r/TheWire • u/Desperate-Cream-6723 • 4d ago

Thoughts on We Own This City

Going through a little The Wire withdrawal after watching the entire series. I've heard We Own This City is the same vibe and somewhat of a sequel of sorts to the Wire... just curious what you all think of this series and if it holds a candle to the Wire?

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u/BanjoTCat 4d ago

Compared to We Own This City, the The Wire is almost utopian. Police in The Wire are by and large depicted as well-meaning but dysfunctional and their brutality as a symptom of the pressure to keep crime down. In We Own This City, the dysfunction is out of petty greed and loathing to admit mistakes. The GTTF was committing state sanctioned robbery on a city-wide scale.

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u/HamroveUTD 3d ago edited 3d ago

the wire just didn’t depict average beat cops doing their shit. The wire shows the corrupt higher ups who enable the shit in we own the city. The focus was just elsewhere but the two go together.

The wire touched on it a bit mainly with Walker but also with herc and carver being assholes always happy to fuck people up. You see more of this when they had their own district under Colvin, being shit cops and beating up on kids.

Edit: Also prez blinding another kid

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u/Low_Football_2445 2d ago

I would argue the dysfunction in WOTC is a combo of forcing the cops to get arrest numbers and a few bad cops corrupting a bunch of others.