"The Wire" on HBO

Looking forward!

have taken to downloading a torrent of the missing episodes at a blazing 0.4 kb/s

thanks to an angel seeder I got my disc

loool at carcetti's campaign manager

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/62/The_Wire_Norman_Wilson.jpg/250px-The_Wire_Norman_Wilson.jpghttp://project1962.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/equal-sign.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/54/Karl_the_Simpsons.png/200px-Karl_the_Simpsons.png

IS that in regards to being great assistant figures or having great voices?

Although there should have been a scene in The Wire where Norman did the whole "my mother taught me to never kiss a fool" slap Carcetti on the ass thing.

a little from column a, a little from column b

man season five is some bullshit

I've just been called in to see McNulty as Scrooge's nephew in this afternoon's christmas film

one thing i never get about this show--and i say this as a complete and total fan--is how people bend over backwards saying how "realisitic" it is. i mean, it is, comparatively, with almost everything else on tv. but plenty of the scenes and set-ups are totally contrived, the acting can be hammy, there's more speechifying than ever goes on in real life, and whoever upthread was way on the money when they said there was a certain "no chief, YOU'RE out of order" quality about mcnulty.
that said, best show on tv.

― Bea Arthur - Lost COmic GEnius ? (dubplatestyle), Saturday, June 24, 2006 11:54 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

this is very OTM

yeah as soon as the show became "important" I started to see faults that didn't bother me the first time watching it, because back then I was comparing it to other cop shows on TV at the time, instead of thinking of it as The Best Show Ever Made.

How much of this is because you were watching it a second time though?

man season five is some bullshit

The last third of it is good.

I hope! burned through the first 6 eps yesterday, have the last 4 for tonight. the show's getting to be a bit too moralistic - like the plot devices/set-ups exist now only to prove some larger 'insight' about How The World Works which is alright I guess but not as good as the previous seasons

also Przybo as a public school teacher is probably the most OTM casting I have ever seen in all of my experience watching TV and movies

maybe it's just cause I didn't see enough of him in season 4...but his english accent is really peeking through in season 5

one thing i never get about this show--and i say this as a complete and total fan--is how people bend over backwards saying how "realisitic" it is. i mean, it is, comparatively, with almost everything else on tv. but plenty of the scenes and set-ups are totally contrived, the acting can be hammy, there's more speechifying than ever goes on in real life, and whoever upthread was way on the money when they said there was a certain "no chief, YOU'RE out of order" quality about mcnulty.
that said, best show on tv.
― =皿= (dyao), Monday, December 28, 2009 3:02 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is very OTM.

In short The Wire is a comparatively very realistic show, but realism is not and probably shouldn't be an end in itself. It's like when so many people complain about Hamsterdam and Serial Killers, as if it breached some sort of sacred code. It's a show, and as so addresses certain issues by playing out scenarios, certainly more true to life and usual to CSI, but when you start treating it as a documentary you're bound to be disappointed, which probably isn't worth it.

People like to forget that this is a ultimately a TV show, and that for TV conventions to appear on a TV show isn't sacrilege. I don't think it necessarily aspires to go beyond TV showdom, it just does it better than most anything else.

The realism thing is a bit of a red herring, yeah. The characters and institutions generally behave in realistic (or at least convincing) ways, but the dialogue and acting is definitely stylised. It's not a Ken Loach film.

i always thought "just like real life" as pertaining to the wire meant "there's a lot of black people on this show"

BTW earlier tonight one of the girls said I reminded her of C who is another youth worker. I asked why and she shrugged, "Well, you're both white. You all sort of look the same to me." lol.
this happens to me at work all the time too. i am lolwhite it's true, but it has happened at least once a semester.

a couple of my students have watched the wire (comm. coll. students) and i always want to talk about it with them, but we really don't have time for that, what with class to conduct and all.

also wire best show ever etc

yeah there's a big difference betwen realism-cum-literary device and realism-cum-realism. people often mistake the former for the latter

btw that was dubplatestyles post not mine! anyways I certAinly don't walk around with a bunch of " my dick is small so what!" ripostes ready to unleash at the drop of a dime

man season five is some bullshit
― =皿= (dyao), Sunday, December 27, 2009 5:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Not going to say this is wrong, because everyone has their own take on each of the seasons but I have to admit that I was far more engaged in season 5 than I was in 3 or 4 (despite them being very very good) because of my work in print. I knew exactly where Simon was coming from in that season though I can understand why most people wouldn't find it as interesting.

My problem with the newsroom element of S5 was not that it wasn't interesting. It's that it was heavy-handed, among other things. No problem with newsroom drama, or even stuff about the business/politics of publishing, in principle.

That's exactly it. I'm a media advisor, and most of my friend are reporters, but Season Five is the very definition of heavy-handed.

Rewatching season 5, I, much of the time, didn't feel much other than aggravation, especially already knowing that Scott is an asshole, etc.

I said waaaay upthread that David Simon's cynicism had started to curdle his sensibilities; the last few episodes are one long, attenuated take on that Simpsons thing about an old man shouting at a cloud.

yeah i probably said this somewhere upthread, but as soon as they introduced the fabricating-reporter angle it was eyerolling time. not that that doesn't happen, obviously it does, but of the many problems with american journalism that one ranks pretty low. it mostly doesn't happen, and when it does, it mostly is not in any particularly important way. (even something like the jayson blair case didn't really have much substantive impact, he didn't affect the outcome or general perception of any major issue.) that combined with mcnulty's loopy fake-serial-killer thing just made the whole season a lot less sophisticated than, say, the take on the school system in season 4.

i loved season 5--none of it feels cynical or heavy handed to me.

it mostly doesn't happen, and when it does, it mostly is not in any particularly important way.

you really think newspapers publishing lies isn't important?

if it's making up stuff about local events (as opposed to like, wmds) it's not that important imo
season 5 was stupid

you're stupid

;)

: D

if it's making up stuff about local events (as opposed to like, wmds) it's not that important imo

otm. it was just a cheap plot device, and one that didn't have much to do with the actual problems of american journalism. the equivalent would be if season 4 had had some big plot line about sex between a student and a teacher.

the whole show was about Baltimore, though, and if had been a fake story about a larger, national issue, I think it would come off as cheap. faking stories, no matter what level they are on, is an Actual Problem of American Journalism

it did come off as cheap! the baltimore sun *is* a terrible paper though, so in that respect i thought it was realistic

you're cheap

:)

i didnt read it as a "faking stories" thing anyway--it was more about the way the editorial heavies leaned on the newsroom to produce 'dickensian' content, bait the pulitzer, & so forth

yup

faking stories, no matter what level they are on, is an Actual Problem of American Journalism

it isn't, really. i mean, it just doesn't happen enough to waste a lot of time worrying about. there are much bigger, more important structural problems and biases, including the kind of corporate dickishness max is talking about and that was well represented in the season. but adding the fabricating-reporter angle (and especially giving him a pulitzer) was just hollywood-level clunky, in a series that was mostly distinguished by avoiding that kind of obviousness.

it might not happen "a lot" but the fact that it happens at all is pretty fucked up

I fabricate my posts on ilx all the time

xpost sure, but it's kind of like acting as if drug-addicted doctors were a major factor in the problems of the american health care industry. everybody knows there are drug addicted doctors and ok that's a problem, but it's really sort of irrelevant to the big picture of american health care.

and david simon knows better, is the point. he knows enough to have done a much more sophisticated critique, and he took an easy route. (i did like other parts of the newsroom stuff, especially gus and the way he was treated by his horrible bosses. that felt pretty true to life.)

just finished it. lol at gov carcetti. I wonder how many standins Simon has in the series upon a rewatch; gus seemed like one to me

leaving season 5 aside, it seemed like simon identified with mcnulty but had some kind of aspirational relationship with omar.

season 5 was pretty bad imo. it's the only season i didn't buy, and i probably won't ever bother buying it. very much agree with you, tipsy, about the drug-addicted doctor analogy. it's like, obviously this is a bad thing, but it isn't like it is so widespread that our system is broken because of it. there are built in checks and balances, which the show demonstrates.

i would have preferred to see a corporate 'conflict of interest' angle, or maybe a political press corp toady-who-doesn't-want-to-lose-access angle, but i guess it would have been tough to cram into a show about Baltimore cops.

Obviously S5 was a bit heavy-handed on the topic of journalism, sure...won't deny that at all...but despite that I still can't condemn it like some of you seem to want to. Maybe some of the heavy-handedness on this was because Simon was too close to the topic? Either way I'd rather have a heavy-handed take on this and be sure that the message got out than having it appear as a more nuanced thing and have some people miss the real point of it. Maybe there was a better balance that would have kept everyone happy though.

BTW, strenuously disagree with the talk above that it doesn't matter as much when it's fabricating stories on local issues. Local issues are often the ones that really screw the most disaffected members of our society right where they live, which is pretty damned important. But ultimately the point is that all "news" should be held to the same standard if people are going to be expected to trust any of it, either local or national, especially when national outlets often rely on local outlets for coverage around the country.

(FWIW don't take my defense of Season 5 to mean it's my fave - it's not, but people dismissing it outright is pretty baffling to me.)