"The Wire" on HBO

main problem with the serial killer strand is it's taking too much time to set up, and because the cast is so big now we only get very limited facetime with eg herc, carver, daniels, beadie, avon... CUTTY. i was hoping it would just implode right quick so they could move on.

can someone explain to me what exactly's going on with marlo, the greeks, prop joe's money, and the antilles? i thought marlo was going to the greeks to cut prop joe out of the action, but it's prop joe who's helping him come up with "clean" money? huh?

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, January 21, 2008 5:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

prop joe doesn't know why marlo wants bank-fresh money. this seemed a bit fucked-up, like maybe it would raise his suspicion. my feeling is prop joe has himself covered. it's not impossible the greeks told him about marlo's move either.

don't know if this has been linked before but.. OMAR SPEAKS:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

I saw on the HBO message board questions about how the Sun buyouts work. I know you guys don't need answers on how the streets work but if you are a Wire fan here's a some refence material.

Well my wife was at the Baltimore Sun when the first round of buyouts (creator David Simon was there as well) occurred and I was at the Sun through the last round of buyouts (2005 maybe?). You don't have to be a writer, newspapers (at least the Sun) have two types of employees unionized (guilded) and non-union (non-guilded).

The Sun (Tribune) reaches an agreement with the union on what's "fair" (lube/no lube). The first round of buyouts were way better than the last. I know of 30-40K/year employees getting maybe 200K if they agreed on a buyout, the amount is determined on salary and seniority. The terms of the last was like maybe 10K for every 2 years of service. Most of the people offered buyouts had been there 20+ years.

The biggest problem not just for the writers, but moreso the non-writers, is they had been performing a newspaper function for over 30 years, and their skillset was applicable only to the newspaper industry, and until recently Baltimore only had one major paper. So unless they relocated, which wasn't an option giving the industry failing everywhere, you have mid-lifers trying to learn new skills for employment.

The biggest issue is the newspapers are still profitable, yet they don't make the kajillions they used to, so the millions they make a year don't satisfy the shareholders. The more news you read online the less the paper sells on the street. The less it sells on the street, the less the paper can charge for advertising. You gotta figure Craigslist & Ebay alone killed the entire Classfied advertising business. Who the heck places a classified ad anymore, and the cost of the ad has bottomed out and they soon will be offered for free.

As far as retail advertising mergers and aquisitions put a ginormous dent in advertising revenue.

Here's an example (fake numbers):

AT&T - $1M a month
Cingular -$1M a month
Sprint- $1M a month
Nextel- $1M a month
Macy's- $1M a month
Goldsmiths- $1M a month

Add that up that's $6 Million a month in revenue. AT&T merges with Cingular, Sprint & Nextel merge, Macy's and Goldsmith's merge, now we have:

AT&T/Cingular- $1M a month
Sprint/Nextel- $1M a month
Macy's/Goldsmith's- $1M a month

Now we're making $3 million a month. Half of what we made per month last year. So over a year that's $36 million in losses. Revenue cut in half, workforce cut. There goes your buyout.

Dudes, Omar on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

uhh

so have any cast members been on NPR recently?

there's actually a quick dookie interview there, too... but hey did you guys hear that interview with omar?

check it out:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

this is interesting:

michael k. williams

c'mon, man, you're killin' me, you're killin' me, stop...this a Philly station?

haha sorry dave 2¼!!

Did anyone read the piece in The Atlantic?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire

ep4 was great. only bad thing was beadie's stock confrontation scene. herc and carv's moment was just right. i was shocked by the ending, marlo moving sooner than i'd have thought.

the shit is getting good now! i don't want to read the non-realtime thread because some people have got the torrents and i just have on demand but i will say that episode 5 is great. and also really hilarious during a particular meeting at the newspaper.

i like the idea of daniels's dirt, built up for five series, being dismissed by nareese like that, though i guess she's going to use it now to leverage daniels.

i am still a hater.

reminds me why I never pick up the Atlantic. "The Wire is a work of fiction. And the creator of the series is incredibly cynical." THX HOW MUCH DOCTOR

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt as well, except that I think there's a slight danger of people taking the show without a necessary grain of salt because its realism is so far beyond anything else on TV that it sometimes comes off as "the way things are."

I did realize from the picture that Simon looks a bit like the guy they cast for Levy, which I thought was interesting since he's probably the most detestable character but also the one who *defends drug dealers*. It made me wonder if Simon wasn't making a subtle joke about himself with the casting.

I mean, ok, not THAT much alike:

http://www.theatlantic.com/images/issues/200801/wire.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/The_Wire_Levy.jpg/250px-The_Wire_Levy.jpg

but I still wonder

I suspect he has more in common with frank subotka.

I don't know about that.

there was bound to be a bald white guy in the show at some point.

fwiw Simon's one on-camera moment was as a reporter when Sobotka was arrested.

bald white jewish guy though

oh, then it's uncanny

ugh i am so jealous my friend was like 'i started new internship and the first thing they did was put me in a cab to go have chris bauer sign a contract and i was like 'omg i am face to face with frank sobotka'' and now i hate her and i hate my job even more :(

did I mention I am a regular at the same bar as odell watkins

still trying to figure out how to hang with bunk tho

bring him one bathrobe???

and a cigar

well see it's more about finding which area bars they hang out at first
bathrobes and cigars I have plenty of

you pimp

i just finally watched the 4th episode and it was a lot better than the 3rd. the two obvious weak spots this season are the serial-killer thing (which i initially defended on one of these threads because i didn't fully appreciate the stupidity of it) and the fabricating reporter. but the rest of it's good. most of the newspaper stuff is right on -- like the federal courts guy saying "do you want one reporter covering two court systems?", i worked at a paper that did exactly that. (same paper made me cover an entire 50,000-student public school system AND a state university, because they'd cut the university reporter position.) but my favorite bits in the episode were small character moments: herc and carver talking in the parking lot; the grin daniels allows himself at rawls' desk; kima with elijah; michael with his mom. i think those are the payoffs you can get in a 5th season when you've put so much time into back stories and characters.

also r.i.p. prop joe. one of my faves. sold out by method man.

i don't know why i keep scanning this thread and risking/seeing major character death spoilers when i haven't even finished s4 yet.

just assume that everybody gets killed. that way you'll be surprised by the ones who don't.

tipsy otm, I love the little moments in these episodes like Herc and Carver, etc.

the Wire auction I went to last week was a little disappointing, the stuff being auctioned wasn't as cool as what they had at the one my dad went to on one of the show's actual sets circa season 4, but some of that stuff is now part of an eBay auction too: http://stores.ebay.com/hbothewireauction
so you could possibly get a DVD set signed by the cast for as little as a hundred bucks

looooool okay mcnulty in the newspaper office pretty much justifies the whole serial killer storyline.

RONG

Has Bunk had any dialogue that didn't involve berating McNulty for being a fuck up?

o yeah, in the bar about white chicks in Aruba

When Homicide got the OT approval for a second detective, why was Greggs brought on instead of Freamon? Is it because Command didn't know Freamon was helping out McNutty?

ep6 was definitely the first time The Wire has mentioned O'Malley as a past mayor (I guess as a gesture of finally saying "Carcetti is not Wire-world O'Malley, dammit!"), but was that the first time the show's mentioned Schmoke?

although acknowledging O'Malley's existence in the show's universe really kind of screws with all the season 3/4 talk about how Carcetti couldn't get elected because he's the "wrong color" when apparently all that time he could've cited O'M as a recent white mayor.

wasn't Freamon supposed to be working the case against Davis?

"Nevermind" MUST be the absolute coldest thing to say to someone before shooting him in the skull, right?

Could somebody please tell me (without spoilers) if this season has gotten better since the end of ep 2? Thx.

mike dxn i think that's from after s05 right? so stfu on this thread.

31g -- yes it does, but it's still the weakest series so far :(

disagree

it's smaller in scope but what do you expect with only 10 episodes

that's only two fewer than series 2. if anything it's larger in scope, though! so it needs more space than it has to do what it needs to. hamsterdam was a big stretch, plasubility-wise, but they sold it well. although the consequences of what mcnulty's doing are convincing, and i respect it more than i did initially, i still find it really hard to get behing the fake serial killer story. i guess it's david simon's take on iraq, more than any previous series. (+ omar as osama bin laden anyone?)