"The Wire" on HBO

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The end of season 4... So tough.

I've watched the first three seasons multiple times, but the last two only once despite owning DVDs of both and having access to them on Amazon Prime. After all this discussion I decided to dial up season 4 and halfway through episode 1 it is already depressing as hell. Not sure if I'm going to be able to make it all the way through.

it's the hardest to get through for sure by that measurement, but it's also the show's best season by a wiiiide margin imo. don't give up!

xp if you don't like depressing shows, then I don't know why you are watching this series

I think I had a greater capacity for it in the past. It's maybe a bit different now that my kid is about the same age as the kids in the show. Also, the first time around I didn't know how their plots would all turn out. Now that I do, there's definitely a greater feeling of dread.

There's always Namond.

things turn out pretty well for him beyond his dad being in jail for life and his mom being terrible, but it's true that his new family is a step up, so I guess that's a happy ending

hating namond's mom is so invigorating though.

ohhhhh i hate her.

how I start every morning

wait till bey hear about this...

he's fine as long as his fish get cleaned and fed

namonds mom is the worst, so much fun to hate her

innocuous scenes like the one in ep. 2 where Cutty is trying to talk Michael into training to be a boxer are harder to watch when you know where the plot is going

Every scene with happy Randy is awful on rewatch...

exactly

There is a moment I caught on rewatch, which I now can't let go, which is when Carcetti and Norman goes to see Rawls after the election. They speak about stats and all that, and all of a sudden Rawls say, that the reason everyone in Baltimore loves stats, is because they all are promoted from Affirmative Action, and since they got their jobs from numbers games, that is all they know. And you realize, if there were no stats, a white boys club would just take over everything, without any kind of control.

Was there a McNulty-speaking-to-the-presumed-good-old-boy-county-sheriff subtext going on there as well?

Well, the clear subtext is that Rawls wants Carcetti to give him Burrells job as police commissioner, so he's stating what sets him apart from the other candidates: That he is white.

yeah, it's a smokescreen to divert attention from the truth. burrell isn't beholden to the numbers bc he's a black police officer who reached his position through affirmative action. he's that way bc he's a hack at police work who somehow managed to be blessed w/ good political instincts - and that description also fits rawls, to a fucking t.

burrell's exit speech to rawls has that lovely note where after he says rawls will eat the political class' shit for a living he adds "daniels too, when he gets here" and rawls' face for a moment is like yezhov's, hollow triumph

speaking of the stalinists, how about marlo's brisk takeover speech to the co-op (headed by joe's empty chair)? textbook.

just watched season 5, ep5 - dukie asking cutty, "how do we get from here to the rest of the world?" is beyond heartbreaking

New David Simon series:
http://curbed.com/archives/2015/01/28/show-me-a-hero-david-simon-yonkers.php

The miniseries is directed by Paul Haggis, who won the best picture Oscar in 2006 for his film Crash, which explored racial tensions in Los Angeles. Mayor Wasicsko is played by Oscar Isaac, the handsome star of the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII movie. The defeated incumbent mayor is played by Jim Belushi, and Winona Ryder and Catherine Keener are also on board, along with the Argentine actress Carla Quevedo.

The miniseries is directed by Paul Haggis

uh-oh

if he isn't writing it, there shouldn't be too many ways to for him to fuck the project up

(he said hesitantly)

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/02/life.gif

And psychologically incurious compared to The Sopranos.

Who even knows what's going on in their heads?

After Treme, Simon had a number of projects on the board at HBO, each and every one given a deeply reported, fully realized treatment, with scripts written for multiple episodes and multiseason show bibles assembled. It’s work that can take years to complete.

“We’re not the people who go around with a trunkful of pilot scripts,” Simon says. “‘It’s a medical show! You don’t want a medical show? It’s a legal show! He’s gotta have a dog? OK, he’s got a dog! His partner’s an alien? OK, his partner’s an alien!’”

There was a partial adaptation of Taylor Branch’s massive civil-rights trilogy America in the King Years. A collaboration with George Pelecanos on Times Square in the ’70s and ’80s. A “very careful treatment” of the CIA from 1945 to 2001, written with his Wire buddy Ed Burns. And a telling of the Lincoln assassination with “crackling” scripts that “avoided the marble men of Lincoln and Booth who have been written to death” and functioned “as a sort of post-9/11 allegory.” He describes it as a “traumatizing act of terror” followed by “paranoia and military trials with indefinite detention … the smell of rendition in Guantanamo and overreach and wartime fear.”

I wanna see the CIA one

They all sound pretty good, esp. the one where his partner's an alien.

haggis is the double worst, why the fuck is he involved

crackling paranoid lincoln assassination scripts!!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GewvuNcC81I/T0fbPqluwEI/AAAAAAAAAKg/kMV9DI0ETtI/s1600/homicides1b.jpg

FINISHED.

http://i.imgur.com/f9AqxPX.gif

I say there's no more nostalgia anymore, but it did feel like I was watching a period piece as I caught up. Going from Nick Sobotka asking Ziggy, "So you just type in some words into the computer and it finds it for you?" to McNutty dropping his jaw at the sight of Spiros texting on his cellphone to Season 5's Lester going "What the?" at the ability of Marlo to send PICTURES through his MOBILE DEVICE.

I watched this solo and didn't check any threads or wikipedia out of fear of spoilers.

Not much more to add. Maybe when my wife and I change into our color-coordinated tank tops and eat dinner tonight like Cedric and Ronnie, I'll think of something.

I really liked the first few episodes of Treme. Is it worth the effort for the long haul?

I enjoy it, but it is much more soap opera-y than The Wire

the dialogue is generally up to typical simon & co. standards - storytelling, not so much. acting is good w/the marked exception of steve zahn (although maybe its just that he's really good at playing one of the most grating characters ever, making ziggy look restrained and introspective by comparison). the music is pretty wonderful.

i could never stick with it other than a few episodes each season, always lost interest. in a nutshell, the criticisms of being excessively didactic or more interested in message than storytelling that some applied to the wire or generation kill are actually true of treme.

I really enjoyed The Wire, but the build-up of it being supreme over Sopranos or Breaking Bad was overkill. There were plenty of moments where it seemed just like any other cop show, except with actual profanity and headshots.

Maybe it was my "what the?" apprehension when I began the second season and saw the boats and ChefTech POS graphics of cargo in the opening credits, but the whole intro scene of the dockworkers on their own ground inside the bar, raising a glass to the union and to the City of Ballamare, that I first groaned a little.

Even that opening where Valchek gets in a huff about the stained glass window treaded close to that awful Sopranos Columbus Day episode where Silvio all of a sudden gets a burr in his ass about the Native Americans.

And the newspaper scenes… Good grief. "He's right. 'Evacuate' is an action done to something, not by an object or person…" Those were some of the most hackneyed of them all.

But The Wire was worth the time and effort. I'd put any of those characters up against any Soprano or meth maker. Seeing Chris and Weebay standing together at the end almost gave me a lump.

Breaking Bad isn't even in the conversation pplains

xp you're crazy the evacuate line is hilarious - well, the one that prompts the alma guiterrez reaction you quoted, not her line

(i see your general point tho)

i love Sopranos and Breaking Bad and, for me, the Wire makes those shows seem like Scooby-Doo.

http://i.imgur.com/ROE59nS.jpg

On some days I prefer sopranos. But breaking bad is def a tier below the others

plains - you blew my mind. wow.

Did not catch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRQ72iHV40

pp did you watch this yet? it's a must:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX1Du7d4gTU

I did! Saw it upthread.

very curious that just after some renewed conversation about the wire and remembering how deeply people hated the journalism aspects of s5 for their supposed implausibility (and, to be fair, other more understandable reasons), brian williams has been revealed as a less egregious version of scott templeton