"The Wire" on HBO

Fucking phone

Anyway the funny thing is that I'm really into the newspaper thing personally but This other thing with mcnulty should've been shot down in one second

i hated it at the start too, but i like how it plays out.

The McNulty plotline is almost (and i say almost) worth it for Bunk's reactions and one scene late in the season.

For all its flaws, and it had plenty, Season 5 did a good job at showing the impossibility of a "great white hope" style hero to save the day. That to me was one of the overall points of the series.

spoilers

you know, i think this actually ended well, i esp like how they tied up the daniels thing, w/ him having to protect his ex-wife & current GF -- i think it was a good counterpoint to mcnulty & freamon as the lone wolves that only care about themselves

i thought michael as the next omar with MINI-SHOTGUN & all was a bit heavy-handed, tho sydnor as the next jimmy was choice

i would give anything for there to have been a procedural spin off ft bunk & greggs -- would've easily replaced stabler & benson in my heart

i had tons of problems w/ omar as a character in general, maybe i'll post about that when i'm feeling a bit less lazy

i also wish that they wouldn't have shown duke doing heroin -- i think they gave enough away when he took the money from prezbo that i wish they would've let that one lie, sorta how they don't give you the satisfaction of thompson being outed as a maker-upper but you know he's gonna get his anyway

As irrelevant as much of the Sobotka stuff felt, it wasn't as lazily written or conceived as Season Five.

Sobotka stuff isn't "irrelevant" at all, WTF.

We could have seen the Greeks and their connection to the re-up without the stevedore woes.

and Ziggy is still the worst acted and conceived thing in the show.

Yeah, the failures and death of unions isn't topical at all in a show about the decay of american cities.

and Ziggy is still the worst acted and conceived thing in the show.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 7, 2011 4:06 AM (5 hours ago)

nah -- I think a lot of people have known a Ziggy-like person, and while it's painful to watch, there is truth to it.

very last line of the whole thing is cheesy as fuck.

forget it chris... it's baltimore

wtf indeed the stevedores are some of the best characters on the series & are entirely central to telling the story of baltimore. wtf alfred

interested to know what jordan's probs w/ omar are

yeah me too

great show, but my one qualm has always been the casting of the red-head politician... um, lady

really? this woman is desirable to ALL of you? (hello, i'm a recovering sexist)

well i think that for a show that is so grounded in realism & is so proud & pompous about how 'real' it is & is perceived to be, that it's a bit odd to have a character like omar that is so unrealistic & practically superhuman -- on the one hand it's a wonderfully acted character, but i think omar undercuts a lot of what the show stands for

i mean, an openly gay rebel gangster (who just so happens to find tons of other gay gangsters to be his boyfriend AND partner in crime) that can steal hundreds of thousands worth of drugs just by showing up and walks around in a trench coat as kids flee the streets and go "oh my god it's omar" -- it's just really fantastical nonsense at times -- and i ALWAYS resented how this superhuman character was not able to kill avon from point blank range in the beginning of season one, which sorta undercuts the whole notion of the character

a show where everything was like real life would suck

― gr8080, Saturday, January 15, 2011 10:01 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

then maybe they shouldn't have created a show based on the premise of it being the most 'real' show ever

maybe you should come at such a show with adult expectations

what should i have expected

dunno if you listened to these, but in some of the commentaries simon talks about omar bits as the least realistic and most crowd-pleasing and western-y they did, more for the sheer fun value. so at least there is the recognition that not everything in the show was created with the same tone or effect in mind. if intent matters!

what would've been the sopranos equivalent of this?

then maybe they shouldn't have created a show based on the premise of it being the most 'real' show ever

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's not the premise of the show at all, though, more the terms people decided to praise it on. there was always a lot more heightened reality in the show beyond Omar than people gave credit for.

http://www.thesterlingedgeduo.zoomshare.com/files/thats_entertainment_gold.jpg

like, vito comes back w/ the diner short order cook and starts robbing all of tony's spots as little italian children drop their ham sandwiches and scramble off the street

i mean i kinda roll my eyes when people focus on Omar or trumpet him as the best character on the show but i don't really mind the charged element he brought to the show

that's not the premise of the show at all, though, more the terms people decided to praise it on. there was always a lot more heightened reality in the show beyond Omar than people gave credit for.

― JaySeanLilWayne (some dude), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

well i understand "heightened reality", but omar is a huge outlier

it's not like the character ruined the show for me or anything -- i still love the show & think it's one of the best things i've ever watched, i just find the character to be problematic is all

i understand & appreciate the purpose of having omar being killed by a random corner kid & not dying in a firefight w/ omar's ppl but maybe they shouldn't have had him survive a six story fall off of a balcony, is all i'm saying

w/ marlo's ppl*

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s235/revmyspace2/graphics/Misc/Bling_Pimp/bling_tony_soprano.gif

http://i40.tinypic.com/710i1x.jpg

are you saying the six-story fall was too comic booky? like some spider-man shit?

lol

great show, but my one qualm has always been the casting of the red-head politician... um, lady

really? this woman is desirable to ALL of you? (hello, i'm a recovering sexist)

― yeah (kelpolaris), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:23 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

i can't even tell who you're referring to -- maybe Rhonda Pearlman? but she wasn't a politician and i thought her hair was more dirty blonde (although i could be wrong about that)?

it has to be rhonda pearlman tho she only had relationships w/ two ppl on the show, also kelpolaris is a troll so let's not bother

probably the most oddly bad performance in this show was the woman carcetti hires to help run his campaign in s3. but i don't think that's the one we're talking about.

i understand & appreciate the purpose of having omar being killed by a random corner kid & not dying in a firefight w/ omar's ppl but maybe they shouldn't have had him survive a six story fall off of a balcony, is all i'm saying

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 2:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was based on something that actually happened!!

o rly

Pearlman was cute but it was all about the campaign manager McNulty and Carcetti both got with

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?172531-Interview-with-David-Simon

also yes sobotka/the stevedores are plenty relevant to the show's theses re: decay of the city/abandonment of the working class/racial hostility fueled by resentment over economic irrelevancy + approaching death/whatever. plus sobotka's walk down the pier in the penultimate episode of s2 is like the best thing on tv ever.

oh yeah i have a question -- maybe i'm forgetting something, but did they ever explore the connection b/w cheese & randy aside from them both having the same last name? like, i don't think it was ever brought up in s4 that randy was related to cheese & joe? feel like this might've been important?

that just came to my mind as the series winds down & cheese becomes a bigger player towards the end

I feel like the "realness" applies more to the way the various plots develop, the sprawling way that stories and character arcs play out, and less to the characters themselves. There are some great characters, but they aren't necessarily the realest-seeming people around, and they occasionally give speeches or make remarks that have no relation to how people talk. And you can view that as a flaw, but I think there's a consistent balance between "realness" and a kind of operatic (and sometimes didactic) nature; see the quotes at the end of the opening credits. How real is a show in which every episode contains a pithy quote that reflects on the episode's theme?

I do share your reluctance about Omar, but I wonder if a character like Lester is that much more realistic.

whoa xxxxp

yeah basically, this was a show that totally had dramatized & archetypal characters, what was 'real' was how it dealt w/ sociopolitical issues, not the characterizations w.in that framework. omar is an awesome character and his heroism is directly contrasted w/ his invisibility to anyone who isnt in the hood -- thus his death being knocked off the newspaper

Though the relationship was never established on the show, creator David Simon revealed Cheese to be Randy's biological father.[1]

^^ thought it was maybe alluded to in the show but i guess it wasn't -- the last name thing seemed too deliberate to be a coincidence anyway