"The Wire" on HBO

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WHAT ABOUT PIMLICO

(i just like saying PIMLICO)

― cutty, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah maybe it is more Highlandtown, I've only heard about them second-hand.

haven't read the Wire book, but I definitely want to. in the middle of Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets right now.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 23:42 (seventeen years ago) link

regarding season 2: the dude i met from the cast told me that pretty much every one of the actors agrees that s2 was a big screw-up. cue drudge sirens!

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 03:04 (seventeen years ago) link

I dunno if I'd put too much stock in the opinion of a group of actors who lost a bunch of screen-time in that season.

― C0L1N B..., Thursday, 22 March 2007 03:27 (seventeen years ago) link

well, there was also the totally unrealistic magical reunion of the detail on the s2 case. i mean.. the stuff about the greeks and the dockworkers was important i just think they should've found another way to make a case out of it.. also spent more time on d'angelo, stringer, avon.. especially d'angelo, i miss him. and less time on ziggy, who is like about 20 kids i knew in college and hope to never cross paths with again..

― daria-g, Thursday, 22 March 2007 03:33 (seventeen years ago) link

The reunion was obviously a little contrived, but they at least managed to do it in a way that fit the bosses' logic.

― C0L1N B..., Thursday, 22 March 2007 03:40 (seventeen years ago) link

the homicide book is great. i think they mention the hit song that summer being "it takes two" which is funny in regards to b-more club

i liked s2 but it might as well have been its own show or a spinoff. maybe they'll find a way to tie it back in with s5

― am0n, Thursday, 22 March 2007 14:36 (seventeen years ago) link

that chapter w/ "it takes two," with the prison riot and everything, is incredible
i love that book.

― deej, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah I need to pick up The Corner at some point too.

― Alex in SF, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Be sure you have your antidepressant scrips all filled up when you do.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

s2 seemed like it lacked focus. the whole introduction to the major criminal case was so contrived. i mean, a little church rivalry? get the fuck out of here. even if it doesn't seem forced, you have to admit that it's not nearly as intriguing as what we were used to be in s1. then, like said above, the detail's reunion is just absurd script writing magic. and the whole season switches between so many different stories, feeling the need to still have something move with stringer, avon, etc, although not focus on it, that there's not much that happens in any one of the plot lines. what's even weirder is by the time the detail is finally arranged and it's time to investigate the case, there's what, 3 episodes left? the majority of the case work is done in a fast-forward montage of clips with music playing since the writers realized they didn't actually have time for any of that anymore.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link

i think it's OK. and i loved the church rivalry thing. that is totally the way some horrible things get set in motion, they start with dumb childish grudges and move through one upmanship to something more serious. or less serious. the main thing i didn't like about s2 is that i just didn't want to spend that much time with ziggy and his perpetually pissed-off brother. characters in tv shows are like people that you're spending time with instead of spending time with actual friends and those two just didn't do it for me.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I dunno, I liked the stained glass church window catalyst, it seemed like the kind of random thing that could actually happen (albeit more plausible a few decades ago when more of the police dept. brass were Catholic from European immigrant family types and the community was more church-based). I need to re-watch that season sometime but the way the old major crimes unit came back together in it didn't strike me as any more contrived or unlikely than a lot of other minor details in the show that bug me more than they should.

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:55 (seventeen years ago) link

the wire is all about the dumb and childish or seemingly insignificant reasons that set horrible things in motion, though.

― lauren, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link

haha xpost, what Tracer said. Maybe some of this kind of thing is in the Alvarez book, but I think the one thing I'd be most interested to ask Simon or Burns or any of the other Wire writers if I ever interviewed them or something, is about the biggest continuity errors and plot contrivances that they've pulled off or regret not catching until it was too late. A show like that, where there's so much attention to detail to make its universe feel real and lived-in, I think it'd be pretty interesting to know what they've screwed up.

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 22 March 2007 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link

but yeah, s2 does feel caught by its affection for all of the characters and storylines. it's pulled in a bunch of different directions and seems to want to devote equal time to everything, and things end up being a bit confused.

― lauren, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:00 (seventeen years ago) link

I really like season 2's expansiveness--not that the other seasons are myopic in their focus or anything, but season 2 just tries so hard to pull so much in and to me it mostly works.

― Alex in SF, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm always kinda surprised that that's one of the stock complaints about Season 2, but not Season 4, where that seemed, to me, to be as much or more of a problem. Maybe it was just that the schoolkids were more popular new characters to introduce than the dockworkers, but I felt like as well as S4 pulled together all the divergent strands, it could've been done better. There were a couple episodes at a time where I was left wondering what happened to a character or if their storyline would be continued at all.

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link

The only season that's really focused is the first one actually.

― Alex in SF, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:08 (seventeen years ago) link

i didn't feel that way at all. i thought that in general s4 was an example of expansiveness done right.

― lauren, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Ziggy hate makes no sense to me at all. The Sobatkas in general just kill me. Nicky's "you're white, I'm white" speech to Frog? Man...

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:18 (seventeen years ago) link

i like the perpetually pissed off brother, but how is anyone going to like ziggy?

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:22 (seventeen years ago) link

A show like that, where there's so much attention to detail to make its universe feel real and lived-in, I think it'd be pretty interesting to know what they've screwed up.

Alex in Baltimore on Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:58 AM (20 minutes ago)

i could be wrong about this, i'd have to re-watch, but... my friend who i'm watching this show with always jokes about how the dude i met in the show, the black cop whose name i can't remember, just kind of disappears for long stretches of time and then randomly pops back up. "what's up guys, how's this case going? oh, jump on some roof? word." i'm pretty sure when the studio magic of the detail reunion happens and everyone is sitting in one room together, he's not there at all - he's been completely forgotten. then later in the season he's magically back on the case doing stuff. haha

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:23 (seventeen years ago) link

i don't 'like' ziggy but i don't like plenty of characters
i do KNOW ziggy tho, or have known people like him, which is why he resonates.

― deej, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:23 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, and he's insufferable

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I think Ziggy is an unloved element of S2 because his character is depressingly realistic, but not in the same way as, say, the destitute and drug-addicted characters. Not so much tragic as annoying. Like the person upthread who said they don't like because he's "like about 20 kids i knew in college and hope to never cross paths with again."

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

COLLEGE KIDS AIN'T SHIT

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

but i know what you mean

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

that's sydnor. he gets pissed off about being forgotten and given lowly tasks, though.

― lauren, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

many xposts

also, isn't the pissed off brother actually the pissed off cousin? nicky and ziggy's fathers are brothers.

― lauren, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:26 (seventeen years ago) link

yep, cousin. yep, sydnor.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

it is his cousin... i just looked that up, actually, because it didn't sound right. :)

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:30 (seventeen years ago) link

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:34 (seventeen years ago) link

speaking of dee: is it just me, or is it that when we are first introduced to him he seems like far more of a retard than he actually is? "huh huh, that was tight, yo, that was tight how you got that security lady to testify. haw hawwww tight yo hawww." contrast that to the chess scene.

I'd have to re-watch it, but it doesn't seem like a strech, those are to totally different contexts and of course he's going to act diffrently with Avon than with Bodie and Wallace. If I recally correctly, Dee does the same sort of mumbly, akward thing at the lunch with Weebay and some of the crew-chiefs a little later in the season.

― C0L1N B..., Thursday, 22 March 2007 16:57 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, dee tries to come off smarter than he is most of the time with bodie etc. Remember him lying about shooting the girl through the window.

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:01 (seventeen years ago) link

tru, tru, u right

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:08 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeh, I'm not saying I want a friend like Ziggy or anything like that. I'm saying watching him hurtle inevitably toward self destruction is compelling TV.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link

one thing about the wire that makes me love it so much is that i find it all really believable. not in any way to compare my experience with anybody in the show's, but it all just seems very credible to me. remember the letter trick that buck and the other cops pulled on dee after the witness shooting? fbi did the same thing to me. when they raided me, before i had access to any lawyers, they convinced me that my best chance is to write an on-the-spot letter to (ironically) mcn4ulty, the doj bureaucrat prosecuting my case, and plead for sympathy, explain the reasons for my crime, etc. i fell for it too. i am such a fucking douche.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:32 (seventeen years ago) link

That letter thing is straight out of Homocide IIRC.

― Alex in SF, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:37 (seventeen years ago) link

heh heh yeah, sorry mickey. it's good you can have that perspective on it. if there's one thing i learned from the homicide book it is if you are in trouble, DO NOT SAY A WORD TO THE COPS, EVER. it is very very hard to prove cases with no cooperation from the defendant.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:39 (seventeen years ago) link

sigh, no kidding.

but point is, stuff in the movie seems really believable. lines from the probation office (forgot where this came in the series, but i noticed when it happened) are the same lines i had p.o. read to me, the stuff feds say, way they act, etc, is same as what i've seen, all the little hoppers act just like the hoppers i grew up around, etc. i think it's rare to find a tv show so believable.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:41 (seventeen years ago) link

this girl told me they were filming tonight at dougherty's pub so i went to see what was what but they already had the place closed off so i couldn't be an extra {Ò_Ó}. i took some crappy far away cellphone pics of some guy that might have been ed burns

― am0n, Friday, 23 March 2007 01:41 (seventeen years ago) link

thereis a lot of great stuff in series two and it's got to be one of the more audacious moves in serial cop shows ever, to reorient so drastically. i wish they ccould have found a way of keeping some of the dock people in, but maybe they will return. don't forget that season brought in method man and the east side in general. prop joe is in s02 more than s03.

― That one guy that quit, Friday, 23 March 2007 09:40 (seventeen years ago) link

The other day when I was leaving work I saw a couple big trailer type things next to my parking garage and thought nothing of it. Supposedly it was a hair and make-up trailer for The Wire, though, so I guess they're shooting in Mount Vernon right now. I dunno if Jess is on this thread but he works on the same block, maybe he can verify. I'm definitely gonna loiter a little if I see any more trailers, though.

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 23 March 2007 12:49 (seventeen years ago) link

this girl told me they were filming tonight at dougherty's pub

Is this the pub they always go to for a funeral?

*POSSIBLE SPOILER*

Season 2 is great, especially on repeat viewings. I'm not sure there is anybody left from the port story, aside from Beattie and Stavros/the Greek that can come back. The Sobotka storyline seemed more of an isolated incident, at least as far as the extent to which he was involved in a major crime racket. At any rate, it did an excellent job of expanding the city itself, at least for those of us who have never been to Baltimore (which sounds really glamorous at the moment, with all this talk of spotting the film crew).

― Gukbe, Friday, 23 March 2007 12:58 (seventeen years ago) link

i was totally coming here this morning to say that i wandered into a wire shoot last night! i was leaving work around 12:30, noticed a ton of tractor trailers along reed street, rounded the corner to park ave. and there they were. (i wasn't 100% sure until i spotted david simon, that lovable leprechaun.) perhaps season five will feature a subplot with drug money being run through the deli where i get my lunch every day.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 23 March 2007 13:15 (seventeen years ago) link

haha Piccadeli's? it's like Chris Rock's bit about Krispy Kremes, if you told me their Italian coldcut had crack in it, I would be like "I knew something was up."

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 23 March 2007 13:32 (seventeen years ago) link

their french fries will be the death of me yet

― strongohulkington, Friday, 23 March 2007 13:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Is this the pub they always go to for a funeral?

no i think that might actually be the sidebar made up to look "irish", judging from the outside shots of them puking in the street

― am0n, Friday, 23 March 2007 14:17 (seventeen years ago) link

lol @ scene of marlo in brewer's art in season 3

― am0n, Friday, 23 March 2007 14:20 (seventeen years ago) link

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