"The Wire" on HBO

MY NAME IS MY NAME, that was such a powerful scene for marlo's character and for me changed a lot of how i saw him

Actually marlo has the best sex scene in the whole show. ("Worked for me")

That was the moment when I thought "wow, this is the coldest character ever committed to screen"

i found deadwood to be a bit slow, but it seemed to really hit a turning point with the thing that happened to the reverend

I just couldn't get past all the "look at me, I AM SWEARING!" silliness

I couldn't even make it to the end of S1 with Deadwood, the dialogue was all so terrible

move to north korea

I had to try Deadwood three times before I made it through season 1. Season 2 is fucking amazing, though, and at this point I'm just hooked on everything Milch.

lol we're doing that thing that seems to happen at every social gathering I'm at now where we just go around the room talking about what premium tv shows we like and don't like and why

Yup. And it's always Wire, Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men.

Funnily enough, I think fewer people are talking about Breaking Bad, even though it had like one of the best endings ever. But probably less rewarding on rewatch, I guess.

Breaking Bad is all forward motion "what's going to happen?!" dynamism - there's no point in watching it again imo

I mean it did that very well, it ended well but I have pretty much zero interest in reliving that particular journey.

will watch Better Call Saul though

Get ahead of everyone else and get The Good Wife into your party patter.

haven't rewatched breaking bad (i just finished it for the first time last month!) and while it is a primarily plot-driven show, it is also wonderfully filmed, there are so many beautifully shot scenes that i think would reward repeat viewers

I thought bb's ending mostly sucked but even if your standards aren't super high I have a really hard time seeing how anyone can lay that sort of superlative on it

I don't think it's a good show after s2 though, at all

tbh i don't have a huge interest in better call saul. feel like it's a flimsy premise for a show even though i liked the character of saul goodman

better call saul is avclub fanboy bait but it could end up better than bb

well sure if you think 3/5 of the show's seasons sucked, which i don't

lol we're doing that thing that seems to happen at every social gathering I'm at now where we just go around the room talking about what premium tv shows we like and don't like and why

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Tuesday, January 13, 2015 4:59 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol otm

if i think 3/5 of the show's seasons sucked wouldn't u think it surprising that i'd see potential in a weird spinoff? i am full of mysteries

nah i just figured you were some mr show dork fan who just loves odenkirk

nah j/k, that was mean.

just figured you liked odenkirk but weren't a big fan of BB

anyway apart from thinking about "cable dramas" i really don't ever think of breaking bad and the wire comparisons, for me they live in different parts of my brain and satisfy very different needs

even if your standards aren't super high I have a really hard time seeing how anyone can lay that sort of superlative on it

and yea i'll be the first to admit i have fairly middlebrow tastes in film/shows, 90% of the time i look up a film i liked on ILX i see the usual folks have already ripped it to shreds

TBF being middlebrow is allowing yourself to accept the opinions of those people who have ripped it to shreds

good work fellas, same time tomorrow?

Breaking Bad is middlebrow shite, can't hold a candle to the auteuristic genius of something like John From Cincinatti!!!

More like autistic genius.

nah i just figured you were some mr show dork fan who just loves odenkirk

― marcos, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 5:26 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i just really don't like bb

and yea i'll be the first to admit i have fairly middlebrow tastes in film/shows, 90% of the time i look up a film i liked on ILX i see the usual folks have already ripped it to shreds

― marcos, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 5:31 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

marlo is a good character; i just hate him

marlo's incredible, though he took awhile to grow on me. only bc i was attached to the barksdale/bell hierarchy. but the marlo crew is so good in S4.

Yeah Marlo/Chris/Snoop make a pretty fascinating/unconventional criminal organization

Marlo's the perfect successor to the Barksdale story arc, the opposite in every aspect

Haven't watched this in 6 years, excited to rewatch the HD versh, perhaps with a white person

was just thinking about their locations and their characters -- Barksdale always holed up in a secret back room or basement -- untrusting, anxious, almost paranoid. Marlo in his totally unassuming open, empty concrete lot/park/whatever that was, all brains and cunning, unemotional, no need for physicality or feeling protected.

nah i just figured you were some mr show dork fan who just loves odenkirk

― marcos, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 2:26 PM (35 minutes ago)

i am tbh

and Donette's line was "no doubt"

xp - Marlo meets out in the open because it is harder to be wiretapped/recorded that way. The narrative goes into this multiple times.

That doesn't disprove his point

yes it does, Marlo is even more untrusting and paranoid

He's willing to trade the vulnerability of being out in the open for the assurance of not being wiretapped, duh

Yeah true, maybe that's not the best explanation. But there does seem to be something about the location that reflects his coldness or maybe moral emptiness or something, it's like his homebase is a non-place.

He seems to have ties to nothing, maybe. D'Angelo Barksdale has ties to the past, his family, etc., meets in old backrooms with old furniture. IDK, maybe just grasping at straws. It certainly at least seems like Barksdale's locations are warmer than Marlo's.

the barksdales (esp bell) see drugs as a means to something and their self-protection is to not lose what they have and to keep building. marlo sees the drug game as a thing to win in itself, his desire is sort of inhuman; idk if "psychotic" is the right word really. the writers toy with fascist ideas with him, or at least a "purity" of will-to-power

i think the thing about Marlo, which also is reflected in the larger narrative about kids and how they get "in the game" younger and younger, is that Marlo seems a lot more childlike than Avon and Stringer. He has that cold eyed Damian from the Omen thing going on. One of Marlo's first sociopathic scenes is stealing lollipops. Could you see Avon or Stringer even eating a lollipop? One of his hangouts is at a playground. You see him bribing kids with candy. You rarely see him interested in sex. Maybe this just shows that he is savvier than his predecessors in terms of empire building, but Avon and Stringer come across more as "men" than Marlo.

I don't think it's an accident htat his name recalls Heart of Darkness xp

Avon is pretty plugged into his surrounding community beyond his gang: hosting cookouts, participating in the East/West hoops game, helping Cutty out with the boxing ring.

xp yeah, and lisa stansfield

I always saw Marlo's rise as an inevitable moral decay (i.e. "Game the same, just got more fierce") of the prevailing social institution, like how globalization replaces personal connections with streamlined capital.