I don’t think I’ve met anyone who actually disliked The Wire In my conversations with others about the series, audiences tend to fall in one of these 2 camps: either they really loved it, or they thought was over-rated, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they despised it. They may have thought it was just OK, and not worthy of all the critical accolades and fan appreciation, but they didn’t hate it!

Although I’m sure there are those of you who did. I just haven’t met anyone that felt strongly negative about it.

It’s a series that was considered of much significance that several colleges and universities taught, and still do teach classes on it, using it in social science courses to help students understand the roots of the social conditions in America’s inner cities, bringing Bodie, Stringer Bell, Bubbles and the rest of the posse from the HBO series, into the classroom – complex characters on both sides of the law-defying simplistic definitions.

Critics of the series argued that The Wire reinforced stereotypes of poor blacks, as dependent on welfare, lazy, criminal, immoral, etc – perceptions that also happen to influence decisions about who is deemed worthy of assistance. But on the opposite side of that argument, others posited that the show actually very much undermined those stereotypes, through its scrupulous exploration of drug-dealing gangs, the police, politicians, unions, public schools and the print media, painting a portrait for viewers that suggested that an individual’s decisions and behavior were (are) often shaped and limited by forces beyond his or her control.

It didn’t really provide any solutions to the problems it unpacked – or they were just not very clear and obvious – seemingly reflecting real-life.

But I’ll leave the debating of the series’ merits to those of you who want to continue it, and instead point you to the below video which, as the title states, features 100 of the “greatest” quotes from “The Wire.”

Only 100 though? I’m surprised “Omar coming” isn’t included. I hear that repeated more often than any other line from the series. What, if any other quotes, do you think should be included in this?