The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

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.

You're absolutely right that The Wire is mostly interested in the "work" people do,

Can we cross-reference Michael Mann fandom with Wire love?

The people listening to Dead Meadow were McNulty's boys, weren't they?

yes altho i guess there may have been someone else. dead meadow are from baltimore, right?

Can we cross-reference Michael Mann fandom with Wire love?

― My vagina has a dress code. (milo z), Monday, June 8, 2009 11:50 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

crime story is another antecedent: significant amount of attention paid to the bad guys; bad guys/good guys symbiosis.

it's not as good as the wire.

i think there may have been two different scenes with Dead Meadow, but i could also be confusing other scenes.

i think they're from D.C.

xp

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 (...)

This street 'code' - well, everyone purports to believe in it and follow it and they sure do talk about it a lot, but in reality it's pretty clear that very few people aren't willing to break it under the right circumstance. In this sense it's a good parallel for the detectives and the law. Neither of these are moral systems, just...agreed upon rules. (Breaking agreed upon rules = where morality comes in.)

but in reality it's pretty clear that very few people aren't willing to break it under the right circumstance

wait waht - don't you mean they ARE willing to break it?

it's only omar doesn't break the code i think. but it's a code he made up himself. he made up his own rules not to break. he doesn't really care about the street 'code' i think.

double negative - few people *aren't*, almost everyone is

+

I always interpreted the "the streets just aren't like they used to be - people used to play by the code" talk as a sort of naiveté - people are always gonna cheat. And it's hard to imagine that the drug trade is actually nastier in the 00s than the 80s. Marlo is someone who gets ahead by cheating, which you can do in any field - and he's not gonna be there forever (*SPOILER*: which is what the last scene suggests.) But he's not necessarily a symbol of a long-term downward trend in the drug trade.

+ (this is more 4th and 5th season stuff, sorry shakey)

On both sides, a lil bit of law/code breaking is accepted - but, when things start getting serious, you have mechanisms that are there to stop them (you'll get fired, you'll get shot.) But these mechanisms, although they usually work, are not perfect and don't always go off in time. There's not one single institution in charge of enforcing the rules on either side - somebody always needs to step up. Marlo and McNulty both manage to avoid this happening early enough - and on both sides this leads to a dangerous point of no return situation.

what I was getting at is that the two opposing sub-groups in the first two seasons (the drug dealing crew vs. the detective crew) by and large the individual detectives are hard-working, morally driven, good humored guys. The individual drug lords - Stringer, Avon, D's mom (basically anyone that isn't D'Angelo) - are shown to be ruthless, greedy, and violent.

Do you mean to say the drug dealing crew that is black? Nicky Sobotka is a pretty sympathetic character.

i don't remember Nicky being a drug dealer

nicky is how they und up connecting the case they have been told to investigate (frank) and the drug case they're all interested in

right, he was one guy who took money to let people ship shit through the docks without knowing what it was. i know he got caught up in Ziggy's whole thing for a little bit, but i don't know if that makes him a "drug dealer". i guess it's sort of beside the point anyway. most of the petty street dealers, powerless cops - the "pawns" - are sympathetic characters.

the individual detectives are hard-working, morally driven, good humored guys. The individual drug lords - Stringer, Avon, D's mom (basically anyone that isn't D'Angelo) - are shown to be ruthless, greedy, and violent.

i really feel like shakey was watching a different show than me.

he gets way more into street level dealing than ziggy ever was, and not just because he's less of a fuck up -- he makes the connection through the greeks for his package. he watches his corner(s?) and is surveilled by herc and carver.

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB-wRxSNU7o

u guys have to remember shakey sees all police as constant violent aggressive alpha male alcoholics who love beating protesters & common folk at every opportunity purely for the visceral joy of torturing another human being