One-star reviews of The Wire
I think you can often judge the greatness of a work of art by its most negative reviews just as by its most glowing. But it’s very difficult to find harsh critics of my favorite television show, The Wire. Take Amazon: out of more than 600 reviews, there are only six one-star reviews for the entire series (Season 1: 4 one-star reviews, Season 2: 0, Season 3: 1, Season 4: 0, and Season 5: 1*). Even with this small a sample we can still receive a clear vision of the show’s brilliance through the warped lens of a review by Johnathon, entitled “Very boring to watch - dehumanizing, densensitizing, coarse”:
I had 1000’s of hours of viewing movies, television series, and television programming behind me before I sat down to watch this series on DVD, season one, the box in my hand. I was very dissapointed. This series stinks. I watched only episode 1, and have the experience and perception to know that it won’t get any better.
The story settled in episode 1 on 3 places - a rundown, neglected inner city lower class neighborhood, the offices of the detectives, and it goes back and forth between a courtroom and the street busts of drug dealers from vans and unmarked cars.
I didn’t like the profanity. It went on for too long, filled every one’s mouths, and didn’t have a point to it after the first 40 minutes. Everyone was swearing and cursing and it bored me.
I got bored with it. It didn’t help to develop character or story and offended me after having it fill my ears for 40 minutes.
The profanity was so thick in the first 35 minutes I got bored. I coulden’t understand what anyone was saying to each other because of the broken english, cursing and swearing, and lude and immature banter everyone engages in. In short, I coulden’t follow the story. If gangster talk and street slang wasn’t worse enough, the profanity and constant cursing just filled in the rest of the dialogue, it felt like the scriptwriters got bored with developing character and story.
Realistic depictions of the life, the neighborhood and what the characters do could be done in less time, with less coarse language, and with more skill. Slow motion, some music, careful planning of the shots, some better storytelling, and the same messages would have come across in half the time. Obviouslly, the people behind the show lack that kind of talent to pull it off.
If watching cheap white trash and cheap black trash destroy themselves and probably each other interests you, this is for you. I have a better way to spend my evenings. I experience enough negativity in the world on a daily basis, that I don’t have to put it in my dvd player after dinner for it to “entertain” me.
When I was a child I did as children did, but when I became a man I put away childish things.
Less then 1 star is my vote.
* WARNING: There are some spoilers in the one-star review for Season 5.
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