We got to watch him fall in love, and then toward the end of this last season we got to really see what he’s about. In the beginning, he was avenging his first lover’s death, and then it became about robbing dudes and making money. Then he fell in love again with Renaldo last season, and he seemed like he was happy. He made that big score and left for Puerto Rico. If they didn’t want to bring Omar back this season, I would have been fine, because I was happy that he would have lived to grow old.
"I crossed some line with this character into people's minds and hearts that I don't think is the norm," he said. "People are very passionate about Omar, and it's a very humbling feeling, the love that gets thrown at me for portraying him. I've heard words like, 'Thank you for your courage.'"
Second, Simon always felt conflicted when critics called "The Wire" complex and difficult. Those are great attributes in a series. But they scare away viewers. For all you newbies - Season 5 is exquisitely complex and difficult.
Also, since each season seems to get around to killing off a long-running character, a moment of silence for poor Bodie (JD Williams), the coolest sideways spitter in the history of television.
"That's the problem with most cop shows," explains David Simon. "It's the black hat, white hat thing. I swear if I had to write a police procedural right now, I'd put a gun to my head.
Confronting the man he thinks ordered the torture and murder of his lover Brandon, Omar counters the man’s bland insistence that “the game is the game” with the simple reply, “Indeed. But see, that boy was beautiful.” Capable of appreciation of a lover’s (or an enemy’s) individual qualities, the “sociopath” Omar has a higher, more complicated relationship to the people around him than most of the characters in “The Wire” — even McNulty.
One of the great role reversals this season is Omar and Renaldo doing the kind of long-term surveillance work that would ordinarily be done by the MCU, if it wasn't effectively brain dead.
That mix of pessimism and moral ambiguity, as much as the show's demanding narrative, or the predominantly African-American cast, has no doubt prevented "The Wire" from becoming a mass-appeal hit like "The Sopranos" or "Six Feet Under," but Simon isn't about to change.
Writer and producer Ed Burns draws on his experience as a former Baltimore detective to create the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, now in its fourth season. It's a crime drama with a central theme of surveillance technology used to capture drug dealers.
"The Wire" is funny and odd and sad and, above all, engrossing. If anyone knows of a good online primer that will get potential viewers up to speed without putting in 39 hours of TV viewing, let me know, because more of you should be tuning in for this incredible series. (And no, it's not a cop show -- it transcends that genre the way "Battlestar Galactica" transcends sci-fi.)
What happened with "The Wire" is that HBO boss Chris Albrecht declared in July that the fate of the show rested on the critical response and buzz about the fourth season. And the critics -- from everyday columnists like yours truly to celebrity scribes like Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly -- responded by spending the last several weeks declaring the show to be one of the best ever to air on television (in some cases, the best).
Having depicted an American city over the course of 50 episodes, THE WIRE will use its fifth and concluding season to examine the role of the mass media within that city.
(Season 4) Layering each season upon the previous ones, creator David Simon conveys the decaying infrastructure of his hometown Baltimore in searing and sobering fashion -- constructing a show that's surely as impenetrable to the uninitiated as it is intoxicating to the faithful.
While Homicide presented many varied African-Americans, it didn’t come close to the wide range that has been offered in the first three seasons (and the fourth yet to air) of The Wire, which features realistic black characters on both sides of the law and in political office. These characters are portrayed with a depth that resists classification as purely heroic or villainous — and as an ensemble, their diversity is unrivaled.
It's almost unforgivably painful, not because, like so much of our entertainment, it's prurient and sadistic, but rather because, week after week, and now season after season, THE WIRE arrives at something very much like the truth.
Wire Features The Comic Reel [Columns] Community Resources About/Misc TAKE A DIVE WITH MIKE CAREY INTO "WETWORKS: WORLDSTORM" by Arune Singh, Staff Writer Posted: June 23, 2006
Sam is sixteen years old, all feet and hands and his hair crashing in front of his eyes. Dean is mostly asleep, trying to listen to a football game through the static. Their father has left them here for the night.
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