"The Wire" on HBO

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"

global warming's effects on the delicate drug ecosystem has definitely reduced the number of people with all of those characteristics

omar is based on al shipley fyi

max, al shipley isnt gay!!

imagine a polar bear, swimming towards an ice floe, that will remain out of reach, forever

uh oh i'm hearing a zing

I don't think it had anything to do with believability, but I did share Shakey's irritation with Omar's gaiety at first - just cause it seemed a bit showy and almost pandering to a certain segment of the audience, like "you're gonna love this guy! he's like robin hood and - get this - he's GAY!".

But that faded pretty quickly for me. Maybe I bought into exactly what I criticized, but I thought it was a really smart and daring move for The Wire to create a thug character that macho dudes would kinda idolize, but make him gay. Way smarter than what the The Sopranos did with their gay gangster.

Plus, you can't deny he was a super fun character - lots of great action, one-liners, comic relief and, as noted, awesome superhero skills.

I forget what show it was, but the main character started putting an ikea bed together and it cut to the character passed out drunk.

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.

^^^all true. I don't think he's a bad character per se - he's always entertaining to watch. But it seems clear to me that his role within the show was to allow some wish-fulfillment for the audience. You know, here's a character who will provide the audience with some sense that justice is still possible, that there are good people within this hellish environment that can still come out on top, etc. His appeal is fairly obvious when you look at it this way. Omar is, in many ways, a break from the spirit-numbing nihilism that pervades most of the other character arcs - he's smarter than most everyone else, he's funny, and he's a badass. Qualities every viewer expects in a protagonist in a cop show. The thing is, given the bleakness of the rest of the show, the contrast Omar provides makes his character stick out - he seems, more than many of the other characters, particularly contrived. That's all I'm sayin

x-posts

he was gay for the purposes of the show because it showed (even moreso than his rip and run actions) that he was utterly fearless

goole is basically otm, but it doesn't change the fact that you all have intractable desires for the situation to be just as you'd hoped. it's just...it's not. it is the opposite.

lollllll I just realized it was don draper putting his kid's playhouse together. Also realized that nothing in my previous statement actually happens, don just gets drunk and randomly drives around or something.

mcnutly does what you've describe iirc

lol mc-nut-ly

yeah mcnutty definitely does pass out drunk after a failed attempt at ikea kids beds. he also randomly drives around drunk a lot.