Special: The Wire!

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2018

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don't sleep on this one. It's a celebration of one of the best shows ever: The Wire! First, you'll hear a vintage Bullseye interview (recorded live to tape in the apartment back in '08) with two of the show's most beloved stars: Wendell Pierce, who played Det. Bunk Moreland, and Andre Royo, who played Bubbles. Royo and Pierce talk about the slow response the show got at first, the love they get now and the painstaking efforts Simon and co took to make sure the show got Baltimore right. Then, author Jonathan Abrams. He just wrote a brand new book about the Wire - it's called "All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire." Abrams interviewed cast and crew and writers to unveil a nuanced, fascinating look inside on of the greatest TV dramas of all time. The Outshot will return next week. Spot on!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.6	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:14.4	Are you a fan of the wire, the groundbreaking HBO drama created by David Simon?
0:20.3	If so, you and I and pretty much every other person who treasures the show.
0:25.0	I'll have something in common, I bet.
0:27.1	None of us fell all the way in love with the wire after the first episode.
0:34.1	It's not that the first episode is bad, it's actually great.
0:36.1	It has one of the best opening scenes ever in television history, but the wire is just
0:42.1	kind of set up like a novel, it has its own idiom, its own pacing.
0:46.1	And the payoffs when they come usually take half a season, an entire season to develop.
0:53.1	Everything is kind of a slow burn.
0:56.1	Andre Roya played bubbles on the show, a homeless drug addict who frequently worked with the Baltimore PD.
1:02.1	He was a fan favorite.
1:04.1	He knows pretty much every critic agrees about how great the show is now.
1:08.1	But when the first show came out, it was like it's too dense, we couldn't understand, you know, half the dialogue.
1:13.1	It's too many store lines, the show thinks it's a book.
1:16.1	And I remember running into David's office, like, yo, they hate us, we got to blow some heads up.
1:20.1	So somebody's butt like NYPD said, you know, we could show a lot more, we don't cable.
1:24.1	It's just something, and he's a sad deal with his feet on the desk and reading the paper and was like, don't worry, they'll come around.
1:30.1	I mean, he was right. It's Bullseye.
1:41.1	Coming up, we're doing things a little differently this week.
1:44.1	We are dedicating an entire episode of our show to the wire, one of the greatest TV shows in history.
	...

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