"The Wire" on HBO

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

the most unrealistic thing in this series were Daniels' abs.

I haven't seen it in years. Time for a re-up?

We watched with subtitles (sometimes) because H's first language is not English, so the slang on top of that was tough for her. I grew up in DC and actually recognized some overlap in the slang, and I knew maryland folks who had similar accents to some of the baltimore accents.

I was able to follow the show well enough without subtitles the first time I watched it, but turning them on the re-watch did help clarify a lot of stuff. There's a lot of cop/drug dealer/city council/shipyard jargon in there.

think there's some specific dc slang in s2 when stringer reaches out to *spoiler*

lol i step away for a minute and the thread goes nuts.

"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

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, April 13, 2016

it's totally that i just didn't want to, you know, ruin it for anyone who was watching for the first time. it's handier than you think!

the most unrealistic thing in this series were Daniels' abs.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 13, 2016

i used to see lance riddick running runyon canyon in LA. i can assure you the abs are true to life.

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

'Indecipherable' I think is not the issue, the issue is 'watching it with one finger hovering over the rewind button', which throws you (some(me)) out far more than the subtitles.

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!

― sarahell, Wednesday, 13 April 2016 19:27 (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, I found Mad Men kind of boring, but in an interesting way. As, I think it was JBR, said on Facebook a while back 'it's not afraid to be boring', which I agree with, and I think that's why it works so well. It was slow-paced but each episode revealed more about itself and it became one of the best shows I've ever seen. Wire, I'm not convinced quite yet... I'm only half way through S2 though and MM took a good while to get going as well. There are quite a few barriers with Wire that I didn't really get with MM or BB or what have you.

Evidently I lack the capacity to understand the Baltimore accent - a problem with me, not a problem with the show. But even watching along with subtitles, half the time I'm thinking 'how does what just came out of that guy's mouth link up with what he was supposed to be saying?'. There is a ton of jargon and slang, and when it's half mumbled as it often is, I'm totally lost.
Agree with whoever said the cops are the hardest to understand. So much jargon, and referring to off-screen characters - 'Who's he talking about? Who's Mclody? Who's Punt? What are they talking about NOW?!'

The huge ensemble is another stumbling block for me. Even by the end of S1, I didn't really feel like I knew much about any of the characters. With few exceptions, these felt like empty vessels filling the role of cop or drug dealer. There hasn't been a lot of time invested on any one specific character for an emotional connection to be formed. So when McNulty's putting up a cabin bed or Kima's partner's stressing about her workload, I find it hard to care. I get that this adds to the realism. When you start a new job, you don't know the back story of all your co-workers. It can take months, years even to get to know who everyone is and what they're like and their nuances. But I'm watching this show for fun, you know? Trying to understand the complex hierarchies within the police department and the relationships the different characters have to each other can feel like a lot of work that I'm not necessarily up for.

Again, it's still early days and now I'm more involved in S2, things seem to be warming up ever so slightly to it. But yeah, it feels like something I have to put myself through in order to see if I warm up to it rather than something that's instantly grabbing me like with other shows. It's too easy for me to get distracted halfway through an episode and to forget where I was. Once I get into it, it does get involving but I'd say it's the opposite of absorbing. If it were a book, it would be the kind of book where I find myself reading about a page or two a night cos I keep having to go back and parse sentences.

So when McNulty's putting up a cabin bed ... I find it hard to care.

Have you considered you may be a monster, just asking.

How did you feel about Wallace?

It was a while ago that I watched S1, but I remember he was one of the more sympathetic characters.

half the time I'm thinking 'how does what just came out of that guy's mouth link up with what he was supposed to be saying?'.

if the subtitles aren't even matching the actual dialogue, you might be better off listening and getting the actual colloquial vibe of the characters, rather than reading an abbreviated translation and complaining that it's unsatisfying

Remembered hearing Trainspotting was, but apparently it was only partially redubbed.

I seem to remember the conversation leading up to the "football/shopping" line was subtitled when I first saw it.

if the subtitles aren't even matching the actual dialogue, you might be better off listening and getting the actual colloquial vibe of the characters, rather than reading an abbreviated translation and complaining that it's unsatisfying

― glandular lansbury (sic), Thursday, 14 April 2016 10:32 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no the subtitles are fine. it's just i know that if i didn't have the subtitles on, i wouldn't be able to tell that this is what they said. my tv has got shit sound too, so there's that.

Trying to understand the complex hierarchies within the police department and the relationships the different characters have to each other can feel like a lot of work that I'm not necessarily up for.

Not that complex, surely? The police chiefs have their own way of doing things that focuses on producing statistics that can be sold to the press and everyone in the organisation has to deal with this reality. Some chafe against it but are professional about it and do the best they can within those limitations (Daniels, Bunk) and some buy into the system wholeheartedly either through ambition (Rawls) or stupidity (Herc).

McNulty bucks the system completely and does his own thing in the name of what he considers to be "proper" police work. This mightily pisses everyone off but they don't do much about it because he's the best detective on the force. All of this is pretty evident within the first, like, five episodes? It's not rocket science.

i had to look up who three of those characters were just now, so no.

Okay, close it up folks, nothing to see here.

At least I hope he recognized the bunk