> But it makes sense, right? Real corruption and crime isn't always about drugs and shotguns.

I think the reaction is just that it's unexpected. Everyone expects there to be crime and corruption in unions, but they don't consider it to be as glamorous or interesting as the gangsters-and-cops tropes that they're used to, and that The Wire seemed to many to be about until season 2.

In the context of Simon's slowly-expanding lens of the American city, it makes complete sense, but most viewers aren't aware of that right at the beginning.

Also how poverty drives people into crime. How the longshoremen were thinking of being above the black gangsters, except when the money runs out, and people want better life. It's an essential season of The Wire.