"The Wire" on HBO

I saw season 2 first so it's kinda my favourite.

De'Londa Brice (Namond's mom) gotta be the worst

this x1000000

how abt the cop who goes on a triple date w/ herc and carver then gets shot doing a hand-to-hand the next day

D'Angelo's mom was pretty bad

Dozerman? xp

Brianna Barksdale >>>>> De'Londa Brice

d'angelo's mom did some fucked up things but i ultimately found her to be sympathetic especially in season 3

theresa d'agostino is just insufferably arrogant

i mean, so are many of the characters on this show but she is just awful. other smug assholes are fun to watch, e.g. rawls

i love the docks season unreservedly. Fucking great stuff.

ziggy is good

most of the dock workers' lives are kind of ruined after s2 tho—but you do see the greeks again in 4 and 5, no?

The reason why most of the dock-stuff didn't feature that largely into the overall plot is that it took place at the docks... Most of the series is the story of the inner city, and the docks were just too far away. The pieces that did fit, like Beadie Russel and the smuggling operation, did feature pretty significantly.

wish there was a season 6 that focused on the hispanic/latino community, that would've been rad

another cool thing about season two is that it illuminates a culture that's a little more obscure than the means streets/inner city schools/a newspaper

Season 2 has Omar in court therefore it is the greatest of them all

hard to argue with that

that's a little more obscure

blue collar white guys? not that obscure. but i guess if you mean stevedores then yea

wish there was a season 6 that focused on the hispanic/latino community, that would've been rad

― marcos, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That was Simon's wish, but he felt like they didn't know enough about it to make it happen in time.

s7 all about a doping scandal in the ravens locker room

s8 is about beef between the As & Orioles, ripped from Today's Headlines

trying to remember, was it was basically:
1 - corners
2 - docks
3 - back to the corners
4 - school/mayoral race
5 - newspaper?

because if so makes sense that the docks disappear after their focus season, the school and newspaper plotlines are also only foregrounded for one-season arcs too, right?

I think David Simon saw it a bit like:
1 - Drugs/Police
2 - Work
3 - Reform
4 - Education
5 - Information

Season three is a bit tough to nail down, thematically, what with Hamsterdam and all that.

yeah, there are lots of reasons why it makes sense that they didn't return to the dock workers, I just would've enjoyed seeing them again.

brio and frederick both right

except maybe i'd say s1 was about the housing projects and s3 going back to the corners after losing the towers/pit the barksdales had fought so hard to get/hold on to

i feel like the layers of reform/education in 3rd and 4th seasons were still present when the s5 layer of media/information was the focus

yeah - that's true... and school - or at least kids' daily lives - was a big part of the narrative throughout

I think S4 was my favorite. I just loved those kids.

Same here - would have much preferred to stay with them more through Season 5 in place of all that fake serial killer shit.

really if they took out the serial killer bullshit and maybe stretched out the season for a couple more episodes s5 would've been just fine.

pretty much, yeah, I even think the fake serial killer plotline could have worked in way scaled-back form. But it just felt like it went on and on and pushed things off the rails to me.

s4 is good but i never ever get the urge to watch it again, whereas 1-3 i can sit thru quite happily. Then again Prop Joe is my favourite character.

s4 prob too downbeat for my tastes, although it should be.

I read this thread as I was watching the show (earlier this year) so I was ready for S5 to be much much worse than it was

s5 isnt that bad, i think it maybe would have been better if David Simon didn't have such a bone to pick w/ his journalism past? idk

Yeah I watched S5 after hearing how bad it was too - and enjoyed it way more than I expected.

xxpost
I can see your point about the "downbeat" aspects to 4 and, to me, 5 - it was always dark but I did feel a little less engaged with the battle for the streets stuff once Marlo came out on top, just found Stringer and Avon way more interesting as the counter-force to the cops.

But I do get how it made total sense for the arc of the show and its big themes that Marlo would come in to replace them - and he is a kind of great character in his own right too.

i really resented Marlo at first but ended up loving his place in the show by the end

First few episodes of S5 depict a stalled bureaucratic world so thoroughly that this approach can be confused with the show itself being tedious and dull.

Some of the frustration, at least when it was airing, reminded me of Sopranos when's-somebody-finally-going-to-get-whacked conversation around the same time.

i've only watched 4 once or twice, 5 only once. 4 was beyond great but it was heavy, didn't want to just repeat it thoughtlessly.

for me the death of frank sobotka was the first truly powerful wire scene. therefore season 2 is great!

wallace's last scene wasn't powerful?

On a slight tangent: on my second re-watch of S1, Kima's shooting suddenly seems a lot more affected in a trite sort of way, especially the way that Rawls went "I hate ur guts but we're IN THIS TOGETHER MCNUTTY," don't really remember the details of my beef.

Yeah Kima's shooting was when I got invested.

i wonder if it's kind of a counterpart to kima's rushing in to wail on bodie after he hits polk or whoever the alkie cop is. like, things are under control, she's way far away, and she sees it and BOOKS over there so she can get in some kicks and stuff too. more for a kind of performance of solidarity for her fellow cops.

It's pretty amazing in the Wire how even the "good guy" cops don't hesitate to jump in on some massive police brutality when they think it's warranted. Even Daniels wails on that one guy (albeit offscreen)

oh right… what is that, in an interrogation room?

i always think that with daniels that's half a matter of fitting in

yeah I don't remember who. He comes in takes a polaroid of the guy, shows it to him, tears up the photo and locks the door.

Yeah, that was when they got Bird and he's spewing abuse at Kima, and I think in that case it was a lot more personal since Kima is one of his officers.

cutty's story arc is hitting me way harder the 2nd time through

xps re: marlo, yea i haaaaated marlo the first time through, just an unfun hardass who never lets up, but second time around i feel like he's a great character with a really heavy presence, great contrast to avon