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Notes -
Mad Men hits its stride in Seasons 3 and 4. I implore you, try again.
Agree about David Simon's books. George Pelecanos (who has a bunch of writing credits from The Wire) has a whole D.C. quartet which really feel like The Wire set 1 hour south on I-95. Supreme Tier beach books.
David Simon is an interesting person to me in how he, unfortunately, followed the bad path of the mainstream / Hollywood adjacent Liberal. The Wire is amazing in large part because there are no clean answers. With maybe one or two exceptions, every character and every institution (the police, the schools, the labor unions, hell, the criminals) are shown to be complex systems wherein individual interest, political pressure, and system wide breakdowns conspire to make The Right Thing hard to do. I always loved that Simon's writing and direction did this when it's a lot easier for show runners to pick easy "good guy vs bad guy" narratives.
But, if you watch We Own This City, which is a "spiritual successor" to The Wire, it seems to have pretty clear cashed in for "Cops-R-Bad" tropes. Paired with some of Simon's personal comments on a variety of issues, you can tell where he lines up today.
Sad, but, all in the game though, right?
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