"The Wire" on HBO

it's smaller in scope but what do you expect with only 10 episodes

that's only two fewer than series 2. if anything it's larger in scope, though! so it needs more space than it has to do what it needs to. hamsterdam was a big stretch, plasubility-wise, but they sold it well. although the consequences of what mcnulty's doing are convincing, and i respect it more than i did initially, i still find it really hard to get behing the fake serial killer story. i guess it's david simon's take on iraq, more than any previous series. (+ omar as osama bin laden anyone?)

stupid serial killer shenanigans get stupider

+ omar as osama bin laden anyone?

i would love to see a diagram of the inside of your mind sometime

the series is pretty clearly an extended skit on the WoT; i don't think he's doing a direct one-for-one thing, it's not an allegory, but the extent to which marlo will fuck up his business to settle scores with omar... i think a case could be made. otoh the imaginary serial killer is osama too.

this ep was better, lol at munch cameo, powerhouse clay davis shit, but seriously this serial killer thing was a terrible idea.

this episode was great EXCEPT for the increasing absurdity of the serial killer plot. Handing out hours and help to everyone in homicide? This isn't going to be noticed? A serial killer abducts a victim, phones it in to the paper - and no one meets with the paper except for one homicide detective? A serial killer in Baltimore, images of the newest victim splashed all over the paper (and national news) - and no one working in the DC shelter is going to notice a striking resemblance to their newly arrived charge?

The shelter was in Richmond VA, right? Still far-fetched.

I felt so bad for that hobo i wanted to puke.

munch!

Also, doesn't Baltimore have street/traffic cameras everywhere? Mightn't somebody go look up the footage of the missing guy's corner and see the abduction? I think earlier seasons mostly stood up better to this kind of nitpicking.

im sure mcnulty would consider camera angles

how are they planning to bring the case in? won't they have to explain an illegal wiretap, etc?

naw they wait for marlo to be in the room w/lol hueg greek drug shipment then say they got a tip is all

Thank god for CIs.

disappointed that Bubs isn't getting more time

drugs on the table.

i want them to pull it off tbh.

but i guess it's a race for the prize w. omar.

Also, doesn't Baltimore have street/traffic cameras everywhere? Mightn't somebody go look up the footage of the missing guy's corner and see the abduction? I think earlier seasons mostly stood up better to this kind of nitpicking.

no they're not everywhere, they're very deliberately placed in mostly poor, non-white areas

that was the first time omar broke Bunk's 'no more killing' pledge, t/f?

Griggs putting together IKEA furniture is the closest they've gotten to anything resembling reality this season.

That said, I'm still kind of enjoying this.

Omar killed one guy in the stash house, I think

I forgot you won't be reading the non-realtime thread, NRQ, but I was calling you out over there - seems no-one else subscribes to your angling that the serial killer plot is Simon's skewiff take on the war on Iraq. Care to expand…?

srsly? well i think it is partly because of evidence that DS likes rubbish analogies. on the commentary for s03e01, at the start, when the towers are getting blown up, he says, "this show is about the collapse of the american empire... and it begins with towers getting blown up... that's all i'm going to say." i am paraphrasing, but, seriously, not very much.

sooooo when this series started with an overstated version of a scene in 'homicide' in which a guy is made to think a photocopier is a lie detector, and bunk says "the bigger the lie, the more people believe..." -- if DS reckons this show is about the collapse of the american empire, what possible subtext could be read into that scene, put at the very start of the series?

so from that the baltimore sun story is not unlike the judith miller saga at the NYT, right? it serves her interests to get a big story, it serves washington's interest too, or, in this case the BPD. and then of course money has to be diverted from more important thinks to fund the investigation/war.

i'm not saying this is a one-to-one mapping exercise, but i do think that's how DS thinks, and though obviously for dipshit english lit grads what DS thinks "doesn't matter", well, you know, maybe it kind of guides certain aspects of the show.

i don't think it's a skewiff take on the war, exactly, just sort of inappropriate and jarring. well, maybe i do: personally i don't think anyone in power really believed iraq posed a threat in 2002, whereas people believe in the serial killer.

wtf does "skewiff" mean?

I dunno about 9/11, but I read the Barksdale-Marlo transition as Simon's commentary about contemporary American capitalism, with Marlo as the faceless, inhuman multinational that's destroying the community (which, yeah, Barksdale's drugs destroyed the community, but Marlo takes it to another level with his treatment of other dealers, etc.).

yeah this is true. but i think a lot of crime stories -- 'the godfather', 'goodfellas', 'casino', 'the sopranos', to take minor examples lol -- have been based on that kind of transition. i hadn't thought of marlo in that way before -- i had him more like a mergers-and-acquisitions kind of guy who doesn't play by old school corporatist rules.

one of the kids in s04 tells wee-bey (it's his son right?) "yeah yeah" when he says says there used to be a code -- also bodie (or poot?) says basically the same thing to herc and carv one time, that people are always saying the next generation is meaner and more cut-throat.

http://www.wordreference.com/definition/skew-whiff

I am not really enjoying this season.

liked e08 a lot better. clay davis golden as ever. "shameful shit". funny that in a programme mostly about the drug wars one of the least redeemable characters is a journalist.

cringed a bit at the obvious CSI zingage. WE GET IT.

huh. i missed that.

when mcnulty and kima go to the feds, one of them has been an advisor on mainstream cop shows. mcnutty says he's never seen CSI, kima says "most of our business is drug murders", not serials, crazies, etc.

I read the Barksdale-Marlo transition as Simon's commentary about contemporary American capitalism

makes an interesting contrast with no country for old men, which charts a similar rise of chaos but attributes it more to cultural (and/or racial) debasement than economic. the same kind of "we've never seen shit like this" line. except the cops in the wire haven't given up yet, and simon blames failed social institutions (because he's a liberal) where cormac mccarthy blames savage nature (because he's a reactionary). (and paul thomas anderson blames bad parenting, because he's paul thomas anderson.) a right-wing reading of the wire would see the parade of public-sector horrors as just confirmation of the failures of government. but that's obviously not simon's point. his heroes are also mostly public employees (aside from a few reporters and editors), and the private sector to the extent it exists at all is either brutal and corrupt (the drug trade) or just corrupt (developers who worm their way into public-private projects) and/or venal and dumb (corporate media).

Oh my god.

did some shit go down?

i wanna know

wait

no

i don't wanna know

ahhh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDJGjPMR0zo

Just that episode 9 made this season completely worth it.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1719872,00.html

^^^^^^^ simon, lehane et al write an editorial in time about the fruitless drug war

Four episodes into S1 for the first time since seeing the following seasons, interesting to see how the relatively minor characters were fleshed out and humanized over the course of the show. Bodie, Omar, Bubs, even Stringer, I think, all had a lot more depth written into them over the course of the series.

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The Wire

lolirony

Bodie, Omar, Bubs, even Stringer, I think, all had a lot more depth written into them over the course of the series.

a) You are king of the obvious.
b) I mean, really, one of the greatest character-driven dramas ever produced contains fleshed-out humanized characters.
c) Next you're going to tell me about the show's Dickensian aspects.
d) When you die, Stringer is going to make you his bitch.

lol

badly phrased - I'm saying, they were all pretty flat for (at least) the first half of the season, and I'm starting to understand the nay-sayers of season one being the best

Well, I'd have to rescreen (Soto RIP) S1 to really be sure, but I'd think the show was focused on fleshing out the "good guys" and establishing the character dynamics therein before going to work on the street.

BTW, sorry for being an obnoxious twunt earlier / last night, milo.

it's true, i remember season 1 being so awesome and fully-formed, but when i went back and watched the first couple episodes they seemed kind of awkward and embryonic.

it's true, i remember season 1 being so awesome and fully-formed, but when i went back and watched the first couple episodes they seemed kind of awkward and embryonic.

Kinda like the first couple of episodes of Knight Rider.

wire seasons ranked by me:
4
2
1
3
5

oh we on THAT again?

1
4
3
2
5

I started watching 1 again and it's just as good as I remembered. And it was pre all the contrivances of keeping favourite characters around/together so it wins for that too. 1,4 and 3 are all pretty close for me, though. 2 a fair bit back and 5 way behind.

3
1
4
5
2

i watched 1 again not long ago and thought it was still just as good

4
3
1
2
5

4 and 3 neck and neck but head and shoulders over the others for me. 5 the weakest but i love them all.

oh god what have I done