Michael K. Williams Is More Than Omar from ‘The Wire’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Damn.
In a profane and violent world, he has a code, which he upholds. IIRC, MKWilliams was the one who insisted that Omar not curse.
There are not many shows taht are better than the WireSeason 5 is the most underappreciated season, but I've really started to appreciate it.
McNulty has been a character who believes the ends justify the means. In Season 1, he falsifies that Sidner (iirc) was on the roof, thus allowing the police to admit phone tapped evidence.
In Season 5, it shows how taking that mentality of by any means necessary can quickly spiral out of control.
Oz is still one of my favorite tv show, it has so many good characters and the huit clos format (closed doors) is really perfect for focusing on them
There is just enough foolery to make it easily tier 2 for me: Francis Wolcott's story arc, Olyphant's acting, Seth Bullock's attempt at morale highground.
If folks aren't turned off by violence, profanity, and prostitution, it's definitely must watch tv.
That's what I liked about it.
The Wire on the other hand I've seen completely atleast 5 times and always notice something new.
Yes! Seeing the family struggles of a vile gangster is what made the show amazing.
Still top-tier, and I think it laid a foundation that others have built upon, in sheer game-elevation alone.
David Simon called it "a treatise on the end of the American empire, and who we are as a people, what we've come to, why we can no longer solve or even seriously address our own problems", and generally said and wrote a lot of insightful things since, very eloquently. I loved The Wire, but discovering that head and character behind it impressed me on top of even that.
Just take this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL6Jv2Jpnpg
If I had to put it in a nutshell I'd say The Wire "comes from a place of" paying attention, not from distraction or deriving entertainment from crime and other problems, and that (combined with genius and the right people getting together and having good chemistry, and a lot of things not going wrong that can easily kill a TV show) made it so good. Good art can be luck, but art this great is always the tip of an iceberg.
One of the brilliant things about the show is how it wove in so many elements: rival criminals, politics, law enforcement, the media, the church, well-meaning citizens, etc. There was so much tension, angst and striving from all quarters. All of this created a separate entity--a system--wherein all actions and motivations served to form a near-perfect tension that held everything and everyone in a state of suspension.
I loved the wire - truly.
However, I think I would rate the first season of true detective as being better than all of the seasons of the wire except for season 2, which was my favorite.
I was surprised to learn that s2 (dock workers, etc.) is not very well liked - I thought it was by far the most interesting.
EDIT: WIRE SPOILER: also, as long as we're talking about it ... the resolution of the omar character in the last seasons of the wire was incredibly anti-climactic and just downright weird. I understand they got the rug pulled out and had to quick wrap up the show but that was really just the worst and most useless bookend to his character arc...
I think that was the point. I don't remember where I read it, but his death was always going to be like that. It didn't matter that he was the only beacon of (kinda) good in a cruel world - good and bad, the streets get you eventually and its never honorable or glorious.
Which in itself is an argument against doing that!
The way he went out says that in the real "game", there are no super heroes. Even the biggest badass dies just as much from a bullet, and ultimately mean nothing compared to the big institutional forces that shape the world.
One way to think about The Wire as a whole is that it's about organisations and how they remain the same, regardless of the seemingly big influence individuals have in them.
At the end of the show most the bigger-than-life people on all sides have been replaced. Yet everything is just the same as it always was.
Which is what made it appropriate and perfect. This is what makes The Wire what it is, this representation of "the game" in all its futility.
> the resolution of the omar character in the last seasons of the wire was incredibly anti-climactic and just downright weird. I understand they got the rug pulled out and had to quick wrap up the show but that was really just the worst and most useless bookend to his character arc...
That's just it. In the streets, there aren't heroes and villains. Just everyday people who are in the game, and those who are not. And if you're in the game, something as normal as going to a 1-stop shop can end in murder.
I loved that for Bodie, they let him go out in blaze of glory. Deciding to hold his corner in defiance.
Both characters were given the type of ending that fit best with their arcs. Omar had enough epic shootouts that one more would have been cliche.
That gives a nice kind of circular relationship, although it's hard to say there was hero-worship going on, given the ending.
Shakur was filming with Mickey Rourke for 1996 release Bullet (actually filmed in 1994), and Williams was specifically chosen for a role by Shakur because of his facial scar. William's manager at the time was James Rosemond who is currently incarcerated with several life terms. Rosemond was a childhood friend of Michael Williams, and grew up in the same area of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, near the Vandeveer housing projects (now called Flatbush Gardens), and became heavily involved in street crimes as a teenager, allegedly robbing drug dealers like in the Wire.
Fast forwarding to the early 90's, a number executives in the urban music industry had indirect/direct ties with street crime and gang culture, and Rosemond, who became Michael K William's manager, was believed to be one of them (he also managed several popular urban music groups at the time). It's widely believed by industry insiders that Rosemond wanted to become Shakur's manager as well, but Shakur wasn't interested. Also, much of Shakur's problems (the 1994 shooting and imprisonment) are believed by many to be of the doing of either Rosemond or his acquaintances.
It would be interesting to know how much Omar's character was influenced by his friendship with Rosemond and people from the neighborhood they both knew.
One of the most interesting to me was Melvin Williams who played The Deacon, and in real life was a big-time heroin kingpin who was renowned for his intelligence. There's a decent documentary about him floating around and a (short) Wikipedia page [0].
Another is Felicia Pearson who played Snoop. Listen to an interview with her and hear her backstory, and you know she's the real deal. Stephen King called her character "perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series". [1]
Goes perfectly with the ethos of the show, at the end, nothing changes.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent to get to the real point, which is that Homicide, filmed a decade earlier than the Wire, highlighted many of the same troubles that The Wire did. Perhaps as the result of being based on the same (or similar) works, but if Homicide was authentic (and I believe it was) and the Wire was authentic (which I also believe), then it seems that Baltimore's had problems for some time.
I work in Baltimore now, and get to see some of the areas The Wire was filmed in enough to see that they've made real progress in certain areas, but on the whole, but Baltimore tends to do a good job of holding a spot in the top 10 of "most dangerous cities" lists year to year.
The UK is even worse, David Harewood is on the record as saying left and went to America to find better roles.
This composition is inevitably reflected in the stories people choose to write, read, film and watch.
As an aside, the PC Peter Grant series (aka Rivers of London) depicts London way more accurately than most fiction, despite teeming with elves and goblins.
If not for the faults I reference above, I'd strongly recommend it as epically great television -- and it is, if you can look past those faults, but sometimes they're pretty glaring.
Andre Braugher though? He's pretty amazing throughout the series.
That said, I'm not privy to the production details, so if even those things were intentional, then so be it, but it definitely feels dated and off, relative to The Wire.
Don't forget to check out Generation Kill, which was co-written with Ed Burns with whom he also worked on The Wire and The Corner.
If someone can direct me to more substantial disagreement, I'd love to know. But so far I've been a little surprised at how little has been written against the depiction of Generation Killl.
What it has in common with The Wire is that its characters are richly crafted, and they're whole characters. Nobody in any David Simon show is a throwaway character, and that might not ever have been more true than in Treme. Also, the acting is exceptional, in every scene, and in every case. Another commonality is that of the failures of people, and of the institutions that ostensibly aim to protect them. Like The Wire, Treme is filled with a panoply of people all attempting their best in every task, but as in life, those people sometimes fail, and often those failures come at the expense of somebody else. Just as in The Wire, we often get to see the impact of those failures up close and personal, and we get to feel the hurt it causes, while sympathizing with those who made whatever mistake caused the failure, and far too often to be comfortable, we get to pick which one of those people we prefer.
There are big differences, obviously. The Wire is, at its core, a cops and robbers drama, with some other stuff going on. Treme focuses more on the people, and less on the game they're playing. Music plays a much bigger role in Treme than in The Wire, but that's a commonality too, as David Simon works tend to feature the city as a character, and Treme's set in New Orleans, and that music is part of New Orleans' character.
The narrative in Treme meanders around A LOT. It all basically wraps itself up by the end, but while The Wire managed to tell a basically cohesive story each season, Treme's big plot is spread out, with blurrier lines. It gives you the feeling of closure with each season finale, but the collection of tales being told don't, and really, keep going well after the show's end.
At the end of the day though, the main difference is that narrative draw. If you need one, maybe Treme isn't for you. Sure, it has political corruption, and criminal investigations, and the occasional legal proceeding, but at its core Treme is really just a window into the lives of a couple dozen folks making their way in post-Katrina New Orleans. We get to see how the storm affected them, and how the city affected them, and sometimes, how they've affected the city -- whether by making their mark on it, or succumbing to its ways, or in some cases, getting out while the getting is good. It isn't about anything that I could wrap up into a few sentences, but it's a deep cultural exploration into a culturally rich and beautiful people, and it's a showcase for some of the best damn music around, and it's an expose into the triumphs and troubles of people just trying to make it work in a city at a time when nothing's working as it should. It's also the inverse of that, in true David Simon form, so -- yeah, nobody can fault you for having a hard time making an adjustment, but it's worth adjusting if you can manage it.
It's on Sundance TV in the US and Amazon Prime in the UK.
Two seasons with a third already commissioned.
>Set in the late 1980's, Hap and Leonard is a darkly comic swamp noir of two best friends, one femme fatale, a crew of washed up revolutionaries, a pair of murderous psycho killers, some lost loot, and the fuzz.
In general people in the UK can understand most Americans. People in the US are fucking baffled when they hear someone from the UK say "herb" or "water".
To give a non-"street" example, one character makes a comment about working a "ro-ro" which I happen to know is a "Roll-on, Roll-off car ferry". But I guess the average viewer isn't supposed to know that, just to absorb the authenticity as a background texture.