Finished up S1 of The Wire, and started Ep 1 of S2, so it's now officially as far as I've made it in to the series. I'll likely continue to go, but I'm still finding the things I enjoyed the first few tries (the balance of thematic convos masked as regular interactions, the goings on in the inner city) to be very much the things I'm enjoying now, while the aspects I didn't like (pretty much the majority of the cop shit, the actual overall case/operation plot) to be mostly dull. Maybe Amy Ryan changes that in S2, but we'll see. Still waiting for it to 'really jump off' but maybe it's just not that kind of show. Which is fine, the plot was rarely 'the thing' in Sopranos either, though the core cast seemed fleshed out in a much more compelling way. Again, the more time we spend away from the cops, the better The Wire seems to be, and between Omar, Stringer, and that surprising appearance by Michael B. Jordan (who you can tell is young and still developing as an actor because he doesn't incorporate "bruh" after every couple of lines), it's not surprising why. Also plays worse for the cops in the current world, but I'm not sure they'd ever be the strength of the series. Could be wrong, perhaps, as I was about Christopher's role in Sopranos; however, looking back to how uncompelling the central plot was in S1 it's hard to imagine that'll be the case, even if it's easy to make them a little more sympathetic by having obviously corrupt politicians shut them down. These systems are a racket, I get that for sure.
For some reason I thought this was like True Detective, in the sense that the cast would change each season. Not sure why I thought that, but either way I was surprised to see Stringer Bell and pretty much all the cops from S1 show back up in the first episode.