Rewatched The Wire after 10 years and it hit completely different now

I first watched The Wire back in 2013 when I was 22 and working entry level plumbing jobs. I thought it was just a cop show with good acting. Ten years later after running my own crew and dealing with city permits, inspectors, and actually seeing how systems fail in real life, I rewatched it over two weeks. The whole thing is about institutions and how people get crushed by them, not about cops and criminals at all. Anyone else have a show that completely changed meaning when you watched it older?

3 comments

3 Comments

vera_robinson361mo ago

Oh man, I read some film critic talking about how The Wire is really about the failure of every institution it touches. Schools, police, politics, newspapers. It makes you wonder if they had a bet about how many systems they could show being broken in one show.

the_thea1mo ago

So @vera_robinson36 is right, it's impossible to unsee once you notice it, isn't it?

jennifer8331mo ago

Impossible to unsee" is right, @the_thea... now I can't stop noticing how every single character in The Wire is just banging their head against a broken system. @vera_robinson36, that film critic nailed it, honestly. I feel like the show snuck up on me with that theme, like I was just watching gangsters and cops and then suddenly realized, oh wait, this is literally about every institution failing everyone. Kind of makes me wonder what that says about me that it took three rewatches to catch it... guess I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.