Season 2 of The Wire is the single greatest work of television I've ever seen. It's as rich as a novel, as tragic as something out of Shakespeare. Seriously. If anyone hasn't seen The Wire, do yourself a favor and give it a watch.
It's always wild that Season 2 seems to be polarizing, it is very different but it's so compelling. Tragedy is really probably the most complete way to describe it.
But yeah the short scenes of "that's my f*ing town" and the "they used to make steel there, no?". I know the first one takes place right next to the bridge because they say they are at Fort Armistead. I assume the latter is in much the same place since I thought they are looking across the river at Sparrow's Point.
Also relevant to season 2. The US seriously lacks dredging capacity, because we only allow US built dredges to operate on our ports. Only 1-3 of the top 50 highest capacity dredges in the world qualify. Bloomberg Odd Lots has a great episode about this.
+1 I recently watched the whole series again after I subscribed to HBOMax. I hadn't watched it since 2008, when I watched in SD using DVDs from my original Netflix subscription.
Aside from the new story details I caught and the general great acting, I was struck by how the series captured a the technology transition going on at the time. Payphones and typewriters shift to classic feature phones and PCs with CRTs. Then camera phones enter the picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebb_Tide_(The_Wire)