What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Newbies edition)
-filmcricket said... I've watched all but the last episode of the first season now, and honestly, I don't quite get what all the fuss is about. It's a great show, no question: compelling, well-acted, well-written. But I don't feel my mind being blown. Five minutes in Al Swearengen's company makes my brain feel like it's been wrung out. None of the folks on The Wire do that to me yet.
--I have to say, the more you see Omar, the more you'll realize he's got that Swearengen effect on you. That's a guarantee. Or, I don't know you, so maybe it's not.
-It's just... the idea that drug dealers can be multi-faceted, that "the system" is set up to perpetuate itself, that good cops can do bad things and vice versa, that hierarchies dislike mavericks - none of this is news. All of it has been portrayed on screen before, and certainly played out in real life.

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, "Old Cases" (Newbies edition): What you could hopefully be finding (or at least, what I am finding) is a show that is intelligent and thought-provoking, that doesn't babysit you, that has compelling characters and an interesting storyline. this is the question, does it? At this point in the story, while everything is being established, it's just a really good show. The greatness (or otherwise) of a story is not determined just by the quality of each individual episode, but by the way they build on each other, the way plot elements are established and pay off, the development of characters and so on.
ok by late in S1 I did find almost every scene compelling for character: McNulty, Daniels, Bubbles, Omar, Avon, Stringer, Wee-Bey.