
"Before a busy day of robbing heavily-armed drug dealers, I always have a complete breakfast, including Honey Nut Cheerios."
David Plotz of Slate on The Wire:
One of the weirdest moments of my Wire offseason was when I spotted Clay Davis—I mean Isiah Whitlock Jr.—playing a goofy dad in a Verizon cell phone commercial. Much to my disappointment, his several lines didn't include his trademark "sheee-it."
If The Wire was a cultural phenomenon beyond its core viewership of urban-affairs freaks, current and former Baltimoreans and lit-crit types, most of the cast could really go places, whether in ads or as actual actors.
Lt. Daniels, as Plotz later mentions, is already shilling for Cadillac. I picture Snoop as a pitchwoman for nailguns ("[incomprehensible] ...no kickback... [incomprehensible]"). If Apple really wanted to go negative, they could replace John Hodgman with Bubbles as a jittery "PC" complaining about how, since he was introduced to Windows Vista, he can't think, work or keep his data straight without a steady fix of service packs and software patches.
Perhaps a gritty dystopian crime drama doesn't lend itself to consumer appeal the same way the Sex and the City starlets sold millions of gallons of hair products after the show's run ended.
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