"The Wire" on HBO

I agree,

And apparently that Jump off the balcony was based off true events, I think it was even higher in real life, actually.

Omar is a trap! He's inextricably part of the drug dealing institution, killing young black men, which, Lester reminds us, nobody cares about, so audiences become complicit in the things the show is critiquing.

Not reading this... but ... Omar the best character on TV ever

That point about Omar prepetuating the cycle is made super-explicit, right? The kid who kills him is one of the little kids who is imitating him in the street in an earlier season - so yeah the audience who cheers him on becomes complicit in Omar's own death.

which all loops back into him being a symbolic figure - and remember how he's really into greek mythology?

xp - i don't know that that kid was one of the ones imitating him in Season 3. I think that kid was being shown to be the next Marlo - emotionless and cruel (see the attempted cat torture scene) - and presumably the fact that he killed Omar would be a notch on his belt, give him cred for his eventual ascencion to the throne.

pretty sure it was kenard that was dressed up like omar.

one of the primary motifs of the wire is that things are falling apart on every level: in politics, in schools, on the corner, in the precinct. All culture is slowly spiraling into darker, less humanistic values and the wire's writers lay the blame predominantly with the country's draconian drug laws.

^ basically Kenard will become the new Marlo, but will be even worse - Marlo's one redeeming quality is his fondness for his pigeons, and Kenard tortures animals.

Presumably d'shaun, following Kenard, will be the antichrist

http://blog.nj.com/alltv/2008/03/the_wire_david_simon_q_a.html
So when you introduced Kenard in season three when they're playing outside the stash house shoot-out, even back then you were planning, "Okay, this little kid is going to kill Omar a few seasons from now"?

With one caveat. We did introduce him, and I had it in my mind that I wanted a moment like "The Shootist" or the buried moment in the gunfight at the end of "Wild Bunch." The character that was most in the Western archetype -- and George had a lot of fun with this -- was Omar. The inner city is now the Wild West, the new frontier in terms of American storytelling, it has been for several decades now. We played a lot of our Western film themes and archetypes through Omar's story. I always had that in my mind. There were arguments to be had in the writers room -- there were guys who didn't want to kill Omar, there were some guys who did, some guys who didn't but came around. Everyone gets a say when you argue it down on the merits. I definitely wanted to plant the beginnings of that story if we wanted to go that way.

thanks, i didn't know/notice that.

i didn't catch it until someone pointed out either! it's a cool little detail

why you guys don't believe in the redemptive power of foot locker?

well, sure, I don't think there's a totalizing belief that no one ever gets out, but I think their point/the show's point, is that it's quite rare that someone does - like Poot and Namond - they're exceptions.

Isn't Poot a reference to the 'rational actor' argument from the venkatesh/freakonomics stuff? he makes more $ slinging sneakers than drugs -- basically everyone who sucks at it gets out. (e.g. cutty, namond)

Wallace got out, he's on Friday Lights now

yeah i dunno maybe go out and slang for a couple years then come back when youre 16 *shrug*

I don't think he makes more $$ at foot locker than he did as a drug dealer.

ya - i never got the impression he was bad at slinging. i assumed he wanted a job that wouldn't get him killed.

^^ my thought, too.

this was the guy whose top priority was getting laid.

pretty sure it was kenard that was dressed up like omar.

― The Devil's Avocado (Gukbe), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:44 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah that was whatshisname, the kid with the little brother who worked for marlo

i dont think working @ foot locker really counts as "getting out" -- wage slavery is wage slavery

its very likely he was making about the same at foot locker as he was in a drug gang

Lower mortality rate at foot locker - though a kid was caught shoplifting at my local, jumped out the first-floor window to escape, and died when he hit the ground.

lol

i don't know what foot lockers you've been to but i don't think payless is sending hit squads over to pull drivebys

deej u crazee

Shoe Pavilion on the other hand has some fierce muscle

drug gangs don't give you awesome referee shirts

yes, i agree that foot locker is a safer job.

i've taken to reading every post here by prefacing it with "in this fictional dramatic program,"
fortune cookie wisdom

attracts a better class of customer, too

though i would like to hear a point by point analysis of corner hopper/foot locker job benefits

h8 to be the dude all "you should read freakanomics" but sudhir vankatesh wrote a chapter in that called "why do drug dealers still live with their moms" about the wage pyramid of the drug dealer & how it comes down to around minimum wage for folks just starting out

Barbara Ehrenreich should have done a chapter of her book as a hopper.

or as an iguana wrangler

LOL i refuse to change my display name until i see the movie!

i yield the rest of my iguana time to a roundabout and bad warhol reference

into the second season now, it's improving. god Ziggy reminds me so much of my little league coach's spoiled son, and so many other spoiled twiggy brats I've known. kinda lol'd at the seven samurai beginning, there's kinda a disconnect for me between the show's realism and its reliance on stock narrative tropes. also had no idea that Dominic West is british!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg_3ZSeHL4g

lol

In re Omar not being realistic: This summer I met a federal prosecutor who worked in a drug crimes division -- I don't know if he was a Wire fan or not (it didn't come up) but he did tell me that a lot of their prosecutions are people who rob drug dealers, and that, in his opinion, they tended to be the absolute worst criminals. Robbing drug dealers is extremely lucrative and carries low risk of getting caught, because what drug dealer will call the police on you?

He said that such robbers often harm not only the drug dealers but their families, and that they tend to use torture to get information about where money/drugs are kept. I.e. they don't tend to "live by a code."

I'm just about to finish the 2nd season which I've enjoyed thoroughly. However - (I think it's already been mentioned up-thread) the Brother Mouzone character is fairly ridiculous - especially by Wire standards. Far too cartoonish to take seriously. Otherwise, looking forward to Season 3.

OK I still haven't watched The Wire yet and I have an idea where I can do this and make it count as a work activity at the same time. I need to know from you seasoned Wire fans whether this is a good idea.

I recently started a job where I am working with drug, street, gang and court involved young people who are mainly between the ages of 18-21. Those that haven't been locked up before have friends that have and many are very entrenched in street life. I am in the beginning stages of forming relationships with them and have to come up with ideas for acitivites. I was thinking of maybe doing a weekly "movie" night type thing but with The Wire where we'd watch episodes and then follow them up with discussion. I would have a co-worker who is a fomrer gang memeber who did five years facilitate this with me. I think that they'd be really into it and that it could spark some really good and hopefully productive discussions about things thye're often reluctant to address.

I feel like this is either a really great idea or a really shitty one. What say you?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/what-do-real-thugs-think-of-the-wire/

It could be a terrific idea. One reservation I have is that it can be really hard to follow. Not the language, but the complexity of the social world, meaning the connections between the characters - I felt like I was out beyond my limits sometimes and needed Mrs K to explain bits to me. It's a great show, though, if you have a bunch of brightish, socially adept kids it could be fun.

at the very least, YOU'LL learn a lot.

My concern would be the length of the show. Do you have enough time? To get to the meat of the show and it's "message" (such as there is one), you perhaps need to watch the whole of season 1, if not right up to the end of season 3.

Others may disagree?