"It's essentially a six hour lecture on zoning regulations" - David Simon's Show Me A Hero

Two episodes every Sunday for the next three weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyD4U8nd4ho

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-oscar-isaac-shines-in-david-simons-show-me-a-hero/

HBO also has two new Simon series in the pipeline, one of em starts shooting in October

Now they just need to give Milch another go (again)

the next one has Franco playing twins...

can't wait!

grantland had an extremely positive review today

Oh I thought this was that Paul Haggis thing and summarily dismissed it.

he directed it

Oh. I'm torn.

Unlike Simon’s last two projects, Show Me a Hero is as entertaining as it is powerful.

Oh gtfo, Generation Kill was amazing.

looks dope

Treme had some amazing highs

not sure abt this, i do like zoning regs but….

Oh. I'm torn.

― :wq (Leee), Thursday, August 13, 2015 5:20 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf the problems in most paul haggis projects have little or nothing to do with the technical acumen of the direction - something tells me simon didn't exactly let him contribute script notes

about to fire up the first one of these

I really enjoyed it. Interesting, engaging, funny.

i like it thus far. understated direction, writing is as sharp as one would expect from simon (and william zorzi, who wrote all of the wire's political storylines) if not as enamored of creative profanity

oscar isaac is already tremendous

I LOL'd at "I don't recommend it."

Was put off by the nytimes review, but watched about 20 mins last night, not bad at all, understated, good performances.

I think I spoke too soon...vacuous Springsteen montage, then Winona Ryder shows up, then descent into young love cliche

I'll watch the rest but I couldn't shake the feeling that the first 2 hrs could easily have been rolled into 1.

Simon's shows can't be as fucking pretentious as his interviews, right?

I like this so far. It feels very textbook Simon but not to the point of being tired. I do feel a little like the first two episodes get repetitive -- look at all these angry white people hating affordable housing! look how mad they are! they're so mad! MAAAAAAAD!

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

Isaac is great and so are some of the other councilmen.

I have to say the show-stealer for me might be Alfred Molina as councilman Spallone.

i like this but goddamn it's hard to watch those city council meetings with the foaming-at-the-mouth townspeople. it reminds me of the meeting about school desegregation in suburban St. Louis on this american life a couple weeks ago. this country is kind of the worst.

I think I spoke too soon...vacuous Springsteen montage, then Winona Ryder shows up, then descent into young love cliche

― calstars, Monday, August 17, 2015 10:25 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would watch a whole show of nothing but springsteen montages fwiw. p sure wacisko is under some kind of court order where he can only listen to bruce springsteen btw.

I like this so far. It feels very textbook Simon but not to the point of being tired. I do feel a little like the first two episodes get repetitive -- look at all these angry white people hating affordable housing! look how mad they are! they're so mad! MAAAAAAAD!

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

Isaac is great and so are some of the other councilmen.
--five six and (man alive)

uhhhhh I grew up around people like the average yonkers citizen and even a generation later they had/have slightly softer version of the same opinions

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, August 18, 2015 12:28 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure this is exactly true; it's more like their scenes are there to illustrate the struggle, so they're not really actors in the way other characters get to be. which is a fair reason to critique the show. also to counter all those scenes where white racists are yelling about who "we" are, illustrating there's a Yonkers that goes politically unrepresented and is basically invisible to the power structure.

i didn't even recognize Catherine Keener at first

uhhhhh I grew up around people like the average yonkers citizen and even a generation later they had/have slightly softer version of the same opinions

― slothroprhymes, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 10:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah yonkers is basically buffalo afaict. also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation. she opined that whites in nyc, chicago, wherever would likely react the same way. i think she's probably right.

so if present-day white yonkers residents have a softer version of the opinions represented on the show, they have the luxury of doing so because our country has basically given up on upholding the 14th amendment in housing.

the dominican mother crying when the cab came to take her back to new york + leave her kids destroyed me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeq9_bKsy0k

holy shit i'm only a few minutes in but that is a BONKERS video.

They really nailed the look for the Jon Bernthal guy.

i watched ep 1 & 2 last night, really dig this

plus yonkers citizenry not too far removed from my country town, my mum would flip her shit like catherine jeener i just know it

oscar isaac + brooce = lurrrrrve

*keener

yea that vid is insane for both like good and bad reasons that it exists & was on tv

horseshoe can have my allocation of springsteen montages, im good

president of the yonkers NAACP:
the class of people who are just, forgotten about, should have the right to live where they want to-

host: -IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT!!! *CROWD ROARS* why should the taxpayers - yes - why should the taxpayers - why in the name of god should the taxpayers go out and acquire expensive property? alright, to build low-income housing, to generally - and i'm not going generalize, generally, take the neighborhood in the first few years, panic it, and send it running? alright. i say move them into the rich neighborhoods"

i was raised in northern jersey so a distressing amount of the people at those meeting scenes are representations of people I'm all too familiar with

"also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation."

lower middle class/working class whites vs affluent whites

that video is amazing, managed to make it 10 minutes in before losing most of my will to live

srsly, why springsteen. why???

i mean, at least they picked dark-ish springsteen songs, i'm fine with those. and hey, coulda been way worse, like mellencamp or some shit

i don't understand are people critiquing "hungry heart" AS A SONG? that is nonsense.

if you're critiquing the sentimentality/laziness of tv montages, that's fair, but send them to me. it's true that they're best employed sparingly--i always enjoyed the big end-of-season musical montage on the wire.

dunno if i can face this. simon comes across as a total moron and the wire has aged badly in my mind. treme was dire and all his characters are ciphers and stereotypes for his few basic views about "decline".

you are not going to like this

that's all i need to never watch it.

thank you!

haha you're welcome! i want to berate you for your views on simon but they seem fair. i don't think he comes off like a moron in interviews, but he does come off like a dick

my husband met simon in the aftermath of the baltimore uprising this past year. they were both out cleaning up in one of the affected neighborhoods. he says he's nice in person. also that he started yelling at some random police officer who was doing his job wrong in a way that seemed unnecessarily surveilling of the people who lived in the neighborhood. this is a thing i value about simon, the way he nerds out about public service jobs and tries to hold people accountable when they fuck them up. the journalist in him i guess. it's also the jerk in him.

yeah maybe dick is more the word. i just hate the kind of macho persona and all this "difficult men" fanboy shit that fed into it.

super satisfying on the ground david simon anecdote!

TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation. she opined that whites in nyc, chicago, wherever would likely react the same way. i think she's probably right.

this is otm i think, in a kind of close to home way. i feel like the speech usually reflected this, also - that most of the comments were prefaced by some kind of limp acknowledgement of a broader duty to commit to reform, only when it didn't directly affect their kids' education.

i am only on ep. 1 of this BUT also while it is the case should mention that the awful crash guy isn't doing anything wrong at all

yeah i was really mad when i found out haggis was the director like simon, how could you let this happen but he clearly does not have a say in the writing, otherwise all the scenes of the project-dwellers would involve them being reciprocally racist toward white people and the overarching message would be "see, we're all a little racist" and it would be totally apolitical and terrible.

i think the direction is fine. i'm not really smart about that stuff.

also ever since the scientology article in the new yorker (haven't read the book yet) i've felt really bad for haggis.

It's too bad more people didn't stick w/ Treme past the ehhh 1st season, season 3 in particular was almost Wire-level good (albeit in a totally different way)

mind you I don't really get why people itt dislike Simon, what's the specific grievance?

i'm trying to rewatch treme right now. i gave up during the first season when it was actually airing. it's better than i remembered it being, even though i'm only in the first season.

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

i don't think people hate bruce to be fair (i mean, if they do, we will fight) i think it just reads as lazy/overkill to have two springsteen montages in the first episode. again i must clarify that i would watch a tv show that was nothing but montage with hungry heart playing on a loop.

i like how the show so far captures the impossible bind of desegregation efforts, because for it to work in practice, it's really necessary to change "hearts and minds" and how on earth do you do that? every time the yonkers whites are bellowing in the meetings, i imagine what wacisko would have to do to explain why building low-income housing in white and black neighborhoods is the only way to honor the principle of equality (saying "we have to follow the law" seems inadequate) and it would just require a lot of calm and rational discourse, which is clearly an impossibility in that setting. i personally have always inclined to antiracist activism that ignores changing people's minds because it seems exhausting and unrewarding and also fuck those people frankly, why does changing a horribly unjust system have to happen on their terms. but desegregation really does, and it's maddening.

i know i keep pimping them but the this american life episodes are really good on this, too.

xpost the David Morse police corruption storyline in season 3 of Treme was as harrowing as any Wire police side plot, and pretty prescient considering contemporary events.

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 20, 2015 11:25 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha otm

the kind of macho persona and all this "difficult men" fanboy shit that fed into it.

never really thought of simon as macho simply for writing about social institutions full of macho personalities (police, drug crews, political structures, the marine corps). that said, i do agree with the distaste for difficult man fanboy bullshit that became tied to certain segments of wire fandom (and sopranos/breaking bad/mad men/insert prestige show here fandom)

i will def check out the TAL episodes

and maaaaaybe I will finally revisit Treme. I quit on it pretty early

Treme benefits from being able to binge, I think - I only lasted a few episodes week to week but since it's more character based than plot based being able to watch people develop in relatively quick succession helps a lot.

you could honestly just start w. s2 and not lose out on too much

Steve Zahn is so fucking annoying in Treme, he is almost unbearable in every scene.

never really thought of simon as macho simply for writing about social institutions full of macho personalities (police, drug crews, political structures, the marine corps). that said, i do agree with the distaste for difficult man fanboy bullshit that became tied to certain segments of wire fandom (and sopranos/breaking bad/mad men/insert prestige show here fandom)

i guess i feel his writing even about these institutions is a studied form of overly erudite machismo. and that feeds into the fanboy stuff. i guess i can't imagine breaking bad fans or mad men fans being annoying in the same way as hardcore wire fans, even though i'm sure there are awful people everywhere.

would def say that's true of a segment of BB fans - consider the huge swell of online hatred for the skyler white character. prob not so much mad men, aside from finance/accounts bros who view don draper's behavior as an etiquette manual

i see more what you're saying tho re: simon by characterizing it as a hypereducated/literary/erudite brand of macho

segue: did people like winona in this? i thought she was pretty good!

in the uk i feel like i've heard white middle class men do omar impressions far too often for comfort. i guess that's not quite simon's fault, but that character is completely ludicrous.

um plenty of mad men fans are insufferable please

i've never heard anyone quote mad men. is there any notable quote? i mean besides "yowzah!" and "i am the secret man who drinks at work"

i think i'm just referring to people who seem to want to live in the era depicted, have mad men costume parties, whatever. i don't really get that show, also, so i'm being mean.

winona is fine so far but she kind of takes me out of the show because she's winona ryder, you know?

Yeah direct quotes aren't the only way to be an annoying fan.

her meltdown at the bar was a good cautionary tale moment, i thought. don't become a politician, kids!

xxp i see what youre saying but she has the look of a harried politician down imo

i think i'm just referring to people who seem to want to live in the era depicted, have mad men costume parties, whatever. i don't really get that show, also, so i'm being mean.

― horseshoe, Thursday, August 20, 2015 2:33 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i find this hugely annoying too, and i'm a pretty big fan of that show. the era fetishization literally misses the entire point of what it's saying about the time period (as does viewing draper as anything but a trainwreck cautionary tale)

yeah i didn't recognize her at first, either. i am enjoying the 80s-i-fication and also the dowd-ification of everyone's look.

xp

Yeah direct quotes aren't the only way to be an annoying fan.

for sure - they feel more prevalent though than someone's private parties or whatever.

Steve Zahn is so fucking annoying in Treme, he is almost unbearable in every scene.

great depiction of an annoying guy imo

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 20, 2015 11:25 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Warren Zevon

Steve Earle is sooooo much worse than the Boss, you guys are aiming at the wrong target

uhhhhh I grew up around people like the average yonkers citizen and even a generation later they had/have slightly softer version of the same opinions

― slothroprhymes, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 10:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah yonkers is basically buffalo afaict. also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation. she opined that whites in nyc, chicago, wherever would likely react the same way. i think she's probably right.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 9:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That may be true, but OTOH I went to an integrated middle school in DC where the white parents were mostly ok with it? I mean maybe by that time it had been integrated long enough that you knew what you were getting already when you bought a house in the neighborhood and there was nothing to "fight." And I did have a couple of friends whose parents decided they were dissatisfied after the first year and sent them to (super expensive) private schools instead. It occurs to me that those kids didn't go to better colleges or wind up with better careers than the rest of us, in fact they both went to kind of mediocre private lib arts schools.

And OTOOH, I watched parents this year in my NYC neighborhood freak the fuck out as they discovered their kindergartners were waitlisted and that they were being assigned to schools in Jamaica and the like, and honestly we freaked the fuck out about it too (our daugher is three but we have hoped she would attend the neighborhood school). Of course just sending a handful of white and asian kids to a struggling school in a poor black neighborhood is not really the kind of integration that has proven to be beneficial the way the TAL reporter described.

tell me about your integrated middle school! how did that happen?

"...malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, any of the -feasance family!"

um, I'm not sure what the history of it is? I grew up in DC which was a majority black city at the time but also had majority-white enclaves. I lived in one, although there were still several black families within a block of me. My elementary school was mostly white, although the teachers were almost all black, just a function of the demographics of the city I guess. The elementary school fed into a middle school that was larger and drew from a wider area, and it was in a majority white neighborhood, and I think the school was around 40% black with a significant number of those kids bussed in from other parts of town, although certainly a substantial minority of them coming from the neighborhood. So there was clearly some deliberate integration going on or you wouldn't have the bussing.

The school had a black principal who was into running a tight ship when it came to student discipline, and like I said there weren't really major issues at the school beyond playground fights. I remember a single time when someone brought a weapon to school and a single time when cops came to the school and it was rumored that a big quantity of drugs were found in a student locker, but I'd imagine almost any public middle school in the country could have something like that happen once or twice in three years.

As I said, my impression is that the school had already been integrated for a while, so any parents buying in the neighborhood already knew what to expect. Some got cold feet after a year, most didn't. And private school was so insanely expensive in DC that even a lot of affluent professional parents couldn't really have afforded it anyway.

four episodes in, this is something truly remarkable imo. but i'm bracing myself for a brutal fuckin ending

this still feels overextended as hell to me. keener's subplot embarrassingly pat.

As a six-hour lecture, it's wildly successful. Dramatically, it's pretty unsubtle.

every time Bernthal appears on screen I shouted "SHAAAAAANE!"

he's really good playing the polar opposite of shane!

I can't help hearing this title to the tune of "Can I Borrow a Feeling"

I am fond of him shane or anti-shane

he takes overacting to a level I didn't think possible.

Did you watch that footage of the real Sussman upthread? He's dead-on!

he overacts on the walking dead and in fury (which he's still good in)...what he's doing here isn't overacting like at all

isaac & molina are so good in this

i liked these pts 3/4 more than 1/2, more bureaucratic that's my vibe

everyone who missed it go watch hbo miniseries olive kitteridge - cholodenko, jenkins, mcdormand etc btw

first impression: i wish this was more like this thread title makes it out to be, a six-hour lecture on zoning regulations. i watched the first episode and every time he wanted to show that politicians were arguing they would all just shout over each other incomprehensibly, shot of oscar isaac looking unsure of what to do, someone bangs gavel... like ok

you can watch local public access if you're after the acual 6 hour zoning meetings

i really like this, even with some of the hammier elements.

molina as spallone too, damn what a shitlord that character is. molina kills it

also sidebar: marvelling at how oscar isaac can wear the ugliest clothes with the worst hair & mustache & still be 100% eyes-turned-into-hearts

I feel like the hair/makeup/costumes in this are a little bit school playish, can't quite put my finger on why.

Keener is by far the most obvious victim there

I think this is wonderful, but it'd be great if even just one of the residents were a fraction as developed as the politicians. Or maybe they could have cut a few of the residents to consolidate screen time and give the others beefier storylines? The 47-year-old woman with eye problems aside, they all come across more like wet blankets than real people in need

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8Q7xbQSDU

there were like 57 springsteen montages in eps 3 and 4! "secret garden" was an odd choice.

i also wish the project residents were given more depth, but this

The 47-year-old woman with eye problems aside, they all come across more like wet blankets than real people in need

― Evan R, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 12:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does not seem true to me. for one thing i kind of hate the teenage girl who got pregnant and then her boyfriend got arrested. she's a p fucking realistic teenager afaic.

also the dominican mom running onto the plane chute thingy to greet her kids!

yeah i kinda like the ppl

i also really love that they're all women. contrasts with all the white men in the council chambers deciding their fates

for one thing i kind of hate the teenage girl who got pregnant and then her boyfriend got arrested. she's a p fucking realistic teenager afaic.

yea i like this plotline

did you guys catch Namond from the Wire as the bored caseworker for the crack mom? took me a minute

i really like that character, even though the crack turn felt a bit paint by numbers. but her relationship with her boyfriend before he died was so cute & real, and that scene with her dad buying her groceries was so sad

OMG YES NAMOND! i had a really intense i know that kid reaction to that actor's face and then when i realized it was namond i kind of flipped the fuck out. wire season four kids, man. i feel like they're real.

yeah the junkie mom storyline is heartbreaking. i get really vocal when she's onscreen, like call your dad! or the scene when he finds the drugs at her house i was yelling, "take her with you!"

also i liked the scene between the dominican mom and her boss's wife

yeah dominican mom gets to me, such a rough life

and she looks like coco from fame <3

finally got to ep 3 and def think it's getting better

goddamnit I knew right away it was a bad idea to leak the poll numbers!

I was psyched to hear a snatch of Rollin With Kid n Play in one of the project scenes

kid w/ poodle lady scene was v nice

so sad. Nay is the cutest

y'all spot Orlando from the wire?

I feel like aside from actors there has kinda been some wire fan bait in this show -- the pager in the opening sequence, and then "re-up" and "fucked up the count" turning up early in the first ep. I don't know if that's some kind of hackneyed, meta statement about the game not changing from place to place and time to time, but it's dumb.

...i think the pager is bc its the 80s and the slang is because that slang (maybe not reup specifically but definitely "the count") is bc its the 80s

Lotta hackneyed dialogue in the final two. Felt especially lecture-y. Still liked the series overall, but my wife and I were giving each other "we get it" looks all through the episode.

i havent read the book, but i get the impression that the story a book is able to tell--the level of detail and digression and backstory--makes for a much richer experience than the condensed, yes rather lecture-y but even worse sorta dramatically inert, narrative television show that this became.

I don't like Paul Haggis but I also think the story just doesn't make great drama without a lot of license being taken, and I do think they do a good job of trying to stick to a fair and factual retelling of what happened. The project character narratives get a little more interesting than they start out, but still have a b-level TV movie feel to them. Telling the story of a housing ordinance is kind of a novel idea, but telling the story of the struggles of certain poor and working class people as a mere vehicle for showing what the purpose of the housing was is kind of flat. Immigrant mother not sure whether it's better here or back in DR, daughter from good parents struggling with drug addiction to disappointment of dad, etc., all stories told many times, not that they can't be told richly, like any one of the characters could be the subject of a well-done movie, but here they don't develop too far beyond being types.

I enjoy the way each successive mayor gets elected by promising the same thing and then gets voted out for failing to deliver the same promised thing (I haven't watched the end yet, but Spallone was also a one-term mayor for the same reason as his predecessors).

this was outstanding

I watched pt 5 last night, will finish pt 6 tonight

Guys, I know it's a bit heavy handed & corny in places but I love this. I loved the lottery and the bus ride to see the new houses & just...idk....these pencil sketches of people's lives, it's really moving

When the crack mom starts her first tenant's meeting with her dream of daycare and the young woman goes in hard about her drain being clogged and she just dies a little on the spot...it was so small but it just felt so true & real

and the blind woman "look what you've done with your meddling"

these pencil sketches of people's lives, it's really moving

otm

finished it yday...ultimately think it's pretty great, possibly the best non-wire david simon project altho neck and neck w/ generation kill for that honor

VG idk if you know historically what the ending is but if not, steel yrself its rough

(i didnt know bc i was six weeks to six years old during the 87-93 time span of this series, deliberately avoided wikipedia-ing)

i already knew going in :(

9/11 happens at the end

unorthodox rezoning technique

it's what happens when the liberals win, truly tragic

thats what reagan warned us about isnt it, shit

Also Omar shows up, and then dies.

Then Longo has several councilmen killed off, dissolves the municipal government, and crowns himself emperor, presiding over 30 years of darkness.

nulty faked the whole thing

this is still sitting on my dvr but there was a good men in blazers w/ simon this week

great final ep but ughhhhhhh so sad

wasicsko's sobbing breakdown :/

i thought for a moment they wouldnt show it but then

i cried for 20 solid minutes

yeah it was rough :(

Slayed me.

can we get Oscar an Emmy plz thx

i hadnt really thought about it til now but those hallucinations of nick's dad leaning against the tree made him look kinda distant & disapproving...even though nick clearly idolized him maybe that was the empty hole that he was trying to fill with votes/approval etc

i am still really sad about nick waciscko

this show ruined my life, basically

otm

this thread is now for holding hands quietly staring out a window & sighing

*sigh*

i turned to my husband this morning and was like, "i'm so sad about nick waciscko" and he was like, "still?" he has no soul.

oscar isaac is really something

and he really did kill himself in the cemetery, i thought it was maybe a dramatic element but ughhhhhh

so sad

http://i.lv3.hbo.com/assets/images/series/show-me-a-hero/homepage/2015/august/150824-ep04-nick-outside-1024.jpg

;_;

I think an emmy nom has to be a given for isaac

lonely guy just thinking baout hings

isaac will def get an emmy nom

holy shit I've been trying to figure out all this time who his gf reminded me of, and I just realized it's Janet from Three's Company

lol not bad, she does have that relatable look & actually like this girl ive been hanging out w/ a lot recently

i wonder now if im going to see janet from threes co. in this gal friend hm idk

she is v easy on the eyes

4 shur

i kinda fell in love with her shoulderpads after a while

imma miss these people

She and Isaac both of course look much prettier out of their late 80s Yonkers getups.

oscar is the most attractive man in the galaxy

I always like hearing that because, like me, he is a modest 5'9" in stature.

so I'm not disqualified from being galaxy-class attractive

i normally adhere to a pretty strict "you must be this tall to ride" policy but he is so pretty I've waived the height requirement

godDAMN he is lovely

well geez I was just speaking generally, not asking for a waiver :p

um i only waved the height requirement for him :p

the "brick by brick" documentary is on vimeo fyi

http://www.brick-by-brick.com/hbo.html

I kind of like the people in that trailer better than the analogous characters in the miniseries

just finished this. fuck.

just finished this, really enjoyed it. agree with general criticism I'm reading re: tonal ambivalence w/r/t wasicsko. the dramatization didn't portray him as much more committed to the cause than news coverage at time of his death did ("He wasn't pro-desegregation, he was pro-compliance" etc. etc.), so establishing him as the titular hero felt both unsatisfying as it fit in the narrative itself and factually questionable. skimmed upthread before watching, expected the final tragedy to be really awful, neighbors burning down townhouses or something. by part 5, I was pretty disillusioned with his character and annoyed with the extent to which the dramatization seemed to be more than half-heartedly promoting his retconned self-importance.

that said, pretty turned off by criticism that conflates the above with how the show handled his suicide. (thinking in particular an Atlantic crit's condescension toward wasicsko because he read the suicide to be brought on by a sense of entitlement that the real world didn't provide. though this may be as much the show's failing as one of interpretation, given the extent to which it seemed to leverage his suicide toward lionization, complete with eulogical send-off to put a bow on the story.) frankly, thought it was one of the most real illustrations of suicide i've seen -- the slow evaporation of self-worth, the withdrawal from and alienation of friends and loved ones, the distorted view of a collapsing world that really wasn't collapsing at all -- that in light of part 6 makes parts 3-5 deeply painful in a way very few things succeed at demonstrating. (especially impressed at this from Simon, who in the Wire -- and elsewhere here -- struck me as more interested in predictable characters as parts of a system, however sympathetic they might be, than as unpredictable and unknowable humans.) the point is that it doesn't make sense, and the sadness is as much in the nihilism as it is in the tragedy of a life ended too soon; to get into a measuring contest of whether wasicsko had it easier than other characters, as Mock at the Atlantic does, completely misses that point. of course we as viewers found him frustrating and overreacting and entitled as he slipped farther and farther out of reach -- so did the other characters in the show, who too reacted with frustration and annoyance rather than empathy before they realized what was ahead. extremely well-executed, if somewhat tonally clunky next to the wonky housing stuff; would be pleased if Simon continues to work at more seamlessly blending the personal and the structural going forward.

I have been thinking about Wasiscko & the title... a lot of comments have been "well he's a pretty crummy hero"

The title isn't meant to imply that he IS a hero, or the hero. It could as easily be the tenants or mary ...there are no perfect "Heroes" here, like in life

And Simon even said that the quote "Show me a hero & I'll write you a tragedy" is talking about how heroes don't exist in the real world, that the truth of their lives is often more difficult & nuanced

i was so starved for more i watched all the behind the scenes clips ondemand

i feel bereft

Still sad about this. Great show though.

Kinda curious about Zaleski and Restiano. They're both still alive, and it seems like their reputations could get a bum deal out of this, that might not be especially warranted.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

watched episodes 4-6 last night.

oof.

The title isn't meant to imply that he IS a hero, or the hero. It could as easily be the tenants or mary ...there are no perfect "Heroes" here, like in life

otm

one possibly stupid question - the pager going off with 911-911-911 - is it meant to be clear what that's referring to? is it just supposed to mean that she knew he was in trouble and was desperately trying to reach him?

(I mean, yes i realize it's pager shorthand for "emergency, call back immediately", but what emergency? his life is in shambles and she's worried about him emergency, or something else?)

he's kinda like McNulty but with depression

wow, yeah

The whole time I couldn't help but think I was watching the guy from New Girl doing Adam Scott's part from Parks & Rec.

...

I guess I'm not the only one

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5486/05/original/820.jpg

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/show-me-a-hero-review-part-3-and-part-4.html

i love parks & rec but that's a stretch for me

Whoa I haven't seen this but Ive stayed at the Desmond Hotel. It's a real place in Albany. And a pretty wacky one, too.

So glad I didn't read up on Waciscko before watching last two eps. Just devastating.

Also: watched this whole thing w/o realizing that was Wynona Ryder!

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/28/wire-david-simon-interview-american-politics-show-me-a-hero

“What was required in Yonkers was to ask: ‘Are we all in this together or are we not all in this together?’ Is there a society or is there no society, because if there is no society, well, that’s the approach that says ‘Fuck ’em, I got mine’. And Yonkers coincides with the rise of ‘Fuck ’em I got mine’ in America.

“That’s the notion that the markets will solve everything. Leave me alone. I want maximum liberty, I want maximum freedom. Those words have such power in America. On the other hand ‘responsibility’ or ‘society’ or ‘community’ are words that are increasingly held in disfavour in the United States. And that’s a recipe for cooking up a second-rate society, one that does not engage with the notion of collective responsibility. We’re only as good a society as how we treat those who are most vulnerable and nobody’s more vulnerable than our poor. To be poor is not a crime, except in America.”

This is remarkably ahistorical - I would have thought Simon would know better than to think the Reagan era introduced selfishness as a main ingredient of American political activity - but watching the series with these ideas in mind seems to make it more intense. It also, unfortunately, means I tend to not give much of a crap about the vignettes, except as sort of exercises in storytelling craft (this is also a problem with Haggis directing, I think - he's just really ham-handed, my god).

At a certain point the furious, inexhaustible rage that Simon has against what he sees as the unstoppable decline of our country starts to wear you down. I know what happens, we're heading into ep 6 tonight, and I will be surprised if I'm much affected other than an incremental increase in my resolve to never own a gun. Will report back later.

The "white people listen to The Boss, brown people listen to Tribe" thing is also ridiculously OTT. Give it a rest.

Just finished Episode 5, really moving, even though some aspects of this show seem hackneyed.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

Just finished this - I had the impression that Vinni was lying with this phonecall? Purposefully trying to fuck with Nick and Nay? And I thought the scene where Nay asked him about it during the vote count and he had no idea what she was talking about and she realised Vinni was lying was really well-handled.

Overall I loved this. It took a few episodes for the families in housing to feel real and not sketched out, and I thought the pacing was strange in places, but by the last half of the series it definitely worked. And Nick doesn't come off as any hero, really - why should he? He had no burning desire to make the integration happen when he got elected, he only backed it when it was clear how catastrophic avoiding it would be, and his later attempts to claim credit for the housing showed that his ego was bruised and he was a pretty selfish and damaged guy, albeit a mostly likeable one who did the right thing when it was necessary (and didn't realise that that would be catastrophic for his career in politics).