The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

12. lesbionic supporting-actress cop who bails the principal male cops out of life-and-death jams

^^^haha

Hakim Bey's 80s essay on cop shows kinda turned me off of them forever

i think people have "cliches" confused with "signifiers of a genre"

^^^

I.... guess? Care to elaborate?

no, it's totally a cop show cliche when a bunch of cops start running around trying to solve crimes and stuff

makes me roll my eyes every time

no, it's totally a cop show cliche when a bunch of cops start running around trying to solve crimes and stuff

that's not what I said at all but thx for the strawman argument

you really need to discern between joshin' around and vicious attacks on your person

i hate it when cop shows involve criminals and also crimes

quality criticism goin on here

i'm not really disagreeing, there's some eye-rolling moments in The Wire, particularly in the first year (the chess scene, ugh), i just think the show is still really worthwhile for a lot of other reasons. like i said, though, obviously how you feel about a show's given genre trappings is gonna figure into it differently for different people.

i can understand why you'd feel the cliches of cops performing mundane cop tasks on a show about cops might seem to be a little too "cop" but season 1 is like the 4th best of the 5 seasons and the next three get increasingly doper

I think some of this is a byproduct of the overhyping of the wire... it gets talked about with such a reverent tone, about how radical and complex it is, ppl make it sound like joyce's ulysses made flesh, then you watch it and it's just a well-done policier, it's like, uh, okay.

edward otm.

I was thinking about starting a thread about people who are OMG FRONTING with the Wire

almost done with Season 1... its pretty good, as far as cop shows go. Still seems to have a lot of the same problems as most cop shows ("You're off the case McGarnigle!" "No you're off YOUR case, Chief!") in terms of heavy-handedness (lolz innercity kids using crack deals to do math problems! DO U SEE) and character stereotypes (the determined heart-of-gold cop, the noble criminal, the confused young kid caught up in a world not of his choosing, etc.)

i thought the wire was original, and cool, in presenting Jimmy McNulty not as a kind compassionate cop out to fight crime, catch the crook, save the community, whatever but instead as a self-serving, arrogant, smart-ass, dick who will do anything to solve a case, fuck the consequences, in order to prove what an awesome cop he is, and how big a slong he has.

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starting with this post

The Wire will have more historical weight when the era it directly depicts has passed, and will help future generations better understand what happened.

― The rickroll from the hilarious NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP, NEVER GONNA (some dude), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:12 PM (4 months ago)

McNulty's motivation isn't exactly clear to me (so far). Which has kinda bothered me tbh.

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"how you feel about a show's given genre trappings is gonna figure into it differently for different people"

Nah, the Wire is pretty immune to that. People who hate cop shows love the Wire.
There's plenty of non-mobster stuff in Sopranos to enjoy as well.

Wire is also frequently funnier than 30 Rock, The Office.

not exactly a herculean feat to be funnier than the office

imo

Like, I get that his role in the show is as the "OMG hardass who's gonna crack this case NO MATTER WHAT" but personality-wise - what drives him, why he does any of the things he does, etc. - he's a blank. Which is kinda lame.

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like lolz I am just waiting for the episode where we find out he has a dead brother/father/girlfriend whose loss has driven him to be THE BEST COP EVAR

(plz tell me this episode doesn't actually happen. if it does I'll just stop watching now)

he's basically a combination of alcoholic douchebag, morally righteous cop, and sad bastard who's incapable of doing anything else in his life worth a shit so he plunges everything into solving cases.

" personality-wise - what drives him, why he does any of the things he does, etc"

he's Irish?

whiney i'm sorry if you're not down with the idea that a piece of fiction that accurately encapsulates many of the issues and problems of its era could be useful as a cultural artifact for later generations to understand that era. but i mean honestly, if in 20 years Baltimore is a completely different place than it is now, and my children want to ask me what it was like in the 80s/90s/early 00s, i will probably show them The Wire or give them a copy of the Homicide book. those, to me, are valuable documents of that place and time. it's not some grandiose far-fetched proclamation to say that people might still be watching DVDs of that show in 2035.

yes

what about diplo

not exactly a herculean feat to be funnier than the office

― @kanyewest (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, May 15, 2009 1:38 PM

and if anyone knows funny it's ^^

diplo

and if anyone knows funny it's diplo

diplol

I'm getting close to the point where I'm gonna have to decide if I continue the wire after season 1 and I'm on the fence (omar might have sold me on soldiering on for a while longer). it's well done but I don't love it like I loved sopranos, and it's very easy for me to point to why. the sopranos' characters are more complex, iconic, operatic even. the sopranos is admittedly weak on plot - in fact I thought the 2nd season was a total waste of time, an attempt to cruise on the cast's charm. on the other hand, the wire has plot and pacing down pat, there's no fat, but the stock characters are keeping me emotionally removed from what's happening. if any of these characters took a bullet in the next episode I don't think I'd be all too concerned, whereas some of the character's fates in the sopranos had me reeling.

the wire is concerned with events in people's work lives, whereas sopranos is concerned equally with work, family, and the relationship between the two (which jouster laid out pretty thoroughly above). it leans towards the psychological whereas the wire is primarily sociological. (and please nobody jump in to say "but the wire has families in it!" - I'm talking about what 90% of any given episode is spent on, major thematic concerns, etc.) so the sopranos has the ability to speak to the human condition directly, and the wire seems more preoccupied with people's relationships with institutions.

keep in mind I'm only half way through season 1 and I reserve the right to totally reverse myself later, this is just where I'm at right now.

if you don't like it by the end of season 2 just stop, but 1 is pretty straightforward "cop show" shit

it's tough cuz people who have the most problems with the 1st season would probably do best to give the 4th season a chance before bailing on the show, but you can't really tell someone to skip 2 seasons of the show and expect them to be able to follow it.

xpost some dude

Why do you assume The Wire is "accurate"?

his real name is "alex in baltimore"

check the birth certificate bitchez

I am pretty much where Edward is right now, totally agree re: the difference in emotional engagement. What initially drew me into the Sopranos in season 1 was unquestionably the emotional resonance of the characters - especially Livia, but also Janice and Tony and Carmella.

No love for the Bunk?

the wire's first season is imo really good but the next 3 are epic and actually vv unusual (the season with the kids has elements of a horror film, maybe since it's sort of from their perspective, and is maybe the best single season of any tv show i've ever seen)

yeah i always end up telling people "season 4 is the best but you can't start there, sorry"

No love for the Bunk?

I was actually gonna say... I just finished the episode where Bunk picks up a barfly and burns all his clothes in her bathtub/gets totally wasted/sleeps in McNulty's kid's crib. There was some nice nuanced characterization stuff he had goin on there, he seems the most like a "real" person to me.

Xpost Shakey and Edward III - heavyhandedness of the Wire is making me wonder if I'll keep watching, though I probably will.

also enjoyed Ashy Larry's cameo from same ep

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"heavyhandedness of the Wire"

the wire is pretty non-judgmental, maybe even frustratingly so. Not like relentless karmic retribution in Sopranos.

? People get away with shit all the time in the Sopranos.

I think there is some serious sociological analysis/heavyhandedness in the Wire and that's what's being referred to (see my above comment re: crack deals teaching kids math; or Ashy Larry being a bagman for a Senator; or the many many many instances of the cops being hamstrung by regulations/politics)

I mean I thought Ashy Larry's appearance was fun, but as soon as he showed up at that party talking about crack I knew IMMEDIATELY that he was going to show up again as a high-placed guy doing dirty shit, placed in the story as emblematic of just how far corruption/the drug trade reaches blah blah blah

xp Edward: Yes, the Wire is a lot more sociological than personal character studies. A lot of its appeal is showing how institutions function and are fucked up and the effects they have on communities. A lot of the best character development and acting comes later: Carver, Stringer, Omar, Prop Joe get more play later on, besides Season 4 with the kids and Namond's mom.

re: the McNulty thing - to me he characterizes a critique of the cop show genre - in your standard cop show he would be the hero - but in The Wire "he's basically a combination of alcoholic douchebag, morally righteous cop, and sad bastard who's incapable of doing anything else in his life worth a shit so he plunges everything into solving cases." He's your standard workaholic dude that's made his job his life, and had he not been divorced, he could end up like the guy in 6 Feet Under who goes on and on about the trivia of his job and how he showed them at the breakfast table before his wife hits him over the head with a frying pan and ends his sad existence. In a later season, it's revealed that he dropped out of college and became a cop because he needed a decent paying job, presumably with benefits, after his girlfriend got pregnant, and his options were limited.

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Edward: You're absolutely right that The Wire is mostly interested in the "work" people do, but don't be fooled into thinking it's just functional or procedural, like a cop show. You've probably heard/read this before, but ... the scope just keeps opening up, the interrelationships between different characters and institutions keep getting more complicated and compelling ... it really becomes something. The first season has a tight focus on one investigation, yeah, but that turns out to feel like it's almost just an introduction.

The second season is maybe medium-tight in terms of focus, and probably the one I'd say is closest to a more Sopranos-y style; it's the third season where the whole thing really starts spinning out amazingly. I think part of why the fourth one works so well is that by that point the show has brought in and is interconnecting events from so many different levels of the city -- streets, gangs, police department, courts, politics, schools, families -- mostly from the point of view of how they affect a specific group of children you wind up caring a lot about, so ... it reaches this ideal balance of being intricate/panoramic but also very tightly about the fates of specific, great characters.