This show is worth every bit of the work and attention it takes to watch. Which is why seven of us progressive bloggers decided to blog the last season over at The New Package

Athenae and Scout of First Draft
Racy Mind
Nancy Nall
Ray in New Orleans
Ashley Morris
and blogmisstress Virgotex.

David Simon’s already dropped by. Come give us a visit-it promises to be a great project. I only hope we can do the show justice.

David Simon also wrote HOMICIDE, the book on which the NBC series was based.

And he wrote THE CORNER, another non-fiction book (about the drug market on Baltimore street corner), which became a miniseries. (And I should add, a terrific miniseries, just as it was a terrific book–as was HOMICIDE.)

For several years, Simon was part of the HOMICIDE TV writing staff, and eventually learned producing from the executive producer of the program, Tom Fontana. (Fontana is also responsible for OZ.)

As somebody whose career in certain respects resembles Simon’s (reporter, screenwriter, novelist) all I can say is that those of us in the same trade regard with awe.

Thanks.

David Simon also wrote HOMICIDE, the book on which the NBC series was based.

And he wrote THE CORNER, another non-fiction book (about the drug market on Baltimore street corner), which became a miniseries. (And I should add, a terrific miniseries, just as it was a terrific book–as was HOMICIDE.)

For several years, Simon was part of the HOMICIDE TV writing staff, and eventually learned producing from the executive producer of the program, Tom Fontana. (Fontana is also responsible for OZ.)

As somebody whose career in certain respects resembles Simon’s (reporter, screenwriter, novelist) all I can say is that those of us in the same trade regard with awe.

Thanks.

As to the questions of whether or not you can start watching Season 5 if you haven’t seen any of the previous seasons, the answer is a qualified yes. The seasons tend to be somewhat self-contained, so you should be relatively okay. There will be spoilers, though. If you start with Season 5 and then go back to Seasons 1-4, you’ll quickly realize that the “new” characters in the first 4 seasons are the ones who didn’t survive to season 5.

Be warned, though: You can’t really start watching in the middle of any of the seasons and expect to follow the show. Each season is like a novel, and each episode is like a chapter to the novel. You can’t read random chapters of a book and expect to enjoy it. It’s the same way with “The Wire”.

No. I haven’t seen the movie yet. There is a release earlier this year covering some aspect, I think it’s about the son.

The very last episode when John dies is really powerful. My SO didn’t particularly like the show but it grabbed her as well. The groundwork for the final episode was laid quite early in the series, so early that the producers had a devil of a time making it believable with footage shot years earlier. I saw the discrepancies, but the filming is covered in the extra material on that last disc.

A little aside: One of the episodes has a woman named Lois Nettleton as a character. Lois is a former Miss Chicago (1948) who my dad photographed (he liked to do glamour photos when I was growing up), entering her photo as a possible contestant during a search for contestants. It was fun seeing her in that episode and comparing her now to the photo my dad took, which I have in my collection.