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Dongattack posted:Were the fronts actually working a profit tho? I'm just thinking about the whole series of scenes where it was revealed that Clay was scamming Stringer all along and i assumed that it was hinted at then that the whole business was operating at a loss and going nowhere. But also now that i think about it it could just be a scene showing Clay Davis being Clay Davis and everything that didn't involve him probably ran a whole lot smoother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn76iJ0DOpI
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Oct 4, 2018 22:11
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If Stringer had thought short-term smalltime he could have made out like a bandit (like Fatface Rick and the like did) by flipping the properties for a big profit, and the money he handed out to the likes of Davis would have been worth it. Instead, he decided to hold onto the properties and develop them himself and become a big time player, which is a good long-term strategy that he unfortunately completely bungled by assuming he could shortcut or game the system like things worked on the street - bribe Davis to grease the wheels to ensure permits/funding came through etc. If he hadn't thought of himself as the smartest guy in the room (ala McNulty) he would have used Levy as a middle-man and had (some) protection from the predators and it might have worked out. Instead, Davis and Krawcyzk were taking him for huge amounts of money while just leaving everything to run as it would have anyway (you do your paperwork, put in your applications for permits and matching funding, then sit back and hope for the best) and he demonstrated he didn't have the temperament to handle things. Edit: The parallel is obvious, but look at all the money Frank Sobotka was throwing at lobbyists to get the canal(?) dredged, while everybody told him,"You've bought political support but it only takes you so far, be happy with what you've got and don't push for something impossible!" and then he ended up losing the small gains he did make because he wanted EVERYTHING. Edit Edit: Hell, they even have a similar thing where the guys he is paying try to mollify Frank by organizing a minor chair position which he can give to his brother (who turns it down) for some extra cash to make it look like they're really working hard for him. Meanwhile, Stringer is paying out all that cash and the best Clay offers him is some minor contract which will get him 20-30k back for the hundreds of thousands he had laid out already. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 00:38
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The central paradox, highlighted by The Greek telling Sobotka to settle the gently caress down and use the money on something tangible like a nice jacket, is that you cannot actually change the system no matter how much money you burn on it. The money is the system, etc. Edit: Similarly, even when McNulty has access to dispense all of the resources of the department as he sees fit, he can't actually enact any ongoing fixes to how policing is handled in Baltimore; the system's own moving parts cannot be used to fix it.
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Oct 5, 2018 03:10
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Ziggy's mom was right... He should have gone to the community college. He would have made an excellent unicycle guy.
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Oct 8, 2018 06:59
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I finished watching the wire about two nights ago and it really moved me on all ends, the write ups are perfect even without the stupidly tiny little weird black cultural callouts of the era that I have no idea how david simon would know (probably doesn't but had cast members help on or some poo poo). I haven't been able to watch anything since and the show is still all in my head. I'm honestly mad at myself for putting it off for as many years as I did and thought it was gonna be lovely from the very fact that a white man was trying to do a show on inner city baltimore. S4 and S2 are probably my favourite seasons
drjuggalo fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Dec 22, 2018 |
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Dec 22, 2018 09:44
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drjuggalo posted:thought it was gonna be lovely from the very fact that a white man was trying to do a show on inner city baltimore. If you haven't already I really recommend checking out his books Homicide and The Corner. You'll really get a sense of why he was able to write this stuff so well (and to his credit, on the show he mostly brought in writers to cover those areas where his knowledge was limited) plus you'll see a lot of the stuff that would eventually inform or be directly referenced by The Wire. drjuggalo posted:S4 and S2 are probably my favourite seasons 
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Dec 22, 2018 13:30
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S4 and S2 are objectively the best. I never got that into homicide. Seemed a bit slow and maybe less serialized? Does it take a while to get into it? Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. I've also been watching The Mechanism on Netflix which is kind of like a Brazilian take on The Wire, seems pretty good so far.
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Dec 22, 2018 17:49
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Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead!
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Dec 22, 2018 17:55
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Ornithology posted:Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. I've also been watching The Mechanism on Netflix which is kind of like a Brazilian take on The Wire, seems pretty good so far. Breaking Bad. It's The Wire's only competition for best tv show ever.
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Dec 22, 2018 17:58
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Ornithology posted:Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. This is totally true although it’s more foul-mouthed Shakespearean than the realism of The Wire’s writing
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Dec 22, 2018 18:00
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The Shield's good too. It will suffer from being That Other Cop Show That's Not As Good As The Wire but I liked it a lot for what it was.
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Dec 22, 2018 18:14
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Ainsley McTree posted:Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead! The first series is great because it's basically the book but without the swearing, and also has the episode 'Three Men And Adena' which is easily up there with the best episodes of The Wire
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Dec 22, 2018 18:47
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I felt Deadwood was two seasons of building up and then sudden cancellation.
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Dec 22, 2018 19:00
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Breaking Bad I watched and is definitely awesome, although a pretty different genre of show than The Wire. The Shield I thought was pretty good but the writing got kinda unbelievable at times. It's a good show in its own right but nowhere the depth of The Wire IMO. Felt more like an action with police corruption as the focus. Deadwood I mentioned as I hear it compared often to The Wire, but I actually wasn't a fan of the cryptic dialogue and the fact that it got cancelled definitely puts a damper on things. For Homicide, do you need to watch them in order or can I just pick up from a certain episode? Narcos is another similar one to The Wire in that it shows from both criminal and LE perspective, and has some emphasis on the futility of the criminal justice system/war on drugs. I watched The Corner and it was just amazing, maybe even better than The Wire IMO.
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Dec 22, 2018 19:59
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I enjoy Narcos but it's really, really pulpy - not really comparable to The Wire, they're very different things.
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Dec 22, 2018 20:12
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I think Breaking Bad is great, but a little too fantastical to really be compared to The Wire. What about The Sopranos?
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Dec 22, 2018 20:19
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spog posted:I felt Deadwood was two seasons of building up and then sudden cancellation. Sure was. We finally get a movie next year.
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Dec 22, 2018 21:04
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i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire. deadwood probably has the best dialogue for a tv show ever but yeah it certainly aint realistic.
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Dec 22, 2018 23:22
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Groovelord Neato posted:i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire. That's a really good way of describing it, I'm stealing that. God drat The Wire is so good. Except the serial killer plot
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Dec 22, 2018 23:27
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Groovelord Neato posted:i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire. Nah... Oberyn Martell only lasts a couple of episodes. Agent Pena is still going into season 3.  Honestly, there's nothing that compares to the Wire imo. Everything falls short in one way or another, characterization, accuracy, social critique...
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Dec 22, 2018 23:35
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Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire The holy trifecta.
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Dec 22, 2018 23:53
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I can't believe that they are making more Deadwood. If you look at what happened in real life, Hearst wins, Bullock and Star sell out, and swearengen dies in a ditch in Chicago
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Dec 23, 2018 00:07
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Thanks for the spoiler. 
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Dec 23, 2018 00:08
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deoju posted:Honestly, there's nothing that compares to the Wire imo. Everything falls short in one way or another, characterization, accuracy, social critique... I just picked up watching this show because of some people gushing about it in C-SPAM, and I gotta say, it's just TV man. It has some good moments that make you think - if you want to. Like in season 2, where perennial gently caress-up Ziggy can be interpreted as either an obnoxious character you wish would just go the gently caress away and stop being forced in front of your eyeballs or the stand-in for a generation of kids with no future. If you wanted to, you could examine this constantly failing-upward idiot who eventually snaps and ruins everything for everyone as the product of his situation, and and I'm sure people have written treatises about it. But doing so does not make the author or the show any better for the effort, and the character's greatest contribution to fiction remains having put Baloogan on film.
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Dec 23, 2018 00:18
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deoju posted:Nah... Oberyn Martell only lasts a couple of episodes. Agent Pena is still going into season 3. Mad Men.
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Dec 23, 2018 00:37
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Jerusalem posted:If you haven't already I really recommend checking out his books Homicide and The Corner. ill def pick them both up (after i rewatch the wire) because im still in awe at everything about the show. i also cant stress how much i enjoyed your and escape artist's writeups. I would legit watch a batch of episodes and cut out enough time in my night to catch up on them because i enjoyed it that much i tried for years to get into 'good' television but its all rear end to me, the sopranos is too racist for my tastes (is it supposed to be like an idealization of mob movies? ), breaking bad bored me for some reason or another, and everything else had too many problems for me to keep engaged. but the wire didnt even feel like a tevlevision show with how god drat dense and unwilling to spell things out to the viewer. my favourite scene(s) by far is when chris and snoop are talking about bounce music and snoop has no loving idea whats popping only for it to get called back in S5 when snoop and chris were riding around looking for omar with loving huricane chris playing on the stereo
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Dec 23, 2018 00:57
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Homicide is really good but bleak at times. Some of the stories in there can feel unsatisfying because the cases were never solved, but it's really well written. A lot of The Wire's best jokes came straight out of it.
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Dec 23, 2018 01:04
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drjuggalo posted:i tried for years to get into 'good' television but its all rear end to me, the sopranos is too racist for my tastes (is it supposed to be like an idealization of mob movies? ) D'you mean like the characters being racist, or the show itself? I'd be interested to hear more. As for what it's supposed to be, it's basically a character study of a sociopath.
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Dec 23, 2018 01:07
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Ainsley McTree posted:Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead! I think Homicide has higher highs than The Wire, but it does suffer a bit from being restrained by the network, and the fact that they bleed talent like nobody's business makes the last 2 seasons pretty dire.
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Dec 23, 2018 02:11
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Ornithology posted:S4 and S2 are objectively the best. Bosch.
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Dec 23, 2018 02:19
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Groovelord Neato posted:i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire. If you like Narcos, then give Queen of the South a shot!
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Dec 23, 2018 02:30
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Lemon posted:D'you mean like the characters being racist, or the show itself? I'd be interested to hear more. As for what it's supposed to be, it's basically a character study of a sociopath. more so in that every single black character is stupid and inept, cant even shoot straight and have as much function as doorstoppers, ive never seen a piece of media that blatant with it to the point where i thought it was satire
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Dec 23, 2018 04:34
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drjuggalo posted:more so in that every single black character is stupid and inept, cant even shoot straight and have as much function as doorstoppers, ive never seen a piece of media that blatant with it to the point where i thought it was satire I thought you were talking about The Wire for a second and I was really confused. I can't remember many instances of black people even being in The Sopranos. Maybe some gang members got hired to do a botched hit in one of the early seasons? Can you remind me? A lot of the Italians are definitely depicted as inept too though, I found it added to the realism and also provide some comic relief. I did like the running gag that whenever Tony murdered one of his own men he'd blame it on some nameless black thugs and no one ever questioned for more detail beyond that. denzelcurrypower fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 05:25
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African Americans aren’t really a part of their narrow world- they don’t induct them as members, based on racism and “stick with your own kind” mentality but there are a few instances of savvy black men in the series- the guy who tony goes into the HUD scheme with, Massive Genius from S1, Noah (“Jamaal Ginsburg, the Hasidic Homeboy”) and none of the main characters say the n word (usually “moulignon”, though Richie Aprile says “Nigerian” and if any character would use it remorselessly, I think that’s it). Characters like Paulie and Bobby Bacala are can’t-shoot-straight made men, every character has a little bit of comic relief to them to show the audience that these guys are below average intelligence- see: constant malapropisms (though possessing above average street smarts) and hey don’t idolize these people The Sopranos is to black people as the Wire is to the Greek- you could make a whole other show based on the very separate worlds these people inhabit, and so they do. There’s literally enough material to explore an entire series with every set of players which is something the wire does really well from season to season- we’re looking at something different every time. But I do not understand how any thinking person could actively dislike the sopranos. I can see someone hating sopranos and wire because they’re stupid but not liking one and hating the other
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Dec 23, 2018 06:19
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i guess my gripes with the sopranos also lines up with my gripes of mobster movies. theres just some nagging little thing in my brain that says the show is racist and makes me wanna turn it off after 20 minutes (i got through most of the first season years ago)
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Dec 23, 2018 07:31
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Some of the old school style Italian mobsters in The Sopranos are definitely racist towards black people. But IMO it's presented as a bit of characterization, not an ideology being pushed by the showrunners. I guess we're getting pretty off topic now. My bad, I started it by asking for other show reccomendations. I'll give Homicide another shot and check out Bosch. The others reccomendations I've already seen, unfortunately.
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Dec 23, 2018 08:04
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I am so down to talk sopranos in this thread since the old gbs thread is moribund Wire related- I was underwhelmed by the carcetti storyline- I thought he was going to be more littlefinger esque in his rapacious grab for power and consolidation of said power He really does gently caress all
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Dec 23, 2018 08:13
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COMPAGNIE TOMMY posted:I am so down to talk sopranos in this thread since the old gbs thread is moribund If politicians could change the game they wouldn't exist
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Dec 23, 2018 08:24
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i liked carcetti, dude was a piece of poo poo who played the system and game but its not his fault he's good at it. my favourite scene of his is when he's at that diner with that old retired mayor who talks about eating poo poo and that just being a simple lawyer who could go home to his family was a fine life while carcetti is actually eating with a huge smile on his face
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Dec 23, 2018 08:34
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Bodie is in an episode of the sopranos. I think it’s in season one, he fucks up stealing a truck.
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Dec 23, 2018 09:17
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