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Troll Bridgington
Dec 22, 2011

Keeping up foreign relations.
This scene still makes me laugh even after so many rewatches

https://youtu.be/uvwNPMX-mOQ?t=155

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Konstantin
Jun 20, 2005
And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
I think this scene is funnier, all you need to know is Cheese shot an actual dog:

https://youtu.be/LfsQaeIYWoY

Soylent Pudding
Jun 22, 2007

We've got people!


What most amused me about String in community college is that to everyone else there he's just another random non-traditional student. None of them knew the guy on their group project was one of West Balitmore's most wanted drug dealers.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Soylent Pudding posted:

What most amused me about String in community college is that to everyone else there he's just another random non-traditional student. None of them knew the guy on their group project was one of West Balitmore's most wanted drug dealers.

String getting offered some dope weed by his group project mate.

Thaddius the Large
Jul 5, 2006

It's in the five-hole!

Soylent Pudding posted:

What most amused me about String in community college is that to everyone else there he's just another random non-traditional student. None of them knew the guy on their group project was one of West Balitmore's most wanted drug dealers.

Community: Season 7?

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
Anyone watch Show Me A Hero last night? Not sure if it's appropriate to discuss the show here but there isn't a thread for the show yet.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010


I've made a huge mistake.

Konstantin posted:

I think this scene is funnier, all you need to know is Cheese shot an actual dog:

https://youtu.be/LfsQaeIYWoY

Y'all some cold-rear end motherfuckers. :(

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Y'all some cold-rear end motherfuckers. :(

What gets to me about this scene is that Daniels blows his wiretap and months of investigation for absolutely nothing - not only do they get nothing from it, but they put their targets on alert and end up further back than where they were when they started - and yet the end result for the top Brass is that Daniels is the golden boy again. Why? Because he allowed the Major who was getting chewed out by the Deputy Ops and Commissioner to demonstrate he was taking proactive steps to deal with crime even if achieved absolutely nothing in the process, and also showed he was a "team player" who was willing to sacrifice his own work for the benefit of a higher-up.

Daniels knows it too, he's not happy about destroying the case and can only appreciate that the way he wrecked it has gotten him enough kudos that he can now rely on a lot more resources and support to.... start up all over again.

theblackw0lf posted:

Anyone watch Show Me A Hero last night? Not sure if it's appropriate to discuss the show here but there isn't a thread for the show yet.

I haven't seen it, would love to hear if it was any good/interesting.

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"

Jerusalem posted:



I haven't seen it, would love to hear if it was any good/interesting.

So far it's excellent. Best thing I've seen from him since The Wire. It also is the closest thing to a spiritual successor to The Wire we've seen.

Might make a thread for it. Deserves exposure/discussion

theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 18, 2015

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

Just hoping everyone has fun.
I would love to talk about Show Me a Hero. I only watched Part 1 so far, but I thought it was good. Has some Wire elements too it, but it definitely has its own style, especially with the soundtrack, so much Bruce. I could make a thread too, but it would be super low effort, so if someone has more time to put something together, that would be great.

strangeneighbor
Feb 13, 2014

theblackw0lf posted:

Might make a thread for it. Deserves exposure/discussion

Please do. Excellent first two episodes though I'm a bit sad that it's only 6 episodes. The pace is pretty fast, with more time it could breath a bit more.

You can feel that you're in the hands of master storyteller, there's something comforting about that. Whenever there's something that I don't quite understand or when I feel like why was this or that scene even here, I can just relax and know that it will all make sense in the end.

Favorite little touch was the sound of the phone ringing over the election night.

steakmancer
May 18, 2010

by Lowtax
:ducksiren: don't read this spoiler :ducksiren:

Show Me a Hero has such incredible cinematography and Simon killing off Wasiscko at the end of the 5th episode according to a whole season review is so crazy

steakmancer fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Aug 19, 2015

Whiz Palace
Dec 8, 2013
I'm looking forward to the bit where Yonkers is nuked by the Soviets.

e: poo poo, I wish I didn't read his Wiki entry. That explains the opening scene...

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"

steakmancer posted:

Show Me a Hero has such incredible cinematography and Simon killing off Wasiscko at the end of the 5th episode according to a whole season review is so crazy


You should REALLY mention that your spoiler is for an unaired episode.

strangeneighbor
Feb 13, 2014

theblackw0lf posted:

You should REALLY mention that your spoiler is for an unaired episode.

Yeah. That was lovely.

Stairmaster
Jun 8, 2012

steakmancer posted:

:ducksiren: don't read this spoiler :ducksiren:

Show Me a Hero has such incredible cinematography and Simon killing off Wasiscko at the end of the 5th episode according to a whole season review is so crazy

are you loving retarded

mattfl
Aug 27, 2004

Wow, so ya that spoiler really sucked to read. Thanks.....

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
Been burning through a rewatch of The Wire and just started season 5.

One that thing stuck out at me is that when Carcetti and his advisers were talking about whether to take the $50 million from the state for schools, it was never discussed that not doing so could harm them not just with education but Carcetti's focus on reducing crime as well., which at the beginning of Season 5 we see happen. Did they just not realize at the time that it would have those consequences? And if so why didn't Carcetti and them realize it?

Troll Bridgington
Dec 22, 2011

Keeping up foreign relations.

theblackw0lf posted:

Been burning through a rewatch of The Wire and just started season 5.

One that thing stuck out at me is that when Carcetti and his advisers were talking about whether to take the $50 million from the state for schools, it was never discussed that not doing so could harm them not just with education but Carcetti's focus on reducing crime as well., which at the beginning of Season 5 we see happen. Did they just not realize at the time that it would have those consequences? And if so why didn't Carcetti and them realize it?

If I remember correctly, Carcetti put his own ambition ahead of the city. The governor was only going to do the bailout if Carcetti faced public humiliation for taking the money, which would have damaged Carcetti's own plans of running for governor. I assumed he knew this was going to have consequences.

Troll Bridgington fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Aug 20, 2015

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"

Troll Bridgington posted:

If I remember correctly, Carcetti put his own ambition ahead of the city. The governor was only going to do the bailout if Carcetti faced public humiliation for taking the money, which would have damaged Carcetti's own plans of running for governor.

Right, but reducing crime stats was one of the two things he felt necessary to win as Governor. So it seems really bizarre that they didn't discuss how not taking the money could affect that goal. It just seems they weren't aware of that possibility, which seems odd that they would miss it (especially Norman who would have used that argument to convince Carcetti to take the money)

Hard Clumping
Mar 19, 2008

Y'ALL BREADY
FOR THIS

Troll Bridgington posted:

If I remember correctly, Carcetti put his own ambition ahead of the city. The governor was only going to do the bailout if Carcetti faced public humiliation for taking the money, which would have damaged Carcetti's own plans of running for governor.

Basically yeah. I think both Norman and Nerese agreed that taking the money would ruin his plans to rise. I think the idea was that Carcetti was only going to get one term as mayor, and if he didn't make governor by the end of that term he was screwed, so out went all his grand promises near the end of season 4.

e:

theblackw0lf posted:

Right, but reducing crime stats was one of the two things he felt necessary to win as Governor. So it seems really bizarre that they didn't discuss how not taking the money could affect that goal. It just seems they weren't aware of that possibility, which seems odd that they would miss it (especially Norman who would have used that argument to convince Carcetti to take the money)

A ton of weight was put on that $50 mil. Everybody seemed to think that taking the money would overshadow any good he did in terms of crime stats.

Hard Clumping fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Aug 20, 2015

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"

Hard Clumping posted:

Basically yeah. I think both Norman and Nerese agreed that taking the money would ruin his plans to rise. I think the idea was that Carcetti was only going to get one term as mayor, and if he didn't make governor by the end of that term he was screwed, so out went all his grand promises near the end of season 4.

e:


A ton of weight was put on that $50 mil. Everybody seemed to think that taking the money would overshadow any good he did in terms of crime stats.

But how not taking the money would affect crime stats wasn't discussed. It was all about the schools.

I mean maybe they did discuss it somewhere but it was never shown, but from just watching the show it's easy to think it never crossed their mind.

tirinal
Feb 5, 2007
The lack of money wasn't supposed to affect the crime stats. It was just supposed to affect the crime.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Just want to stress again that they didn't feel that it would negatively affect Carcetti running for Governor...... they felt it would negatively affect Carcetti running for Governor in two years. He hadn't even worked out the groove of Royce's rear end from the chair before he was aiming for the Governor's seat, and for him having to wait an extra four years was unthinkable.

For all the things he said (many of them I'm sure quite genuinely) Carcetti's first and foremost concern was always his own career.

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
Found this comment on Alan Sepinwall's blog from a guy who used to work in journalism. Pretty helpful reading for Season 5

quote:

Anonymous said...

I'm a former newspaper reporter. I never worked at a place as big as The Sun but here's how some things will work in the newsroom: (PART ONE)

1) There are many "desks" at a newspaper the size of The Sun. They are the same thing as a unit/division in the police department. Or a corner under the Barksdale/Malro chain of command. The City Desk is the desk that covers any and all news in the actual city of Baltimore. This may seem like the most important desk, but over years the years it has been most likely devalued as more and more people move to the county. Other news desks at the Sun are probably a County beat, a Statehouse beat, maybe even a DC-suburb beat depending upon how far they are trying to reach readers. The Sun might even have a DC-based national reporter or two. But all of their BIG news will come off the AP wire.

LINGO:
The newsroom has its own lingo. The lingo is more or less the same in any newsroom, but each one will have its own dialect.

INCHES: Newspaper stories are measured in "column inches." So any discussion about "inch length" means how long a story is. 15-18 inches is more-or-less your average news story. I'd imagine the story we got to see break from City Hall, one with a lot of background, was more in the 30-inch range.

BUDGET: The editor is asking his reporters what they are working on, when to expect it, how long it will be, etc. An editor needs this information fairly quickly to work on layout/design.

DEADLINE: Any of the phrases before a deadline means the schedule of deadline. The word "deadline" can mean a lot of things in a newsroom. There are actually a few different deadlines based upon the story being written.

STAFF RANK --

CUB REPORTERS -- young reporters who just broke in who are trying to rise up the ranks. Alma and Scott are the City Desk's cub reporters. They're also at the bar away from the veterans towards the end. Scott and Alma more-or-less got the poo poo gig in the story that got broken, the equivalent of Herc and Carver moving a judge's furniture. They also got "contributions by" at the end of a story as opposed to a byline signifying they took part in the actual writing of a story.

BEAT REPORTERS -- established reporters with a bigger beat. These include city hall, police, and not a transportation reporter.

REWRITE DESK -- Copy editor/rewriter. These follks are extremely anal grammar nerds know things like how to properly use the word "evacuate." Most smaller papers don't have a rewrite desk, which is why you'll see a lot of grammar errors at those papers.

CITY EDITOR -- Gus. He runs the City Desk. Thing of him as the Daniels of the newspaper office.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF -- the guy who is in charge of all of the desks at the Sun.

MANAGING EDITOR -- Same kind of deal as the E-I-C, but he'll also be the guy who reports to corporate a lot more.

PUBLISHER -- not sure if The Wire has one, but most papers I worked for, the Publisher was ultimately in charge. All of the departments (news, ad sales, delivery, etc.) all reporter to him.
2:28 AM, January 07, 2008
Anonymous said...

PART 2 --

The newsroom look, pacing, language, etc. was 100% accurate. As you'd expect from someone like David Simon.

One adage in a newsroom is that the more you're at your desk, the less your doing your work. That's why Gus was so dismissive of Scott, who was hanging out at his desk. Reporters DO have to wait for a lot of phone calls, but Scott seemed like a perfect newsroom template: the entitled cub who went to a rich kid J-School program (Columbia) who thinks covering a city desk beat is completely beneath him. He also isn't doing anything looking to develop his own stories and prefers to pick assignments. Reporters do have ot make phone calls but the excuse of "I'm waiting for phone calls" usually means you're watching something on YouTube. A good reporter is rarely at his desk.

(He should try working at a weekly where there is literally NOTHING to write about.)

The City Hall beat was perfect. Agendas for meetings like that are super long, written in legalese and you need to be EXTRA sharp to catch something like what Gus caught. It's really easy to get burnt at a beat like that.

The guys above Gus had the perfect smug smarm of someone who has achieved a position of rank at a big daily newspaper. A lot of the folks I met at those positions tended to have a whole new level of arrogance. They are obsessed with awards.

The editor killing the story on race issues at U of Maryland was a guy killing a story at the behest of a friend. He also probably knows about impending layoffs and is angling for a tenure position at the UMD Journalism program.

One character they are missing: the oldhead columnist who has seniority (I'm guessing The Sun is a guild newspaper) who won't get laid off but hasn't written a decent column since Watergate, probably also has a severe alcohol and chain-smoking problem.

There are many reasons I got out of newspaper reporting. The primary one is that the people we'll see in The Wire will work 60-hour weeks and will make about $40,000 a year. Another reason is because it's next-to-impossible for someone to make a jump from a weekly newspaper to a decent daily. Editors at those places LOVE J-School grads as opposed to people who actually had to write at a crappy beat.

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
Jerusalem, you did an absolutely phenomenal job with the recaps (as well as everyone else), and picked up on tons of things I had never noticed before.

However there's a really significant comment made by Whiting that you seemed to have missed. It's from this section on Episode 2.

quote:

At the Sun, Whiting seriously declares that he wants the schools story to focus on the "Dickensian" aspects. Others in the meeting note that it would be wrong to take a simplistic approach to the issue, there are many aspects to explain the difficulties and problems faced in education, including the parenting or lack of parenting of these children and other societal pressures outside of the school system itself. Gus agrees that the schools could use a good "beating" from time to time but if they really want to address the issues, they need to actually address the issues and not focus in on one particular issue as if it was the end-all and be-all. Whiting's responses are full of buzzwords like "tangibles", and he gets support from Scott who agrees that you probably don't need a lot of context to focus on a classroom. Gus retorts that you need context for EVERYTHING but his snarky attitude (particularly a venomous comment about Pulitzer bait) finally pushes Whiting too far, as he complains that he isn't simpleminded like Gus is trying to imply and he knows about the problems in the school system because his wife volunteers at one. He wants the schools project to focus on the schools, and he thinks that Scott (the only person who backed him) should be the one to write it.

What you missed is Whiting's reasoning for simplicity. He's saying that's what readers want, and if you go too complex you lose people. As he says "who wants to read that?". And I could see why he might think that. Many people want to believe there's a simple solution to complex problems. It's disheartening to realize that the problems of our society involve a complex intricate web that one can't address through simple solutions, even though that's what politicians sell all the time. Also they want something easier to follow, and digestible. Yea he's totally in the wrong. But sadly he might be right that his approach will attract more readers.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised these are some of the very same arguments David Simon heard from networks when trying to sell The Wire.

Granted I haven't all your recaps after that episode, so maybe you cover that elsewhere.

theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Aug 20, 2015

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

No that's a fair point, and if they'd handled the newspaper storyline with a little more detachment I think they could have made the argument from both sides - yes an overcomplicated issue might turn off readers, but isn't their job to make those complicated issues understandable/palatable to the readers instead of just presenting them with what they already want to hear? After all, they're supposed to be journalists, and the Sun is supposed to be informing the populace of what is going on, not just soundbites and easily digested faux-news. But then with competition from television and the growing internet, can they afford to hold themselves to the old standard or will that just be them rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Arguably the biggest problem with the newspaper storyline in season 5 is that almost without exception we don't get to see or hear anything from the perspective of the "bad guys". With the police, at least you get episodes/scenes where the top brass reveal the pressures they themselves are facing from those higher up, or the impossible job they have of trying to hold everything together with the budget they have etc. The newspaper editors are never shown as anything but shortsighted, arrogant and quite often idiotic. Even loving Valchek is shown to have political nous, these guys just come across as dummies (the worst case being when Gus schools Klebanow in front of the other journalists after doing his stand-up comedy bit while watching a press conference). The whole Pulitzer obsession seems to pretty obviously be their way of trying to either shore up their own job security or get the prestige to move to a more stable job (like Scott tries early in the season), which suggests they were just as under threat by the restructuring/lay-offs as everybody else.... but everything else seems to paint them as sitting in a bubble untouched by the ramifications of what was going on, because the season never shows anything from their perspective - the closest to their POV we get is from Scott.

algebra testes
Mar 5, 2011


Lipstick Apathy
Yeah Scott always bugged me because he's the most moustache twirling villain in the entire series, and for that reason he's so uninteresting to me as a character.

Also, show me a hero is great. With a few friendly faces in it. ;)

theblackw0lf
Apr 15, 2003

"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
The journalism plot was somewhat based on Simon's interactions with the two top editors at the Sun, and the disagreements he had with them.

This is a really great article that goes into detail about their disagreements, and covers it in a more balanced way than Simon did, where you can see both perspectives.

Granted Season 5 was fictionalized and a lot was exaggerated from what really went down, but it touches on many of the same themes.

http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/secrets_of_the_city.php?page=all

Philthy
Jan 28, 2003

Pillbug

theblackw0lf posted:

You should REALLY mention that your spoiler is for an unaired episode.

The series is based on a true story. It's like spoilering Titanic. I mean, even the season previews trying to sell the show explained what the show was about and mentioned this.

That said, it's really nothing like The Wire at all other than Simon being involved and it having overlapping social issues.

Philthy fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Aug 24, 2015

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Philthy posted:

The series is based on a true story. It's like spoilering Titanic.

No offense to Yonkers, but I'm pretty sure the events of a character from there during the 1980s isn't as universally known a fact as arguably the most famous shipwreck in history.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Minor season 5 question: why does Gus appear to have both his own office but also a desk out in the bullpen?

jiggerypokery
Feb 1, 2012

...But I could hardly wait six months with a red hot jape like that under me belt.

gently caress me, I am still on the first viewing (just started series 4, taken about 2 weeks to get here and I don't watch a lot of TV normally) and I am all ready wanting to watch it all from the start. I just found out today that half the actors aren't even acting, many are just basically playing themselves. I wasn't in the least bit surprised. It is a total master piece and I think that has a lot to do with it. Are there other shows that have done anything like this?

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


jiggerypokery posted:

gently caress me, I am still on the first viewing (just started series 4, taken about 2 weeks to get here and I don't watch a lot of TV normally) and I am all ready wanting to watch it all from the start. I just found out today that half the actors aren't even acting, many are just basically playing themselves. I wasn't in the least bit surprised. It is a total master piece and I think that has a lot to do with it. Are there other shows that have done anything like this?

Yeah, it's cool. A lot of the minor characters are just normal people, but even some of the characters that get lots of screen time are bona fide gangsters.

snoop, for example

And the guy who plays the deacon is an ex-drug kingpin.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Ainsley McTree posted:

And the guy who plays the deacon is an ex-drug kingpin.

The inspiration for Avon even. In season 15 of the wire, Avon is released and becomes an actor in a critically acclaimed HBO tv series.

Whiz Palace
Dec 8, 2013

Ainsley McTree posted:

And the guy who plays the deacon is an ex-drug kingpin.

Melvin Williams posted:

I know more about murder than you know about that camera.

Alec Bald Snatch
Sep 12, 2012

by exmarx

Jerusalem posted:

No offense to Yonkers, but I'm pretty sure the events of a character from there during the 1980s isn't as universally known a fact as arguably the most famous shipwreck in history.

His point was that it's a real thing that happened, like the Titanic. That hardly constitutes a spoiler. Whether or not one is more widely known than the other is immaterial.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
And Jerusalem's point is that how widely known it is isn't immaterial at all? Everyone everywhere already knows the Titanic sank, I doubt even 1% of the people on this site know about what happened in Yonkers in the 1980s.

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Aug 31, 2015

steakmancer
May 18, 2010

by Lowtax
Nice my spoiler was technically wrong

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Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Troll Bridgington posted:

This scene still makes me laugh even after so many rewatches

https://youtu.be/uvwNPMX-mOQ?t=155


Konstantin posted:

I think this scene is funnier, all you need to know is Cheese shot an actual dog:

https://youtu.be/LfsQaeIYWoY

For my money, this is the funniest scene in the series, even though it skirts pretty close to being racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrzpoUjJ_0g

The delivery is so strong.

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