Wire, The: Season 3

If you've made it to reading about the third season of The Wire, there's no shortage of the amount of praise you've heard, so let me start with something I didn't love about season 3. Trying to create a theme this season about politics, season 3 spends a great deal of time on a plotline about Councilman Carcetti, played dutifully by Aidan Gillen, and his seething need to be mayor. I have to admit that as a rod for the season, I didn't care about it that much - his campaign manager, played by Brandy Burre, is also a rather uninteresting character, or perhaps, I'm forced to admit, that Burre is the first actor hired onto The Wire to be beneath her part.I start with the way it doesn't work because while it's going on, you're treated to some of the most astonishing television ever created (there's that praise again), and to say that eventually, Carcetti's plotline joins the fold and gets interesting. It joins the fold through a different rod of the season - Mjr Colvin, embodied with fierce drive by Robert Wisdom, who decides to conquer the Baltimore drug problem, in a way, by moving it - he drives the dealers we've come to be familiar with and some others into a "free zone" where drugs can be legalized, an idea that works to an extent, but one that no one can talk about without destroying the world around them. It's that "talk" that the season is really about - that is to say, the politics, from the top down. Beyond Carcetti's literal politics and Colvin's political maneuvering within the police department, there's the internal politics of the drug world - of our familiar faces of Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) competing in their own way for the heart of what it means to be gangsters - is it blood or business that keeps them all going? The combination of the drug world and the political world - and that includes our always-central crew of detectives, each of whom go through their own political and personal disaster or two in the course of the year - is what makes The Wire so free of easy answers, and so impossible to shake.There are two scenes that, I think, embody what the show succeeds at so well this season - in the first, late in "Time After Time," the season premiere, Colvin cruises his police car around his filth and crime-ridden West Baltimore streets. He stops as a young boy tries to sell him crack. Colvin pulls out his badge, his hat, etc., and with each step, the boy is completely unthwarted in his attempt. We think, not knowing Colvin, that we're about to see a cop crusing for addictions of his own, but we see the opposite - the heartbreak of the streets on those that want to do good, and the total irrelevance of police in stopping it. The scene crushes expectations nearly as quickly as it does your heart.And the second? The second scene that blew my mind is the one that taught me that Idris Elba, sitting under our nose as Stringer Bell for so long, could be one of the great actors of his generation. During "Homecoming" he's having dinner with Donette (Shamyl Brown), D'Angelo Barksdale's lonely widow, when Stringer snaps at her about telling D'Angelo's mother that D's murder may have been a murder. Stringer is the drive of all the season's best drama, but it's at the point he yells at her, revealing the gangster under the chilly pose, that we realize, fully, just who he is. Where it goes from there during the remainder of the season is pure business on this show - as cynical as it is daring, as fearless as it is inevitable. To watch Elba's work this season is to see the capabilities on a television show that holds its audience's intelligence at a premium, and does it by fulfilling its own storytelling capabilities. What happens this season changes everything we've seen on The Wire up to this point - its finale, "Mission Accomplished," ties up so many loose ends, its hardly a surprise that we even see a "Reelect Frank Sabotka" poster in its final minutes - that you're shocked at just what dramatic power it retains.

Decent season

What can we say, "The Wire" I can watch it over and over again. Thanks to my grandson I can. 💙

After a virtuosic first season and an ambitious (but not quite as thrilling) second season, The Wire's third season proved to be the best one yet. Even though it hasn't been embraced by the public at large (like, say, The Sopranos), the show has received gobs of critical acclaim and delivers the goods, too, every week. I think that not only is The Wire a better show than The Sopranos (which is, admittedly, a truism), but it is a show which better reflects our post-9/11 mindset than its erstwhile New Jersey neighbor. The Sopranos is a product of another time, the zeitgeist of the late 1990s, with its constant putdowns of moneyed, whining, shrink-visiting, latte-sipping, politically-correct hipsters (the Eagles song "Get Over It" being perhaps the definitive cultural manifesto of the time). That show produced three excellent seasons of TV, but then 9/11 changed the world and Tony, Paulie, et al, never managed to get back ahead of the curve. The Wire was formed in direct response to 9/11 and links the drug war to the War on Terror, in both a direct and indirect sense, while examining the institutions (both legitimate and seamy) and the individuals that inhabit them. Although the show is described (even by itself) with such terms as "gritty" and "unvarnished", it is actually not so simple--in the show, as in life, few people fall into the sinner and saint categories. Leaders in these institutions are generally rational and even the antagonists occasionally speak uncomfortable truths. The result is a universe in which we find people's character defined not by their social or economic position.Season 3 builds on the previous seasons and returns to the streets for a showdown between Avon Barksdale's (Wood Harris) crew (still managed, in the interim, by Stringer Bell (Idris Elba)) and a vicious upstart by the name of Marlo, who has taken control of Avon's territory thanks to Stringer's attempts to go straight. On the law side, Kima's (Sonja Sohn) doubts about motherhood continue to grow, while newly-minted Deputy Commissioner Rawls (John Doman) rips district commanders to shreds (and is the subject of a revelation of some interest). At the center of it all is Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), whose liaison with an elite political consultant leads to some quite surprising conclusions that make you reevaluate the character entirely. The political plotline leads naturally into the new arena the show explores, Baltimore's city politics, which prominently features two figures: Mayor Clarence Royce, who seems like an honest, reasonable man, and City Councilman Tommy Carcetti (Adrien Gillen), whose character flirts the line between raw ambition and occasional idealism. In between these personalities is still-Acting Commissioner Burrell (Frankie Faison), whose previous cock-of-the-walk status gives way to getting chewed out by the Mayor. There are plenty more great storylines: Daniels (Lance Reddick) hooking up with Pearlman (and dealing with his nominal wife), Bunk trying to find a wounded officer's gun, and Major "Bunny" Colvin deciding to legalize drugs in condemned areas in order to keep the dealers off the streets. Colvin's plan does reduce crime, and things seem to be getting better, except that the legal drug area ("Hamsterdam") is a hellhole, and eventually the plan is exposed. This plotline just goes to show how much bigger problems can get if they're ignored. Overall, a spectacular season from a show that exceeds even high expectations.

Its Good How in hell did i miss this TV Series wow its been 21 years since it aired and i just came across couple months ago I could kick myself lol

The best tv for me used to belong to the West Wing but having watched all 3 series of the Wire, I have been blown away by the quality of this show. The acting and plot lines are first class. The fact that the story runs throughout a series allows the depth of these characters to develop. In amongst the gritty reality of "modern urban policing" there was plenty of comic humour. There were also plenty of cliff hangers making watching the next episode or series compulsory! Roll on series 4.

We go to Baltimore most nights at 9pm and enjoy an episode - ten times better than the rubbish on tv

A1

An equal match to the first superb season, quality-wise, better than season two (well, that one was different, anyway) the third season is just great viewing. Like all great film, it starts with the writing. Tight and inventive to say the least. (These guys know how to tell a story.) And then there's that cast. Simply great chemistry. Understated excellence. No spoilers here but between the ideas in this series, the overlaying metaphor, the symbolism... This is easily the best stuff on TV and far better than most recent film. (Yes, I know there's alot of great film too. I mean commercial film. You know, the kind that unfortunately makes money.) I'll be at my PVR tomorrow night to watch and rewatch the beginning of season 4. Don't miss this stuff. Real ideas here. Right out of the Greek classics.

I watched a few seasons here and there back when they originally came out on HBO but had a craving to buy these and watch them from start to finish. Simply unbelievable. The storyline is far beyond that of your average show. The characters are raw and not politically correct. It often becomes hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this as both sides make decisions to improve their own positions in this war between cops, politicians, gangsters and the rest of society. Certainly a must see for anyone who doesn't mind raw content.