"The Wire" on HBO

I've just finished watching seasons 1-5 in one two-month binge. I'm presuming that going back and starting straight from season 1 again is a common reaction? It took me most of season 1 to get a handle on who was who.

jesus christ why do all wire fans seem to think dealers are the point of the show

― TOMBOT, Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:46 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the wire talks and indeed delivers a good game abt the institutional tragedy that is the drug game but it blatantly purposely stimulates the vicarious transgressive aspect too - the show is crazy entertaining AND deep - so there

i love it when wire actors turn up in other stuff

I fixate on this too now, though it usually involves noticing them in older stuff (Reg E. Cathey in Airheads, dude who played D'Angelo in Cecil B. Demented).

The trippiest possibility is to go back and watch old episodes of Homicide, where I'll occasionally have trouble wrapping my head around things like McNulty's wife and his favorite judge being homicide detective partners.

I saw Senator Davis in "Enchanted," it's very disconcerting...

the wire talks and indeed delivers a good game abt the institutional tragedy that is the drug game but it blatantly purposely stimulates the vicarious transgressive aspect too - the show is crazy entertaining AND deep - so there

― :) wealth destruction! (ice cr?m), Saturday, November 22, 2008 11:29 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I think the show consciously wants its audience to feel the pull of drug dealing in communities where there are few other options -- it's the only employer, it's sexy, it offers a system of authority and meaning that is stronger than that of the "official" institutions (the schools). This is really hammered in Season 4 with the alternative classroom program.

Oh, it goes out of its way to make the viewer totally complicit in that, with the brief period where Michael, Dukie, and Bug are all living happily together on drug money. In the short term, that's the kind of happy ending you're tempted to cheer -- all three get lifted above the problems you've been rooting for them to get past, they form something resembling the functional family unit neither of them ever had, and with Dukie in particular, it stands out as most likely the happiest free-from-hardship moment he'll ever get in his entire life ... all made possible by drug gangs. Which is a nicely complicated thing to do to your viewer. I appreciate that the show's "explanations" for how people wind up in the drug trade aren't just built around the usual TV/film stuff about power or unusual greed or whatever -- it's pretty clear about how this holds out some (very short-term, and partly illusory) path to escaping your own circumstances. (And then it gives us characters who we really, really want to see escape their own circumstances.)

been rewatching season 2; james ransone as ziggy is so amazing. don't think i properly appreciated the performance the first time around.

do NOT watch that larry clark movie where he does personal time srsly

Avon Barksdale was on House a couple of weeks ago.

The full box set for all 5 seasons just came out a couple of days ago on DVD.

http://blogs.pioneerlocal.com/entertainment/2008/12/the_wire_box_set_out_the_show.html

Going for less than $150 on Amazon, apparently.

oh shit

christ that's a good price. and i have a $50 amazon certificate...

i recently bought the complete buffy box set for $70! amazon is killin shit lately

5 episodes into the wire (still waiting for mark sinker to turn up, i guess that's later...) and my favourite is the bloke sat in the back making furniture for dolls' houses.

3 former Homicide:LOTS people already though (Luther Maloney as ME, wtf!). are there only 15 actors in the whole of baltimore?

Which three are you counting so far? Judge, McNulty's wife, and the ME?

my favourite is the bloke sat in the back making furniture for dolls' houses.

I think you will be in for a treat with him.

3 former Homicide:LOTS people already though (Luther Maloney as ME, wtf!). are there only 15 actors in the whole of baltimore?

lots of times people who create multiple TV/movie projects end up casting favorite actors more than once. plus most of the big Wire/Homicide players aren't from Baltimore.

97% of the wire cast is from england anyway

David Simon didn't actually work on Homicide, though, I don't think.

david simon didn't create 'homicide'.

xpost

he ended up writing for it, but not initially.

Pat Moran (John Waters posse represent) did the Baltimore casting for both shows.

Ha, McNulty + Bell = 97%?

A bunch of those early episodes are also directed by Clark Johnson from Homicide (who joins the cast in the last season)

And Simon was both a writer and a producer for Homicide, starting in the fourth season

just chiming in here to say we're in the middle of season 4 right now and holy shit this show is awesome

joeks, nabisco@

yeah pretty sure snoop is welsh

if you want to see cast overlap, check out "Oz"

anyway yeah less than 97%. carcetti is irish

The deacon is Bavarian

Clark Johnson's character was so tiresome in The Wire that when I saw him walking into the Chelsea Clearview Wednesday I was actually like "ugh, him." Then I discovered from posters that he was there for a screening of films starring and written by teenagers, one of which he directed. Then I remembered he directed episodes, was Meldrick, and is probably awesome.

I loved him on The Wire. :( I know his character was overly saintly, but I loved his performance.

You could basically sum his Wire character up as "The Last Great Newspaper Editor. Knows it, too cynical to get up on cross." all the press characters were so one-dimensional.

Believes in reincarnation, wishes the pope had a bigger dick

those would have been welcome character details

Still, they had it about right with the redundancies etc at the Sun: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2008/12/08/daily12.html

"The Last Great Newspaper Editor. Knows it, too cynical to get up on cross."

^^ not one-dimensional really, but i agree the newsroom/mcnulty story was ass.

McNulty bothered me way more that season than anything newsroom-related

but it was almost all worth it for that serial killer profiling scene

^^ otm. couldn't believe he went the way he did. i think with more time to develop how desperate and out of control the city's fiscal situation was, it would have been a little more believable. this is all old news i kno i kno

xp yah that's otm too

Dame Judi Dench to play Avon Barksdale in "The Wire" motion picture.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519JTHDV3ML.jpg

l-r bodie, wallace, d'angelo, snoop

the SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER serial killer plotline seemed to me the cruel/lazy inverse of my favorite theme, developed in season 2: that sometimes justice is done even tho nobody had the good intentions to do so. mcnulty goes to these amazing lengths to do something about the can full of dead hungarian girls, only to fuck over his previoius boss. only later does the sentiment that there is something moral at stake come out, and only tentatively. doing good things for bad reasons is a rare development in any drama, doing bad things for good reasons is dime-a-dozen (hello jack bauer)

i guess it's closer, in a way, to omar putting away bird by lying his ass off on the stand, but that was charming and hilarious and only took up 6-8 minutes of screen time.

Dominic West's accent as Cromwell in The Devil's Whore was hilarious.

Here if you missed it

Dame Judi Dench to play Avon Barksdale in "The Wire" motion picture.

I was actually the other day imagining Tracy Morgan playing Brianna Barksdale.

Tracy Morgan would be better as Namond's mom

I take that back, Tracy Morgan would clearly be best as McNulty

Tracy knows all about Snot Boogie

I would like to see Tracy play The Wire as a one-man show.