"The Wire" on HBO

Yeah I watched S5 after hearing how bad it was too - and enjoyed it way more than I expected.

xxpost
I can see your point about the "downbeat" aspects to 4 and, to me, 5 - it was always dark but I did feel a little less engaged with the battle for the streets stuff once Marlo came out on top, just found Stringer and Avon way more interesting as the counter-force to the cops.

But I do get how it made total sense for the arc of the show and its big themes that Marlo would come in to replace them - and he is a kind of great character in his own right too.

i really resented Marlo at first but ended up loving his place in the show by the end

First few episodes of S5 depict a stalled bureaucratic world so thoroughly that this approach can be confused with the show itself being tedious and dull.

Some of the frustration, at least when it was airing, reminded me of Sopranos when's-somebody-finally-going-to-get-whacked conversation around the same time.

i've only watched 4 once or twice, 5 only once. 4 was beyond great but it was heavy, didn't want to just repeat it thoughtlessly.

for me the death of frank sobotka was the first truly powerful wire scene. therefore season 2 is great!

wallace's last scene wasn't powerful?

On a slight tangent: on my second re-watch of S1, Kima's shooting suddenly seems a lot more affected in a trite sort of way, especially the way that Rawls went "I hate ur guts but we're IN THIS TOGETHER MCNUTTY," don't really remember the details of my beef.

Yeah Kima's shooting was when I got invested.

i wonder if it's kind of a counterpart to kima's rushing in to wail on bodie after he hits polk or whoever the alkie cop is. like, things are under control, she's way far away, and she sees it and BOOKS over there so she can get in some kicks and stuff too. more for a kind of performance of solidarity for her fellow cops.

It's pretty amazing in the Wire how even the "good guy" cops don't hesitate to jump in on some massive police brutality when they think it's warranted. Even Daniels wails on that one guy (albeit offscreen)

oh right… what is that, in an interrogation room?

i always think that with daniels that's half a matter of fitting in

yeah I don't remember who. He comes in takes a polaroid of the guy, shows it to him, tears up the photo and locks the door.

Yeah, that was when they got Bird and he's spewing abuse at Kima, and I think in that case it was a lot more personal since Kima is one of his officers.

cutty's story arc is hitting me way harder the 2nd time through

xps re: marlo, yea i haaaaated marlo the first time through, just an unfun hardass who never lets up, but second time around i feel like he's a great character with a really heavy presence, great contrast to avon

xxxp not as much I guess. sobotka's fate was determined in the last second ("your way...it won't work") and he willingly took a risk.

wallace was too much (children killing children) too early (wasn't as invested yet)

Cutty's denoument with Dukie, his line that "somebody out there's able to escape all of this... but I'm not that guy" is just so goddamn sad.

Also that scene where he's running set to Move on Up is amazing.

avon with cutty is gold

I think David Simon saw it a bit like:
1 - Drugs/Police
2 - Work
3 - Reform
4 - Education
5 - Information

I see it like:
1. - The Game (starts off with the murder at the dice game), then there's the chess scene, opponents are dealers and cops
2. - Globalization (you see how the drugs are just a part of the global economy, and how the Barksdale operation gets screwed when their supplier gets busted as part of a larger game)
3. - Capitalism and Reform (this was my favorite season)
4. - Reproducing the Means of Production
5. - Post-modernity (I don't really have a clever theme for this season)

2. - Globalization (you see how the drugs are just a part of the global economy, and how the Barksdale operation gets screwed when their supplier gets busted as part of a larger game)

OTM and prob why I remember so fondly S2 - just blew my mind how they just opened the lens wider to show how the corners were just a speck in the structural big picture. Truly felt that I was watching a political TV show for the first time (and not a show about politics). Also at the time I was working on global shipping policies and I did feel that it was a rather obscure sector that captured a lot of the important stakes of the 21st century economy - the show kinda comforted me in that idea.

4. - Reproducing the Means of Production

nice

been thinking about it a little, i think one of the reasons s2 doesn't appeal to me that much is because there is such a massive cliche in american media of the "eastern european gangster" and despite the quality and depth of the rest of the shows' characters, i just never feel like the greek and his men transcend that cliche. they just aren't very interesting or dynamic characters. i know the greek is intentionally left fairly mysterious in the show b/c that's how his character rolls, but to me, instead of mysterious he just seems to fit the vague stereotype of "eastern european gangster". same for vondas and sergei.

good point - especially in contrast to how sharply observed and rooted in Burns' and Simon's own experiences the street level gangsters, cops, and city hall worlds are

To me, their role is to show how the Sobotka family is completely out of their depth

so i started re-watching season 4, definitely feel like it's the best. there are no false notes, every story in it is magnetic, the boys especially. marlo & his crew are developed so much more. freamon and bunk paired up in homicide flows so well. carcetti bored me in season 3 but the mayoral race is fascinating, watching him so sure he's gonna lose and then it turns. maybe the only thing that's a little over the top is bubbles getting beat on all the time

there's some Omar & Prop Joe gold in 4 too

definitely

omar robbing marlo's card game was pretty satisfying too

just started s4 last nite

had completely forgotten abt dukie :-(

yea...

How could you forget Duquan??

didn't forget. dukie's story was the only one that brought tears to my eyes in the 60 hours of watching this show

that kid was so well cast - all the kids were, but him especially. great performance.

Speaking of heartstrings, the scene where Wallace gets his little siblings ready for school in the abandoned house.

otm

speaking of tears, what about bubs at the end of S4.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/michael-k-williams-cocaine_n_1854966.html

:(

an actor a drug addict, now i've seen it all

(jk it's sad obv. seems like a good guy and glad he's clean)

s4 is when i start to resent bubbles, partly because i feel boringly manipulated by the relentless pathetic suffering and partly no doubt because i yearn to turn my privileged face from the underclass, but he does interact in this season with the (nameless?) malevolent beat cop who's almost a shadow of marlo and troubles the s3 ideal (the final shot of mcnulty) of the compassionate plugged-in beat cop: evil is not always ignorant or confused or detached; sometimes being aware of and close to people's pain means exploiting it better. "bad cop" hardly a groundbreaking character concept and iirc this guy gets no complexity or depth (stands with levy in the show's very small complement of simple monsters) but there is very little of him, enough to forget he exists between appearances, and the actor projects a genuinely frightening predatory vibe, so whenever i see him i'm startled and unnerved. can't remember what happens to him or if he's in s5.

some of the stuff in the schools (prez's naive indignation, SO WE JUST TEACH THE TEST??? etc) foreshadows the clunkiness of the newspaper imo, but is right away better because prez is totally incompetent for much of the season instead of an angelic vision like gus. plus yeah the kids are all great. i kinda hate the cheaply drawn Wimpy Academic tho.

might be the best bunk season: partnered with lester, puking at the wake, talking that other detective into "unsolving" his own case. (landsman, also a gem this season btw: "and you! stand the fuck up for yourself!") finally, i might actually prefer you-gonna-take-care-of-me-sergeant-carver to where-the-fuck-is-wallace, on the cries-of-unanswerable-anguish front.

man reading the recent flurry of posts I'm remembering characters i haven't thought about in years

I had the same thing, to the point of looking up bubs' friend johnny on wikipedia today and remembering that he had a colostomy bag for some reason.

Got the shit kicked out of him literally iirc

Yeah. In episode one. It's the reason Bubs start working with the wire-team.

it's funny, Clay Davis is in the first three seasons but it's not till s4 till he really let's loose with the "shheeeeeeit"

http://i.imgur.com/9nRsS2T.png

i kinda hate the cheaply drawn Wimpy Academic tho.

otm, simon must really hates naive academics, jabs against them pop up here and there throughout the show.

that character is really cheaply drawn, dude's a professor in a school of social work, social workers imo are pretty plugged in and aren't super naive. sure they're not tough hardened cops but if you're a social worker in baltimore i'm sure you've seen some shit. lots of social work academics are practitioners too. (disclosure: my wife is a social worker and worked for years w/ drug addicts, mostly heroin)

sure, but lots are like that guy as well.

it "worked" better in the series that he was a wimp. it would have looked weird if he had been a tough guy as well alongside Bunny. you needed the contrast

not saying he needed to be a "tough guy"