"The Wire" on HBO

i understand & appreciate the purpose of having omar being killed by a random corner kid & not dying in a firefight w/ omar's ppl but maybe they shouldn't have had him survive a six story fall off of a balcony, is all i'm saying

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 2:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was based on something that actually happened!!

o rly

Pearlman was cute but it was all about the campaign manager McNulty and Carcetti both got with

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?172531-Interview-with-David-Simon

also yes sobotka/the stevedores are plenty relevant to the show's theses re: decay of the city/abandonment of the working class/racial hostility fueled by resentment over economic irrelevancy + approaching death/whatever. plus sobotka's walk down the pier in the penultimate episode of s2 is like the best thing on tv ever.

oh yeah i have a question -- maybe i'm forgetting something, but did they ever explore the connection b/w cheese & randy aside from them both having the same last name? like, i don't think it was ever brought up in s4 that randy was related to cheese & joe? feel like this might've been important?

that just came to my mind as the series winds down & cheese becomes a bigger player towards the end

I feel like the "realness" applies more to the way the various plots develop, the sprawling way that stories and character arcs play out, and less to the characters themselves. There are some great characters, but they aren't necessarily the realest-seeming people around, and they occasionally give speeches or make remarks that have no relation to how people talk. And you can view that as a flaw, but I think there's a consistent balance between "realness" and a kind of operatic (and sometimes didactic) nature; see the quotes at the end of the opening credits. How real is a show in which every episode contains a pithy quote that reflects on the episode's theme?

I do share your reluctance about Omar, but I wonder if a character like Lester is that much more realistic.

whoa xxxxp

yeah basically, this was a show that totally had dramatized & archetypal characters, what was 'real' was how it dealt w/ sociopolitical issues, not the characterizations w.in that framework. omar is an awesome character and his heroism is directly contrasted w/ his invisibility to anyone who isnt in the hood -- thus his death being knocked off the newspaper

Though the relationship was never established on the show, creator David Simon revealed Cheese to be Randy's biological father.[1]

^^ thought it was maybe alluded to in the show but i guess it wasn't -- the last name thing seemed too deliberate to be a coincidence anyway

are any of you watching that new chicago "wire"-like show with the unfeasibly hot police commissioner and a polish mcnulty?

I think the deal w/cheese & randy was that it was just a little thing they threw in, and there wasn't really any plausible reason to go any further with it.

Pearlman was cute but it was all about the campaign manager McNulty and Carcetti both got with

yeah this girl. adorable but then i can't speak objectively to this since she resembled in almost every detail of personality the first girl i ever kissed (who now actually does work for the democratic party). but the first girl i ever kissed played this part way, way, way better than the actress in the wire, who came off flat and awkward to me every time she tried to say anything witheringly hobbesian.

brother mouzone was as stupid a character as omar too. this show was good but is massively and ludicrously overrated for some reason. both mad men and breaking bad are ten times the show this is.

i'll kill you

brother mouzone is not a great character, but he's an outlier in that sense

i think brother mouzone was based on something real too /deej

realism as in dealing with subject matter that actually happens and realist in style are two different things, although the later isn't particularly well-defined.

brother mouzone is hilarious

Though the relationship was never established on the show, creator David Simon revealed Cheese to be Randy's biological father.[1]

^^ thought it was maybe alluded to in the show but i guess it wasn't -- the last name thing seemed too deliberate to be a coincidence anyway

― JaySeanLilWayne (some dude), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:03 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

thank u ship

yeah there's no way there are two central characters w/ the last name wagstaff & it is a coincidence

brother mouzone gets a pass for being From New York and having all the characters talk about how he's Come In From New York and is going to use New York Tactics and it's actually pretty funny when he turns out to be a tarantino cartoon.

tbf i agree like...the whole "it's so realistic" is prob mostly this show's stupid thing people say about it. on a number of levels it's stupid cos why would a tv show being realistic even be a definite quality or positive anyway?

people get super dumb when they talk about realism but it is hard to talk about clearly tbf because it turns out no one is ever talking about the same thing

i learn something new and infuriating every time this thread gets revived. can't believe people don't enjoy omar little.

i like both him & mouzone but hearing jordan bash omar but enjoy mouzone makes even less sense!

i def bristle at the idea that mad men is touching this show

All the realism praise is cos people like to think they know about "the streets" and so on after watching The Wire.

re: madmen -- there's gonna be a crossover??

I enjoy The Sopranos and The Wire about equally but Mad Men is nowhere close yeah

s4 is the only thing that'd taint that for me...but i like the emotion of mad men and the romance (mean that broadly.) prob a personal thing...by the same token i'd say twin peaks is my fave tv show of all time. not really looking for realism so much as that sort of wistfulness.

breaking bad on the other hand is just such brilliant storytelling.

i enjoyed the wire but it is kinda annoying in places as well, eg the scene with mcnulty/bunk going "fuck" repeatedly or whatever it was. that wasn't "omg genius", it was really stupid cop show rubbish. plus the first two seasons of the wire are way way way better than the last three, which get progressively poorer.

mouzone is a "worse" character than omar obv

cop shows are great

i meant hilarious in a bad way

btw i enjoy the character of omar -- just had some problems

I hate the "fuck" scene as well and it always annoys me when people bring it up in praise of The Wire.

i dont know if thats what some ppl do it but there are plenty of other reasons to praise its realism i.e. the realistic way characters are forced to interact w/ larger systems

that was re: ppl liking the wire bcuz they know whats going on in the streets

j0rdan look at the realism this way ... ppl like prodigy from mobb deep bcuz his rap style feels visceral & 'real' -- but when he raps 'got a rusty gun, but that shit still spit,' that would actually be a stupid thing to use as a weapon, but it SOUNDS badass? like, there's a tension between realism vs. dramatic license going on in any form of entertainment. the guys that wrote this show were by & large fiction writers

i am trying to remember if mad men ever affected me emotionally.

I hate the "fuck" scene as well and it always annoys me when people bring it up in praise of The Wire.

― Number None, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:26 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this sounds like reacting to ppl hyping it imo. wasnt the 'fuck' scene also based on bmore cop humor david simon observed firsthand?

what scene are you guys talking about

I think that's a significant reason why the show has become so canonized in recent years. Makes people feel a bit superior that they watch this show that's so realistic, complex etc.

weird...i found it affecting throughout. s4 prob a bit of a letdown as i think about it now, mind you.

x-post it could be based on real humour and still be shit. maybe bmore cops aren't funny either.

Well, i hadn't heard any hype when i watched the scene and i have since read that it was based on a real situation but it just always came off fake to me.

I think that's a significant reason why the show has become so canonized in recent years. Makes people feel a bit superior that they watch this show that's so realistic, complex etc.

― Number None, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:30 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u have a v pessimistic view of ppl's motives & its impugning your ability to be rational while critiquing this show imo

who cares if it's fake, it's awesome.

sometimes the wire's staginess falls flat, but i love the "fuck" scene

lol, number none is taking the place of whiney g weingarten in this discussion

hey guys which scene is the "fuck" scene