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It was at some point in the third episode of The Wire, that the characters really got traction for me. I like how well drawn and ambiguous the characters are on both sides. The world view really takes me back to high school, the way the cops were just another gang, brutal and internally loyal. I like that the drug trade is treated like exactly that; a trade, a business. I've been arguing for years that you deny bright people options to use those brains in legal, positive ways they will turn those brains to surviving

Now that I've seen this, I get what Chicago Code is trying to do. They are cleaned up for network TV, but they are clearly trying to be the network safe version of this and not quite making it. They got the gritty feel, the politics, and the ensemble casting, but prime time rules tie their hands and they are aiming at corruption instead of the drug economy. You can see the Wire's influence in things like the heat wave episode where they show the Alderman sending minions around to check on the old people, some of them the same thugs he's employed in crimes. They miss the full nuance of the alderman and the Irish mobsters, but they keep trying to draw them as whole people.