I watched a few episodes of Boss but I didn't think it was that good. Kinda ridiculous in a lot of ways. I can't believe you just compared it to The Wire.
It's getting better and better. They've cut down on the random nudity and sex along with drawing back the "OMG IT'S AN EPISODE OF THE DISORDER" aspects to where it's driven mostly by the politics now. And the wife is awesome. I don't want to disagree they did a ton of stuff early on to try and catch viewers that threatened my Kesley Grammar love, especially since they committed to two seasons from the get go, but it has settled down. Grammar might not even be the best or most relevant part of the show now. Latest episode barely had him in it compared to the first couple that had him in every scene.
And I think the way it handles the politics is easily comparable to The Wire's same. They are two of few shows I can think of that show politics (especially big city politics with their racial dynamics, which for the history wonk I am, Grammar's lecture in the first episode on the unification of the ethnic enclaves into one political machine was gold, and for Chicago especially has been a major ongoing battle to hold down dem uppity blacks from voting the wrong folk in during recent, even post-Reagan decades) as the dirty ignoble business it is. Carcetti, Kane, Davis, Royce, Zajac, Ross, none of these people are heroes. Let alone Josiah Bartlet.
It's not about the rest of the city though, unless it ties into Kane, which is why it's not close as an overall package. But what is? The Wire is about a city that's more or less fallen, Boss is about a man who is in the process of doing so. (And is now becoming about how that impacts the politics of the city.) It's a much tighter scope. If The Wire had focused only on Carcetti and Royce, it probably would have been better than this because of the strength of the team behind it, but it wouldn't be the untouchable best series ever that The Wire is. I see tons of potential in Boss though because it gets lots of stuff right even as it was trying to figure itself out because even The Wire tip-toed around getting full bore into big city politics until the third season. And I'm of the mind that if The Wire doesn't take you over by the fourth episode, as that's when you really should not be able to ever turn away from the masterpiece, there's a real possibility you're a scumbag subhuman. And if you go through six episodes and drop it saying "I don't really like Law & Order type shows" well, there's a special hell for you.
In a lot of ways, the show undersells Chicago politics, like The Wire often made aspects of Baltimore life more palatable. I could write ten seasons about a show set in Flint and nobody would believe it and it'd all be basically true or composite stories.
Sorry about the ramble nobody wanted, don't want to seem like a "defense force" guy for a show nobody watches.
I'll rephrase to where it's a Starz version of The Wire's political plotlines that could potentially outdo that one single strain of The Wire. I admit the political aspects are done well enough to where I was overlooking the silly shit early on and now it's getting into just the politics so we're totally going steady. I just can't decide exactly which tracks to put on the mixtape though.
yeah that really took me out of the show. Dwight to me has always been off/misguided but mostly good, now he's racist?
Even Meridith/Angela I'd buy it as poorly done joke and be like haha they're a racist. Even Michael or his stand-in Andy doing it by accident or being unaware gets by. But Dwight was just such a wrong character to do it with. Everything he does is so focused. The idea that getting a black guy to invite whites, that's fine, I can buy that as him failing to understand humans. It was the getting rid of the blacks after part that took it too far.
And it undermined what was otherwise an amusing Dwight plot for me.
