"The Wire" on HBO

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/way?mbid=social_tumblr

This 16:9 transfer sounds like a disaster, but I haven't seen any of it yet. I'd prefer they just cleaned up a 4:3 version, but I guess even that's not really necessary for this show.

I just caught a bit of season 4 on HBOSG, which I don't get in HD so it's letterboxed. Didn't notice anything too bad with the framing.

This is a very cool interview:
http://www.avclub.com/article/jamie-hector-loving-wire-and-building-his-own-back-213516?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1:Default

Put in first episode of season 4 a few days back, it is still the pinnacle of the art form known as television. Am now on episode 6. Two things I notice due to recent other products of culture: 1) Serial. They do talk quite a lot about Leakin Park, Lester and Bunk go there to look for Lex, and Woodlawn is even mentioned in episode one. 2) Actress. I watched the doc with Brandy Burre, who plays Theresa D'Agostino. She explains that she was pregnant during season 4, and it's pretty imposible to not notice once you know. There's a running gag where she is always in those big ugly campaign sweaters, but in episode six, at the win celebration, she is in a smart black dress, and wow she's big.

she was pretty great on the show.

What doc?

Actress.

this show would be so much better if they kept the season 1 themesong throughout

I like the Neville Brothers version

this show would be so much better if they kept the season 1 themesong throughout

― pursuit of happiness (art), Monday, January 12, 2015 7:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i am not clear on why this would measurably improve anything but 4 minutes of each episode?

(assuming one agrees that the season 1 song is the best version, which i don't)

The whole theme-sequence in season four is so amazingly great. As is every scene in Prez' classroom, once he gets a bit of hang of it. As is almost every damn second of season four.

xxp it is like im watching the very first scene and as it ends the little lead in starts to roll and it's like "oh yeah here it comes" then im immediately super disappointed

If you don't think the waits version is the best, you are crazy and don't even like to fart

Anyway I liked the conceit of changing the song each season, went well with the structure of the show.

watching thru this again w/ a friend who's never seen it. we're in s2 and it's kind of a slog; none of the people she's interested in are given enough focus and she doesn't really like the sobotkas & greeks or the dead women plotline. we just got thru the ep where d'angelo gets killed in prison. the next day she texted me saying "I'm still so sad about D'angelo!" and she was already bummed about Wallace in s1. i tried to hint vaguely that there's more coming but it's not a death-y show like Sopranos was. her response: "If Stringer dies I'm out!"

it took a little while for s2 to grow on me, i wasn't happy about shifting focus from s1 either

ime by the time stringer dies you're too far in to be out

Yeah, I think you can get away with lying to her.

I was too far in to be out when Frank gets whacked. I love S02.

s2 is the best imo

my parents just finished watching the wire after me badgering them for years to give it a try. season two was a real sticking point for them too and it reminded me just how bold s2 is - sidelining characters the audience had only just gotten to know, introducing a whole new supporting cast, shifting the entire focus of the show, even changing the title music. it's almost like a challenge to the audience to stick with it.

actually, there aren't really supporting characters in this show, are there? i haven't watched the show since s5 finished airing, and i've only watched it through once, and i was amazed when talking to my parents about it that i could remember basically every character's name, motivations, and interactions with others in detail. there are very few other shows where that's the case.

The Wire is really fucking boring.

only seen s1 though.

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-30325-clay-Davis-cigar-gif-The-Wire-3Eja.gif

I think season 2 might be the most important, in a way. It's through the patient groundwork done in that season, that the rest of the show can be as ambitious as it can. Season 1 breaks down all it builds up, with the Major Crimes unit shut down, and all the people involved scattered to the wind. Some sort of contrivance would be needed to get everyone back into the story again, and season 2 does that masterfully in the end, but it takes a hell of a lot of time. Then season 3 and 4 can hit the ground running, allowing for subplots like Carcetti, Cutty, Colvin and Tilghman Middle School, to be introduced without people thinking of how it impacts the main story. Which they often don't really do.

The Wire is really fucking boring.

― this is just a saginaw (dog latin), Tuesday, 13 January 2015 10:38 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Someone's getting a bit too carried away with this 'freedom of speech' lark

good reaction gif deploy

fwiw I feel like I'm the only wire fan who didn't much like frank sobotka as a character. Something a little too tropey working class hero about him. But w/e, it wasn't a huge complaint. 2 isn't my favorite season but 5 is the only one I really found disappointing.

yea i wasn't hugely pulled to sobotka either

season 2 is the one everybody suffers through. always surprised to find people on the internet who actually didn't hate it

ziggy is the most annoying character on the show no contest

ziggy is sad

i love season 2 v much

it's why we get up in the morning

Season 2 doesn't have the elegant sweep of 3 and 4, which are masterpieces of multi-strand storytelling. 2 is more a new story, which can't quite leave the old Barksdale-people behind. That said, it's obviously a very very good season, better than almost everything done on tv ever. I haven't rewatched 5 ever, but I think I'll continue once I'm done with 4. Will start episode 10 right now.

It was definitely crucial to David Simon's sort of "theory of everything" of Baltimore/post-industrial urban america. It wouldn't be the series it is without Season 2.

season 2 is great. i feel like the greek's pal vondas keeps drinking increasingly tiny cups of espresso throughout the season.

I think my main issue with this show - for all of the things it admirably attempts - is that I never felt any real emotional investment in any of the characters. There are SO MANY, and the vast majority of them are not allowed enough time or opportunities to provide a lot of depth or shade or contradiction; vast swathes of the cast are one-dimensional. This is exacerbated by the way the stories are framed, this really tightly laid out, mechanistic method of storytelling - everybody is a piece on a board, a cog in a vast machine that must move from point A to point B for the narrative to maintain momentum. I am always highly conscious of how methodical everything is, the way the show is straining to get all its puzzle pieces aligned just so so that the viewer properly understands the scope of the inescapable trap, the overwhelming scale and force of the institutions that all the characters are enmeshed in. There are ridiculous caricatures - Ziggy, Omar, Marlo, McNulty, Brother Mouzon, that weaselly guy that runs for mayor - that I can't take seriously for a second, surrounded by all of these other essentially tragic figures who you just know are going to get fucked no matter what they do or how righteous their motivations are. Unlike the Sopranos or Mad Men, most of these characters don't show much more depth than the chess pieces they're treated as - they simply aren't on-screen enough, or given the opportunity to display a wider range of who they are. Overall it leaves me cold. I don't find any of the characters as fascinating as Tony or Janice or Peggy or Pete etc.

In that sense I think the didacticism of the show undermines its effectiveness as drama

idk i felt like every season putting another antagonist in front of tony and making him too dumb to figure out how to deal with it felt more programmatic than the procedural nature of the wire

I agree that it's not the most character-driven show, but there were still characters I thought showed a lot of emotional depth, e.g. D'Angelo Barksdale. I don't see it as a flaw of the show, just a different kind of show.

There are ridiculous caricatures - Ziggy, Omar, Marlo, McNulty, Brother Mouzon, that weaselly guy that runs for mayor

His name is McNutty.

One thing I did find weird about the Wire was the sex scenes -- pretty much every one of them is cold, sudden, and aggressive in about the same way, except I vaguely remember a really bad late-nite-movie style scene maybe with daniels and rhonda?

the sex scenes in the wire are almost uniformly terrible w/ the exception of a few that are played for black comedy (such as mcnulty showing his badge to the cops who watch him plowing a woman he picks up at the bar and their subsequent departure from the scene). mostly bc they're just awkwardly filmed. but, hardly enough of a prob to detract from its superlative qualities in other areas.

xp yeah that scene's at the end of season 3, its pretty unintentionally hilarious

yeah it's a minor thing except that it just seemed like there was an overall lack of a sense of any good male-female intimate relationships overhanging the whole show, like maybe a little bit of a bitterness about women and/or marriage/dating that pervades it. McNulty's divorce and bitchy ex, Daniels' divorce, the strongest female characters being "more like men," etc. I wouldn't go so far as to say misogyny, but probably bitterness.

sex scenes in the Wire were all gratuitous nonsense, serving no purpose to the narrative. which was totally not the case with the Sopranos (sorry to keep bringing it up but those poll results make me so mad)