"The Wire" on HBO

While I'm at it, "self-destructive alcolholic" shouldn't really equal dude who has sex all the time and occasionally turns up to work with a mild hangover. There was the time he crashed his car, which seemed promising, but it just resulted in a cafe waitress adding herself to the menu cos barely conscious bleeding McNulty was just too damn tasty.

I'm cool with mcnulty as a character up til his S5 storyline (despite some of its highlights cf the profiler scene), he's probably the most likable of the premium cable fuckups bc he's just a dude with a chip on his shoulder about the system pushing people around as opposed to a charismatic and amoral antihero. His comedy bits are pretty good imo and on the flip side a scene like his confrontation with d'angelo's mom was pretty powerful. Always liked the progression of his relationship w/bodie too.

imo we're seeing the world through McNulty's eyes in the beginning and as the show returns to him in the final season, you realize he's this fuck-up who almost made life work and then completely goes back off the rails in stupendous fashion

the waitress scene in season one is kind of eye-rollingly bad, but I like to think we saw it through his drunk vision. the waitress, if anyone else had seen her, wouldn't vaguely resemble the actress they cast

That's a good way to look at it. Especially considering in the ensuing sex scene he apparently has no problem keeping it up, which is a little unrealistic.

smdh

hmm i think the whole scene where McNulty crashes his car a couple times/gets a bite to eat/has sex was sort of a very effective (and funny!) nutshell encapsulation of his character: a total fuckup, thanks to his own efforts and despite knowing better, and yet he somehow manages to get lucky anyway.

Thinking Season 2 must be through the eyes of Nick Sobotka then.

Favorite bit in Season 5 is Gus watching Carcetti fire Burrell on TV and ad-libbing his internal monologue - "He feared and hated me and I merely wanted him dead."

smdh

― passé aggresif (darraghmac), Saturday, September 23, 2017 7:26 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

effective defense against ED tbh

not sure why drunk fuck ups having a lot of sex is so vexing....or am i

Especially considering in the ensuing sex scene he apparently has no problem keeping it up, which is a little unrealistic.

yeah, totally shitfaced people never fuck irl

I wasn't really moaning about the behaviour of an amoral character, because they can be entertaining in the context of a tv series. Just a lazily + badly written one, played by a 3rd rate actor is what doesn't work for me.

https://media.tenor.com/images/361f76ab7e8c3e64872a0621758a733e/tenor.gif

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/reg-cathey-%E2%80%98house-of-cards%E2%80%99-and-%E2%80%98the-wire%E2%80%99-actor-dies-at-59/ar-BBIWauj

: O

He came close to getting the Lester role before Peters got it.

heard this is a good show, started watching it, halfway through S1 and it's really great!

ten years old this week, decent article in guardian

im up to s3 taking my time and its the best tv show of all time into

decent article is by an ilx0r

ten years dead, not ten years old

rip

tbfttm i read it on irishtimes which didnt credit

I am curious if this show will impress more than Oz, but I doubt it

there is much less male nudity in The Wire

Oz is more emotionally brutal and has way more male nudity and gay sex. I love both shows.

Okay I haven’t seen Oz, and now I’m scared to.

Oz is fine but basically a penis-heavy soap opera. Wire is epic.

No need to be frightened of a few dongs now andrew

Oh yeah I should probably have clarified that I’m scared because Season 3 of the Wire is the my benchmark for emotional brutality.

Oz is fine but basically a penis-heavy soap opera.

no, it's kinda the opposite ... the soap opera elements and other "lighter touches" (e.g. musical numbers, theatrical narration) are there to make the socio-political issues at the core of the show easier to watch/engage with

in terms of emotional brutality, Oz is closer to Walking Dead, where all of the characters experience serious personal trauma at some point in the show, and Walking Dead is a speculative fiction about zombies.

Oz characters experienced some intensely brutal and degrading stuff but nothing on Oz was nearly as devastating as, say, the ultimate fates of a couple of the younger characters on the Wire.

nothing on Oz was nearly as devastating as, say, the ultimate fates of a couple of the younger characters on the Wire

it sounds like you just didn't really empathize with the characters in Oz.

I think it's fair to say that I empathized less with the characters on Oz than I did the characters on The Wire. The former characters didn't feel quite as fully rendered to me.

The regular characters were at least as fully rendered as the main characters on The Wire, some more so, I felt like. I can see someone not wanting to empathize with them because at one point they did something horrible (and since they have been in prison, they have done other horrible things), unlike the kids in the Wire who were victims of their circumstances ... but I feel like saying they weren't "fully rendered" seems odd to me. Especially, in comparison to the Wire, which is more about how systems work, and less about people.

TBF, I've seen The Wire twice through but never finished the last season or two of Oz. It's entirely possible the characters were ultimately more fleshed out than I recall.

TBF part 2, The Wire (and a number of shows since) had well-rounded characters who did awful things but still elicited sympathy/empathy so I can say that's not the issue.

I felt like the Aryan Nazis in Oz were as fleshed out as most of the characters in the Wire, but I didn't have much empathy for the Nazis, but characters like Beecher, Alvarez, Maria (the doctor), Saeed, Cyril, Bob, Sister Peter Marie, the priest, Mr. White who just keeps fucking up ... the list goes on.

Oz was a dumb and bad show

oh, and of course, Augustus Hill the narrator ... idk, the production techniques of the two shows were pretty different - like Oz had that late 90s staginess/awkwardness as it was kinda at the beginning of the "era" -- it was somewhat similar to this UK show I watched recently that was made around then (late 90s, pre-Wire), "Supply and Demand" that had Eamonn Walker in it, and it had some of that awkwardness too. And I can definitely see how the awkwardness can create a barrier to empathizing with the characters (it did for me to some extent).

Oz was a dumb and bad show

― Louis Jägermeister (jim in vancouver), Monday, March 12, 2018 2:10 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was a dumb and bad opinion

Oz was more about the characters than the plot to a fault, imo

yeah well so is life mannn

The characters on Oz was less fully realized because we basically only saw them in a very dehumanizing environment. When I think of heartbreaking scenes with Wallace, I think of the scene where he plays with his toy while on watch out, or where he has to get all the other kids to school. There's nothing like that on Oz, because prison is exactly about removing people from those kinds of things.

**SEASON 1 SPOILERS LOL**

welp, made it 10 episodes into this show before my first ugly cry (first Kima getting shot and then really hard when Carver went to go tell her girlfriend). Also was very very sad about Wallace :( :( :( Season 1 was great and the first episode of S2 was.... not terrible but just really off, like it feels like a totally different show. Everyone and their mother has told me this so it's m/l what I expected going in.

Yeah, prepare yourself for a mild POV reboot every season.

Season 2 is the biggest shift, but it's a classic in its own way.

Also was very very sad about Wallace :( :( :(

in that case, brace yourself for season four my dude

Is season 4 the one with Zombie Wallace?

Season 2 is the reason The Wire is The Wire, I think. Season 1 ended much more definitively than most other seasons, with McNulty on the boat and the group disbanded, so they had to really lay the groundwork for the show running five seasons in season 2. It is kinda offputting, but I think the reason many other shows go off the rails after great first seasons is because they try to cut corners with their long term investments.

Season 2 is the reason The Wire is The Wire

otm

I don't know why the only thing I specifically recall as a development during season 2 is the drama surrounding Valchek's stained glass windows.

Oh, wait, shit, season 2 was Ziggy, wasn't it. I clearly need to rewatch this thing for a third time.