"The Wire" on HBO

hey gr80 - the word "douchebag is pronounced the same.

seriously dude - take your tropical bro crepe act to another thread

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2011/01/bealefeld_the_wire_a_smear_tha.html

wait what xp

so some dude's issue with the line is because Bubs drops the first syllable of "between"?

― sarahel, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 5:06 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

partly but not entire -- it's just what tips it over from tolerably pretentious to ugh

yeah http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/xgllya_2.gif

as if bealefeld doesn't have bigger problems than some tv show
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-friendly-fire-shooting-20110110,0,4108960.story

so some dude's issue with the line is because Bubs drops the first syllable of "between"?

― sarahel, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 4:06 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i totally dont get what his point was either but i figured we were ~letting it go~

we want this thread to be the other way is what we're saying

good job letting it go, deej

i just want this thread to be discussion of The Wire; felt like maybe we'd derailed a bit much on the subject of Homicide

thnx bro ^__^

i agree w/ sarahel

2 thread cops with clashing personalities, forced to be partners. what hijinks will ensue?

I'm getting too old for this shit.

wait who are the thread cops?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUH3JQjcweM

nevermind. u_u

the wire sucks: discus

my favorite wire character is Larvell Jones

But back to Brianna -- I really liked the fact that she was developed as a character, because in so many scenes like with Bodie's grandma, Lex's mom, and Andre's wife, you see that "The Game" also involves women that might not be direct players, but you know that it has a real effect on their lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvK0IZVpbOE

but then this fucker pops up and its all downhill from there

aw, <3 m perlich, now I wanna watch Homicide

when I realised who Gus in Breaking Bad was played by, I youtubed the Buggin' Out sneakers scene from Do The Right Thing to show my housemate, and she was like "but wtf that guy's black!"

but then this fucker pops up and its all downhill from there

aw, <3 m perlich, now I wanna watch Homicide

when I realised who Gus in Breaking Bad was played by, I youtubed the Buggin' Out sneakers scene from Do The Right Thing to show my housemate, and she was like "but wtf that guy's black!"

Chris - wikipedia has something about a domestic sexual abuse backstory for him, hence him going to town on michael's dad

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 1:53 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah I remember this being pretty heavily signposted during the show

i wonder how they say "ambulance" in baltimore

― gr8080, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 5:14 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

this post just screams "tropical bro crepe"

http://www.moviesandlife.net/images/max-cady-cape-fear1.jpg

no reason for your mans to panic
you dont want to see no ambalances

roxy - who are your favorite characters from The Wire?

Nunya Biznazz

huh, because you are often a very clever and observant poster, roxy, i am sincerely curious. I'm particularly curious about your take on Snoop - and how she's kinda the most intolerant and a bigger bully/more prone towards violence - and whether that's related to some kind of insecurity/attempt to function as the only girl, and wanting to be one of the boys.

well yeah obv

i think my favorite character in the wire was tropical bro crepe

that was the dude that Kima grabbed off the top of the car when she and Cheryl were stuck in traffic, right?

iirc homicide is entertaining but it really has the fontana touch - super-catholic, earnestly liberal in a somewhat dated feeling way - the acting's prob better than The Wire, all things told

― Princess TamTam, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:19 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have to side with deej here, the acting is H:LOTS is a lot more theatrical and mannered, even Braugher -- where The Wire is "writerly," H:LOTS is "actorly." (I couldn't get through 3 seasons, coming to it post-Wire.)

david simon's response to bealefeld:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2011/01/simon_responds_to_bealefelds_c.html

It is my understanding that Commissioner Bealefeld - by finally choosing to emphasize the quality, rather than the quantity of arrest - has been able to reduce the homicide rate somewhat in our city. If true, this is not only commendable, it is a long time coming. Too long, in fact.

Interestingly, the newspaper that covered his department began making the argument to do exactly that as early as 1994, in a series of articles entitled "Crisis In Blue" (Ed. note: part two can be found here) that carefully articulated the disconnect between the Baltimore department's aggressive street-level prosecution of the drug war and the root causes of violence in the city. The arguments were furthered in a book entitled "The Corner" that was published three years later. After a new election cycle, however, those arguments were ignored in favor of years of "zero tolerance" of minor street crimes and an obsession with street-level drug enforcement that actually de-emphasized quality police work and led to marked declines in arrest rates for major felonies.

Later, when a mayor sought to become governor using public safety as an issue, the same police department went further down the path, emphasizing widespread street arrests of dubious quality and legality. This did not reduce crime so much as it violated the civil rights of many city residents and led to the widespread alienation of our jury pool, with many city jurors no longer willing to trust the integrity of testifying officers - a problem that will plague Baltimore law enforcement for years.

Furthermore, on behalf of Mr. O'Malley's political aspirations, many supervisors in many police districts were engaged in a prolonged campaign to improperly downgrade U.C.R. felonies to misdemeanors so as to further the political claim that crime was under control. This was common knowledge throughout the department and was much remarked upon privately by respected veteran supervisors and investigators, themselves frustrated at the practice. Nonetheless, aggravated assaults became common assaults. Armed robberies became larcenies. Rapes were unfounded.

I do not recall that Commissioner Bealefeld - when he was rising through the ranks during those years - made strenuous public objection to the department's misdirection, to its statistical flummery, or to the decline in arrest rates that resulted as quality police work was de-emphasized in favor of juked stats. Perhaps he did so in private, to little avail. And perhaps now that he is in a position to act, he is taking a better path. Again, as a resident of Baltimore, he has my wholehearted support if this is the case.

But publicly, let me state that The Wire owes no apologies -- at least not for its depiction of those portions of Baltimore where we set our story, for its address of economic and political priorities and urban poverty, for its discussion of the drug war and the damage done from that misguided prohibition, or for its attention to the cover-your-ass institutional dynamic that leads, say, big-city police commissioners to perceive a fictional narrative, rather than actual, complex urban problems as a cause for righteous concern. As citizens using a fictional narrative as a means of arguing different priorities or policies, those who created and worked on The Wire have dissented.

Commissioner Bealefeld may not be comfortable with public dissent, or even a public critique of his agency. He may even believe that the recent decline in crime entitles him to denigrate as "stupid" or "slander" all prior dissent, as if the previous two decades of mismanagement in the Baltimore department had not happened and should not have been addressed by any act of storytelling, given that Baltimore is no longer among the most violent American cities, but merely a very violent one.

Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility. That is the police department we depicted in The Wire, give or take our depiction of some conscientious officers and supervisors. And that is an accurate depiction of the Baltimore department for much of the last twenty years, from the late 1980s, when cocaine hit and the drug corners blossomed, until recently, when Mr. O'Malley became governor and the pressure to clear those corners without regard to legality and to make crime disappear on paper finally gave way to some normalcy and, perhaps, some police work. Commissioner Bealefeld, who was present for much of that history, knows it as well as anyone associated with The Wire.

We made things up, true. We have never claimed otherwise. But respectfully, with regard to our critique, we have slandered no one. And to the extent you can stand behind a fictional tale, we stand by ours - and more importantly, our purpose in telling that tale.

Respectfully,

David Simon
Baltimore, MD

flawless takedown

FATALITY

i was coming to post the takedown am0n posted a week ago but

2 thread cops with clashing personalities, forced to be partners. what hijinks will ensue?

― gr8080, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:49 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm getting too old for this shit.

― polyphonic, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:50 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

this is quality fucking posting guys kudos to yall

Season 5 = shameful shit (at least the half I'm through)

It gets better. Slightly.

The funny thing

Fucking phone

Anyway the funny thing is that I'm really into the newspaper thing personally but This other thing with mcnulty should've been shot down in one second

i hated it at the start too, but i like how it plays out.

The McNulty plotline is almost (and i say almost) worth it for Bunk's reactions and one scene late in the season.

For all its flaws, and it had plenty, Season 5 did a good job at showing the impossibility of a "great white hope" style hero to save the day. That to me was one of the overall points of the series.

spoilers

you know, i think this actually ended well, i esp like how they tied up the daniels thing, w/ him having to protect his ex-wife & current GF -- i think it was a good counterpoint to mcnulty & freamon as the lone wolves that only care about themselves

i thought michael as the next omar with MINI-SHOTGUN & all was a bit heavy-handed, tho sydnor as the next jimmy was choice

i would give anything for there to have been a procedural spin off ft bunk & greggs -- would've easily replaced stabler & benson in my heart

i had tons of problems w/ omar as a character in general, maybe i'll post about that when i'm feeling a bit less lazy

i also wish that they wouldn't have shown duke doing heroin -- i think they gave enough away when he took the money from prezbo that i wish they would've let that one lie, sorta how they don't give you the satisfaction of thompson being outed as a maker-upper but you know he's gonna get his anyway

As irrelevant as much of the Sobotka stuff felt, it wasn't as lazily written or conceived as Season Five.

Sobotka stuff isn't "irrelevant" at all, WTF.