"The Wire" on HBO

re: madmen -- there's gonna be a crossover??

I enjoy The Sopranos and The Wire about equally but Mad Men is nowhere close yeah

s4 is the only thing that'd taint that for me...but i like the emotion of mad men and the romance (mean that broadly.) prob a personal thing...by the same token i'd say twin peaks is my fave tv show of all time. not really looking for realism so much as that sort of wistfulness.

breaking bad on the other hand is just such brilliant storytelling.

i enjoyed the wire but it is kinda annoying in places as well, eg the scene with mcnulty/bunk going "fuck" repeatedly or whatever it was. that wasn't "omg genius", it was really stupid cop show rubbish. plus the first two seasons of the wire are way way way better than the last three, which get progressively poorer.

mouzone is a "worse" character than omar obv

cop shows are great

i meant hilarious in a bad way

btw i enjoy the character of omar -- just had some problems

I hate the "fuck" scene as well and it always annoys me when people bring it up in praise of The Wire.

i dont know if thats what some ppl do it but there are plenty of other reasons to praise its realism i.e. the realistic way characters are forced to interact w/ larger systems

that was re: ppl liking the wire bcuz they know whats going on in the streets

j0rdan look at the realism this way ... ppl like prodigy from mobb deep bcuz his rap style feels visceral & 'real' -- but when he raps 'got a rusty gun, but that shit still spit,' that would actually be a stupid thing to use as a weapon, but it SOUNDS badass? like, there's a tension between realism vs. dramatic license going on in any form of entertainment. the guys that wrote this show were by & large fiction writers

i am trying to remember if mad men ever affected me emotionally.

I hate the "fuck" scene as well and it always annoys me when people bring it up in praise of The Wire.

― Number None, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:26 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this sounds like reacting to ppl hyping it imo. wasnt the 'fuck' scene also based on bmore cop humor david simon observed firsthand?

what scene are you guys talking about

I think that's a significant reason why the show has become so canonized in recent years. Makes people feel a bit superior that they watch this show that's so realistic, complex etc.

weird...i found it affecting throughout. s4 prob a bit of a letdown as i think about it now, mind you.

x-post it could be based on real humour and still be shit. maybe bmore cops aren't funny either.

Well, i hadn't heard any hype when i watched the scene and i have since read that it was based on a real situation but it just always came off fake to me.

I think that's a significant reason why the show has become so canonized in recent years. Makes people feel a bit superior that they watch this show that's so realistic, complex etc.

― Number None, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:30 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u have a v pessimistic view of ppl's motives & its impugning your ability to be rational while critiquing this show imo

who cares if it's fake, it's awesome.

sometimes the wire's staginess falls flat, but i love the "fuck" scene

lol, number none is taking the place of whiney g weingarten in this discussion

hey guys which scene is the "fuck" scene

you guys need to indulge your cornball tendencies imo

horseshoe you're just trying to feel superior

I love the show though! Just saying i've encountered people who watch it that way. Also, broadsheet journalists

j0rdan look at the realism this way ... ppl like prodigy from mobb deep bcuz his rap style feels visceral & 'real' -- but when he raps 'got a rusty gun, but that shit still spit,' that would actually be a stupid thing to use as a weapon, but it SOUNDS badass? like, there's a tension between realism vs. dramatic license going on in any form of entertainment. the guys that wrote this show were by & large fiction writers

― deej, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:29 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is a stretch, deej

j0rdan in the first season, when mcnulty and bunk are investigating a murder scene and realize the shooting took place in a different way than they'd thought + find the bullet and say "fuck" over and over the whole time they're reenacting the shooting

i don't think number none is way out of order to suggest that people cite some dumb ass reasons for liking the wire, eg "realism" 99 per cent of the time. is that really why it's a good show? i don't think so. it's just become the thing people say about it.

x-post otm...so much broadsheet bullshit about this show. news journalists get horny for this realism bullshit.

I watched the show before there was any hype about it and I still hated the "fuck" scene.

Favorite show ever tho.

i am going to say any scene with bunk in it is fine by me

xp

it's realist like a realist novel...it's still fiction

i don't remember the "fuck" part of that scene

bunk is really the best -- he really turned it on during the homeless thing

this is a stretch, deej

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, 9 March 2011 21:34 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

how so

'realist fiction' is exactly what both of these are

All the realism praise is cos people like to think they know about "the streets" and so on after watching The Wire.

I did get to use the word "burner" in convo w a friend who was considering becoming part of a drug distribution arrangement, and she was totally shocked that I knew what one even was. That was kinda fun.

Sounds like you've got some pretty street friends

why are you being such an asshole about this reason that people like the wire that you made up?

Lol no.

I don't think i'm being an asshole. All i'm saying is i get that impression from a section of the show's audience. Again, i love The Wire and i love it cos it's entertaining, funny etc.

acting superior about people acting superior

a solitary rap line vs a whole character in a TV show

maybe compare rick ross & omar little

the thing about realism in fiction is that unrealistic (or I guess improbable) things happen in reality all the time, like people surviving falls from a 6th floor

xxxxpost to like 20 posts when realism in The Wire was discussed

sorry Number None i misread the tone in your comment to Laurel. wire threads make me so touchy.

a solitary rap line vs a whole character in a TV show

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:45 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf dude its just a parallel example of dramatic license

im trying to explain what ppl mean by 'realism' w/r/t the wire is similar to 'realism' in rap music

its not a 'stretch' its an 'example you are already familiar with that might help you approach it with the expectations of fiction'

i really like the mcnulty/bunk murder-reconstruction scene. the "fuck" part is pretty irrelevant: it's several minutes of guys doing a job, which is both interesting and rare on TV, and there's this whole other additional enjoyable layer where we have in fact had this murder described to us, earlier, by an unreliable narrator, and so there's two layers of crosspollinating suspense: 1) will mcnulty/bunk succeed in reconstructing the murder; 2) will mcnulty/bunk's reconstruction of the murder reveal to us inaccuracies in the description of the murder already presented w/ implications about the character, priorities, and concerns of the guy who described it? pretty elegant scene. dunno what else people want from fiction.

the repetition of fuck kind of just sets off how absorbed they are in their work

they say it sort of meditatively

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10fHQS2tvKg&eurl=