The original post: /r/television by /u/deliriousposting6 on 2025-10-14 17:08:03+00:00.
I started rewatching The Wire recently and it hits completely differently now. When it first aired it just felt like an incredibly well written drama about baltimore. But twenty years later it feels like everything it warned about actually came true. The education system still fails kids who never had a chance, journalism has been gutted, police departments chase numbers instead of justice and the drug war continues to grind on pointlessly. It’s eerie how accurate it all still feels. Last night after an episode I was playing overwatch and just caught myself thinking about how little has changed since that show came out. All those systems that were breaking then are still breaking now just with new names and new faces.
The Wire isn’t just a show about a city anymore it’s a story about how systems fail people no matter how hard those people try to do the right thing. It might still be the most honest portrayal of institutional failure ever put on television.