The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

i started season 1 of the sopranos at some point recently because of this damn thread. it was pretty good. i should finish it.

Sopranos shows, the Wire tells.

at no point in the wire does a character point to avon barksdale and say "this guy is not reformed and in some ways has returned to the street an even more committed criminal than he was before"

also you're leaving out the giant ironic tragic joke that takes several seasons to set up wherein stringer is portrayed to us as the smart ambitious forward-thinker who wants to go legit and is held back by his childhood friend avon's "posturing", and during his period of total control of the organization in avon's absence takes it in a direction that seems to us WHITE COLLEGE KIDS to be productive and sane and disconnected from avon's apparently irrational honor killings, and to be making an argument for the hoary old analogy between the drug trade and good ol' standard "legitimate" american entrepreneurism; and stringer "comes into conflict" with avon not because avon is a gangsta cartoon but because avon believes there are certain things about the socioeconomic situation into which they were born and to the top of which they've risen that make it fundamentally separate from and unable to successfully interface with the different one stringer wants to enter, i.e., avon thinks the analogy is incomplete; and only after he has sent his closest friend to prison for life in order to ensure his total severance from his origins is it brought home to stringer that he has made a mistake and that he has not escaped but is in fact being cynically used by all the people he looks up to as "legitimate", people whose fundamental sharkiness and sociopathy avon always understood better than stringer. then stringer is murdered, right after understanding this.

i mean that is what is going on with that arc, not "sometimes there is recidivism".

ts: cast of 80 vs. cast of 8

lol waht both of these shows have HUGE casts

yeah, the fluctuation in which one looks like he knows what's up in the stringer-avon relationship over the first three seasons is one of my favorite parts of the wire

xp

at no point in the wire does a character point to avon barksdale and say "this guy is not reformed and in some ways has returned to the street an even more committed criminal than he was before"

this is a hilarious take on avon's characterization tbf

Bell is a more interesting character than Avon, that's for sure

show v. tell is some made-up percy lubbock stuff anyway

at no point in the wire does a character point to avon barksdale and say "this guy is not reformed and in some ways has returned to the street an even more committed criminal than he was before

O RLY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TuvmqJ1SWI&tracker=False&NR=1

I think Sopranos fanboys are kidding themselves if they can't admit the show got unwatchably soap-opera-ish at times in both Seasons 4 and 5.

And I say this as someone who was a fanboy up til then!

yes, law enforcement is pissed that avon got out. it doesn't mean that that's the purpose of his character.

xxp

sopranos had a lot of high points and low points, wire more consistent but less interesting imo, can we lock thread now

No we have to accuse other posters of "not getting it" first!

it doesn't mean that that's the purpose of his character.

I didn't say that it was...?

My point was that the Wire handles recidivism in this really didactic, fairly hamfisted way. and the clip I posted is a perfect example of that.

Sopranos was also guilty of characters doing out of character things to move plots along toward the end...also enjoy how Tony killed or had killed 70% of his social circle

i mean the strength of the wire's big "dickensian" Thesis isn't in what it says about the decay of the american city; it's in the way it attributes that decay to a systemic inertia that does not require that its human components be evil or destructive or exclusively selfish to persist anyway. (cf. what pains the show takes to explain the motives of very nearly every single character, even the ones who in early episodes are set up as straightforward obstructive Bad Guys.) and then the way it proposes that this inertia isn't a specific quality of american government or laissez-faire economics or the drug trade but in fact common to all systems, that any social system erected by human beings is going to be dragged gradually towards collapse by the cumulative and inevitable selfishness that exists in every one of its members. and then the way it singles out for lionizing not people who Save The World and Bring The Condition Of Our Cities To The Attention Of Those That Can Help, but people who sacrifice for and elevate individual other people (namond, bubbles), because that's the only kind of behavior that's really in opposition to decay. it is pretty universal and cosmic and not really a slate article.

haha most of that clip is given over to the stringer/avon thing, including references to their childhood in which stringer's naive political ambitions are quietly revealed to have been there all along! but yeah there is that thing at the beginning where daniels says "this is some bullshit". but that's not God telling us about recidivism; that's a police detective who locked up a criminal being upset that the criminal is being released.

like i'm not arguing for this show over the sopranos which i have actually never seen, just saying the show has a whole lot more going on than Important Social Issues.

it attributes that decay to a systemic inertia that does not require that its human components be evil or destructive or exclusively selfish to persist anyway

any social system erected by human beings is going to be dragged gradually towards collapse by the cumulative and inevitable selfishness that exists in every one of its members

were those not ok

i think he's saying they contradict. but they don't

oh, yeah, that's why "exclusive" is there. almost everyone in the wire, even someone like landsman who at first is set up as evil, cares about other people and about society and stuff. it's just that they are also looking out for themselves, and the combined weight of that is what's so hard to tug against.

people who sacrifice for and elevate individual other people (namond, bubbles), because that's the only kind of behavior that's really in opposition to decay.

i hadn't really thought about the show this way before. i'm not sure that i completely agree with the second part (also feel like the show is pretty invested in human institutions, fallen though they may be) but i love your wire posts!

xp

(one of the weirder exceptions here btw would be what's-his-name the criminal lawyer, who is an EVIL JEW WHO ONLY CARES ABOUT MONEY)

yeah that character is a problem. feel like s1ocki pointed that out at some point, maybe in this thread?

fwiw theres some real glass houses stuff to the psychoanalysis of wire fans, as if fans of a show abt hypermasculine mafia archetypes wouldnt have its own problematic fandom

but i guess the wire has the added OOOH RACE thing to throw in there so theres that

i do enjoy watching tv shows with more than one nonwhite character in them, full disclosure

"(one of the weirder exceptions here btw would be what's-his-name the criminal lawyer, who is an EVIL JEW WHO ONLY CARES ABOUT MONEY)"

I love that EVIL JEW.

oh, yeah, that's why "exclusive" is there. almost everyone in the wire, even someone like landsman who at first is set up as evil, cares about other people and about society and stuff. it's just that they are also looking out for themselves, and the combined weight of that is what's so hard to tug against.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 10 March 2011 21:05 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is really banal shit tho, 'ppl who aren't entirely bad do bad things'

well it wasn't his whole point, he was just explaining why you didn't really catch him in a contradiction

they aren't strict contradictions but the subtraction leaves only that rather meagre notion

it's basically true to simon's worldview tho

this is really banal shit tho, 'ppl who aren't entirely bad do bad things'

the point isn't that people do bad things, or that people sometimes don't care about other people, it's that the cumulative not-caring-about-other-people of a whole bunch of people over time creates systems and situations that are really difficult to turn around. like the wire is constantly making the "this person is acting as is basically required of him for the preservation of his job, and look how destructive it is, but look how difficult it would be for him to act differently" point about all kinds of different people with all kinds of different jobs, and the GIANT DICKENS/ZOLA SCOPE that can sometimes make the show seem shallow or didactic or less deep than the presumably-more-shakespearean sopranos is necessary to get the perspective the show needs to figure out how these people's jobs got this way.

(even though there is plenty of shakespearean stuff in the wire, like all that stringer/avon stuff above.)

i love tv that is about people on their jobs. i guess the sopranos is about that, too.

I love that EVIL JEW.

i love the part where he comes down to the police station to do something EVIL, i forget what, and says to landsman or someone "YOU KNOW YOU DRAGGED ME OUT OF SEDER"

the point isn't that people do bad things, or that people sometimes don't care about other people, it's that the cumulative not-caring-about-other-people of a whole bunch of people over time creates systems and situations that are really difficult to turn around. like the wire is constantly making the "this person is acting as is basically required of him for the preservation of his job, and look how destructive it is, but look how difficult it would be for him to act differently" point about all kinds of different people with all kinds of different jobs, and the GIANT DICKENS/ZOLA SCOPE that can sometimes make the show seem shallow or didactic or less deep than the presumably-more-shakespearean sopranos is necessary to get the perspective the show needs to figure out how these people's jobs got this way.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 10 March 2011 21:20 (5 minutes ago)

this all true but it's p fucking limited stuff, there's a reason kids read dickens and nobody outside of france/college reads zola

if i could just establish that all wire detractors have no use for dickens maybe i could relax and stop reading this thread

also, you're p fucking limited stuff

haha that's p good for the relentlessly secondrate horseshoe xox

this thread is either the best or worst such opposition on ilx cuz most ppl like both shows, i liked the wire a lot

both shows take place in the mad men universe, god willing.

a show abt hypermasculine mafia archetypes wouldnt have its own problematic fandom

this is wrong. Sopranos is as much about the women as it is the men. which you cannot say about the Wire, which is even MORE invested in hypermasculine archetypes than the Sopranos is.

im not 'wrong' shakey, its obv commendable / important that sopranos is about women (& fyi wire totally has female characters playing important significant roles too?) but that doesnt mean its not also about male mafia archetypes! i mean we're already talking abt ridic strawpeople who apparently only like the wire bcuz they get off on xyz so why isnt it conceivable that, if i accept those strawppl exist, they might also exist for sopranos?

youre blinded by partisanship here

which is even MORE invested in hypermasculine archetypes than the Sopranos is.

― You hurt me deeply. You hurt me deeply in my heart. (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:53 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

like how are u even measuring this

by the yardstick that all the major characters in the Wire are male and all the female characters are, for the most part, terribly written and one-dimensional

i dont understand how that is a measurement of 'hypermasculine archetypes' -- isnt that a measurement of 'multi dimensional female characters'? but w/e, im arguing with shakey mo, time for a break

the men: hard-drinkin, hard-livin detectives, young black thugs, old hardassed corrupt politicians/administrators, blue collar Joe Luncpails etc

the women: lesbians (only one of which really has a good arc/fully fleshed out character), that terrible bird lady politician, the pixie-ish redhead lawyer with a heart of gold

and then there's Namond's mom, who is just a monster, but hardly on the multi-dimensional level of Livia

saying your idea of "oh noes our american cities" being what resonates, actually probably will not resonate nearly as immediately and universally as "having a family is complicated"

― gawka flocka flamewar (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, March 10, 2011 12:01 PM (1 hour ago)

and there are tons of good tv shows and movies about complicated families ... and far fewer that engage the details of industrial decline/drug problems etc. in American cities.

and there are tons of good tv shows and movies about complicated families

well now that two and a half men is off the air...