"The Wire" on HBO

But given that this is a show primarily about drug dealers and homicide detectives (those are the only groups that have been studied from s1 through 5), those worlds perhaps are not the most gender-balanced to begin with.

unlike the mafia, which is chockfull of chicks amirite

we've had this argument before...

do you even know how to watch television

ooooooh new thread!

unlike the mafia, which is chockfull of chicks amirite

I haven't watched that show much, so I am making no such claims about it.

I went to college and studied television watching, thank you very much.

I thought most of the sex scenes in The Wire were there for a reason, fwiw.

Shakey doesn't think so, and he knows how to watch television.

can someone please start a new thread for this so it doesn't have to go here?

lol, do you even know how to watch television? Fuck you Rapey Mo. You're talking about things being there for titillation purposes or because nudity is ok on HBO when there are what, a handful of sex scenes in the Wire over the 5 seasons? Do you know how to count?

Sex in the Wire and The Sopranos trolling goes in here

actually, I agree with Shakey re: sex on the Wire

Me too.

I agree that the inclusion of some of the sex scenes were probably in some way advertisements for HBO's ability to show them, but I think the gratuitousness and tawdriness of them -- which almost all involve McNulty -- actually work in service of the plot/his characterization. His drunken conquests are kinda pathetic. To me, they served as a critique of the stereotypical great white hero cop that is such a stock character in television and film.

Not about y'all not knowing how to watch TV, just about the general weakness of the female characters and the unnecessariness of most of the sex scenes.

I actually didn't feel that the female characters in the Wire are weak ... they do have less screen time, there are fewer of them ...but I don't think their characters are any weaker than most of the men.

Keema's far from weak. Pearlman's weaker but that's only because she's a mid-ranking character - like, say, Carver.

they're certainly less flattering - most of them are either shrews (Daniels' wife, McNulty's wife, Kima's wife) or monsters (Barksdale's mom, Namond's mom). Lawyer lady doesn't get a lot to do. Most sympathetic woman on the show is actually probably the dock cop from Season 2 that McNulty ends up with

x-post

considering most of the male characters are either dumbasses or monsters?

daniel's wife isn't a shrew she's an ambitious woman who put her aspirations on the hold until she saw cedric wasn't gonna make the big moves she expected him to, now she's taking the reigns & is working on becoming a power player. she has nothing in common with mcnutty or kima's wives, open yr eyes & watch tv right shakey mo.

McNulty's wife struck me as a fairly normal woman; Kima's girl Cheryl was more pouty/passive-aggressive than shrewish.

"they're certainly less flattering"

I don't agree with this assessment at all. As sarahel points out the male characters are not exactly shining beacons of morality. The weakness of the female characters has more to do with their relative lack of screentime than it does any flaw in characters.

I think maybe it says more about Shakey Mo that he sees so many female characters as shrews.

jon OTM

Worrying about how sympathetic and/or complexly portrayed every single character is and whether or not that has something to do with the gender, race or cultural background of that character is a pretty terrible way to watch television, imo.

aka what happened to the Mad Men thread a few weeks ago

Kima's girl Cheryl was more pouty/passive-aggressive than shrewish.

I thought her issues with Kima were pretty justified!

The weakness of the female characters has more to do with their relative lack of screentime than it does any flaw in characters.

yeah I think this is right. I agree, the male characters are not shining beacons of anything either, but since they're on-screen more they do get more opportunities to show their redeeming qualities. This doesn't happen with most of the women, who are largely there to provide a counterpoint to whatever male is on-screen, and then quickly abandoned when that role is no longer required.

Me too. And McNulty's wife is super-sympathetic! He's an overgrown child, fer crying out loud.

I thought her issues with Kima were pretty justified!

she married a cop, what did she expect apart from macho posturing and an inability to empathize

as far as McNulty's wife goes, the show went out of its way to portray as being really harsh to him, even when he was making an obvious effort to be a good father and/or get back in her good graces.

I think maybe it says more about Shakey Mo that he sees so many female characters as shrews.

oh fuck off. Point me to a scene where Daniels' wife, McNulty's wife, or Keema's wife are not shown nagging their significant others.

B-b-b-but the show makes it painfully clear that he's tried to get back in her good graces before and then completely fucked her over again and again.

Shakey has posted far more than most of the women on this thread and yet I don't feel like he's taken the opportunity to show his redeeming qualities very often.

Brianna Barksdale isn't a monster, just extremely self-interested, self-deceiving and beholden to the mythologies of the lifestyle that comes with drug dealing, i.e. McNutty's stingy barbs wouldn't have affected her the way they did if she wasn't at heart a typical mom.

I've also reached the last disc of the fourth season, but I am not feeling it much at all. Maybe because I realize that all the warm hopiness that made this season so arresting the first time is actually really shallow and wispy, and I can't emotionally invest with it.

Taking the Kima/Cheryl relationship outside of the show's main thrust, it sure seemed like a dysfunctional relationship. It was pretty clear that Kima didn't really want a kid, and was only going along with it to make Cheryl happy, which tends to not work out well, but is a situation where both parties are at fault.

Shakey - he repeatedly cheated on her and lied to her - I don't think she was being overly harsh. He was being unrealistic about how easy it would be to patch up that relationship.

Also, I kind of get tired of Sonja Sohn's acting tics -- she goes with her exasperated sigh waaay too often not to bug.

Brianna Barksdale isn't a monster, just extremely self-interested, self-deceiving and beholden to the mythologies of the lifestyle that comes with drug dealing,

she sends her son to jail out of selfishness and greed. that's pretty monstrous imo.

on the other hand, she's probably pretty aware that were he to become an informant, he would likely get killed.

as opposed to being in jail, which is a totally safe environment

seriously when did daniels' wife nag, they had a clintonesque agreement & he reneged & is now doing his penance which he seemed totally a-ok with despite residual sadness of y'know a marriage breaking up

xp Shakey - it was made clear that he had protection from Avon while in jail.

since she's pretty much disappeared after mid-Season 3, mostly what I remember is from Season 1 and 2 where she continually pushed him to get ahead in the department. they're relationship wasn't as strained as Keema and Cheryl's but it didn't seem particularly loving to me

it was made clear that he had protection from Avon while in jail.

lolz yeah that worked out real well

basically she put her son's life in the hands of murderous, unscrupulous people, so that she could be a rich mother-hen in the background - putting all the risk on him and none of it on her, while she reaped the benefits.

anyway i mostly agree with shakey on details yet am not sympathetic to his argument cause very little of this is pertinent to the main thrust of the show, i mean, i ended up fast forwarding all the kima/cheryl scenes after awhile & missed nothing important that i could tell

xp - I'm sure Avon and Brianna were totally thinking, "Hey, our trusted business partner is totally gonna betray us and kill a member of our own family."

i dunno shakey, the show is careful to set it up so the "monstrousness" is built into the system -- asking her son to do his duty so the whole organization doesn't collapse, it looks virtuous within that, is the point. d'angelo (the angel! fuxake!) still has a residual real moral sense.

most of the show is about "falling on your sword" in the service of preserving the status quo.

most of the show is about "falling on your sword" in the service of preserving the status quo.

Holy shit, so true.

does the watch/mobile phone mms code make any sense?

the show is careful to set it up so the "monstrousness" is built into the system

most of the show is about "falling on your sword" in the service of preserving the status quo.

yeah these are both true, and it is great writing that showcases the characters' ambiguity against this backdrop... even so, I have problems with the whole resignation/"forget it Jake, its Chinatown" POV and am still inclined to hold characters' actions against them when a) they're motivations are highly questionable and self-serving and b) the resulting suffering is too horrible to be acceptable. This show is very, very bleak and in a way defies the viewer to judge its characters by constantly shifting the blame away from any given individual and instead onto the institution or system they find themselves in. I have issues with this. Institutions are built by people, run by individuals - for them to function and not become total nightmares, lines have to be drawn and people need to be held accountable. Otherwise you end up with... Baltimore (or Chinatown lolz)

Forget it Shakey, this is America.

heh