The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

also if you're talking about jimmy mcnulty, give me a fucking break.

that herc is a model citizen.

shakey i sort of wonder if your own proclivity--based on some things youve said on this thread--would be to naturally "side" with the drug dealers in some way, and that youre just sort of assuming that the detectives are thought of as loveable working class stiffs (instead of arrogant power-tripping drunks) because youve never been in a position to like the police in a given show?

does that make sense as a question? i just mean its like--i like cop shows, and i dont usually have a problem rooting for the cops, but the cops in the wire are among the least sympathetic on television, more or less across the board. i wonder if the assumption youre making about the shows sympathies has more to do w/ yr own blind spots than the mechanics of the show and its audience

i mean clearly you dont think of them as cute and fun, and i dont know that anyone on this thread has ever claimed to think of them that way--so why assume that the show does?

yeah I guess we just view this differently (and maybe my perception is altered by later seasons), cuz this --

by and large the individual detectives are hard-working, morally driven, good humored guys

-- only seems true if "by and large" means ... Kima, Daniels, Bunk, and Freamon? Maybe McNulty? And then leaves out higher-level alcoholics, dudes coasting toward retirement, dudes pulling injury scams, idiotic forays into public housing and kid-face-smashing, evidence theft, general covering up for one another's criminal wrongdoing, etc. ... also, apart from some things you haven't gotten to yet, there's never much sense that any of them are acting largely on behalf of any public good; aren't there some explicit conversations about how their main drive is just to win, to be smarter than the criminals, to not have their power be skirted or undermined?

Whereas the drug dealers are also hard-working and good-humored and driven by ... not a code you'd call "moral," but kind of moral system nonetheless. I guess what I mean is that it always seemed to me that part of the point of this show was to portray both sides of this from similar perspectives, and to show how an individual in a gang navigates the gang's institutional concerns on the same plane that a policeman navigates his department's concerns -- and one result (for me, anyway, and most people I talk to) is that while you start the 1st season with the expectation that the police will "win," you gradually come to a point of just watching the workings and politics of both sides, rooting for whoever/whatever you like in either system to come out ahead, in the knowledge that neither one is just going to "win" anyway.

NB this is part of why there's a benefit to hanging on until the next couple seasons, because there comes a point where both worlds have changed entirely and you're looking at, e.g., low-level drug dealers from the beginning kind of growing and moving through their system, and it becomes ... different and interesting. The response is definitely not that they're just bad.

kima, daniels, lester and bunk, i guess, but they're no saints. mcnulty's moral impulses are so entangled with his asshole-ness i just don't think they should count.

daniels is crooked, kimas a cheater, bunk is fat

bunk's a cheater, too; i feel like they basically all are.

kima's also a lesbian! Immoral City!

daniels is too in shape

daniels has a weird looking body

^^ weird or not, I would not mind being that fit

That is something Shakey needs to hold out for, the moment where suddenly Daniels has no shirt on and you're like "OMG I THOUGHT HE WAS JUST SKINNY," and then there is a shirtless Daniels every few episodes from then on

ha ha serious--it's so weird

i mean how often he is suddenly shirtless

i think stringer bell's beauty should count toward his good points or whatever.

Daniels' physique freaked me the fuck out by the time I watched Season Five. Those stills of him plowing Pearlman made me worry about her breaking in twenty pieces.

i sort of doubt she was worried

dude--you're giving stuff away

daniels is so built that when his shirt is off he looks like he's got all his muscles tensed but really it's just that he's way jacked.

you should not be on this thread if you're worried about spoilers for either show wtf?

spoiler > Pearlman remains intact.

i was just kind of kidding wtf

well, there was a lot of 'wait until future seasons but I don't want to ruin it for shakey' stuff going on upthread, too.

i dont want to ruin it for shakey but daniels is fuckin diesel

You want a cop who's a just plain fucked up dude, Shakey? Wait til you spend some time with Colecchio.

shakey will come back all like, 'daniels is a twig wtf'

i think shakey probably ruined it for himself when he decided to compare every minute of the show to the Sopranos, because of this thread, or being sick of the word-of-mouth hype, or whatever. i'm glad i started watching this show when nobody i knew had heard of it.

btw if prop joe isn't the most likeable drug dealer in any movie/show ever, and more likeable than 75% of the cops in this show, i am a monkey's uncle!

otm!

(otm about Prop Joe - not the monkey thing)

like, the ostensible PURPOSE of the institution of drug-dealing is never portrayed as being positive.

lol really?

hahah

i was gonna say

drug dealing is to set your mom up in a sick pad and then get your boys awesome aquarium fish.

it's the only real option

thx for the lolz while I was away at lunch (fwiw, in general I am not the type to worry about spoilers - if a piece of work is good, it'll be good whether you know what's coming or not)

i think shakey probably ruined it for himself when he decided to compare every minute of the show to the Sopranos, because of this thread, or being sick of the word-of-mouth hype, or whatever.

this is entirely possible - this poll had closed and I'd read this whole thread before even starting the show. (Although I can say the same thing about the Sopranos - I followed threads on that show before I ever saw any of it and was not really disappointed when I eventually watched it)

I do like the Prop Joe character a lot.

drug dealing is to set your mom up in a sick pad and then get your boys awesome aquarium fish

On the serious side, though ... in seasons 4 and 5 you do get a pretty heavy real-world example of how the wealth- and job-creation aspect of drug dealing can help people, like it or not!

(On a related tip, one thing that's interesting about this show is that your attention is mostly called to drug users who are impoverished city junkies, which I guess has some ring of truth in terms of real-world accuracy; less examined, though sometimes shown, are slightly wealthier people coming into the city specifically for drugs, who would kinda constitute a significant wealth-transfer mechanism in terms of bringing money from elsewhere into the inner city)

yeah i always wanted to know more about the girls (in a jetta, even?) who come into Hamsterdam to buy

Unrelated note: I've been racking my brain all morning and only just now remembered what eventually became of Poot. For some reason I was always captivated by what was up with Poot.

was it he who ended up at

*spoilers*

foot locker?

YES -- fucking blase Poot just coasts along through thick and thin with that dopey look on his face and then winds up with a normal job

NB I think I said "Wesley" up there, meaning Wallace -- I always think "Wesley" first and then consider that that really doesn't sound right

^^ i don't know if this makes sense w/r/t the timing of wire-hype season to season but that always played to me like a shout out to sudhir whatsisface, the "drug dealing is less renumerative than minimum-wage work for most ppl ps i love the wire" guy

xp

poot locker

One thing I enjoy about this show is how much, by the end, you get to have annoyed reactions to characters as if they're actually in your social space or something, so there will be mundane scenes of Cheese being an asshole or Poot being Poot and your reaction is just that "this fuckin' guy" head-shaking -- true of lots of long shows, obv., but especially for me with this one

I guess there's also the admiring "this fuckin' guy" response, e.g. when Clay Davis responds to hardship by being Clay Davis

athlete's poot

Sudhir Venkatesh, is who i meant

he's paid tribute to by the college guy who helps out Bunny right?

less examined, though sometimes shown, are slightly wealthier people coming into the city specifically for drugs, who would kinda constitute a significant wealth-transfer mechanism in terms of bringing money from elsewhere into the inner city

white-clients-listening-to-Dead-Meadow scene in season 2 (or 3) to thread!

maybe it's just a given to me, but anyone who has ever bought drugs in America knows that you can go to the nearest "bad" neighborhood (across the tracks!), or housing project, to buy drugs. also never known as the ideal way to get them...

i was reading an article about the Robert Taylor homes and Cabrini Green and a key reason those places became so infamous was because each were conveniently located near major highways and rich neighborhoods (respectively) which made it easy for wealthier people to use them as drive-thrus. Clockers goes more into it, too. great book for any fan of The Wire, btw. i agree that it could have been interesting to explore this redistribution though.

i wonder if they were concerned about it being too similar to 'traffic'

the original 'traffik' is classic shit.

i wish that channel 4 had had the resources of hbo and had really gone with it, coz that had the potential to be the wire of the late 80s.