"The Wire" on HBO

(fwiw my go-to "greatest show of all-time" answer is usually the Twilight Zone)

Were those aliens really cannibals? I mean, the screen goes to black before you see them eat anyone.

cannibalism is not addressed in "To Serve Man"

The fact that the cops don't shoot any suspects is normally one of the things people like about the show, it's not as if murdering suspected criminals normally turn the audience against the cops. Look at Justified.

Justified is more like a western than a cop show

cannibalism is not addressed in "To Serve Man"

Ah, so you did just blindly take it on face value that those were really aliens.

i suppose the reason why this retconned discussion is frustrating imo is not that criticizing the wire is an unforgivable act (it ain't perfect at all! no show is!), but that trying to paint a show that took major capitalist and political city institutions to task in brutal fashion as Not Quite Critically Liberal Enough is a sure sign we are thoroughly entrenched in the thinkpieceification-of-everything era and we're never ever getting out :/

there's no getting out
sopranos.gif

lol

Ah, so you did just blindly take it on face value that those were really aliens.

well the tv said it was true so

there are plenty of legit criticisms of the wire and shakey mo has not articulated any of them

legit criticism - "you want it to be one way but it's the other way" isn't half as good a line as fans seem to think it is

in retrospect I'm disappointed that Steve Earle didn't play the same character in Treme as The Wire - and any future Simon projects.

there's a huge difference between holding the wire up to some weird imagined ideal standard of a "truthful show" -- of course it can't be truthful, it's a show -- and seeing it for what it is. the weird defensiveness over it isn't like over the quality of entertainment it produced, but over acknowledging that the "message" (and it did have one, or a few) wasn't necessarily as earth-shaking as ppl like to pretend.

altho i will grant that in that time, a major "important" thing coming out directly for legalization felt like a sort of big deal, and probably did end up having some minor knock-on consequences in terms of what's happened since.

acknowledging that the "message" (and it did have one, or a few) wasn't necessarily as earth-shaking as ppl like to pretend

― entry-level umami (mild bleu cheese vibes) (s.clover), Tuesday, May 5, 2015 6:34 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it shook my earth fwiw

a list of my complaints about this show as articulated to-date in this thread (a primer):

1) The way the show handled female characters. The women on this show are relegated to supporting roles and in almost every case are under- and/or just badly written.
2) totally pointless and gratuitous sex scenes
3) the "forget it Jake, it's Chinatown" nihilism re: institutions
4) the constant didactic hammering home of point 3 (w/copious montages in case viewers were having trouble drawing connections on their own)
5) jarring juxtaposition of an essentially fantastic character (Omar) in an otherwise relentlessly "realistic" show
6) cops are generally portrayed in a more favorable light than I find credible

anyway, off to watch last week's episode of Mad Men (which is way better than the Wire nyah nyah)

xp

the message in and of itself was not necessarily earth shaking but using that format as a delivery system was certainly a landmark. no other tv show aside from OZ (and in a less substantive way the shield) covered this ground in any way - homicide couldn't quite get there bc it was on a network although it was pretty great. obviously OZ did it in a different specific venue but covering similar themes of institutional and bureaucratic failure. can we learn about these sociopolitical issues in other more traditional mediums like print? of course, but it's great that mediums like fictionalized TV started to address them, and the wire (and the corner) are both huge parts of that.

xp I mean the only author that portrays cops in a way that seems like it would make sense to you given what you've said would be james ellroy where they are almost exclusively complete monsters, and hey, I like james ellroy so that's aight

I like some Ellroy. in general yeah I don't like cop shows.

I like Cops though. that's a great show.

The Shield. But there are still plenty of people who think that guy was a hero. I think like it's impossible to portray war horrific enough, it's almost impossible not to make working as a cop seem exciting and heroic.

Brooklyn 911 manages

lol Brooklyn 99 damn u autocorrect

3) the "forget it Jake, it's Chinatown" nihilism re: institutions
4) the constant didactic hammering home of point 3 (w/copious montages in case viewers were having trouble drawing connections on their own)

it's not forget it jake nihilism though, there's a lot of frustration about working within broken institutions but the ultimate takeaway isn't cynical

2) totally pointless and gratuitous sex scenes

anyway, off to watch last week's episode of Mad Men (which is way better than the Wire nyah nyah)

pointless and gratuitous sex scenes: something that is clearly not an issue of every prestige tv show including the ones beloved by the person offering this criticism, yea this is just a prob of the wire

getting mad at gratuitous sex in prestige tv is like saying salt is salty

Before loading this 5000 post thread, is this latest 100+ post revive due to Shakey Having Opinions

Shakey and Dave Zirin

to be fair I like/love most of the shows typically touted as worthy of the GREATEST SHOW EVER mantle especially mad men and that one may indeed be the best in a lot of ways...anyhoo getting cranky about unnecessary sex scenes (scenes that are not legitimately offensive or don't prove anything about a character at all) in this age of television is a fool's errand verging on old-man-yells-at-cloud shit

xxp it's mostly that. but not entirely.

I dont need to see boobs in tv showz if it doesnt have anything to do w the story. Boobs are everywhere these days! If its just extraneous bullshit, dont waste my time.

I'm not a 12yo and it's not 1985.

nicky's girlfriend's boobs invalidate any complaints against boobs

so all those times at the (redacted) club in the (redacted) and the burlesque club/various comparable if not literal examples in (redacted) men really were integral to the plot every single time

I mean not for nothing but does matt weiner cut you checks to rep for shows he was partially or entirely involved with where is yr "becker was ahead of its time" hot take

you literally cannot make that criticism against one show and stan for others with the same issue it don't work like that

what's even more ridiculous about doing that is all these shows are good and the things that are criticizable about them are all unique!

http://i.imgur.com/6oNOUsd.jpg

sex scenes were lol, I'm cool w/ the trashiness, gives the show some levity

re:
so all those times at the (redacted) club in the (redacted) and the burlesque club/various comparable if not literal examples in (redacted) men really were integral to the plot every single time

well like I said 6 years ago (ayiyi)

nudity /= sex scene imo. Even so, Tony "worked" at a strip club. Because strip clubs are common fronts for criminal enterprises. And since the world of the mafia is deeply sexist, what better way to play that up than to have the casual exploitation of young women as a perpetual backdrop.

do you even know how to watch television

― Blanket McCulkin (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, September 8, 2009 2:11 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for a show where the exploitation and victimization of women is a running theme, it made narrative sense to have that stuff included. it made sense in terms of that being the milieu those characters operated in, and it reflected the power dynamics that were central to the show.

all the sex stuff/nudity I can recall in the Wire is by contrast pretty unnecessary - it doesn't tell us anything about the characters, it doesn't impact the story, it isn't central to the plot or within the context of the action, it's just "Daniels is RIPPED here is a shot of his ass while he sexes his wife" or "Sobotka's gf is totally hot let's have some boobs why not"

tbf i was not here that long ago sir

thats a totally reasonable arg. for that show, and i have generally agreed with most criticisms of women on the wire being underwritten but as for the sex scenes themselves they did generally seem to align with how you'd expect the men involved in them to behave - they are generally some sort of sexist if not always virulently so and that makes perfect sense given their professions

which is of course bad all things being equal! but sadly it made sense imo.

the sex scenes are sometimes essential for characterization i.e. mcnulty's pathetic drunken diner waitress experience

anyway idk what kind of bullshit puritan objection to the show this is anyway, oh no they had sex scenes?

It's America, man.

It's not the sex, it's the pointlessness. I don't like filler

Saying that Sopranos critiques the misogynistic mafia culture is having your cake and eating it too, because it's almost certainly meant to titillate as well.

idk I found p much every sex scene involving Tony (or one his henchmen) fucking to be gross and ugly rather than titillating but ymmv

nudity at the Bing is kind of a different thing but I hardly think it's an unrealistic depiction of a strip club, nor was it unrealistic for gangsters to be there. I find most of those scenes sad and pathetic rather than titillating but hey that's strip clubs