Remember the scene at the end of 300 when the Persian army’s arrows fly through the air in such a large number that they briefly block out the sun while descending upon Leonidas? Go on Twitter right now and tell the world that you have never seen David Simon’s The Wire. The results will mirror that scene as friends and well-meaning observers fill your feed with praise for the show and their reasons why you absolutely, positively have to watch every single episode right now.
What I’m saying is people like The Wire and think that it was an okay TV show, but what they may not know is there was supposed to be an even deeper exploration into the seedy underbelly of Baltimore politics according to Simon.
“We were actually trying to spin off the city hall show and do a political show,” Simon revealed to BuzzFeed News, explaining it would’ve focused on Aiden Gillen’s politician Tommy Carcetti. “We wrote a bunch of scripts that would spin off after Season 3 of ‘The Wire.’ But HBO said, ‘No, we only want one show that nobody is watching in Baltimore, not two!’
Well, “Sh******************t,” that could have been amazing, but it’s probably for the best. The Wire didn’t necessarily end strong and after it was over, Simon went on to make the amazing Generation Kill, Treme, and now he’s got Show Me A Hero an HBO mini-series about a young politician’s struggle to desegregate Yonkers, New York. David Simon is a shark, he clearly needs to keep moving.
As for Aiden Gillen, he seems to be doing pretty good as an upstanding small business owner on Game of Thrones despite the fact that he is the only person to appear on The Wire who has yet to appear on The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, Tommy Carcetti died of a cocaine overdose in a Towson, Maryland Super 8 after he got booted from office over a corruption scandal and I just typed it, so that makes it canon.
Source: IndieWire
