"The Wire" on HBO

also they keep making mcnulty like re-describe the scenario every time he asks for more details and it starts to feel weirdly like it's being done for people who can't understand what the guy he's talking to is saying. which is unfortunate because mcnulty's own accent in that scene is kind of a trainwreck.

i'm glad whiney could swing by

scenes that I think are overrated - chess explanation and "you want it to be one way"

mean, an openly gay rebel gangster (who just so happens to find tons of other gay gangsters to be his boyfriend AND partner in crime) that can steal hundreds of thousands worth of drugs just by showing up and walks around in a trench coat as kids flee the streets and go "oh my god it's omar" -- it's just really fantastical nonsense at times -- and i ALWAYS resented how this superhuman character was not able to kill avon from point blank range in the beginning of season one, which sorta undercuts the whole notion of the character

yeah his myth is played up a lot but it is treated as myth, not truth

that scene's just not very well acted.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:08 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is true. there are moment w/in esp the first season that scream 'im acting'

Anyone wanting 100% realism from this show is insane, it's all about the cartoonish excesses of the characters, that includes the cops as much as the ridiculous and massively enjoyable standoff between Omar and Brother Mousone. Should've had more Brother Mousone actually.

Actually what I'm saying is that the realism makes the show but without the occasional cartoonish excess you miss out on either the heightened drama, the comedy, or both. How many dudes like Stringer Bell do you think there are around?

7

every time i open this thread its people talking about whether it's "real." someone should seriously send this to HRO

― gawka flocka flamewar (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:54 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha otm

In case these interviews with David Simon haven't been linked to already:

http://www.wnyc.org/people/david-simon/

a solitary rap line vs a whole character in a TV show

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:45 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf dude its just a parallel example of dramatic license

― deej, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 1:49 PM (1 hour ago)

deej otm - Jordan, are you seriously that dense?

xposts but

that it's a bit odd to have a character like omar that is so unrealistic & practically superhuman

he’s not superhuman

(who just so happens to find tons of other gay gangsters to be his boyfriend AND partner in crime)

tons = 2?

and i ALWAYS resented how this superhuman character was not able to kill avon from point blank range in the beginning of season one

a) he’s not superhuman
b) why WOULD he kill avon in the beginning of season one? how would this benefit him?

but maybe they shouldn't have had him survive a six story fall off of a balcony, is all i'm saying

people schooling you on this is at least the third time it has been brought up in this very thread already, c'mon

i really like the mcnulty/bunk murder-reconstruction scene. the "fuck" part is pretty irrelevant: it's several minutes of guys doing a job, which is both interesting and rare on TV, and there's this whole other additional enjoyable layer where we have in fact had this murder described to us, earlier, by an unreliable narrator, and so there's two layers of crosspollinating suspense: 1) will mcnulty/bunk succeed in reconstructing the murder; 2) will mcnulty/bunk's reconstruction of the murder reveal to us inaccuracies in the description of the murder already presented w/ implications about the character, priorities, and concerns of the guy who described it? pretty elegant scene. dunno what else people want from fiction.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:50 PM (4 hours ago)

yeah the point of this scene i think is that it's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain what's going on, so dialog telling you exactly what bunk's & mcnulty's thought processes are would be kind of redundant and pointless - the "fuck" repetition is just a funny sort of device to hold the place of explanatory dialog here imo, you still get the idea of what's going on

not that anyone cares but i think i'm sort of applying roger ebert's analysis of the motel scene in "pulp fiction", which i always really liked, to this scene as i was thinking about it

anyway the "fuck" scene is awesome, omar is awesome, & local garda is british. keep that in mind

jordan here's the "fuck scene" fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM

deej otm - Jordan, are you seriously that dense?

― sarahel, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 7:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

uh, you know, there are varying levels of artistic license

oh lil wayne says "pistol off in my boxers" BUT DO WE KNOW IF LIL WAYNE ACTUALLY WEARS BOXERS??

what an immaculate example of artistic license that we can use as a parallel for all other uses of artistic license

yeah the point of this scene i think is that it's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain what's going on, so dialog telling you exactly what bunk's & mcnulty's thought processes are would be kind of redundant and pointless - the "fuck" repetition is just a funny sort of device to hold the place of explanatory dialog here imo, you still get the idea of what's going on

It also highlights the Bunk/McNulty partnership - they know each other and their working methods so well, they don't really have to communicate beyond single syllables.

lol jordan

the "fuck" repetition is just a funny sort of device to hold the place of explanatory dialog here imo, you still get the idea of what's going on

― kl0p's son (k3vin k.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 9:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah if you wanted to stretch it you could say theyre clowning the typical over explainy police procedural - the whole 'fuck' aspect is p interesting from their tone at the beginning of the scene you think its moral indignation over the loss of innocent life but then as it progresses its more that theres a mystery that needs solving, the presence of a mystery causes them great disgust and so they must destroy it - amazing virtuoso scene, anyone not feeling it is wildly out of line, same goes for the stevedores of the great season 2

that scene is great, yes

what an immaculate example of artistic license that we can use as a parallel for all other uses of artistic license

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 8:54 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the prodigy example makes perfect sense though. it would counterintuitive to setting up your scene as 'realistic' using a rusty gun, but it sounds badass. it would be counterintuitive to set up your scene as 'realistic' with a lone gunman, but it would be badass

i dont see what exactly is the stretch here

like, neither is impossible, they're just examples of dramatic license giving something more punch while working w/in the parameters of 'reality' despite not being the most realistic choices

i mean, that said of course, both are entirely POSSIBLE ... just ilke, as it turns out, jumping out of a six story window & surviving is, in fact, real

well yeah it would be badass if prodigy rapped about killing his enemies with a flamethrower while perched in the middle of queens on top of a purple elephant but i'm not sure if i would call it "working within the parameters of 'reality'"

horseshoe, difficult listening hour otm

just like plenty of scenes involving omar go past what i can tolerate in terms of the violation of the parameters of reality

i love pretty much every scene that everyone hates and i never understand any of the criticisms

i'll relent slightly on the balcony thing but i still don't think it really matters seeing as 99% of the ppl who've watched the show (and any who thought the whole thing was bullshit) probably will not see those quotes from simon

tamtam: i never really knew you well enough in your former guise to have an opinion on you one way or the other, but i think you are an a+ poster no homo.

it's not really a lack of realism! it's what realist fiction is made of! like have you ever read a dickens death scene? i always end up sounding like that awful baltimore sun editor from season 5 on wire threads.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 5:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is very otm to me - it seems hyper-literal and a little lunkheaded to complain about this stuff imo.

jaymc-chan....

tv show is not 100% reflective of reality, oh my god

that said, I had a similar reaction as js my first time through, this tv series was lauded for being 'realistic' and I took 'realistic' to mean 'verisimilar' but actually it just means 'realistic' and then I was like okay, I can get down with that...until season 5

not sure why you would expect a scripted dramatic tv serial to be "verisimilar"

well yeah it would be badass if prodigy rapped about killing his enemies with a flamethrower while perched in the middle of queens on top of a purple elephant but i'm not sure if i would call it "working within the parameters of 'reality'"

― little humma boy (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 11:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this something that omar does in the show cuz i missed that

horseshoe, difficult listening hour otm

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 11:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u think im offtm or are u just making sure i know u still dont like me

are you starting beefs, just to start them?

like Marlo putting people in those boarded up houses not cause he has to, but because he can?

im not 'starting' anything thnx for your input

because tamtam didn't include you in his otm litany? like, while you were banned, did you think about how 51 people came to press that button?

i mean, clearly the thing to do would have been to post, "you did not otm me? surely some mistake!"

oh my godddddddddddd

max otm
deej otm
everyone otm

except for jordan and whiney

oh my godddddddddddd

― max, Thursday, March 10, 2011 2:59 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

not sure why you would expect a scripted dramatic tv serial to be "verisimilar"

― sarahel, 2011年03月10日 星期四 下午2:55 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah but people always cite the 'realism' of the wire as being one of its strongest points, its just interesting that 'realism' covers such a broad category of factors, but when people foreground it like that in the conversation I expected idk something closer to the verisimilar side of the spectrum, instead like you said it's just a scripted tv serial

btw deej otm.... SIKE

Ah, good old Local Garda, being clueless and British again.

anyway the "fuck" scene is awesome, omar is awesome, & local garda is british. keep that in mind

― kl0p's son (k3vin k.), Thursday, March 10, 2011 2:40 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

id thought he was irish for the years i've posted here. huh.

who is sarahel