Now, I'm not a Wire-fanatic. But I have watched the entire series. And I couldn't help myself.
So I put together a 16-character bracket. Why not 32? Well, just think of these as the first round of winners from the Grantland bracket. Why would I need to seed the people that couldn't win one matchup? Of course, it wasn't as simple as playing out the Grantland setup. Because some of my favorite 16 include people in first-round matchups from Grantland's bracket (McNulty and Cedric, Mouzone and Bunk, Snoop and D'Angelo, Avon and Prez). But also because I wanted to carefully construct this. More on that after you see it.
But the biggest question is what is your criteria for selecting your favorite character? I based it simply on this: which characters would I rather watch a scene of?
I based the seedings on Grantland's seedings. Which allowed for upsets. Which is key. If I just ranked my favorite characters 1 to 16, that wouldn't be a very good bracket at all.
So how do I construct a bracket like this, where I want to control how far each character advances? I do it in reverse order. And in tiers.
So Omar was my favorite. Then I wanted String to face him in the final. Lester and McNulty round out my final four. And then I picked my elite eight: adding Bunk, Clay, Carcetti and Cedric in that order. Then it's just a matter of juggling the seeds. Originally I had McNulty as a 4 and Lester making the Final Four as an 11 over the 3 seed Bunk. Then I realized I hadn't placed Avon and based on Grantland's seedings he needed to be in the top 4.
I was happy that I got to place McNulty vs Bunk. And the final four featured two street vs cop matchups, with the street winning both times.
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Of course, this is just a personal preference. And like I said, I'm not a Wire fanatic. I'd love to hear what Mark's favorite characters are, at least a final four, if not an elite eight.
When I first saw Grantland's bracket, I couldn't understand some of the seeding. As the days have passed, they've offered what they believe to be the criteria for voting. But that hasn't been how I think about the characters. When I first heard about and saw the bracket, I thought about which characters I liked, who I enjoyed watching, who showed growth. I can't put a percentage on how I voted, but those factored into my gut when I looked at the match-ups.
ReplyDeleteIn no particular order, some of my "top" characters:
Stringer
Bubbles
Bodie
Bunk
McNulty
Lester
Daniels
Deangelo
Randy
Omar
Bunny
Rawls
I think my final four would come down to:
McNulty
Bubbles
Bunk
Stringer
I think McNulty's almost disappearance and bad 5th season story line takes him out of the finals and Stringer not making it to the end drops him. In the end, I think Bubbles beats out the Bunk.
Ranking the seasons, I'd go:
3
4
1
2
5
Omar was great, but he was too consistent for me. I just loved Bubbles' wisdom and journey. He's a true underdog story.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just started rewatching the entire series. Probably 4th time all the way through, but I've seen seasons 3 and 4 another time.