The Wire - The Complete Second Season
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Movie Reviews of The Wire - The Complete Second Season
Movie Review: The Wire, Season 2
Summary: 5 Stars
Again the casting and acting of this show is extremely good.
This time they took a classic 'whodunnit' storyline but succeeded in keeping the suspense all the way to the end.
They added some new actors (phenomenal), a new setting (the port of Baltimore) and new ingredients of corruption, smuggling and fraud to this second season on top of the ever existing western society drugs issues and kept some old characters in.
Big thumbs up!
Movie Review: the wire
Summary: 5 Stars
The Wire may be the most overlooked tv program ever and also the best.
Do yourself a favor and watch!!!
Movie Review: The Wire -Season 2
Summary: 5 Stars
I couldn't wait to get the second season. It arrived promptly and in great condition. It was well worth the cost!Movie Review: I'm still not worthy
Summary: 5 Stars
Coming off the utter triumph of its first season, The Wire faced a pretty big test in trying to move on without compromising its astoundingly high quality, but having just finished watching I'm pleased to say any traces of a sophomore slump are virtually nonexistent. Once again, the show brings just the right mix of cynicism, humor and tragedy to its stories of crime, punishment, and lives on the edge. I don't know about the claims on this site that season two is superior to its predecessor, but The Wire's standards of writing, characterization, and realism are still very much intact. Not to mention, The Wire's sprawling focus and blink-and-you're lost complexity are, if anything, stepped up as it juggles multiple, often tangentially related, plotlines over the course of its twelve-hour running time. This season certainly doesn't see The Wire abandoning its examination of crime in Baltimore's black ghettoes, but rather expanding the view of its microscope to cover the illegal activities of the (mostly) white working class on the docks of the city's East Side and the international syndicate that provides their side income. As a result, the reach of the show has become even more comprehensive, stretching from the projects to the docks to the police headquarters to the prison system. At times there's a bit of a too-many-cooks feel to the events of this season as the show tries to shoehorn the struggles of the disrupted Barksdale-Bell drug crew into the main plotline (in a setup for the third season, it turned out), but that's a small complaint, as what goes on the screen is still probably the best TV out there.
Season two starts with the major players, on both sides of the law, dispersed all around Baltimore, with McNulty and Daniels serving punishment duty as a result of their actions at the conclusion of the first season, Avon Barksdale and his nephew D'Angelo in lockup following their arrests, Omar hiding out in New York waiting to testify in a key murder trial, and Stringer Bell left trying to maintain his and Avon's housing-project drug empire in the face of serious supply problems. McNulty, especially, has become a train wreck, with his addictive personality and dissatisfaction with his new post on the Maritime Police reaching new heights of self-destructiveness highlighted by an hilarious episode-opening bender that sees him smashing up his car and having random sex with a diner waitress before passing out in her bed. It's not long, though, before everyone gets back together, as a personal vendetta draws the attention of Major Stan Valcheck (aka Prez's father-in-law) to the longshoreman's local led by his old neighborhood rival Frank Sobotka. It does feel a bit contrived seeing the wire team brought together for another case, but seeing them do their thing in all its detail is still just an fascinating as ever when they finally get to it. The show still provides a better look into modern policing than anything I've ever seen, from the nuts and bolts of surveillance work to the internecine wrangling that does nothing but impede the actual solving of crimes. Not to mention, there are plenty of shocking moments thrown in to shake up the audience, from a pile of dead bodies in a container at the conclusion of the first episode to some truly cringe-inducing murder scenes to the sight of shotgun-toting street criminal and all-around tough guy Omar making out with his boyfriend.
Season two introduces a new cast of villains, led by the mysterious elderly crime lord known only as The Greek and his murderous underlings, who have taken advantage of the local longshoremen's declining fortunes to turn the city's docks into their own personal way station for drugs, prostitutes, and God knows what else. It also delves into the hard-boiled existence of a people who, in their own way, have been forgotten almost as much as blacks in the housing projects as the U.S. continues its transition to a middle-class country. In the role of Frank Sobotka, Chris Bauer makes a more than convincing everyman, as we see the character dealing with everything from his crumbling union to his bumbling wannabe-criminal son to his nephew's increasing involvement in the urban drug trade. As he struggles to keep his local (and his family) together in the face of the tightening scrutiny of the cops and the pressure of the Greek's crew, Sobotka also becomes increasingly symbolic of the decline of American union labor, but at the same time he emerges as a compelling character in his own right. Frank is a relic and a dinosaur and he's starting to realize it more and more, but he still fights to maintain as much of his niche as he can, keeping up his determined front even as things fall apart around him. He's proud of his job and what he's accomplished, and his grim resolve to resist his declining fortures sends him on an inexorable path to the season's grim resolution.
While they don't assume center stage as much as in the first season, the Bell-Barksdale crew and many of its central figures are still around to one extent or another, with a whole new set of problems (ranging from the imprisoned D'Angelo's newfound independence to the aforementioned dearth of quality product) putting Stringer and Avon in major damage-control mode. Left to run the crew largely on his own, Stringer emerges as an even more fascinating and complex character, a villain whose intelligence and calculation are matched only by his ruthlessness; you get the sense this guy would kill his own mother in the name of business. At the same time, though, it's hard not to admire his single-minded commitment to being the best at what he does, no matter how tough the decisions it requires of him. Watching Stringer work, I couldn't help but think he would've made a great captain of industry if he had been born in the suburbs instead of the projects. This season also sees the start of the rift between Stringer and Avon that would only intensify in the third season. Needless to say, the emergence of this division is handled in the show's usual organic and realistic manner, with the tension between Avon's street-soldier philosophy and Stringer's all-business approach culminating in their vastly different attempts to resolve their supply problems. Fortunately, the problems in the Bell-Barksdale camp do give us viewers Brother Mouzone, a bowtie-wearing Muslim hitman from New York with an odd combination of comprehensive education and seemingly unmatched deadliness, who's brought in by Avon to protect the crew's territory and ends up running into some problems of his own involving a long-running grudge between Omar and Stringer.
As others have noted, the events of any season of The Wire are difficult to encapsulate in a review; anything anyone can write short of a full-length magazine feature is just going to be a bare-bones outline that comes nowhere near capturing the exhaustive detail that goes into each episode. Suffice it to say, then, that season two is a seamless progression from its predecessor, while at the same time setting up events that continue to unfold even now, two seasons later. It's just part of an ongoing saga, but at the same time everything that happens in this season is worth watching in its own right. Every season is brilliant in its own way, from the intense, propulsive first to the sprawling, tragic, recently completed fourth, and season two is no exception. If you've never seen this show, you're missing out on the best TV has to offer. Seriously.
Movie Review: A minor let down from Season one, but still a classic
Summary: 3 Stars
I've been watching "The Wire" since it was first aired. Season One set the standard for intelligent, gripping, no-compromise drama that required you to meet it on its terms. Even if you couldn't understand the street-corner dialogue or the fraternal "cop speak" or the numerous plot twists, the grittiness and well-defined characters on both sides of the law made up for it.
Season 2 doesn't match up to the intensity of Season 1 or the Jacobean rebound of Season 3. Its main problem is that the main narrative moves from the "corners" of Baltimore to the corruption-laden wharves of the harbor. A season-long who-dunnit concerning a shipping container of dead illegals spurs numerous examinations of union corruption and the decay of Baltimore's mercantile economy. The new characters introduced--nearly all white, and not very interesting--remove the main narrative thrust from the McNulty/Daniels/Barkesdale/Stringer axis that drove Season 1 forward. With these main characters--and their streetcorner dramas--serving as B stories, the dramatic tension decreases substantially.
If one were on a budget, I'd recommend getting season 1 and 3, and either renting (or borrowing from a library) this one. The other seasons are watchable; this one is a bit of a chore to get through.