Watch: We Own This City

I really loved The Wire. I thought it was a brilliant show; all the seasons were good, and good in their own way, even the Greek longshoremen one. There was an overall unifying greatness to the show which was undoubtedly was due to the writing and the characters we grew to love and hate.

I really wanted We Own This City to be the spriritual successor to The Wire, but it disappointingly wasn’t. It doesn’t have a real identity the way The Wire did, no real grit. It’s not sure if it wants to be a show that highlights injustice during a historic moment and spread a message or a show about crooked cops and all the terrible things they did. I admit parts of it were interesting and informative as I didn’t know much about what happened in Baltimore during that time, but the rest just wasn’t entertaining enough, which is a shame since they were a bunch of interesting characters but it all somehow fell flat. I’m not sure if it was the storytelling or the writing, but I found myself bored a lot; most of it felt like a preachy lecture but without any real message or substance. Those scenes had the worst dialogue; all of it like forceful attempt at trying to be profound but failing miserably. There wasn’t any emotion behind anything they were saying other than flabberghasted confusion and that was disappointing. This could have been a better show.