"The Wire" on HBO

Omar's role in the series always seemed kinda obvious and irritating to me - he's the one guy that's unbeholden to any of the institutions that trip up everyone else, and he has this moral code that he lives by, he only robs/kills criminals, he loves his momma, etc. And as an extra bone to all us open-minded liberals out there, he's GAY! Its all just so ridiculously idealized. This from a show that otherwise prided itself on its realism...

anyway my favorite character was Prop Joe.

I see what you're saying, and yet he's just so much damn fun to watch.

xpost
His performance makes it easy to forgive all that, for me anyway.

yeah Omar is fun. he allows the viewer some rare moments of satisfaction re: people getting what they deserve, etc.

xxxp shakey - i don't think he feels much for his momma, he was raised by his grandmother.

shakey omar is based on a real person

realism is not very fun. the wire is fun. the wire is not realistic. it takes place in a realistic environment. i know people clown the whole "dickensian" bit and maybe the show clowns itself w/r/t it, but it's not far off the mark.

lolz "based on a true story!"

what are you, 12 years old

shakey omar is based on a real person

this doesn't mean Shakey has to "believe" in Omar, though

dickens had realistic environments with characters who were just a tad unrealistic and OTT. not sure why this is a negative about the wire, if anything it's a positive.

hmm I had never made the Dickens connection before but that is a really good point of comparison, def a lot of parallels

"he's the one guy that's unbeholden to any of the institutions that trip up everyone else"
Did you see the ending? That he actually is beholden is his undoing. Also, he has Spider-man powers.

james morrison, stop reading this thread btw

come back later when you've finished

i.e. "that's some spiderman shit right there."

Did you see the ending? That he actually is beholden is his undoing. Also, he has Spider-man powers.

haha nah, I stopped at the end of season 4 and everything I've read about season 5 sounds super-silly. altho yes the glory of wikipedia has clued me in as to the conclusion of Omar's character arc

'thats some spiderman shit right there' is based on a real thing that happened to donnie andrews. watch the commentary

that really was the only scene where i liked Marlo.

Is it true that Donnie (Andrews, the inspiration for Omar) in real life jumped off a balcony the same height that Omar did?

Actually, two floors higher.

Two floors higher?

The Murphy Homes. He also jumped off the rail bridge at Poplar Grove, onto the rail bed. That was probably about three stories. And he hurt his ankle. It’s just true. Those jumps, by an athletic person, can actually be made and are made, routinely. By a non-athletic person? if I made it, I’d be all over the pavement and they’d pick me up with a spoon. If you made it, they’d pick you up with a spoon. When 28-year-old Donnie Andrews makes that jump because he has to, sometimes he makes it. It’s funny: I’m doing this thing now with recon Marines, “Generation Kill.” And some of them had no problem with the jump. They just started telling stories about recon training. I don’t know whether to believe them or not, but I do believe Donnie.

It was a story I actually used, I wrote about the first time back in 1990. That story was all through the ghetto: “They had him cornered, and motherfucker jumped off the railroad bridge and kept running. Did not want to die that day.” But we did want it to feel a little bit mythic, and “What the fuck?” because it fit with the general arc of Greek tragedy.

season 5 isn't super-silly, although it has some super-silly moments / episodes.

(btw, donnie andrews wasn't gay deej)

isn't/wasn't whatever

well that changes everything!

Marlo was also sympathetic early on when he showed his love for pigeons.

^^^roflz

omar isn't gay because of the "liberals"

well that changes everything!

its not that any one of those characteristics I listed makes him unrealistic (hey, all gangsters love their grandmas, right? haha) but the combo of all of them together in one character is just kinda ridiculous.

why is being gay unrealistic

because gay people don't love their grandmas very often

gay people are a myth propagated by the liberal atheist socialist humanist agenda dontchaknow

im glad youve realized the ridiculousness of your position

yes you have convinced me that a black, gay, robin hood-type near-superhuman stickup man is TOTALLY REALISTIC

kudos

how do you know what real stickup men are like though? what is "realism"?

what is "art"?

what is "gay"?

superhuman?

no black gay people are superhuman in real life

i know because i have never met one

it's not like he's routinely performing superhuman acts - his supposedly superhuman feats consist solely of jumping off that balcony.

shakey omar is based on a real person

― GANGSTA KILLER (deej), Tuesday, November 17, 2009 4:51 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you want it to be one way

it's not like he's Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

do the shakey leg

guys, the thing is: it's the other way

He is so superhuman that he is SPOILER murdered by a small child in a convenience store.

I agree w/ shakey

uh oh i'm having a fantasy (about a black, gay, robin hood-type near-superhuman stickup man)

I said near-superhuman. His ability to routinely surprise/get the drop on people without getting shot is pretty miraculous

i believe the following people have existed in the criminal drug trade: dudes who are "prison" gay on the outside, dudes whose place in the drug ecosystem is to live via stickup and robbing "weak" corners, dudes who try to keep the violence internal to the trade, dudes who are charming and funny, dudes who have survived longer than usual.

whether these have all been the same person, well, who knows.

he spends a lot of time surveying, researching his targets - it isn't like he has this consistent stream of "lucky encounters"