"The Wire" on HBO

I find the idea of him destroying the people around him a more credible organizing principle (or whatever) than with McNulty

but the thing is, as people have pointed out upthread, it really isn't the organizing principle of the show.

if these shows were "realistic" they would be really boring

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:11 AM (14 minutes ago)

I shudder to think at how even more boring Mad Men would be if it were realistic!

McNulty's "I know I can deal with this situation" nature is pretty well spelled out when he keeps drunkenly driving his car around the corner to hit the bridge

McNulty isn't that central

The protestations of his being an asshole so far aren't much more than half hearted work bitchings

If you speak English and watch this with subtitles then you prob are going to not enjoy it anyway

no idea what that's supposed to mean. i'm sure the show is still perfectly good with subtitles.

Bunk's reaction when he gets a copy of the Greek guy's texts - one of the biggest laughs I had watching the series.

can't begin to calculate the mileage i've got out of Stringer's big zing from the first meeting of the New Day Co-Op

can u remind me or link to vid roger

I speak English, put the English subtitles on, watch and listen, all at the same time. Sometimes, just for an extra challenge, I wave my right hand in the air.

I thought McNulty's best dramatic scene in the first season was visiting Kima in the hospital.

"is you taking notes on a criminal fuckin conspiracy?" is probably too specific to be what roger's been getting mileage out of (tho i don't know his life) but i wanted to post it anyway

i was gonna say it's the thing he says to tank about taking minutes on the meeting (bc he's been reading robert's rules of order) but that's in the s3 premiere, which predates the co-op's existence

ha! jinx xp

but the thing is, as people have pointed out upthread, it really isn't the organizing principle of the show.

Maybe not, but in the first season, a) Bunk says that to McNulty, b) Rawls says it to him, c) I think Pearlman says it to him, and d) he clearly believes that himself. I suppose I've overstated it--half the story is the other side, and McNulty's nothing to them--but it is a theme that's verbalized by a few different characters.

wait it is the first co-op episode (s3 e5). shit. also shamrock is the one reading robert's rules not tank

it's been a while since i've watched

ep 1 always felt to me like we were picking the story up in the middle of proceedings (cold open always helps with that). I mean yeah, McNulty shit stirring is the starting point of everything but the McNulty = fuck spiel always felt like direct allusions to stuff that happened before we met the characters and not a thematic statement.

wire is plenty funny. prop joe-pat riley is in season 1 isn't it? and prop joe telling omar where avon is to be found "he's not having the best of days is he?"

i probably said this somewhere upthread a few years back, but what I took from that "theme" is that it was a critique of the crusading cop as "great white hope" -- in that McNulty is the sole cop character who fits the profile of the hero cop from most television shows prior to The Wire -- and he is damaged goods, an asshole, and can't really save the day.

However, Season 1 does have the most stereotypical characterizations of the cop characters. It does "get better" in later seasons.

all of mcnulty's characteristics "fit" in the usual M.O. of a central character from a cable TV show, but his womanizing and carousing and self-destructiveness are not really seen as part of a larger spiritual quest, which is what happens with a lot of these others shows.

p much every word out of prop joe's mouth is gold eg his phone call 'voices'

also shamrock is the one reading robert's rules not tank

iirc stringer has imposed robert's on them; what shamrock or whoever it is has done is get too enthusiastic about it and not think about which elements will be actually useful to a cabal of drug dealers and which won't

funny moment cuz the apparatus of new day (and the uneasy west/east peace it represents) is so much the product of string's yearning for legitimacy and order, and usually he gets pushback on this from avon and others who think it's deluded, but in this case his pragmatism makes him the one in the room who has to remind his newly roberts-enthused lieutenant that they are still drug dealers -- the line builds stringer's character as Smart while also quietly undercutting his vision for the future

this is dr. sidney handjerker trying to reach thomas hauk xp

lol i totally forgot about those, prop joe is the best.

on the dvds the actor robert chew did commentary for one season 4 episode along with the kids who play dukie/namond/mike/randy and does impersonations of half the cast, it's hysterical. (also totally forgot he died & that just bummed me the fuck out)

I shudder to think at how even more boring Mad Men would be if it were realistic!

OMG thank u.

man i didn't know robert chew died, a little devastated to hear that

yeah, 2013. heart attack at 52.

all of mcnulty's characteristics "fit" in the usual M.O. of a central character from a cable TV show, but his womanizing and carousing and self-destructiveness are not really seen as part of a larger spiritual quest

i think his shacking up with beadie is the clincher for this - there's no big drama around it, he's basically just like huh whaddaya know domestic happiness iirc - but it also gets undercut/confused by the final season bullshit, without which his domestication would have put the idea of questing to rest. not that the final season bullshit seriously gestures in that direction, it just makes it less coherent that he's NOT a spiritual-questing detective/person.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/used-subtitles-to-watch-the-wire-the-writer-says-thats-just-criminal-1773087.html

http://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/cache/db/d5/dbd57bcbb3fff7245025a39061012200.png

A Daily Mail critic, meanwhile, observed the "mumbled patois of the Baltimore dealers", adding: "Most people I know – and these are people in their mid 30s – prefer to watch The Wire with the subtitles switched on."

That's just silly.

a lot of people watch everything with subtitles. idk i find it impossible cuz i can't stop reading the subtitles and it tends to obliterate the performances. i also watch everything w giant headphones tho, partly because i am surrounded by tiny, extremely loud frogs, so i sympathize w audio problems. but as for the slang, yeah, yr obv supposed to pick it up. (idk how subtitles are supposed to help w the slang. i was disappointed that independent article's guide wasn't a grunge-style joke.)

i turn on subtitles for a lot of britishes media

frogs, dlh?

Alternative would be to dub the voices with proper English?

"proper"

dlh works at a French daycare

"Oi, McNulty, tell us where you don't want to end up, guv."

i use subtitles as much as possible because i have bad hearing. my gf does it too but i'm not really sure why. i guess people just don't want to miss dialog!

Accents and language are so weird. If i don't hear one for a while it takes me a while to get into it and have to listen carefully. If I haven't heard one before, there's a learning curve. I think the received British accent that people in India use is oddly one of the most understandable.

Reminds me of some dude from France I briefly met in Quebec who claimed he'd have people repeat things to him in English because "Quebec doesn't really speak French"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coqu%C3%AD

Watched season one and half season two so far after starting it last week. It's hilarious and perfect.

I'm not as a rule a fuiud type but I may try a fuiud on for size for this.

Yaaaaay!

people from France are always horrified by the Quebecois accent/dialect. It's mildly perturbing to an English speaker even

more than mildly perturbing when youre being berated by an angry metro worker for not speaking english

English French obv

"proper"

The Wire dubbed in crisp, articulated, Nebraska-bred mid-century broadcast-school English.

Seems like you would have had to actively avoid a wide swath of culture for the past few decades for the wire to be indecipherable

was just reading around to see if I could find any English language films that were subtitled in the US. Remembered hearing Trainspotting was, but apparently it was only partially redubbed. As was Gregory's Girl. And the original Mad Max

Re mcnulty as white anti-hope, this theme is set up even in the first ep when he's drunk in his car, then hears some kind of distress, runs out and slips down the hill. When he's crusading he's sometimes doing the right thing but often just being a special snowflake and a bit of an asshole.

i use subtitles as much as possible because i have bad hearing.

It really is as simple as that. You're over-analyzing this.

A couple of things I really liked from the first season: 1) The formulation, repeated two or three times, that if you follow the drugs you find drug dealers and more drugs, but if you follow the money you never know where you'll end up; 2) The way D'Angelo's mom is brought in as a kind of hidden hand right near the end--expect she'll be more prominent in season 2.

Sunny teases me because I watch "The Young Ones" with the subtitles turned on.

― Pleasant Plains, Monday, June 20, 2011 9:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink