"The Wire" on HBO

It's in a social situation. Watch closely.

people in the smart phone era miss a LOT when watching t.v. and movies. that's all i'll say. drives me up a wall at home.

^^^ hands down #1 source of agonizing oh god i am my dad feelings

yeah i dont know of any model-looking 8% body fat aggressive go-getter zingy dudes who are successful with the opposite sex nope sirree bob those guys strike out every time

tho vg is correct in that there should be a season or two of everyones actual comportment in viewable rentable format before you have to decide whether or not to bone them

mcnulty is totally hot to me in a caveman way but i'm not a woman. when he's really really drunk though i don't have any idea why anyone would go near him and women totally do in the show and they never seem anywhere near as drunk as him.

clay davis

sheeeeit

i totally had a crush on mcnulty's ex-wife on the wire and when watching i completely forgot that she had been on homicide and that i had a crush on her back then too. my love is true.

i haven't watched homicide since it was on. i never missed an episode.

she looks a bit like annabella sciorra imo
i like her

Just finished S3 and daaaaaamn R.I.P. Hampsterdam

"she looks a bit like annabella sciorra imo"

the love of my life, so, it makes sense...

wait, don't tell my wife i said that. wait, she is well aware of all my fictional crushes.

there aren't that many really. annabella. rosario. you know, the usual.

i'm like 1/4 of the way thru season 4

lol @ the students calling Prez "Prezbo"
i LOVE Snoop
Marlo isn't doing anything crazy yet but tensions are mounting and its making me nervous
still hate Landsman

Season 4 is a heartbreaker, for reasons you can probably sense.

season four will turn your face into a heart
(and stomp on it)

yeah the second Marlo started handing out hundreds of dollars to dumb kid I was like "NOT GOOD NOT GOOD RED FLAG THIS WILL NOT END WELL"

And then Season 5 is like Johnny Rotten sneering "did you ever have the feeling...you'd been cheated?" or whatever he said

no one tell me anything about season 5!!!!

you wouldn't believe us if we did

Season 4 is my fav theme song so far, followed by 1, 3, and 2 very far in the distance

respect

I like the original Tom Waits original but understand people not appreciating him because he’s way into his shtick

season four’s version is unjustly maligned but really fits the direction in an honest way

it’s maligned???

also yeah as someone who’s never listened to Tom Waits it sounds like a really absurd parody of what I imagine Tom Waits to be like

it makes more sense in the context of frank's wild years

i got so good at skipping ahead to the weekly quote. the waits thing was unbearable to me.

The Neville Brothers version (s3) is by far the best. I love the JESUS!!! and the trashy sounding cowbell.

otm

never noticed how egregiously performative Clay Davis is during his court testimonial in the last season, which is the same as his dialogue in every other season

his intonation and accent are nothing like his actual base, he has some wild speechifying thing that isn't just grandiose, it sounds like he's doing some arch-black leader thing the whole time. jeeeeeezuuuuus

There's a lot of shitty acting through the whole thing tbh

I don't think I could really rate it much above LOST, and that isn't a compliment, much as I love LOST

hmm mh could be describing johnny cochran

I don't think it was shitty acting, I think his character was doing the state rep does black savior voice plus sheeeeeiiit

I have no judgment re: cochran but I'm definitely not able to make that judgment

Tbh his sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiit was a highlight of any episode he was in

I think they call it pandering (random xposts)

sheeeiiiit isn't pandering, just amazing and his shtick

iirc he deliberately switches to his performative mode bcz he knows he's fucked legally? it's a last-ditch effort to pull his usual media / "lower orders" bullshit, mainly in case it makes him look good to ppl he'll have to fool in order to make a comeback after jail, but it ends up playing in the room too? I only watched it once, ten years ago, tho

there are very few instances in the series where he actually speaks to the public as opposed to a couple guys in a meeting

ok I finished season 4, it was great I loved the idea of showing this transition from childhood to adulthood

I'm 6 episodes into season 5 and it is preposterous and sloppily written and unpleasant to watch. It's embarrassing that the writers thought Freamon or McNulty behaving like this would be remotely believable. Like, McNulty is dumb and flawed but he is not this naive.

also every time Clay Davis says "sheeeeeit" it's so exaggeratedly drawn out that it feels like a weird Tim & Eric bit and very unreal

I felt that way at the time of its release but in hindsight I've come around to thinking both that the scenario is preposterous and that McNulty actually is that dumb and flawed and naïve. His Achilles heel is being skilled and competent but thinking he's actually a genius and subsequently stretching way past the limits of his skill and competence. He basically just goes full Raskolnikov in season 5.

xpost, obv

and the plotline does at least result in one all-time funny scene

Not sure if it's the one you're referring to, but the moment when McNulty and the reporter sniff each other out is all-time.

The point of season 5 is to draw out the preposterousness of the systems and their perverse incentives (once again), it fits in with the rest of the series just fine. There is the issue of having to invent new stakes since by this point they’ve done so much damage to the cast your average viewer is a bit numb, IMO.

TBF (and I’m going to probably get blown up for this) I suspect there’s a mildly patronizing aspect to how audiences come down on Seasons 2 and 5 but not on the others, because poor black people in Baltimore have few options and therefore their shitty decisions are just sad, but white and middle-class black Baltimoreans with access to straight jobs ought to know better than to lie, cheat and steal, and so we treat their OTT corruption with less suspension of disbelief. Not a judgement of the characters or their real life analogues, duh; just in how we watch the show.

It’s all coming out of the same writers’ room based on their experiences (plus a lot of what-iffing and using local urban legends as fuel).

Nah he means the scene in which the psychological profiler comes up with a profile for the "killer" that basically describes McNulty to a tee.

Oh yes, also all-time. One of West's best performances on the series.

Season 2 is fine! I get why ppl hate it bcz it's more of a departure from the primary narrative than any of the other seasons, but it's still great television

it's not that i'm aghast that the cops are lying, cheating, and stealing -- this has been established throughout the whole show -- but mutilating corpses in order to get more funding when there IS. NO. MORE. FUNDING. is such a massive risk for such an unlikely payoff, like no one in their right mind would do something this fucking stupid? McNulty maaaaaaaaaybe but Freamon? oh come on fuck no

it is preposterous and sloppily written and unpleasant to watch.

It really does feel like everyone behind the scenes got fired and replaced by scabs. Wire season 5 = Simpsons season 50 or whatever.

TBF (and I’m going to probably get blown up for this) I suspect there’s a mildly patronizing aspect to how audiences come down on Seasons 2 and 5 but not on the others, because poor black people in Baltimore have few options and therefore their shitty decisions are just sad, but white and middle-class black Baltimoreans with access to straight jobs ought to know better than to lie, cheat and steal, and so we treat their OTT corruption with less suspension of disbelief. Not a judgement of the characters or their real life analogues, duh; just in how we watch the show.

interesting analysis, I think I like it for season 2 but season 5 has so many other issues making it hard to disentangle

Season 2 is always going to suffer on the first view because it's not the same story and not the same people (or it takes long enough to return to being the same people) - I think there's a lot of people on this thread saying they appreciated it more on a second viewing.

Huh? The Barksdale crew is there (getting its NPR on) from the first episode! (Or do you mean it takes a while for Major Crimes to get together again?)

That and also the focus is more on the new people (because they're new, even if they're not getting more screen time than the old).