Saturday, January 23, 2021

The Wire (2002-2008)


My habit of arriving late to things. Latest example: The Wire, whose first season I found at the Lonsdale Sally Anne and, despite it missing its final disc (left in the player after its owner never came back from the hospital?), I purchased gleefully and am now watching.

What I had heard of The Wire was evident after its first three episodes. Great writing, great casting (acting) and a great choice of setting -- the terminal weirdness that is Baltimore. Why is Baltimore weird? Well, it was weird (to me) when I passed through it twenty years ago, and it appears weird to Baltimore resident Kirsten Jeffers, a "Black queer feminist urbanist" who posted this on her blog in 2017:

"So here we are, the first true Baltimore-centric post. It took me two months because as I said in in my 2017 birthday post, I was scared. This is a city where people get hurt and get hurt often. Especially by people who claim they are doing the right thing. The last thing I needed was for my post to come along and stir up a hornet's nest. I'm trying as much as possible to fly under the radar."

The Wire has a great soundtrack, though not all its songs are by those who brought them to our attention (Can anybody "Tell Me Something Good" [1974] as good as Rufus & Chaka Khan?) As for Gram Parson and Emmylou Harris singing "The Streets of Baltimore" (1966) -- yes, they played that, too.


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