I think a lot of viewers miss the point of the series, which is why they hate on Season 2. They think it's just supposed to be a show about black gangsters. In truth, the show is meant to be about the whole drug trade - not just dealers, but suppliers, and how the police, media, politicians, and little people living in drug-infested communities are interwoven. The Wire was a very sophisticated show, in that sense.
Even Michael Williams missed that at first. At the start of Season 2, he was complaining to David Simon about how they had built the show off of black characters and black talent, then made it a show about whites. Simon essentially told him to keep watching. After a bit, Williams realized what the point of the season and the series as a whole was; it wasn't about him, it wasn't about a specific group of people, it's about the city.
Frank represented the working man. The Wire aired nearly twenty years ago, portraying things that had been happening for decades by that point. If he fought so hard and was losing so badly back then, imagine what it's like now. And imagine if someone tried to make a show like The Wire nowadays - you can't, not anymore. Ironic, because the show was meant to warn its viewers where society was headed if things kept going the way they went in Baltimore.
You mean US society - specifically city in the first world country in decline. Things outside US are far worse. And yes, at any point of the time you could make a series like Wire, why not?
@@AnteBoss Because it requires an open mind to reality and an attention span longer than 10 seconds, which the current American population seriously lacks.
@@themostsecretscience6409 Yeah I forgot that todays USA has a cancel culture but on your point about attention span - fuck USA populaton, make a similar show for the minority of the US and EU and all is good
@Dylan I am living here all my life and I can say this: 1) Less murder yes, but look at all the wars and terrorist attacks, it comes about the same, if you would look at US history and EU history, we have more genocide than entire planet combined (per capita xD) 2) Cheaper health care - on average healt insurance is mandatory 10-20% off your gross monthly wage, but have in mind that on the postcommunist side of EU these healthcare systems are not as nearly effective as US system - doctors are incompetent, they have low salary, infrastructure is very weak, the waiting list is huge, the tax needed to maintain this is immense and just imagine the corruption 3) Less incerceration - that is the problem, EU laws (both east and west EU) are pure injustice, there is no death sentence, killers are walking free, criminals and terrorist cant be convicted, justice system is injust (well maybe in Austria and Germany situation is better) but still their women are raped by immigrants and police/courts are doing nothing 4) better education? that is simply not true - we have "free" education but all the experts, all the best and brigtest from all around the world - all go to the USA to get education - it is expensive, but it is the best (looking at Ivy Leauge teritiary education), but from the otherside our primary and secundary education trumps US
‘’Today we got ships uncle Frank, today’’ That’s gotta be a shitty feeling that even though you’re having a good day and everyone is getting paid, everyone is eating, everything is good, you have to pull yourself from fully enjoying the good moment because you don’t know when the next payday will be. What’s even shittier is that this is the reality for so many people just working to get by.
“This season is so underrated!! Love this season! Best season in the show!!” - Every plumber, electrician, truck driver, construction worker, landscaper, longshoreman, shipping & receiving, and roofing fan of the show
Frank was ready to be done working with the Greeks but soon as he heard the price of doing business with them was tripled, he gave in and jumped right back in. It’s a shame what you resort to when you’re broke and don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
@@steverogers7601 Any human being with the minimum amount of decency knows better than to deal with human traffickers. No matter how broke you are. If you deal and harbor human trafficking then you're a criminal too Being broke is no excuse for what he did
My experience watching The Wire in 2022 was being completly hooked in Season 1. Then S2-E1 comes on and it's like...what is this? By E2 you realize the docks is going to the be the season's focal point and it's annoying! I wanted a *direct* continuation of S1. Newbies to the series just need to push past their disappointment and let the series unfold. In 2023 I went back and rewatched S2 and loved it. PS: The acting and dialogue is so damn good
“Fuck the wall” That’s where my dads at right now with his legal business. The courts have been shut down for over and a year and a half and he has clients bothering him every hour every day trying to figure out when their case can go through, and he’s got nothing to say. We need more people willing to say “fuck the wall” and we need them now, not just in America, everywhere.
well he is running a corrupt union which is in bed with Democrats for 60 years while the city went to hell. The dock is solely dependent on imports which are going to Norfolk instead because the manufacturing industry in America was destroyed by socialist democrat regulations, democrat energy policies and bad trade deals from career politicians like the ones we see throughout the show. Maybe if he supported Republicans his dock could ship goods out and he wouldn't have to resort to dealing with a drug kingpin called "The Greek" moving drugs from overseas into the United States and enabling drug gangs destroying the inner city. Maybe if he was against illegal immigration he wouldn't be dealing with the same Kingpin who was human trafficking sex workers through his dock. Maybe if then he wouldn't be under police investigation when 13 of those illegals were found dead in a cargo container. Maybe if his union wasn't crooked for so long due to being protected by Democrats he wouldn't have named RFK with two republican presidents one being Ronnie "the union buster" Reagan as people that tried to clean the docks up before. I mean after all RFK was known for his attempts to investigate the mafia. Wonder how the union survived that one? Oh I remember the union had allies with the Democrats in Baltimore who had allies with the FBI. After all Thomas D'Alesandro the former mayor of Baltimore was in congress at that time. D'Alesandro was so notorious to be crooked and connected to the mafia that JFK the president that put RFK in the position of attorney general told him to investigate D'Alesandros connections with "Baltimore Hoodlums". Luckily for the crooked union and D'Alesandro himself he was good friends with FBI Director Hoover who was being blackmailed by the Mafia and stonewalled RFKs investigation. But things have changed right? I mean it's not like D'Alesandro is still alive. Wonder how his kids made out? Ohh his daughter went into politics. Her name happens to be Nancy fucking Pelosi, believe it or not, and she's the Speaker of the House and leader of the Democrats that are obstructing and trying to obstruct President Trump. Last time I heard her talking about Baltimore she was calling Trump a "racist" because he correctly called it a "rat infested mess" and laid the blaim at the crooked Democrat politicians who have done nothing to fix the city in the last 60 years they have been in charge. Then the cherry on top. In the end this crook Sobatka gets killed as a result of the FBI protecting the leader of a major criminal operation. It wouldnt be the first time since Hoover was protecting Nancy Pelosi's father and his Mafia friends that the FBI was protecting ruthless criminal kingpins who used the docks as key parts of their organization. I mean back in the 70s and 80s they were feeding Whitey Bulger in Boston information about snitches so Whitey could kill them. Ohh and lets not forget they sent and kept 4 innocent men in jail for years because the evidence to exonerate those people would have exposed their dealings with Whitey. Wonder which agent was responsible for framing those innocent men? I'm sure you've heard that crooked agents name before. He ended up as director of the FBI during the time this show was filmed. His name is Robert Mueller. As FBI director he shipped uranium samples to Russia before the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved sales of Uranium to Putin's Government. You know uranium the stuff they make not just Nuclear Weapons with but also tank armor and tank rounds. Then when Hillary Clinton lost to President Trump he wasted 50 million tax payer dollars using a dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton that was full of obvious lies to investigating "Trump Russia Collusion" which also gave him a couple years to try to cover the tracks of his crooked friends in the FBI that violated Trumps civil rights and illegally spied on him, tried to frame and entrap him. A dossier full of lies so obvious only a ignorant person with an IQ in the single digits could believe had any credibility. A dossier full of lies only someone completely brainwashed who believes what they see reported on CNN and MSNBC could believe. But it's not like this show talks about Fake News right? Only the whole last season revolving around it. Shame they never made season 6 which was going to be about illegal immigration. But hey the issue only ended up costing Sobatka, a crooked Democrat Union boss, his life when the FBI was more interested in protecting his killers than they were in bringing the guy important illegal immigrant sex slaves into the United States to justice or stopping the flow of drugs across international borders into the inner city minority neighborhoods. Maybe you can explain to me just exactly how it's funny to use a comment this piece of trash makes before he goes back to criminal activity of smuggling things across the border to take shots at Trump. Explain to me how it helps or justifies any of the failed policies of crooked Democrat politicians that are trying to remove Trump from office or how the Orange Man is Bad and Racist for proposing and implement dozens of policies that actually help minority communities in the USA.
@@thomasdemay9805 lmao damn so much anger yet in the end republican or democrat, it dont matter you stupid fuck cuz theyre all corrupt no one wants whats best for you. They want whats best for them. Laughable to think otherwise lmao
@John Dana just fucking lol at not being a right winger as a male. just transition to a being a woman already everyone already sees you as an effeminate pussy.
The end of this episode always confused me a little too but after rewatching the scene I think I get it. I think Nick means that they have ships THAT day, but those days are becoming few and far between. The writing in the wall being that their industry in Baltimore is slowly receding into nothing. Hence Frank's fuck the wall final line. He acted the shit out of that role.
@@theyeking7023 how i look at it is that Nicky's "the writing is on the wall" line means that they are getting ships, so they can get by without the greeks' money, however Frank is the one that knows that they wouldn't be getting so much work every day, hence continuing to work with the greeks
@@vladimirandreev5932 I was thinking along those lines too, but I always find it hard to see how Nicky couldn't realize how marginalized their industry was becoming, even if they had ships on one particularly good day. Still the best drama hands down. My favourite season changes as I watch them.
You had to grow up around this stuff to get it. This is the docks but they talked the same in the mill towns. All this stuff started decline in the 1960s. The peaks got lower and the valleys got deeper. The old timers always hoped it would go back to what it was. Nick is telling Frank that a good day does not matter. the whole place is on borrowed time. In this case more and more automation, containers that did not need broken down, and other ports of entry. Frank's dealings might buy a little extra time, but that is it.
I'm not sure Petey is right. They didn't know what was in the cans. Their only jobs was to make the cans disappear from the stacks and end up down the road in the Greek's hands. Frank used the dirty money to bride politicians & law makers to try and get more legitimate business into the docks. In this clip, after people died by being smuggled via a cargo container, Frank decided that the bad wasn't worth it, until Nicky mentions they are offering 3 times the rate normally offered, a deal Frank finds hard to turn down - considering all the working people's jobs at stake. That's how I remember it.
Unfortunate, really. He was a decent dude that got desperate and made some bad (yet neccessary) decisions. Rock and a hard place. RIP Frank Sobotka. Life isn't fair where he goes down, but that grimy bastard Valcheck thrives.