All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire

by Jonathan Abrams

You had these conversations, and that’s what made Season Three big. You had two audiences who came together and started talking about this show and going, “This show is amazing. This show is not following TV standards. They can just go from any angle.” It’s all the same narrative. It’s about the community. I don’t think any other show at that time was doing it like that, just changing it all up. Because Season One or Season Two, there were no nominations. If you get a nomination or even if you win, it’s harder to change up. If it’s working for you, HBO might be like, “Don’t change nothing. Leave it like that and keep doing it.” [But] because we were still going under the radar, HBO was like, “Try and do something new. Try and figure it out. See if you can get nominated. If it ain’t bad, then do that.” It was David Simon’s and Ed Burns’s plan, but they didn’t get that much resisting in the changing.