"The Wire" on HBO

i still like 2 more than 3

4 is still my favorite

1-2-4-3

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1 is still my least favorite season by far, but maybe I should rewatch it.

I thought Carcetti showed up in season 3?

Maybe (don't remember), but I think all S2 stuff put in motion a lot of events that led to Carcetti's rise.

I thought that possibly at the end of S4 where Marlo was getting paranoid and started asking questions about the greek guy that we were going to come back to that storyline in S5. S2 was fucking brilliant - as was said upthread it was a tangent but a no other show would have followed it through so far or so well.

1 • 3 • 4 • 2

4 IS TEH NUTZ

i think s2 is great. frankie sobotka is a great tragic character.

yah sobotka is brilliant

Notice how no Wire fan has said that any season is dull or not worth bothering with. Because it's all good. I like 4 especially maybe because it's especially... gritty. Because Chris and Snoop are some of my favorite villians of all time.

I like season 2 but I think they could've done some slightly more interesting things to address Baltimore's depressed post-industrial workforce. I mean, I think the decline of Bethlehem Steel had a bigger impact on Baltimore's working class than the docks, but that'd probably be harder to work into a show about cops and criminals.

I think there's a reference to this also - iirc Spiros points across the water when talking to Frank and says "They used to make steel there, no?"

yeah, how are the docks not related to steel?

Gary, Indiana suffered the same and worse fate... they used to make steel, and the raw materials needed to do that were so heavy that they were cheaper and easier to ship over water. As the stteel industry collapsed, mostly in the 80's, the cities that steel built shrank, and eventually even shipping ordinary goods to those places became less appealing.

that's a HUGE simplification, obv. But docks and steel go together, sure they do.

The British Geological Survey reports that in 2005, China was the top producer of steel with about one-third world share followed by Japan, Russia and the USA.

Sure, and you could probably name dozens of other American cities with similar stories. Jersey City, where I live now, was a huge dock town. You know that rather bland skyline you see across the Hudson from lower Manhattan? It's all built on what used to be railroad and docks. (my understanding is that the city government practically gave the land to Samuel LeFrak for the original Newport development.)

I'm starting to think the main problem in Season 2 is just that the writing isn't as tight. Episode 7 is pretty weak - there are like five scenes that end with people laughing at something just said, the point of each scene is telegraphed, and there are a lot of moments that feel like watered-down rehashes of season 1.

I did love the Omar testimony in episode 6 though.

Really? I thought that felt really forced.

I liked it, but all the "Gosh Omar, you so crazy!" stuff afterwards was groanworthy.

A lot of somewhat redundant scenes too, or stuff that could have been done more efficiently. We don't need to see Cedric arguing Marla about his work on the case twice in the same episode, for example.

Also D'Angelo's funeral was one of the least effective funeral scenes I've ever watched, and I'm not even sure why.

xpost I thought it made for an especially unrealistic court scene. Why would a lawyer of that caliber, good or bad, even bother to react to Omar? Surely he knows that he'll look better in court if he doesn't react.

You may be right about that. I guess he's supposed to be caught off guard, but it's hard to believe a lawyer that good would just stop in his tracks and not come up with a recovery.

For work earlier this month I came across this info on the largest steel mill in the country, near Baltimore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrows_Point

> all the "Gosh Omar, you so crazy!" stuff afterwards was groanworthy

ERROR!

"You really askin'?" is one of my favorite laugh lines in the series, up there with "Got to, this is America" "They got honeynut Cheerios?" and "I can't wait to go to jail."

series 2 is amazing. also there's a lot more to it than the stevedores. i suppose s01 is "two things": the cops, and the barksdale crew. s02 is "three things": the cops, the smuggling operation, the drug crews. it's not just an introduction to prop joe, it's stringer embarking on his ill-fated product > territory strategy.

also i think it's been funnier since s01? i'm not dissing the first series, but i think david simon has (been made to) declench(ed) a bit.

"Ey mista nugget - you da bomb! You got the bone all the way out the chicken. So I'm gonna write my clowny ass name on this fat ass check."

(I know that's not exactly it - I'm paraphrasing from memory)

I got a call from Blake Leyh yesterday asking for some help on getting music for season 5, got some cool tidbits about the montage they're shooting for the finale this week. This last year of the show is gonna be some awesome. [/ namedropping]

some=so

Suzy in Baltimore

What I loved about season 1 was the way every moment demanded your attention (sometimes even repeated viewing) - season 2 doesn't have that intensity.

mind you i only saw series 2 after series 3 had aired and 'the wire' looked safe. probably seemed more 'eh?' without that context.

frank sobotka
-- RJG, Monday, April 30, 2007 2:41 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

says it all really.

Enrique OTM re: Season 2. S1 is a little shaky: there's a lot more television-y exposition and they hadn't quite figured out the show's visual style--remember all those awkward surveillance cam shots?

I like the surveillance cam shots, not to mention that they establish one of the primary themes of the show.

the funny thing is that city-sanctioned surveillance, particularly the "blue light" cameras, really became way more pervasive after The Wire's first couple seasons when they actually addressed/included those things more. I hope the new season touches on developments in that are a little more.

I didn't know about the real life Baltimore context for it, which could certainly be used interestingly. As for S1, sure they "establish a primary theme", but it's an inelegant, white elephant-y way of going about it. (And actually, is surveillance itself really a primary theme of the show? I mean it's obviously an issue that's impossible to ignore, but it's certainly not something that keeps me occupied when I'm thinking about the show).

The show is called "the wire," of course surveillance was, at the outset, a primary theme. How much it's strayed from that theme since season 1 doesn't really change that.

I just want to say that the part in Season 2 (I think?) when McNutty gets drunk and crashes his car into a pillar, and then goes to a diner and nails the waitress was one of the best things ever.

agreed

Surveillance is still big in Season 2 with the detail operation, the cloned computer, the high-end bug that gets crushed in the tennis ball, etc.

i love how he crashes once then does drunken hand reenactment of crash the crashes again

Yeah, and as an investigative issue it remains important. But as a thematic element, it pretty much is a non starter. I haven't seen anything on the Wire that made me think Simon had any feelings one way or another about living in a panoptikon-style state of perpetual observation.

x-ie post-ie

I don't think he has a didactic point to make about it, but I do think he's trying to show that surveillance is already much more a part of the fabric of our lives than we realize

Er, actually I guess that would be kind of a didactic point to make.

> I do think he's trying to show that surveillance is already much more a part of the fabric of our lives than we realize

If so, the best scene is definitely the McNulty kids front-and-following Stringer at the market.

yeah that is a great scene.

if anything the show is *pro*-surveillance. it often pits herc & carver's instinct against "we make this case with a voice on a phone". the federales have all the great technology but it's the purpose they're put to that the show criticizes -- terrorism and union-busting -- rather than the fact of this stuff and the police's right to use it in itself. the fact they have to prove "exhaustion" in order to get up on a wire, and that they have to observe the suspect using the phone is treated as a chore.

but it isn't a big theme -- maybe it isn't pro-surveillance so much as pragmatically, "look, it takes this much effort to stay on people we know to look at, no government organization could process private communications even if it wanted to."

A++:
Prez cold cocking Valcheck
Brother Mouzon bitching out his henchman for forgetting the new issue of Harpers

also the scene where product has dried up, low rise projects actually look cleaner and happier - kids running around playing, etc., and Bodie: "Shit is fucked up!"