"The Wire" on HBO

can someone explain to me what exactly's going on with marlo, the greeks, prop joe's money, and the antilles? i thought marlo was going to the greeks to cut prop joe out of the action, but it's prop joe who's helping him come up with "clean" money? huh?

strangely, the hbo website says klebanow "has a weakness for attractive young female reporters with questionable writing skills" .. ?

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, January 21, 2008 12:47 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

This was alluded to in I think the very first scene at the Sun in episode 1, w/ the dudes outside bullshitting and having a smoke.

Does Prop Joe know why Marlo's asking for clean cash? The young'un could be sticking it to the fat man by getting him to tie his own noose.

i think this big emphasis on how "realistic" everything about this show is has always been sort of misplaced

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, January 21, 2008 9:31 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^
this needs to be said again and again

for the record, i don't give much of a shit about realism. what i admired in the wire was all the greyness, complexity and intelligence of its characters, even spread across their disparate personalities.

Like, Hamsterdam and McNutty drinking and Herc being a massive fuck-up and getting some kid almost killed - different seasons! Not all piled together fighting for time.

thats what i'm saying, i really think hbo's 10 episode cutback might be to blame for this

they talk about Klebanow's perv streak during one of the bull sessions on the smoking dock

has every episode had an exchange between Alma and S. Glass about the Sun being a good paper vs. nuh-uh I wanna for the Times dammit?

if not already posted, streaming episodes here

http://www.surfthechannel.com/show/television/The_Wire.html

http://www.thefader.com/newsletters/wirebmore/thewire_bmore.jpg

i'm going to this tomorrow, hopefully will be able to afford to bring home some kind of cool memorabilia.

pretty sure i saw sonja sohn getting out of the elevator i was about to get into this weekend.

sean the wire is chock full of intelligent people doing dumb things! i agree that there's more of it this season so far, but that's fine by me

Fresh Air interview with Michael K Williams (Omar)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

i'm mostly concerned about finding out who rawls was talking to in that gay bar in season 3 o_O

-- omar little, Monday, January 21, 2008 12:39 PM (Monday, January 21, 2008 12:39 PM) Bookmark Link

YESSSS this has been killing me!

some gay guy?

i was expecting his implied homosexuality to resurface at another point that season but it never did.

stop with all the innuendo, guys, Jess didn't even move to Baltimore until later.

kinda sad that the show has more exposure than ever, but the weakest start to a season. Hope new watchers aren't going "the fuck is with this serial killer bullshit?!" and not giving it a chance.

Well if new viewers come from a cops/robbers procedural, the serial killer plot is going to be pretty standard convention, i.e. they won't know any better.

lol Alex

seriously; what are they going to think - "well it's ok - but it's no Nash Bridges."

even if omar turns out to be marlo's long lost brother, separated at birth - and episode 8 is done entirely as a musical it will still be 1000000000x better than any of the other garbage time cop shown polluting the airwaves!

xpost

meta: One of the cops (the dude with the earlier homeless case) was reading 'Generation Kill' when McNulty was talking to him. (My stepbrother wrote that book. HBO series comes out in September, produced & screenwritten by Burns/Simon..)

dudes im worried about this season. the serial killer thing do not like.

here's what i think they should do. marlo and omar run into each other down tropical way. it's super-tense but then who do they run into but the detectives of the western, who are ALSO down there on vacation!!! then they all team up and go after clay davis, who is running a smuggling operation down there. mcnulty and marlo have to team up! eventually they learn how to work together and even earn some grudging respect for each other. and at the end of the season they have a big party at prop joe's carribbean villa. with some lovely ladies ;) last shot, mcnulty drinking rum, looking at the bottle and saying, "i could get used to this stuff." (maybe him and bunk open a bar on the beach after it's all over)

._.

and bubbles sings a song with the band!

do not read the spoiler thread, slocki. u will b sad.

one of my friends put it really aptly (he, like me, has only seen to s05e03) -- so far this season feels like Wire fan-fic.

i don't necessarily disagree with you but i think i'm going to stop reading this thread for the rest of the season if you keep up this whining.

is that a threat?

THAT'S A PROMISE

haha yeah sorry that came out like a jaymc 'writing you off' thing but seriously

:(

you better get to liking this season more sean, or alex is gonna have NO CHOICE.

well i mean i avoided this thread during s4 because there wasn't a seperate thread then for people with screeners and torrents of unaired episodes, so no biggie.

what you're saying is, you've done it before and you'll have no problem doing it again. you're basically putting us on notice.

great conversation, guys

oh, you're going on the list now too, s1ocki.

now you know how some of us feel on M.I.A. threads ;(

well some parades were meant to be rained on

MIA threads are so full of spoilers.

Has anyone found a torrent of episode 4 where the audio matches the visuals? The one streaming on that website is the same one I downloaded the other day ... it's worthless.

the one i got on mininova was fine.

Is the filename appended with 0nD3mand.r!p?

main problem with the serial killer strand is it's taking too much time to set up, and because the cast is so big now we only get very limited facetime with eg herc, carver, daniels, beadie, avon... CUTTY. i was hoping it would just implode right quick so they could move on.

can someone explain to me what exactly's going on with marlo, the greeks, prop joe's money, and the antilles? i thought marlo was going to the greeks to cut prop joe out of the action, but it's prop joe who's helping him come up with "clean" money? huh?

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, January 21, 2008 5:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

prop joe doesn't know why marlo wants bank-fresh money. this seemed a bit fucked-up, like maybe it would raise his suspicion. my feeling is prop joe has himself covered. it's not impossible the greeks told him about marlo's move either.

don't know if this has been linked before but.. OMAR SPEAKS:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

I saw on the HBO message board questions about how the Sun buyouts work. I know you guys don't need answers on how the streets work but if you are a Wire fan here's a some refence material.

Well my wife was at the Baltimore Sun when the first round of buyouts (creator David Simon was there as well) occurred and I was at the Sun through the last round of buyouts (2005 maybe?). You don't have to be a writer, newspapers (at least the Sun) have two types of employees unionized (guilded) and non-union (non-guilded).

The Sun (Tribune) reaches an agreement with the union on what's "fair" (lube/no lube). The first round of buyouts were way better than the last. I know of 30-40K/year employees getting maybe 200K if they agreed on a buyout, the amount is determined on salary and seniority. The terms of the last was like maybe 10K for every 2 years of service. Most of the people offered buyouts had been there 20+ years.

The biggest problem not just for the writers, but moreso the non-writers, is they had been performing a newspaper function for over 30 years, and their skillset was applicable only to the newspaper industry, and until recently Baltimore only had one major paper. So unless they relocated, which wasn't an option giving the industry failing everywhere, you have mid-lifers trying to learn new skills for employment.

The biggest issue is the newspapers are still profitable, yet they don't make the kajillions they used to, so the millions they make a year don't satisfy the shareholders. The more news you read online the less the paper sells on the street. The less it sells on the street, the less the paper can charge for advertising. You gotta figure Craigslist & Ebay alone killed the entire Classfied advertising business. Who the heck places a classified ad anymore, and the cost of the ad has bottomed out and they soon will be offered for free.

As far as retail advertising mergers and aquisitions put a ginormous dent in advertising revenue.

Here's an example (fake numbers):

AT&T - $1M a month
Cingular -$1M a month
Sprint- $1M a month
Nextel- $1M a month
Macy's- $1M a month
Goldsmiths- $1M a month

Add that up that's $6 Million a month in revenue. AT&T merges with Cingular, Sprint & Nextel merge, Macy's and Goldsmith's merge, now we have:

AT&T/Cingular- $1M a month
Sprint/Nextel- $1M a month
Macy's/Goldsmith's- $1M a month

Now we're making $3 million a month. Half of what we made per month last year. So over a year that's $36 million in losses. Revenue cut in half, workforce cut. There goes your buyout.

Dudes, Omar on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087

uhh

so have any cast members been on NPR recently?

there's actually a quick dookie interview there, too... but hey did you guys hear that interview with omar?

check it out:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299087