The Wire 2x11 Reaction

Just signed up to your Patreon a few days ago to watch The Wire reactions and I think you two are doing a great job because sometimes I see people try to react to the series and are so confused to the point it's almost frustrating. Then again, this is probably my third or fourth time watching the entire series.

Frank was doomed from the start. The choices he made, the people he got in bed with. His life (and death) is a microcosm of the stevedores and those kinds of workers as a whole. Probably the most tragic fate in The Wire. It doesn't really dawn on you until this episode that it's practically inevitable that Frank is going to go.

I don't know why, I don't have much evidence but for me Frank Sobotka felt like the Jesus of Baltimore . He died for the sins of the City to continue, so fucked up!

I just realized. Frank's resistence to change and technology taking over forced him into illegal shit to save the docks and that technology killed him in the end. Ironically enough, the fuck up Ziggy sucked at everything but was only good at one thing? Technology, computers, cameras and shit. This writing is so godly!!!!

Upon many viewings I have seen that The Wire has an interesting, idk if intentional theme of technology coming in and making life better but also worse? That paper being uploaded was so suspensful even though you knew Frank was done, just seeing technology fuck with him one more time as he has been clinging on to the past glory of the docks. Damn!

I subbed to the patreon just to get early access to The Wire reactions. If you girls end up watching The Sopranos after this, you two are basically forcing me to stay subbed haha I can't seem to find anything where your subs can talk other than here. Don't you have a Discord server, a subreddit, or anything else for the community to come together a bit easier than on here?

Frank actually failed his workers several times over. He kept not pushing back against the system but rather working hard to make sure the docks stayed part of the system. His lack of leadership and vision ultimately doomed them all. What he should have done with all that money instead of tens of thousands of political donations and church donations is invest in career training programs so that the younger dock workers with all that time to kill could learn a new trade and find themselves a new career. Then he could've set up a retirement fund for the older dockworkers so they'd be set when the inevitable happened. But he didn't do that. I doubt he even considered it. Instead he kept thinking of himself and everyone else there as stuck and only put the huge amounts of money he acquired to dig them deep further into their position.

The Wire really knows how to gut you doesn't it, I mean we just came right off of Ziggy gunning down someone and getting locked up, to Frank walking toward his death. It really hurts when you know that Frank never had any intention to hurt anybody but now of all people he will die. I get what you girls mean when you meant the show being too realistic. I grew up in a city very similar to Baltimore in California, I am Black and I have family and family friends that unfortunately are very similar to some of the characters in this show, this show is one of my all time favorite shows but it also can be triggering for me in a lot of ways. There are certain parts I still to this day can't watch without balling my eyes out. It's also why I am so connected to the "criminal" characters even though I make NO EXCUSES for their actions, and why I almost never root for the police. But this season, like you ladies mentioned before, it was soooo easy to root for the police because we were dealing with human trafficking, there was not ONE person with The Greek that I liked, I rooted for their demise every episode, so to see the ending of this episode and to slowly come to the realization that FRANK out of all of them was going to die, the heartbreak was unbearable. A lot of people didn't like this season and puts this season, along with S5 as their least favorite seasons, for me I loved this season but I do put it more at the bottom of the list of my favorites because I have never forgiven this season for the ending, lol. It was traumatic to say the least.

I’ve officially finished s2, so I'm only a little bit ahead. Really been enjoying this show and im glad I’ve been able to keep up with LM watching. Knew as soon as I saw this episode that the tragedy of it all would really hit them. I was surprised at how much it affected me! Frank isn’t a favorite character of mine and I was often very critical of him when watching, but this whole sequence of events really made me sad.

Them not deciding which episode is their favorite so far... we all know is the one where Omar testifies in court 😉

Frank is no saint but as he said, he did the wrong things for the right reasons. Let's not forget that it was Valchek's pettiness over the window that set off the chain of events that led to Frank walking towards The Greek in the final shot.

Does anyone know if the girls have watched The Americans with Keri Russell? They don't have reaction videos but they might have watched it privately off camera? That and For All Mankind (featuring the actor who played Frank) are the two shows on my wishlist for them to react to. Especially For All Mankind because it has a few characters that I think they'll love.

Since he's making his exit, the actor who plays Ziggy is James Ransone. He actually stars in another David Simon HBO series from 2008, Generation Kill, about the Marine 1st Recon battalion during the initial days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He plays a similar character, with the major difference that in that series he's extremely competent at his job. Since you're enjoying The Wire so much, you might want to check out Generation Kill somewhere down the line, though I'm not holding my breath for it to win any polls. It's a cult classic that seems to be much beloved by actual veterans for how accurately it depicts life in the military, but seems to be mostly forgotten by everyone else.

I am so glad that you are loving the series. It is in the mount rushmore of TV