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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:There's a bunch of things that show that. He asks Royce earlier to drop Eunetta and he says no. He has Daniels help Cutty with the permits for his gym, and they are together there. (He complains about Eunetta there was well, something like "Do you know Miss Perkins? No? Few do these days" as if Cutty would have any shot of knowing his councilperson.) drat right, I remember this. I wonder how I couldn't realize this small connection line between politicians and semi-criminals like Cutty. Looks like it's time to re-rewatch the third season.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:26
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Nobnob posted:drat right, I remember this. I wonder how I couldn't realize this small connection line between politicians and semi-criminals like Cutty. Looks like it's time to re-rewatch the third season. It's okay, I've watched this show like 5 times at this point, there's a lot there.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:29
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I like how Cedric's promotion to major finally comes in right after the mayor decides to support Marla.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:00
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I'm on a rewatch again, but if it weren't for this thread I probably would never have figured out that Chris is basically making all the decisions for Marlo. I don't think it's ever addressed and the body language is easy to miss.
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Feb 7, 2015 11:49
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Comrade Question posted:I'm on a rewatch again, but if it weren't for this thread I probably would never have figured out that Chris is basically making all the decisions for Marlo. I don't think it's ever addressed and the body language is easy to miss. That's drat true. I first realized that when Chris was giving advice to Marlo and I think there is like one scene in the whole show where Marlo gives Chris an actual order (end of season 5, watching out for Omar) and even that bit was put in question by Chris for a second. Interestingly, he puts himself as "just a soldier" everytime talking about the power structure in their organization.
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Feb 7, 2015 14:02
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I don't think it is fair to say that Chris is actually making the decisions for Marlo, more that Marlo respects him enough to actually look to him for his opinion before making his own decisions. Chris is basically the only person that Marlo respects (and Chris and Snoop are probably the only two people in the world he likes) and part of that I think is because Chris knows his place and accepts his role. That's part of why Marlo is so infuriated when he learns about Omar tarnishing his reputation - on top of the horror of discovering somebody was openly mocking him and that everybody will always believe he was too scared to do anything about it, there is the rather shocking (to him) revelation that Chris went "above his station" and deigned to make decisions on Marlo's behalf, effectively giving him power over Marlo as well as unintentionally suggesting that Chris was in some way superior to him or had authority over him. Check out Marlo's reaction to learning that Chris is going to be sacrificed and spend the rest of his life in jail - it isn't panic or fear at being without the guy who gives him direction, it's an almost casual shrugging of,"Well I guess that's just the way things are" He respects Chris, he likes Chris, but he doesn't think he NEEDS Chris, because he's a guy convinced entirely that a real man/gangster pushes to the top and stays there through sheer force of individual effort. Consider season one with Avon and Stringer. Avon looks to Stringer for guidance in areas, he even allows Stringer to dictate terms at times, like when Stringer announces without discussion that they're changing up how money collections and the like are handled, and that HE is removing AVON from the process. But Avon is still clearly the guy in charge, and Stringer's role - like Chris' - is that of a trusted adviser. Yes he'll make use of his skills and listen to his input, but in the end it is always the guy up top who makes the ultimate decision, and when the guy beneath him pushes too far past their authority, they pay for it.
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Feb 8, 2015 01:47
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Just wanted to post that one of my friends threatened to end our friendship after having told me to watch this show for the past few years. I finally broke down and started in January and adored every minute of it. I ended up spotting this thread and started a complete rewatch with my girlfriend who hadn't seen it before. In between watching a few episodes at a time I'd start reading the threads episode breakdown and good lord  I thought I had caught things I'd missed the first time watching it and this thread showed me how much I missed in terms of the very, very small details. Just wanted to say thank you for everyone who has written up an episode write up and thanks to this thread in general, because I've absolutely loved reading every page. I'm currently trying to track down a copy of The Corner locally if I can, failing that I'll order one online.
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Feb 8, 2015 01:54
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I only did one writeup, and it was a lot of loving work. How Escape Artist and especially Jerusalem did so many, it kinda blows my mind. I was at a pretty busy period in my life when I wrote that review, so I wasn't able to give it quite the amount of attention that I wanted to--it was more summarative than analytical, I'm sorry to say. But it did teach me to look at the rest of the show with an eye for specific details, especially in regards to camera angles and audio cues. It was a treat, but it also had a lovely side-effect: when I look at most other television shows, they don't measure up. The later seasons of Breaking Bad come close, but I think Gilligan overplayed his hand on occasion when making his show into a modern-day western (complete with a train robbery). The Wire was guilty of this, too--season 3 is, in large part, an Iraq War allegory, and parts of season 5 are about as subtle as a brick--but when the show focuses more on its thesis (the institutions of modern America, and how they fail the people who are a part of them), there's really nothing better. In seasons 2 and 4, every piece adds to a perfect whole.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:15
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So about Stringer getting caught on the wire in season 3; wouldn't a lawyer be able to find out that local police had the FBI lie about his first name in order to use the patriot act to intercept his calls?
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Feb 8, 2015 05:45
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That makes sense, I guess I was a little eager to jump on a fresh interpretation.
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Feb 8, 2015 14:54
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3Romeo posted:I only did one writeup, and it was a lot of loving work. How Escape Artist and especially Jerusalem did so many, it kinda blows my mind. If something gets popular and big on my radar I tend to ignore it or forget about it, I only started watching Game of Thrones for example back in September. I'll have to go check out Breaking Bad at some point.
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Feb 8, 2015 15:58
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snodig posted:So about Stringer getting caught on the wire in season 3; wouldn't a lawyer be able to find out that local police had the FBI lie about his first name in order to use the patriot act to intercept his calls? IANAL, but probably. That always seemed like a bit of a throwaway joke for the audience to me. I'd say the way the show does it would leave them exposed to that in discovery. If they wanted to be super proper, seems like it would be easy enough to just tell the wireless company that Stringer was an alias for a terrorist group's recruit. Remember that the only purpose of lying about his name is getting the company to put their wiretap absolute #1 priority, not justifying the wiretap in general.
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Feb 8, 2015 16:09
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Jerusalem posted:Check out Marlo's reaction to learning that Chris is going to be sacrificed and spend the rest of his life in jail - it isn't panic or fear at being without the guy who gives him direction, it's an almost casual shrugging of,"Well I guess that's just the way things are" He respects Chris, he likes Chris, but he doesn't think he NEEDS Chris, because he's a guy convinced entirely that a real man/gangster pushes to the top and stays there through sheer force of individual effort. I thought about this for a while, and yeah, it really does seem like Chris is the real power behind the Stanfield operation - which I really didn't notice until reading your write ups. As soon as Marlo has to start operating independently of Chris, he's utterly lost. He doesn't have even the slightest sense of what to do to exploit his new situation, ditching major opportunities at that fancy shindig to go fight in the street. Avon, on the other hand, immediately begins running Jessup without any help from Stringer. Marlo has the ambition and ruthlessness to order mass executions and hijack Prop Joe's operation, Chris has the wisdom to execute it properly. I guess that's the key difference: Chris doesn't want anything. I mean, he wants to take Michael under his wing, he wants to provide for his family, but that's all. He doesn't even look too unhappy that he's going to jail for the rest of his life. Wee-Bay at least knew his family would be provided for and he'd be made comfortable, so he's happy, but Chris? I didn't read much of a reaction.
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Feb 8, 2015 16:18
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The reason Marlo was lost in his new world was because it was one he had zero interest in. He drove himself to the top of "the game" because it was the only thing he actually cared about - his upbringing meant that he wrapped up his sense of self-esteem and what it means to be a success in those he saw "gain the crown" on the street. When you grow up on the street and the only world you know is gangbanging, dealing drugs, beating up on those weaker than you and establishing dominance through sheer force of will, then the legitimate world is as alien to you as our world is to the legitimate one. Stringer was different, he grew up seeing making it in that seemingly unreachable world as the mark of success, while Marlo grew up seeing rising to the top of "the game" as the mark of success. It's one of the wonderful ironies of the show that Stringer and Marlo both get the fate the other would have desired. I don't think Marlo wouldn't have minded at all dying because two incredibly skilled street-assassins came after him for revenge - he would have seen it as a mark of respect and acknowledgement of his power/prestige. Stringer would have loved to have been removed from the street and welcomed with open arms into the world of corrupt property developers, politicians and investment bankers. Both gets the other's ending, and the big difference is that Marlo isn't smart enough to realize that his return to the corner marks his ultimate failure - this is what he knows and so he returns to it thinking he can build himself back up again, but more important than the police being fully aware of him and capable of taking him down now, he's already lost the one thing that mattered to him, which was his name. Chris' lack of reaction to learning he'll spend the rest of his life in jail makes perfect sense for his character too. He's a guy who seems happy when he has stability, when he knows the "rules" of what has to happen/what he has to do. His family are being looked after so that's fine, he accepts that he was caught and thus will have to serve his time, and in jail he's going to have everything laid out for him - he'll know when to get up, when to eat, and there will be a position for him to take in prison once he figures out the power hierarchy, and he'll slot in there (probably a Lieutenant for Avon alongside Wee-Bey) and do his job without reservation or concern or desire for more power so long as everything continues to make sense. The only time you really see him lose his cool in the entire series is when Omar injects some chaos into his controlled life, or when he's face to face with Michael's stepfather, fully aware of the crime this guy committed that Chris considers truly evil and unforgivable. Other than that, he just kind of moves along in complete control of himself, at peace because everything makes sense to him, he knows his place, he has a job to do, and he does it well.
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Feb 8, 2015 22:57
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Watching season 3 and I have to ask...What is the point of Colicchio? He's just such a stereotypical drug cop (that we already saw plenty of in Seasons 1 and 2. I almost think the character exists strictly for Carver to write him up in Season 5. Other than that he just acts like somebody poo poo in his cereal 24/7. I guess I sort of get it but eh, he just seems so useless.
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Feb 10, 2015 01:51
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Flipswitch posted:Just wanted to post that one of my friends threatened to end our friendship after having told me to watch this show for the past few years. I finally broke down and started in January and adored every minute of it. This is similar to how I was finally convinced to watch the show, but my friend did it in a more jovial way than yours seemed to. "Our friendship is on the line at this point" Akileese posted:Watching season 3 and I have to ask...What is the point of Colicchio? He's just such a stereotypical drug cop (that we already saw plenty of in Seasons 1 and 2. I almost think the character exists strictly for Carver to write him up in Season 5. Other than that he just acts like somebody poo poo in his cereal 24/7. I guess I sort of get it but eh, he just seems so useless. You're probably not far off with the Carver thing. He kinda serves as a reminder to how loving brutal a lot of cops are, just meatheads who want to bust heads. He opened an avenue of exploration into Carver trying to maintain his sense of morality as he moved up in the ranks, trying to tread the line between doing what the higherups expected of him and not being one of the bosses McNulty wants to gently caress so bad. Colicchio has some interesting parallels to Officer Walker, and part of me thinks it would have been interesting to see them fused into one character, but that probably would have been too much. They were both just on-the-nose examples of The Bad Egg.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:14
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He literally got to the point where he'd call me out on not getting around to watching to it every conversion, it got to the point where that's all he was saying to me because he knew how much I'd glue to it and read into it as much as I can, which is exactly what I've done. Cracking bit of television.Akileese posted:Watching season 3 and I have to ask...What is the point of Colicchio? He's just such a stereotypical drug cop (that we already saw plenty of in Seasons 1 and 2. I almost think the character exists strictly for Carver to write him up in Season 5. Other than that he just acts like somebody poo poo in his cereal 24/7. I guess I sort of get it but eh, he just seems so useless.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:20
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Yeah I think you've got Carv and Herc early on as "just wanting to bust heads" but they do it in a sort of honorable way, you have to kinda have someone that shows "busting heads" just because they love the power of it all.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:34
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LordPants posted:Yeah I think you've got Carv and Herc early on as "just wanting to bust heads" but they do it in a sort of honorable way, you have to kinda have someone that shows "busting heads" just because they love the power of it all. I always looked at Calicchio has being a less dynamic and (didn't know this was possible) more unrefined version of Herc. Carver is definitely has the most dynamic character development in the series. It really is amazing to think of how him and Herc dealt with Bodie in season 1 and then here him talk about how you can't just bust everyone's head because then you've got no one to talk to when poo poo gets really sour.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:40
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Herc is great because his development comes from not learning the lessons that carver does. So after loving everything up by not paying attention and not learning he ends up getting kicked out and has a new job and starts learning at last. I really like the way he simultaneously fucks Marlo by giving Carv the number, and then saves him by working out there wasn't an official wire tap.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:47
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Levy masterminded that whole thing though, he didn't just happen to mention a wiretap to his ex-cop employee, file a written copy of the number where the employee could easily get it, then leave the room. He wanted there to be an illegal wiretap so he could use it to generate business and build his reputation.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:02
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The write-up for S04E04 is missing the most important detail in the whole show.
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Feb 10, 2015 14:33
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David Simon was pushing so hard to make a live-action adaptation of Dragonball Z. 
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Feb 10, 2015 21:35
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I skipped season 1 for my rewatch since I didn't have my DVDs on me when I started. Just got to it after finishing season 4 and seeing Prez cock that kid with his pistol is the most surreal poo poo after all those classroom scenes.
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Feb 13, 2015 12:25
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Akileese posted:I always looked at Calicchio has being a less dynamic and (didn't know this was possible) more unrefined version of Herc. I think Calicchio is generally there to provide some contrast from the other cops, for, all the major characters there are entirely good-intentioned. If the Wire throws anyone softballs, it's probably the police, but there's still some criticism there.
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Feb 13, 2015 12:46
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Rewatching season 5 and some of the characters introduced like Templeton, Klebanow, Whiting and even Gus feels very one-dimensional. In previous seasons you get a sense and understanding of why characters do as they do, even if they written to be slightly unpopular and annoying. But here you have Whiting which is portrayed as a complete tool without any redeeming qualities. Klebanow much the same. Templeton you at least get the hint that he feels under-appreciated, but even then he come off as a character that's just there to annoy you as a viewer. They all remind me of the white police commissioner in season 1. Gus's lines are the ones you come up with in the shower two days after you had the actual conversation - he's brilliant, funny and just the absolute best all throughout the season. I think it was in season 1 or 2 where McNulty is giving a speech to Maury and you kinda roll your eyes because it's a very cliche situation that happens only on tv, but it actually works. With Gus I never felt it worked, or maybe it worked a couple of times but it got old when he did it in every single episode. This is a much bigger issue for me than the somewhat outlandish serial-killer thing, which isn't THAT crazy when compared to the hamsterdam situation in season 3.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:09
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Yeah, Klebanow and Whiting really stood out because we got zero sense of why they were the way they were, what was driving them, whether they questioned the direction of the paper or were in fear for their own jobs etc. That said, while I absolutely agree about how shallow the surface level writing of Gus the Super-Journalist was, at least there was the unspoken theme running throughout the entire season that the paper and Gus (and print in general) were so inward looking and concerned with the inner machinations of their own industry that they completely missed all the major stories going on throughout the city. Some because they were successfully covered up, but others because the paper didn't have the staff to cover them, the staff they did have didn't have the expertise, and those who did have the expertise were either fired or had their heads stuck up their own rear end standing out the back smoking cigarettes and talking about what great journalists they were.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:34
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A lot of the newspaper guys were also bad actors. I think Colicchio was also terrible.. They act like how when athletes are guests on SNL or something. Just awful.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:40
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Yeah those newspaper guys are such mustache twirling villains and end up being less understandable than any of the cold blooded murderers on the street.
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Feb 17, 2015 03:05
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 There's not too much of this kind of thing (ARRI logo on the left) in the new HD version right? Just loaded up an episode at random to see what the transfer looked like and that was the first thing I saw. Hopefully they fix it for the Blu-rays...
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Feb 19, 2015 14:59
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Allegedly the initial transfer was going to leave in stuff like C-Stands being visible in the new extended frame, but Simon took a heavy interest in the process and they did the best they could to remove as much of that stuff as possible. So hopefully that is just one that slipped through the cracks.
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Feb 20, 2015 03:27
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Way early in season 1, mcnulty talks to the Fitz (the FBI guy). Fitz has had spectacular success in following up a CI Mcnulty gave to the feds. We even see the stash-house get busted live on camera. They also got the scent of some dominicans in New York. Not that the brasses give a poo poo - it would have been a career case :-/ , but nowadays it is only about counterterrorism. FBI might give up the dominicans in New York to the DEA or whatever though. When Bird suggest that <some streets> are way open, it's probably because FBI has cleared out the professionals. ( I think it is the same baltimore area as Fitz mentions to McNulty??). When the dominicans in New York get caught (which are Stringers supply), it might actually be because the Fitz has given his leads to someone else. And those agencies, probably DEA, has caught them up. Which had nothing to do with the wiretap McNulty had running on Stringer and co - though it was related to a previous investigations from McNulty. Or maybe I a way off?
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Feb 20, 2015 23:37
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Fitz says his bust is on Homer Avenue in Pimlico. The street that Stinkum (not Bird) tries to take over is Edmondson Avenue. They're not terribly far from each other, but not really close enough to presume they're related.
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Feb 21, 2015 00:08
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If you want to make connections to the Dominicans, it's more likely that it's Avon's supply who stops selling to him after he is convicted and they start having legal problems. That's what resulted in them selling the more expensive crappy stuff from Atlanta and nearly losing the towers.
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Feb 21, 2015 02:57
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Grabbing this from a bit earlier on the page -Akileese posted:Watching season 3 and I have to ask...What is the point of Colicchio? He's just such a stereotypical drug cop (that we already saw plenty of in Seasons 1 and 2. I almost think the character exists strictly for Carver to write him up in Season 5. Other than that he just acts like somebody poo poo in his cereal 24/7. I guess I sort of get it but eh, he just seems so useless. I've come to see Colicchio as yet another victim of institution. Don't get me wrong - he's an animal most of the time - but he could be like Randy. Perhaps we don't see the evolution, just the result. Beyond the overall theme of institutional failure, what specifically made me think of this is that moment when Bunny catches Colicchio raging in the station, calming him down by asking for his location. Colicchio rattles it off in the most pleasant, intelligent tone he displays in the entire series. It's possible he's always been a knucklehead who wants to thump suspects, or just that he respects authority enough to not get fired, but that scene was enough to make me question if he'd always been that way.
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Feb 22, 2015 01:09
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Colicchio always struck me as a walking zero-tolerance policy: he has a pretty stark view of right and wrong, and doesn't much change throughout the run of the show. He never gained "soft eyes," and I think that makes him an excellent way to measure the evolution in attitudes of the other police, like Carver and Kima. The season three Carver would never have turned him in, and I'd go so far as to say that the early season one Kima wouldn't have done it either. He isn't an inherently bad guy, like Walker is. He just doesn't understand that aggression isn't always the best solution to a problem, and he puts a high value on violence of action. I don't think it's an accident that Simon cast a Marine in that role.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:39
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Imagine if Herc had never been pulled for that detail in season one and just kept on "bustin' heads" in the western district. That is basically Colicchio.
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Feb 22, 2015 09:11
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oh poo poo the guy from fruitvale station WAS wallace! knew he looked familiar
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Mar 2, 2015 01:08
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He's also in S4 and S5 of Friday Night Lights. Dude's an emotional powerhouse.
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Mar 2, 2015 01:24
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This concludes today's exciting episode of Where The gently caress Is Wallace At?
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