The beauty of The Wire is that no character feels minor— every human seems real and complex, no matter their screen time.
As others have said, snowfall may be a good show. But going on 20 years from now will people be lookiing back at it with scenes people feel are iconic? They use The Wire at colleges and Ivy league universities to teach polictical and literary studies: Academia In the years following the end of the series' run, several colleges and universities such as Johns Hopkins, Brown University, and Harvard College have offered classes on The Wire in disciplines ranging from law to sociology to film studies. Phillips Academy, a boarding high school in Massachusetts, offers a similar course as well.[117][118] University of Texas at San Antonio offers a course where the series is taught as a work of literary fiction.[119] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire#Academia Once you've seen the whole series and fully understand all the characters, you can look back on scenes like this and really appreciate just how good the series is. It's like a totally raw, visual novel about crime and how organizations affect society. You have to watch the whole show to really appreciate it imo.
Agree with what the Yung-T said. It's kind of like a 3 act play divided into season 1, 2, and 3-5. I really like Breaking Bad too - pretty sure I was one of the few that saw the pilot episode on its premiere night. Over the seasons, I think Breaking Bad got a little too cute at times, though I get it's just nitpicking a great show. The Wire gets cute even less often and rarely takes the easy way out...and it's not just Game of Thrones type favorite characters suffering because it's in the script (I like that show too btw). It's always a complicated suffering and downfall that makes sense in a complicated crappy world.
I love Breaking Bad but there entire premise was ratcheting up the tension especially during the later seasons. I loved it but you did not get those small moments that continued on throughout the run of the wire. IMO the wire was a fully fleshed out story, where Breaking bad became more action and suspense and did try some cute things to ratchet up the shock factor.
It probably had to do a lot with the show writers: crime reporters, epic novelists (guys who write 700 pg books and those that end up as Oscar award winning movies), local Baltimore people, real cops and teachers, and talented people all around.
Tried nearly the entire first year of The Wire but couldn't get into it -- can't explain why exactly I certainly don't dislike it - probably will try again someday to at least finish the first season.
