Line #53 Trivia/TheWire


1	->''[[ArcWords "All the pieces matter."]]''
2	-->--'''Lester Freamon'''
3
4	* AcclaimedFlop: Despite being hailed as one of, if not ''the'' greatest TV Show ever made, it did horrible in ratings, despite critical and viewer acclaim. Luckily, said acclaim is what convinced HBO to see it through to the end.
5	* ActorSharedBackground:
6	** Richard De Angelis really did have cancer and died due to complications from it after season 4. When it was confirmed that his cancer was terminal, his character Colonel Raymond Forester also developed cancer, died from it during the course of season 4, and was given a wake at Kavanaugh's Pub. When he appears in Season 4 for his final episodes, his obvious and drastic weight loss from treatment between seasons can be quite shocking.
7	** Felicia Pearson was a street-level drug dealer who had done a few years in prison for a murder (she has always insisted it was self-defense) she committed at 15, ''before'' she was cast as Snoop.
8	* CastTheExpert: A number of police officers and drug dealers in the series were played by actual former cops or criminals, including Dennis Mello, who was played by the real Jay Landsman, and The Deacon, whose actor Melvin Williams was a former drug kingpin and one of the main inspirations for Avon Barksdale.
9	* CastTheRunnerUp:
10	** Creator/LanceReddick auditioned for the roles of Bunk Moreland and Bubbles before being cast as Cedric Daniels. He was told that they were looking for "a name" to fill the Daniels role.
11	** Tray Chaney originally auditioned to play Wee-Bey Brice but the producers felt he was too short. They were so impressed with his audition that they created the character of Poot for him to play.
12	** Jay Landsman auditioned for the character based on himself, before being cast as Dennis Mello.
13	** Seth Gilliam auditioned for the role of Stringer Bell before being cast as Ellis Carver.
14	** Tristan Mack Wilds auditioned for the role of Randy Wagstaff before being cast as Michael Lee.
15	** Gbenga Akinnagbe auditioned for the role of Marlo Stanfield before being cast as Chris Partlow, Marlo's NumberTwo.
16	** Jamie Hector auditioned for the role of Cutty Wise before being cast as Marlo Stanfield.
17	** Isiah Whitlock Jr. auditioned for the role of Lester Freamon before being cast as Clay Davis.
18	** Creator/MichaelBJordan auditioned before casting director Alexa L. Fogel in New York City for the role of Bodie. He was called back twice and the auditions went well, but he was turned down for the part because Fogel thought he was too young. The part went to Jordan's friend J.D. Williams, who grew up in the same hometown with Jordan in Newark, New Jersey.
19	** Anwan Glover auditioned for the roles of Marlo Stanfield, Fruit and Drac before being cast as Slim Charles.
20	** Donnell Rawlings was considered for the role of Omar before being cast as recurring character Damien Price.
21	** Jermaine Crawford auditioned for the role of Michael Lee before being cast as Dukie Weems.
22	** Michael Kostroff originally auditioned for the part of Frank Barlow before being cast as Maurice Levy.
23	** Creator/RegECathey auditioned for the roles of Cedric Daniels and Lester Freamon. He was later cast in the show's fourth season as Norman Wilson.
24	** Creator/IdrisElba originally auditioned for the part of Avon, hiding his British accent at the behest of a casting director because David Simon preferred American actors for authenticity. Upon discovering Idris' true origins, he offered him Stringer Bell instead.
25	* TheCharacterDiedWithHim: Producer Robert F. Colesberry died from surgery complications and his character, Detective Ray Cole, passes away while working out on a Stairmaster in Season 3. Richard [=DeAngelis=] who played relatively unimportant Major Raymond Foerster, died of cancer during Season 4. Both receive an InMemoriam wake at Kavanaugh's Pub. Cole's one is the first of the series.
26	* CreatorBreakdown:
27	** Creator/MichaelKWilliams secretly struggled with a cocaine addiction during the third season. He never missed a day of work nor was he ever late. He also suffered with an identity crisis due to his popularity as Omar.
28	** During the first season, Sonja Sohn had much trouble remembering her lines causing numerous delays. She says it was due to childhood trauma of growing up in a ghetto and witnessing police brutality. Because of this she was uncomfortable in the neighborhood while filming took place and had issues with portraying a police officer.
29	** Creator/AndreRoyo, who played Bubbles, had a difficult time with his role at certain points, just because everything Bubbles went through was so heartbreaking, depressing, and repetitive that it left him with depression as well, which he dealt with by drinking heavily. In the end he needed substance abuse help to deal with the drinking problem he developed.
30	--->By the third season I was drinking. I was depressed. I'd look at scripts like: what am I doing today? Getting high or pushing that f*cking cart?
31	* CreatorChosenCasting: Creator/DavidSimon cast Creator/JamieHector as Marlo Stanfield after seeing him in ''Five Deep Breaths''.
32	* TheDanza:
33	** Felicia "Snoop" Pearson.
34	** RealLife Baltimore drug kingpin "Little Melvin" Williams plays the Deacon, whose first name is apparently "Melvin".
35	** Officer Bobby Brown is played by Bobby J. Brown.
36	* DarkhorseCasting: The series avoided casting big-name stars and instead used character actors who appear natural in their roles.
37	* DawsonCasting:
38	** Marla Daniels is clearly supposed to be around the same age as Cedric, but Maria Broom has a solid 12 or so years on Creator/LanceReddick, and is noticeably older.
39	** D'Angelo Barksdale's prison records seen in season three indicate that he was approximately 23. Larry Gilliard, Jr. was 31 years old in season 1, making him two years younger than Creator/WoodHarris (Avon) and one year older than Creator/IdrisElba (Stringer).
40	** J.D. Williams is older than the teenage Bodie by eight years.
41	** Omar Little is supposed to be in his late twenties by the beginning of the series and is noted as being 34 on his [[spoiler: death certificate]] in season 5. Creator/MichaelKWilliams was 35 in 2001, when he began playing him.
42	* DeniedParody: It is often assumed that Tommy Carcetti is based on former mayor of Baltimore Martin O'Malley. Creator/DavidSimon and the other writers claim that he's modeled after a number of obscure Baltimore politicians.
43	* DirectedByCastMember: "Took" was directed by Dominic West ([=McNulty=]). Clark Johnson also directed several episodes (notably [[PilotEpisode "The Target"]]), even before he joined the cast as Gus Haynes. He also directed the finale.
44	* DisabledCharacterDisabledActor: Blind Butchie's actor S. Robert Morgan actually is blind (though as a result of macular degeneration rather than a gunshot wound).
45	* DuelingWorks: With [[Creator/FXNetworks FX]]'s ''Series/TheShield'', another gritty crime drama about the day-to-day lives of a special police unit. Both shows even ran for six years and shared some of the cast members.
46	* ExecutiveMeddling: One of the rare examples that was good for the show. Simon and the writers originally planned for [[BuryYourGays Kima to die of her gunshot wounds]] at the end of Season 1; an HBO executive persuaded them to let her live.
47	* FakeAmerican:
48	** Jimmy [=McNulty=] and Stringer Bell are played by Brits Dominic West and Creator/IdrisElba.
49	** Italian-American Tommy Carcetti is played by Irishman Aidan Gillen.
50	* FakeNationality:
51	** "The Greek" (who is not actually Greek, nor even of Greek descent, but clearly isn't American either) is played by American actor Creator/BillRaymond.
52	** Spiros either is Greek or pretends to be one (he has many identities), but he is played by the American Paul Ben-Victor.
53	** Subverted, after a fashion, with [=McNulty=]: although Landsman makes numerous jokes about [=McNulty=]'s "negligible Irish ancestry," Dominic West, although born in Yorkshire and identifying as English, actually is of primarily Irish ancestry.
54	* FakeRussian: Ukrainian Sergei Malatov is played by American Chris Ashworth. "Malatov" is also not a Ukrainian name--however, it might be a fake name, made to conform to American stereotypes. He works for The Greek [[spoiler:(who isn't Greek)]].
55	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: While the show notoriously wasn't a hit for HBO and it mostly owes its reputation to word-of-mouth that hadn't started until around the latter half of its run, it saw huge success in the United Kingdom.
56	* IAmNotSpock: Several of the actors had difficulty finding new roles after the show ended.
57	** Gbengga Akinagbe (Chris Partlow) remarked "It was so authentic, people thought we weren't actors. At industry events, people would ask 'What are you doing here?' And I'd say, 'What do you mean?' and they'd say 'What are you doing out of Baltimore?' ".
58	** Creator/MichaelKWilliams suffered an identity crisis because people on the street would always recognize him as [[KarmicThief Omar Little]] and expected him to live up to that part.
59	** Defied by Wendell Pierce: "If you see me on the street, feel free for the rest of my life to call me Bunk."
60	* IronyAsSheIsCast:
61	** The Deacon is played by Melvin Williams, a reformed criminal and basis for Avon Barksdale. The show alludes to the fact that the Deacon wasn't always a choir boy when he shows skill as a pool shark.
62	** Drug kingpin Avon Barksdale, shown as a one-time rising star in the boxing world, is played by Wood Harris. Fans of the iconic sports movie ''Film/RememberTheTitans'' will be shocked by how the well-mannered, All-American Julius Campbell managed to become the lord of the Baltimore underworld.
63	** The proudly Irish-American Catholic Jimmy [=McNulty=], who sneers at Bushmills as "Protestant whiskey" and makes other references to pro-Irish and anti-English sentiments, is played by English actor Dominic West (admittedly, West is of Irish ancestry, but the point remains he identifies as a Yorkshireman). There's also a scene where he gets to do a hilarious impression of an American doing a bad English accent.
64	* OnlyBarelyRenewed: Both the fourth and fifth seasons barely happened. The fifth possibly only because the creator wrapped up the series and delivered a shorter season.
65	* PostScriptSeason: Creator/DavidSimon was convinced that season three would be the end of the show.
66	* RealitySubtext:
67	** Co-creator Ed Burns left the Baltimore police force to teach in city schools, much as Prez does in Season 4.
68	** The Deacon is played by Melvin Williams, the real-life inspiration for Avon Barksdale. In his prime, during the 1970s, Williams dominated the drug trade in West Baltimore in much the same way.
69	** Felicia Pearson had never acted before Michael Williams saw her in a nightclub and invited her to the set to test for Snoop. Before that, she had lived much the same life, getting involved in drug dealing in her teens (which she still did even after she was on the show, until she knew she'd like doing it) and serving a prison term for a murder she insists was self-defense[[note]]The victim's family was ''not'' happy she got the part[[/note]] Since the show ended she has been arrested on drug dealing and conspiracy charges again.
70	** Former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke really did, when seeking re-election, use campaign graphics with "Schmoke Makes Us Proud!" on a black, red and green background (just ''coincidentally'' the same colors the African American flag uses), as a dogwhistle to black voters, much like Royce does as he gets more desperate to win the primary. Schmoke also did actually suggest decriminalizing drugs, which got him labelled as "the most dangerous man in America". Schmoke appears in a bit role as Royce's Health Commissioner, and warns Royce that is he tries to continue Colvin's Hamsterdam experiment, the papers would call him just that.
71	* RealLifeRelative:
72	** Producer Nina Kostroff Noble is the real life sister of Michael Kostroff, who plays Maurice Levy.
73	** Michelle Paress (Alma Gutierrez) is married in real life to Larry Gilliard Jr. (D'Angelo Barksdale).
74	* RecastAsARegular:
75	** One of the cops in the courtroom in "[[Recap/TheWireS01E04OldCases Old Cases]]" is clearly played by Gbenga Akinnagbe, two seasons before he was cast as Marlo Stanfield's chief enforcer Chris Partlow.
76	** The woman Bunk drunkenly sleeps with in "[[Recap/TheWireS01E08Lessons Lessons]]" is played by Denise Hart, who would later play Randy Wagstaff's stepmother in season four.
77	* RealSongThemeTune: Music/TomWaits' "Way Down In The Hole" is the theme song, and is performed by a different artist each season (including Waits himself in Season 2).
78	** Season 1: The cover version by The Blind Boys of Alabama in a traditional blues/gospel style (note: this version is often considered [[CoveredUp the best]]).
79	** Season 2: Tom Waits' original rhythm & blues cover.
80	** Season 3: The Neville Brothers, which has distinct funk and reggae influences.
81	** Season 4: A contemporary R&B version by [=DoMaJe=], a vocal group brought together specifically for the purpose, consisting of actual Baltimore City public school kids.
82	** Season 5: A rock/alt-country version by Music/SteveEarle (who plays Bubbles' NA sponsor Walon and gets a substantial amount of screen time that season).
83	* ReferencedBy: An episode of ''Series/WillAndGrace''. In "The Wedding," Jack [=McFarland=] (Creator/SeanHayes) claims to have a foolproof method to find the one gay cop out of a group of cops. He asks them one by one what their favorite show is. Most of them predictably say ''The Wire''. But Officer Drew (Ryan Pinkston) says his favorite show is ''Series/ThisIsUs''. Soon Jack and Drew hook up in the men's room.
84	* SparedByTheCut: Kima was supposed to die in the first season. Creator/{{HBO}} executive Carolyn Strauss urged Creator/DavidSimon not to kill off Greggs, telling him it would be a mistake.
85	* StarMakingRole: For Creator/IdrisElba, Creator/DominicWest, Creator/AidanGillen, Creator/MichaelKWilliams, Creator/LanceReddick (coupled with ''Series/{{Fringe}}''), Andre Royo and Creator/ChadLColeman (coupled with ''Series/TheWalkingDead'').
86	* TechnologyMarchesOn:
87	** At the beginning of the series, the Barksdale Organization still uses pagers and while that is mentioned as being unusual, cellphones still haven’t completely conquered the telecommunications industry. As a result, working payphones are everywhere and the Barksdales have a scheme to use them for communicating and dodging police wiretapping.
88	** Freamon and Prez do their research into Barksdale's shell corporations and laundered campaign contributions by physically going to the offices where those records are filed and asking for them. Today that can be done over the Internet.
89	** In Season 2, Nick and Ziggy steal some cutting-edge digital cameras that retail for $500 and offer them to the Greek's organization to fence. Today you couldn't give those cameras away.
90	** The FBI determines the container's origin was faked by calling up their counterparts in France to check out the purported address, something that by 2020 could be done with Google Street View or similar services.
91	** Baltimoreans are shown voting on lever machines, which many states had already long abandoned (if they'd ever used them to begin with) by the mid-2000s. By 2020 they are all long gone from American polling places.
92	* ThrowItIn: Senator Clay Davis' catchprase "Sheeeeee-it" didn't appear in the script. Isaiah Whitlock Jr. added it in.
93	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
94	** The writers discussed having a season dedicated to immigration and the large influx of Hispanic immigrants in Baltimore, but the amount of time that would have been needed to [[ShownTheirWork do the research required]] and [[http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/the-wire-reunion-paleyfest-cast-david-simon-1201332671/ HBO having enough with the show's low ratings]] scuttled it.
95	--->'''David Simon:''' We were considering a season on the topic of immigration, it was debated in the writers’ room, but it's like, by the time we do the research, learn the Spanish, the train’s already rolling along and you can’t stop it. We were just begging HBO to give us another season.
96	** During season 3 the idea was floated of spinning off the political subplots into a separate show called ''The Hall''. Instead the political side was folded into subsequent seasons. Ostensibly because the heads of HBO were like "No, we only want one show that nobody is watching in Baltimore, not two!"
97	** Jimmy [=McNulty=]'s original last name was [=McArdle=]. This was alluded to in season 2 where one of the white drug dealers is a guy named "White Mike" [=McArdle=].
98	** Creator/JohnCReilly was Simon's first choice to play [=McNulty=], implying his original idea for the character was ''very'' different from what we ended up with. Creator/RayWinstone was offered the role, but turned it down. Winstone liked the show but did not want to be away from his family for seven months of the year, which was the filming schedule.
99	** Simon originally wrote the crime family featured in season two as Italian-based. However, to avoid comparison with ''Series/TheSopranos'', also on HBO, Simon changed it to a Greek mob.
100	** The original character outline for Bubbles mentions that he is slowly dying of AIDS, a character aspect that was instead given to Bubbles' friend Johnny Weeks.
101	** Judge Daniel Phelan was originally named Judge Clifford Watkins and was black.
102	** [[http://kottke.org.s3.amazonaws.com/the-wire/The_Wire_-_Bible.pdf The Wire Bible]] reveals that, among other things, D'Angelo was meant to testify at the end of season one.
103	* WordOfGay: Rawls's sexual orientation is strongly hinted at in the show (especially with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFNda6csJLg his appearance in a gay bar where Lamar is looking for Omar]]), but Creator/DavidSimon has confirmed it in interviews.
104	* WordOfGod: Creator/DavidSimon has spoken on a number of points over the years, (including the sexual orientation of Bill Rawls, as mentioned above, or confirming that Chris Partlow was also molested as a child) but perhaps the most interesting case regards the newspaper storyline from Season 5. This plot arc is widely criticized for being simplistic and obvious compared to the depth and complexity of other stories, however Simon has claimed that the critics are missing the true point of the arc, and it isn't really about the evils of the newspaper business or holding Gus Haynes and a few other writers up as paragons of virtue, [[http://davidsimon.com/the-wires-final-season-and-the-story-everyone-missed/ but about how the newspaper (even the good people who still work in it) has completely lost touch with the lives of the people in its city.]]
105	-->Here’s what happened in season five of ''The Wire'' when almost no one — among the working press, at least — was looking: our newspaper missed every major story. The mayor, who came in promising reform, is instead forcing his police department to once again cook the stats to create the illusion that crime is going down. Uncovered. The school system has been teaching test questions to improve No Child Left Behind scores, and to protect the mayor politically and to validate a system that is failing to properly educate city children. No expose published. Key investigations and prosecutions are undercut or abandoned by the political machinations of police officials, prosecutors and political figures. Departmental priorities make high-level drug investigation prohibitive. Not the news that’s fit to print. Drug wars, territorial disputes, and the assassination of the city’s largest drug importer manage to produce a brief inside the metro section that refers only to the slaying of a second-hand appliance store owner. Par for the course.
106
107	-->That was the critique. With the exception of the good journalism that bookended the story arc — which is, of course, representative of the fact that there are still newspaper folk in Baltimore and elsewhere struggling mightily to do the job — the season amounted to ten hours of a newspaper that is no longer intimately aware of its city. ... A good newspaper covers its city and acquires not just the quantitative account of a day’s events, but the qualitative truth and meaning behind those events. A great newspaper does this routinely on a multitude of issues, across its entire region. Such a newspaper was not chronicled on The Wire. There were still good journalists in our make-believe newsroom, and they did some good work — just as there are still such souls in Baltimore and every city laboring in similar fashion and to similar result. But there used to be more of them. And they covered more ground, and they knew the terrain in a way that they no longer do.
108	* WriteWhatYouKnow:
109	** Creator/DavidSimon used to be a reporter for ''The Baltimore Sun''. This inspired the media plotline in season five.
110	** Prez's experiences as a teacher are based on those of Ed Burns, who became a Baltimore middle school teacher when he retired from the Police.
111	* WriteWhoYouHate:
112	** Writer and former newspaper reporter David Simon [[https://www.saratogian.com/2008/01/07/the-wire-gets-personal-in-its-final-season/ based two different characters]] on Bill Marrimow, his former [[DaEditor editor]] with whom he had a bitter feud while working for the ''Baltimore Sun'' newspaper. The first, Lt. Charles Marrimow, is an utterly incompetent and hardasss police lieutenant whose true purpose in being appointed the new commander of a special police unit is to disrupt the unit and make it so impossible for the unit to function that it disintegrates, thus quietly halting their investigations into various corrupt politicians and shady businessmen who are power players in the city. The second character, an editor at the fictional version of the ''Baltimore Sun'' within the show, is a stuck-up prig who protects a journalist who is fabricating stories and is noted to be engaging in [[HiredForTheirLooks hiring attractive young women for their looks]].
113	** The executive editor in charge of the fictional version of the ''Sun'', James Whiting, [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/exaxgz/david-simon-280-v16n12 is based]] on an executive editor from Simon's time at the real ''Sun'', John Carroll. Whiting is a PointyHairedBoss and UpperClassTwit who also goes out of his way to protect the reporter fabricating stories. Another character speculates that he does it purely in hopes that the sensationalist fabricated stories can win a Pulitzer Prize and raise Whiting's profile within the newspaper industry, so even if the ''Sun'' goes under, as many fear will happen, Whiting and company can easily secure their next job.
114	* WriteWhoYouKnow:
115	** Lester Freamon was inspired by Harry Edgerton, Ed Burns' former partner in the Baltimore homicide unit; Edgerton was also the inspiration for [[Series/HomicideLifeontheStreet Frank Pembleton]].
116	** Jay Landsman was based on and named after a real homicide detective sergeant whom David Simon had met while researching the book ''Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets''. He was often given dialogue that the writers recall the real Landsman using. The real Landsman would later be cast as an unrelated police officer, Dennis Mello.
117	** Wee-Bey Brice was based on Vernon Collins, who was investigated by Burns and was described by one FBI informant as a "narcotics hit man who is feared throughout the narcotics underworld in Baltimore".
118	** Bubbles was based on a real police informant known as "Possum", whose true identity has not been made public at the request of his family. Possum was noted as having an incredible memory for faces, and was often very helpful in pointing out drug dealers to police. Creator/DavidSimon met with him twice, shortly before Possum's death from AIDS, intending to write an article about him. He ended up turning it into an obituary.
119	* WrittenInInfirmity: The scars on both Creator/MichaelKWilliams and Creator/JamieHector's faces are real.
120	* YouLookFamiliar: Given the size of the cast, it's not uncommon to observe cases where casting unintentionally brought in an actor in an early season who returns playing a much different role later on in the show.
121	** Dr. Randall Frazier was played by Erik Dellums, who previously played drug kingpin Luther Mahoney on the prequel series ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet''.
122	----

Context Trivia / TheWire