"The Wire" on HBO

it's kinda weird that the actor from homicide who has gone on to the most success, in some ways, is melissa leo.

tbh i was thinking braugher would be bigtime. maybe he still will, one of these days. kyle secor was great on this show, but he vanished.

So, has anyone watched it with commentary? I know it's not on every episode, but it's still going to be a lot of time to commit to, though.

i just finished season 2. last episode was good but not as good as ep. 11 - i feel like they wrapped up almost everything w/ the greeks & sobotka family tragedy in ep. 11, and 12 seemed like it was mostly setting up for season 3

in any case most of the arcs seemed to peak emotionally/thematically in ep. 11. frank sobotka approaching the greeks under the bridge, when u just knew his fate, was.....intense

all in all tho i thought season 2 was pretty incredible. it did take the whole first 4 episodes to really get the ball rolling and the reuniting of the detail was a bit contrived (as others mentioned upthread) but yea, the each of the sobotkas' arcs was really well done

Just finished the series. watched final episode tonight. DAMN. I love the way they wrote McNulty over the series...by the last season each time he showed up I wanted to punch his grinning face in. and that last season...weird ride. I ended up feeling kind of sheepish for thinking someone, somewhere would get some kind of comeuppance. Nuh UH. Not McNulty, not that weasel reporter, not Marlo, not anyone. As Clay Davis would say....SHEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIT.

Season 2's definitely my favorite overall. And I'm still in therapy over Season 4. All that shit going down with those kids just KILLED me. Especially Randy & Carver. Wow.

just started homicide. MUCH better than I hoped based on the first episode!

First couple of Homicide seasons are really good, but be very wary of anything after that.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Wire-Illustrations/252777

http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles3/111050/projects/252777/1110501246162986.jpg

http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles3/111050/projects/252777/1110501249152745.jpg

Those are spectacular.
I'm gonna finish breaking bad and get through the first four seasons of homicide and i think i'm ready to watch this bad boy from start to finish one more time.

on Season 4. I laughed at loud when State Senator Clay busted out with like a 30-second long sheeeeeeeeeit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIi0dzmvpE

I know we've talked before about how the head-shaking "this fucking guy" sentiment makes up a whole lot of Wire viewing, but Clay Davis is just the ultimate in it -- you can spend whole seasons thinking the guy's a slimeball and wishing him ill, and then as soon as things start coming down and he's grandstanding and claiming persecution and spewing bullshit in every direction, he becomes 100% captivating, totally charming, almost lovable, like ... this fucking guy.

Actually, Herc is definitely up there with a long "this fucking guy" head-shaking arc.

x-post yeah otm....I love the scene in the courtroom where he talks about leaving one street with his pockets full and ending up 5 blocks down the road with his pockets empty. or when he's in the radio station and he starts some point with "but the people....I'M TALKIN BOUT THE PEOPLE NOW!"....it's like he's this sort of shallow heel and then all of a sudden when the chips are down he becomes this heroic bullshit merchant.

simple idea but I lolled heartily

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrfCixsd2N8

I mean this is a whole other issue, but it's interesting how the show's whole presentation of calcified institutions (etc. etc., all the things we usually talk about) doesn't really prompt any kind of righteous desire to correct anything; in some ways it might even train you to feel good about being cynical. You don't sit hoping for Davis to get a comeuppance as much as you sit there totally entertained by his weaseling and maybe even somewhat interested in his weaseling out successfully. But I don't know that that's really a criticism, because it has the opposite effect on a personal level, as far as how it might make you behave in the real world: it does sort of sensitize a person to the idea that there's a hell of a lot of weight in how we make decisions about carrying out our roles, and that there are good and bad ways of treating that, and that you'd much rather be on the good side than the bad one, just for your own peace of mind. Nobody -- xpost, yes -- nobody wants to be a Davis or a Herc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30YW3wgRvyI

see I watched the courtroom scene with Clay Davis annoyed that the strongest case was for self-dealing, piercing the corporate veil and various violations of IRS regulations re: non-profits.

deep into season 4 now, for the past half hour i hear carcetti's voice whenever i read ilx posts

uggh even nabisco's posts (which are really interesting, btw) on this thread

go away tommy

and i see his goofy ass walk too

btw i think those wire illustrations are fucking terrible

clay davis looks like he has reverse vitiligo

lol

finished s. 4 last week...wow, i don't know even know what to say about it. last ep had me in tears for like a half hour, i can't even remember the last time i cried at tv/movie or whatever. the kids were incredible

also, season 5 isn't bad! am about halfway through. serial killer shit is definitely the worst part of it and not very well done imo, but everything else is really good. the city hall stuff in s. 5 is great and excellently transitioned from s. 4 - how it looks like it's gonna be a 'new day in baltimore' w/ carcetti coming in and all the bodies being found, then right away the budget crisis kills everything

(also how awesome was dukie, michael & bug ditching the corner to go to six flags???)

the show totally fucks with you too. u see avon & stringer do all kinds of fucked up shit the first 3 seasons but w/ marlo being the new king, you totally feel nostalgic for them, esp. hearing bodie talk about the good old days and how the game's all changed now. and i hated those 'greek bastards' in s. 2 but when vondas & sergei show up later and i'm all excited to see them. u can't imagine how i felt seeing avon show up in the prison when marlo thinks he's meeting sergei.

btw i'm really hoping for a good arc w/ marlo - so far he's just fucking cold. unflinching. for three seasons now. almost boring. the show for the most part has done a fairly good job wrt making the 'villians' a bit more rounded out, but marlo's just cold

"serial killer shit is definitely the worst part of it and not very well done imo"
how so? the bunk's escalating disapproval is pretty great! how else could it have been done?

Marlo is a lot like McNutty: he's a dude who really loves his job, and doing it his way!

Season 5 does have some of the best high points ever. the lows are pretty low, though.

Avon's reappearance is classic.

xxp maybe i shouldn't have spoken so soon, and yes bunk's scolding of mcnulty is pretty great. and i've got 6 episodes left in the season. but for one, for all the stupid shit mcnulty does, this still seems like a stretch. i also just can't see lester getting into it - dude likes fucking w/ the bosses and doesn't mind going against authority but up until now it was all for a purpose. following the money, the subpoenas, the wiretaps, all that was real police work for lester, and he didn't do crazy shit unless it facilitated real police work.

like what's the motive here? if they succeed in scaring city hall, city hall is gonna want the serial killer shit solved, not marlo stanfield's 22 bodies. the idea that it's somehow gonna help knock marlo down by bringing attention to some other serial killer seems like a huge stretch and not something that mcnulty & lester, who are pretty intelligent police, would actually think of doing

Marlo is a lot like McNutty: he's a dude who really loves his job, and doing it his way!

yea but u don't get anything from marlo the way u do from mcnulty. there's no sense of humor w/ marlo, no camraderie. like snoop is cold as hell but she's hilarious and engaging. chris shows some warmth to michael and you see a lot of layers to him. marlo's just a tight-ass. deadly as shit yea but a tight-ass. prop joe reached out to him nonstop but marlo's just cold as shit

and i don't even get the sense that marlo loves his job. he just wants to be the king to be the king, there's no joy there imo

There is a moment at the end of S5 that really explains my point, fwiw, but I don't want to spoil it for ya.

I really did think that S5 redeemed itself by the end of the season, even if I lost my faith in the middle.

dun worry, mark - you'll see lester's angle on it soon enough

like the one time i found marlo remotely engaging was when slim charles meets him up on the rooftop (in s. 4 i tihnk?), and marlo says, 'alright slim, have a seat. let's chop it up." i liked the way he said that, but that's about all the warmth u get from him.

(isn't to say that the character lacks any depth tho, or that he isn't a good character)

dun worry, mark - you'll see lester's angle on it soon enough

yea ur prob right, i just need to be patient

There is a moment at the end of S5 that really explains my point, fwiw, but I don't want to spoil it for ya.

thanks! i'll prob post again next week.

when i'm finished w/ s 5

you know, sometimes it's hard getting really specific and detailed about Suspension of Disbelief and what does or does not strain credulity, but in the end yeah, I agree (and think lots of others agree) that there's something about the fake serial killer that jars a bit, for that very reason -- as with anything else, it's less about realism and more about what tone and what limits we've come to expect from the show. people always respond to that complaint by saying that Hamsterdam is credulity-straining in real-world terms, but that's where the specifics and details come in; it'd be tough to explain why, but something about that just fit better and flew better within Wire-world than the serial killer seemed to.

of course, the last season's still compelling once you swallow that. and the one excuse I can make for it is this: the reason the fake serial killer jars, in Wire-world, seems to be that it's sensationalistic in a way the show normally skirts, and I suppose that's probably pretty purposeful and meaningful in a season that wants to explore the relationship with the press.

In lieu of a serial killer, what crazy shit should mcnulty have pulled? the best I can think of is maybe mcnulty finds out about carcetti's affair and blackmails him.

There's a really great and compelling re-imagined phantom menace thought up by john hodgman that you could really see working much better than lucas's version, but i haven't seen any wire fanfics that improve upon the serial killer storyline.

i always thought it was weird how many people accepted the hamsterdam plotline but not the fake-serial-killer one. maybe it's because the latter comes out of nowhere and you're eased into the former more gently. personally speaking tho - i never had a problem with either.

xpost - no - and i wouldn't change it. what's this about Hodgman tho?! i heart that man!

it would have helped if it could have made the serial killer story sensationalistic without having the actual behavior of McNulty (et al) or the tenor of the show start to feel sensationalistic. I don't know what details would have changed that, but something to draw more of a line between the story itself and more unexciting/unglamorous stuff put into sustaining it. (this was obviously attempted, but I don't think it came off.)

S5 tips into black farce with the killer plot, which personally I quite liked. I always thought the 'realism' aspect of the Wire was too talked up anyway. It occupies a very well-conceived and convincing world which perseptively comments on our own, but it's always had its cartoonish aspects (Omar, The Greek and Brother Mouzone for example).

S5 tips into black farce with the killer plot, which personally I quite liked. I always thought the 'realism' aspect of the Wire was too talked up anyway. It occupies a very well-conceived and convincing world which perseptively comments on our own, but it's always had its cartoonish aspects (Omar, The Greek and Brother Mouzone for example).

i agree w/ a lot of that. but i think that nabisco's right when he says that it's less about realism and more about what we've come to expect from the world that the show has created, like how likely something is to happen in 'wire-world'

hodgman's reimagined phantom menace (look for act 3):
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=232

hodgman should totally write wire fanfic.

like so far my problems w/ the serial killer plot aren't that 'it would never happen IRL' but that it just seems like a stretch for what the two normally intelligent characters are pushing it for xp