"The Wire" on HBO

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.

or baldwin

Okay fine, the cast of 30 Rock should play all the parts.

Kenneth would make an excellent Ziggy, or perhaps a Carcetti!

tina fey as daniels

liz lemon as kima, or maybe jay landsman. twofer as lt. daniels.

xp

I would be outraged if anyone other than Baldwin played Jay Landsman.

Cathy Geiss as Snoop.

Kenneth as Prez, duh. Devin Banks as Carcetti.

ah yes devin, good call

I don't know why I've found the 4th season especially hard to finish. I mean obviously one reason is that I'm in law school and have no time to do anything. But I also find it especially dark and depressing. Not that the other seasons aren't dark and depressing. But as good as it is, I'm not looking forward to finding out what happens next as much as I was previously.

really? man i'm totally into it

I was completely sucked into the fourth season, but I can understand the sense that it's dark or trying -- I don't think it's particularly different from the other seasons, it's just that it centers on kids, and that raises the moral/emotional stakes in a way that can be pretty shattering.

It was probably my favorite season.

The funny thing about Landsman is that apparently there's an ACUTAL Jay Landsman who doesn't even play himself on the show!! He plays another police, instead. I guess he wasn't Jay Landsman-y enough?

or actory enough!

he's plays the dude who runs roll call in the western w/the mustache

Correct.

i recommend the book "Homicide" for lots of good irl landsman stories

Lt. Dennis Mello.

I think S4 is my favorite both because the kids/education angle is particularly compelling, and also because I think it's really tightly constructed from a narrative standpoint. All these little connections come into play, and you see how characters' choices reverberate far beyond their circumscribed worlds. (I'd be more specific, but I don't want to spoil it for those still watching.)

ha. i like the fat porn hot dog guy better!

All these little connections come into play, and you see how characters' choices reverberate far beyond their circumscribed worlds.

Exxxxxxxxactly. This season especially.

I can finally read this thread because I finished the whole series!! At one point I accidentally skimmed over the words "the McNulty wake" and I spent the whole 5th season thinking he was going to be killed (or kill himself). Which, the way it was going, seemed extremely possible.

And anyone who is still watching who reads that accidentally -- ulp sorry. But this thread is full of spoilers anyway! What are you even doing here??