Tim Goodman's The Wire (season4) reviews

Television Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Tim Goodman's The Wire reviews for this season. His blog is called "The Bastard Machine" which sort of gives you an indication of his writing style.

Slate.com's editor-in-chief on why the Wire is "the best TV show ever broadcast in America."

"The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America. This claim isn't based on my having seen all the possible rivals for the title, but on the premise that no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature."

It's about a month old, but like most of the links here, it's new to me, and maybe, to you as well. I know most of you who watch the Wire already agree it's a good show, but I think like a good movie or book, it's rich enough that I enjoy reading why other people think it is as well.

NYT's Felicia Pearson "snoop" profile and interview

With her braids, oversize clothes and baseball cap turned to the side, the small, youthful Snoop looks like a teenage boy. With her partner, Chris Partlow, she is the muscle for the drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield. She is a cool, calm female killer who creatively makes enemies disappear with the use of a nail-gun, hiding the bodies in Baltimore’s vacant and condemned row houses on HBO’s much-praised series “The Wire.”
The actress Felicia Pearson, who plays Snoop, has emerged as one of the show’s most compelling characters; Stephen King, in Entertainment Weekly, called her “perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series.”

What to watch when the Wire is over?

So what do I do when this season of the Wire is over? What do I watch while I wait for season five to show up? Battlestar, the Office, and...? I guess I can just read more. That's a good thought. And speaking of books, I should find out what the Wire related books are and make a list to post here. I think there's a bunch of them, fiction and non. Ok, that's coming up as soon as I have time. I hear some of them are pretty good.

Top 10 Reasons Not to Cancel The Wire

This came out early on in 2005, when people were not sure if the Wire would be coming back for the fourth season. Today, with the success of the fourth season (the best show ever is finally catching on), HBO is bringing it back for a fifth and last season. But it's still a good read in case you missed it. And like a lot of great the Wire coverage, it's from the Baltimore City Paper:

1) “Bring me a Shrek 2 slushie and some Krispy Kreme.” —Squeak

The characters are the most instantly and constantly gratifying aspect of The Wire, and over all three seasons its writers cared enough about everybody who utters a line to invest each with a personality that sounds more reported than written. Squeak is a minor character in the third season, a woman who junky/criminal informant Bubbles works through to sell bugged cell phones to lieutenants in the Avon Barksdale drug crew. And yet in her few scenes, The Wire doesn’t turn her into a mere plot-point pawn; you get to know her. She’s loud, controlling, and more than a little domineering. And when the cops do pick her up with her boyfriend and she barks at him, “You got to be the dumbest motherfucker I done ever gone out with,” and he fires back, “I can’t wait to go to jail,” you’ve digested an intimate portrait of a relationship in less than five minutes of screen time. Such detailed attention is lavished on every character, no matter how seemingly trivial, because in The Wire you never know what the next episode will unfold. (Bret McCabe)

Chicago Tribune's "Best Candidate to Break Your Heart" is Dukie of the Wire

BEST CANDIDATE TO BREAK YOUR HEART: Duquon "Dukie" Weems (Jermaine Crawford) on "The Wire" (HBO). Middle schooler Dukie shows up at school in dirty clothes because there's no running water in his house. His few other clothes are stolen by his family so they can buy drugs. You'd think that environment would break him, but there is a core intelligence and sweetness about Dukie, who blossoms under the attention of a caring teacher. Dukie's plight as a basically good boy tempted by the rough streets as his only way out of a rougher life may just be the most heartbreaking story on TV all year.

Agreed. I usually hate kids on tv or movies. They are usually all wise-cracking, with haircuts only found on screen. Best use of child actors on tv or film right now.

I bet Bugs is selling the discs out of his shopping cart

In a season when new technology is drastically changing the ways in which television networks try to reach viewers, The Wire, HBO's Baltimore-based drama, has found a new and avid audience in East Coast nightclubs and on online auction sites such as eBay and Craigslist.

There is, however, one problem with the gain: These new viewers are watching bootleg DVDs or illegal downloads of the entire season, often sold at a fraction of what it would cost to subscribe to HBO or buy a DVD of a full season of the Peabody Award-winning drama. Some of these viewers are then going online and posting "spoilers" - descriptions and comments about events taking place in episodes that have yet to air on HBO. -Baltimore Sun