Pod Yourself: The Wire, with Brendan Sexton III

Talking episode 507 with a real actor who auditioned for Ziggy.

Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.

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Hello, #Content lovers. Apologies for the slow posting this week. Some big deal life stuff going on that I’m not quite ready to share yet, sorry to be cryptic about it. Anyway, Top Chef is back next week so at the very least I’ll be shadowboxing in the corner until then, getting mentally limbered up to unleash some scorching hot risotto takes.

In the meantime, we did record a new Pod Yourself The Wire (for those keeping track, this started as a Sopranos rewatch podcast, called Pod Yourself A Gun, and we’ve since moved onto rewatching The Wire. We’re probably just going to keep the “Pod Yourself” as part of the branding. That’s a little inside baseball for you guys, the sausage being made and so forth).

Here’s the episode description, from our producer, Brent:

“This episode should have been called ‘Spite.’” - Brendan Sexton III

For the first time in the history of this pod, we have a guest who auditioned for a role on The Wire. In 2007 he nearly played Frog (one of the many people who rip Ziggy off), but this week actor Brendan Sexton III joins Matt and Vince to talk about season five episode seven, “Took.”

As our guest points out, this episode, like many, could have been called “Spite.” It’s what’s motivating the actions of our two favorite Baltimore murder poe-lees. Jimmy, out of spite for the bosses, and the whole damn system, is using his fake serial killer to single-handedly ensure funding for any cop who needs it and knows where to find him. In the process, he learns that you either die the cool philandering drunk detective, or live long enough to become one of the bosses. 

Bunk, meanwhile, is pounding the pavement, chasing old leads, and generally doing a lot of shoe-leather detective work – likely the best work he’s done in years, just out of spite for Jimmy and his outright fraudulent behavior. The police can not be reformed or re-trained. Instead, to fix America’s policing problem, we need to have a handful of cops who are so off the rails that their peers have no choice but to actually do their jobs out of spite for their own co-workers. 

Tell us in your own words what you learned from Prometheus Bound in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. 

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-Description by Brent Flyberg  

That episode is available on the Patreon, but it also means that last week’s episode, “The Dickensian Aspect,” with Nora Barrows-Friedman, is up for free. (Here’s the host site, in case you’re not an Apple piggy). The free shows are a great place to start if you’re merely pod-curious. Back to our regular schedule soon.