"The Wire" on HBO

i love season 2 v much

it's why we get up in the morning

Season 2 doesn't have the elegant sweep of 3 and 4, which are masterpieces of multi-strand storytelling. 2 is more a new story, which can't quite leave the old Barksdale-people behind. That said, it's obviously a very very good season, better than almost everything done on tv ever. I haven't rewatched 5 ever, but I think I'll continue once I'm done with 4. Will start episode 10 right now.

It was definitely crucial to David Simon's sort of "theory of everything" of Baltimore/post-industrial urban america. It wouldn't be the series it is without Season 2.

season 2 is great. i feel like the greek's pal vondas keeps drinking increasingly tiny cups of espresso throughout the season.

I think my main issue with this show - for all of the things it admirably attempts - is that I never felt any real emotional investment in any of the characters. There are SO MANY, and the vast majority of them are not allowed enough time or opportunities to provide a lot of depth or shade or contradiction; vast swathes of the cast are one-dimensional. This is exacerbated by the way the stories are framed, this really tightly laid out, mechanistic method of storytelling - everybody is a piece on a board, a cog in a vast machine that must move from point A to point B for the narrative to maintain momentum. I am always highly conscious of how methodical everything is, the way the show is straining to get all its puzzle pieces aligned just so so that the viewer properly understands the scope of the inescapable trap, the overwhelming scale and force of the institutions that all the characters are enmeshed in. There are ridiculous caricatures - Ziggy, Omar, Marlo, McNulty, Brother Mouzon, that weaselly guy that runs for mayor - that I can't take seriously for a second, surrounded by all of these other essentially tragic figures who you just know are going to get fucked no matter what they do or how righteous their motivations are. Unlike the Sopranos or Mad Men, most of these characters don't show much more depth than the chess pieces they're treated as - they simply aren't on-screen enough, or given the opportunity to display a wider range of who they are. Overall it leaves me cold. I don't find any of the characters as fascinating as Tony or Janice or Peggy or Pete etc.

In that sense I think the didacticism of the show undermines its effectiveness as drama

idk i felt like every season putting another antagonist in front of tony and making him too dumb to figure out how to deal with it felt more programmatic than the procedural nature of the wire

I agree that it's not the most character-driven show, but there were still characters I thought showed a lot of emotional depth, e.g. D'Angelo Barksdale. I don't see it as a flaw of the show, just a different kind of show.

There are ridiculous caricatures - Ziggy, Omar, Marlo, McNulty, Brother Mouzon, that weaselly guy that runs for mayor

His name is McNutty.

One thing I did find weird about the Wire was the sex scenes -- pretty much every one of them is cold, sudden, and aggressive in about the same way, except I vaguely remember a really bad late-nite-movie style scene maybe with daniels and rhonda?

the sex scenes in the wire are almost uniformly terrible w/ the exception of a few that are played for black comedy (such as mcnulty showing his badge to the cops who watch him plowing a woman he picks up at the bar and their subsequent departure from the scene). mostly bc they're just awkwardly filmed. but, hardly enough of a prob to detract from its superlative qualities in other areas.

xp yeah that scene's at the end of season 3, its pretty unintentionally hilarious

yeah it's a minor thing except that it just seemed like there was an overall lack of a sense of any good male-female intimate relationships overhanging the whole show, like maybe a little bit of a bitterness about women and/or marriage/dating that pervades it. McNulty's divorce and bitchy ex, Daniels' divorce, the strongest female characters being "more like men," etc. I wouldn't go so far as to say misogyny, but probably bitterness.

sex scenes in the Wire were all gratuitous nonsense, serving no purpose to the narrative. which was totally not the case with the Sopranos (sorry to keep bringing it up but those poll results make me so mad)

as to the character thing...idk. for every somewhat caricatured or one-dimensional character (ziggy, the newspaper bosses, arguably marlo) you have prez, or the kids in seasons 4-5, or how grounded michael k. williams makes omar through his acting despite the deliberately outsized nature of the character, or daniels, or carver, or bunny colvin, the aforementioned d'angelo, bodie, etc. etc.

also if you really wanted to you could make "one dimensional" arguments about multiple sopranos and mad men characters.

there is def an undertone of misogyny through the Wire imo, the female characters are all either underwritten or downright horrible

xp

mcnulty's ending on the show is happier than i remembered, like off the force and off the drink and back home with amy ryan. seems like a pretty good way to end up.

you could make "one dimensional" arguments about multiple sopranos and mad men characters.

you could, but there are *fewer* of them, as opposed to like 3 dozen in the Wire

you can say that abt virtually any cable show, even the sopranos quite frankly. i wouldn't say it about either show. though i think the best of the major cable shows w/r/t female character is definitely mad men.

misogyny, that is.

mcnulty's problems are based on david simon's marriage self-destruction (pre laura lippman), so there's def bitterness there. but i think about marriage/romance on a whole rather than women. and the way the beadie/mcnulty relationship works out in the end (or daniels/pearlman) seems to indicate the possibility that individual people can figure their shit out even if the overarching things they're part of are kinda fucked, like everything else in the show.

xxp mad men def has the shows it's so frequently associated with lapped in terms of great women.

i just rewatched season 4 and the first few episodes of season 5, and unpopular opinion alert: season 5 is, newspaper editor caricatures aside, really fuckin good.

Season 2 is great because so much huge stuff is set in motion (and ultimately hindered) by Maj. Valchek's personal feud with Frank Sobotka. Feels like real life, sadly.

If you think of it as five "acts" it kind of makes sense for the second act to not be the most exciting of them, yet have lots of necessary setup in it.

you could make "one dimensional" arguments about multiple sopranos and mad men characters.

you could, but there are *fewer* of them, as opposed to like 3 dozen in the Wire

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:33 AM (7 minutes ago)

This is ridiculous. So many 1d characters in sopranos and mad men!

i just rewatched season 4 and the first few episodes of season 5, and unpopular opinion alert: season 5 is, newspaper editor caricatures aside, really fuckin good.

i remember watching the first few episodes of season 5 and thinking "this is good! why all the hate?" but by season's end it just gets really bad. the serial killer plot and the absolutely dead character of templeton were just awful

also i think i mentioned it somewhere else itt but one of the reasons s2 bothers me is the corny "russian gangster" aspect of the greek and his organization -- even though they aren't russian it just has that totally cliched vibe of unlikeable eastern european criminals as antagonists

there is that one russian guy, boris.

sometimes i think people are a lot less dimensional than people who consume a lot of drama think

anyway marlo is a psychopath; they're shallow. omar, mcnulty, and carcetti are not ridiculous caricatures. (the guy who plays carcetti is a bit of a ridiculous caricature, and admittedly mcnulty's scenes/plots become redundant except as machinery.) an incomplete list of people i get very emotionally invested in, none of whom are chess pieces except insofar as they are not free: bodie, bunk, avon/stringer, carver, frank, randy, cutty, norman. agree about the sex scenes and the women, tho snoop's p indelible.

sometimes i think people are a lot less dimensional than people who consume a lot of drama think

Yes.

Season 2 is great because so much huge stuff is set in motion (and ultimately hindered) by Maj. Valchek's personal feud with Frank Sobotka.

this is way otm, the shot in e1 of valchek standing in front of the giant window staring up in disbelief+disgust became one of my favorite images in the show when i rewatched it knowing how absurdly consequential this part was

I'm only two seasons through the Sopranos but it's basically a sitcom

sometimes i think people are a lot less dimensional than people who consume a lot of drama think

yes!

how well do you get to know people when they are working anyway

also cmon fuckin bubbles and his AA arc

Sad that for Shakes none of the charactesr on the Wire approach the finely drawn intricacies and inimicable shading of Paulie Walnuts

yeah no doubt

xp

true that every sex scene in this is a ridiculous horror

like, to the point where i wonder if they weren't staged and shot ineptly but contemptuously

the one thing that is notable about The Wire vs. Mad Men and the Sopranos is that there is a greater diversity in acting styles.

The sex scenes with Kima are pretty good tbh

lol dayo you get it

Paulie is a great well-drawn character fuiud

many xps to marcos: i wasn't bothered by the serial killer plot at all, i thought it was outre but kinda fascinating and bolstered by the anti-institutional cynicism that fuels so much of the show. as for plausibility, it didn't bug me any more than hamsterdam but i know i'm in the minority on that.

yea i thnk the difficulty i had w/ the serial killer plot was freamon's participation in it, just didn't seem to fly w/ anything we previously knew about that character

i'll always remember the sopranos' subtle depiction of a closeted gay mobster

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg76/JimmyMarkum/gayvito.gif

I envy all of you for whom every sexual encounter is some sort of Richard Gere bodice ripper

probably somewhere upthread is a post from me where i express appreciation for the scene of Omar and boyfriend #2 in bed watching a Beecher/Keller sex scene from Oz on tv

It's not about whether they depict good vs bad sex so much as that every single one is done in the same terrible jumpcut-to-fast-fucking style.

not every single one!!!