I've been crowing about this all over the Internet.

My friend Tom Block was the origin of the idea, but I think I was the first on the Internet to make the argument that The Wire was incorporating many overt direct references to The Wild Bunch, especially in Season 2.

I awoke this morning to David Simon confirming this on NPR.

Here's the earliest mention of the two that I can find on the Internet. That's me in the comments. My friends and I had been kicking the point around for a few years by this time, but I can't find an earlier mention of it on the google.

Note that Alan Sepinwall catches my snap in the comments. In early 2008, he made a similar argument in his column, but he lessens the impact by mentioning that the writers were influenced by Westerns "like The Wild Bunch." In this case, he was wrong. It wasn't Westerns "like" the Wild Bunch, it was The freakin' Wild Bunch that they were paying homage to.

Later, on the House Next Door, I called most of the particulars of Omar's death a few weeks prior to the episode because of parallels between Omar and Pike. I was wrong about one of the specifics: I thought it would be Dookie instead of Kenard. Matt Zoller Seitz still sent me a snow globe for being so damn right. It's right next to me now.

Really? Cause I thought the snow globe thing was a joke, a sort of positive, virtual, methane probe, if you will. As to the Wild Bunch, have to take your word(and all those other folks', including my fake husband's) because, although when you said that I rented The Wild Bunch, I also appeared to miss the point in some fairly important ways. Was I the only one here who saw Simon on Colbert? It's been a few months now, but the Emmy-taunting was a priceless moment. But you know you're a die-hard when "Generation Kill" will top your queue for Christmas week. That seems wrong, but I don't know that I'll really change it.

[link]

In David Simon's five-season HBO crime drama The Wire, the mayor of Baltimore was an ambitious white politician who left city hall to a crooked council president in order to become governor of Maryland. In reality, the former mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley was elected governor of Maryland in 2006. The city council president took over for him. And, well...

Thanks, Scola!

Finished Generation Kill today...powerful stuff. It's weird when you finish a show and it makes your house feel empty...the end of The Wire was kind of like that, too.

I was a bit worried about this season of FotC after last week's episode (a bit too high concept I thought). However, the whole "cup" sequence has made me fall in love all over again.

The "West Side Story" parody on FotC was PRICELESS! Loved it!

My friend Calamity Jon Morris is a freakin' genius: Deadwood Valentines.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So hysterically funny!

That is fabulous.

I think my favourite has to be the final one.