Paulo Seabra

Like most people who know their stuff I too love The Wire. But like another big chunk of people who also know their stuff I love The Sopranos even more. In many ways my heart should be torn betwixt two lovers but it kinda isn't. So though I do love both shows, and though I even compare them all the time and consider them to be cousins, my heart rests firmly on the belief that The Sopranos is and always be the king of kings. There are a few reasons for that, some of which are bound to be personal and therefore subjective, but since I often come across casual debates about this topic in a variety of comment sections, I figured I'd write down something about it. For that reason, this isn't really meant as a take-down or anything of the sort, not even close. It's really more of a nitpicky thing, basically pulling apart five reasons why The Wire is just a bit lesser than the titan that is its rival HBO show. I picked five reasons because it's a round number, but eve...

Some television shows do so many different things so damn well that you could write entire essays about just one or two aspects of any given scene. The Wire is for sure one of those shows, with its brilliance being both timeless as well as all-encompassing. Still, a lot of those aspects are a combination of way over my head, not really my area of expertise to begin with, or already have been talked about by much smarter people than me. However, when I last rewatched the show, almost a year ago actually, I thoroughly loved it, even more than the previous time I watched it, but I only made one note – Walon, episode one-ten, addiction and forgiveness. Now, in many ways I could have written something similar about plenty of other scenes, probably all of Walon's scenes in fact, but it was this particular one that simply made the most sense to me, what with him and Bubbles sitting on a park bench during a warm Baltimore morning, talking about life and people and forgiveness, with the c...

In what was a beautifully written show, full of characters who are strikingly and perhaps surprisingly eloquent, Bubbles stands tall among all of them. All throughout the sixty episodes we get the distinct impression that, though he fits in rather well and survives in his own world, the seedy underbelly of the Baltimore drug trade, we also can't help but wonder how, all things considered, Bubbles is just a normal man caught up in a very bad situation. In fact, he's a good man, a smart man, a kind man... He could well be the heart of The Wire, what with his street wisdom and off-the-cuff poetry and all, which is a truly remarkable sight and, though the show is often pessimistic in a way that is sadly commensurate with reality, it also leaves us with a very hopeful finale for ol' Bubs. Because even stuck in between the needle, the bullet, the fist, or even just the stone cold of a Baltimore winter, he perseveres, even maintaining his upbeat demeanor in dire circumstances, an...

Ask anyone about the best TV shows of all time and you're very likely to hear either one or the other. Full disclosure, among us fangirls, I'm Team Tony all the way. I think The Sopranos has a pretty huge advantage over The Wire simply because, at its core, it's exceptionally funny, and in my view, all great art ought to be comic art. And though both shows have their brilliant comedic moments, I find The Sopranos wholly superior in that aspect, especially because I actually needed a couple of tries to get into The Wire, perhaps because it's more plot-heavy, which can be good or bad depending on how well you can keep up with all the deep procedural talk. But regardless of my preference, the more I watched either show, the more I realized they were oddly similar. Indeed I've come to think of them as cousins, and though different in significant ways, they probably have more similarities than differences. And as I wrote about the similarities between Berserk and A ...