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Kima isn't powerful herself but the institution of the police is
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Sep 10, 2020 21:29
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Marlo wouldn't know who the gently caress Clay Davis was. He may have been a terror on the streets but there are lot of examples of him not having a clue about much beyond that. As Prop Joe so eloquently put it: "It ain’t easy civilizing this motherf***er".
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Sep 10, 2020 21:31
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CharlestheHammer posted:Stringer didn’t do it because it would be bad for business which is exactly what Marlo is suppose to be a contrast to. Kima is a cop, it's pretty clear cops have real power over poor black people.
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Sep 10, 2020 21:32
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General Battuta posted:Kima is a cop, it's pretty clear cops have real power over poor black people. It was shown more than once in season one that attacking any cop gets a violent reaction. Quite apart from Weebays famous reaction to hearing she was a cop, Kima herself showed this with her beatdown of Bodie after he punched the useless drunk cop, Pogue or Mahone or whoever it was.
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Sep 10, 2020 21:35
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Polk. The Pogues are the band that plays the song they play at cops' wakes, and the one playing when McNulty crashes his car.
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Sep 10, 2020 22:03
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bucketybuck posted:It was shown more than once in season one that attacking any cop gets a violent reaction. Quite apart from Weebays famous reaction to hearing she was a cop, Kima herself showed this with her beatdown of Bodie after he punched the useless drunk cop, Pogue or Mahone or whoever it was. "Pogue Mahone" is a phonetic approximation of the Irish phrase for kiss my rear end, so this made me laugh
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Sep 10, 2020 23:49
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General Battuta posted:Any character embedded in a power structure which will retaliate for their death. For example, you can't just go kill Clay Davis without massive blowback. Even the dealers are backed up by their organizations; if you get got, someone will take revenge. I think he meant among the street players but I get your point. Still...there was some loose talk surrounding Stringer floating the idea of even whacking Clay Davis. Thing with Omar (and, yeah, occasionally it got into some unbelievable wild west poo poo) was that he had no allegiance to any crew. Territories and gangs weren't specifically defined with him and how he operated. Even if his portrayal was a little bit over the top sometimes, he WAS based on a real person who went about poo poo exactly as was portrayed for the most part. I've heard it said they even dialed him down a notch or two because no one would believe it it they wrote him how he was. For all the money he stole, we never saw him driving a sleek ride or living in a lush crib so that allowed him to fly under the radar too. To tell you the truth, and now that I think on it, where the gently caress DID Omar keep all his money? AFIK we're never really shown that unless booking it off the Bahamas counts? EDIT: Also, Stringer wanted to hit Clay for ripping him off. Not for street poo poo. It was central to his character, where he thought that he could run the game like a real business and poo poo. Then when he found out that wasn't possible, all of a sudden he wanted to go street with it again once he got taken by The Big Boys. It was pretty central to Stringer's arc - being really loving smart but sometimes too smart and often very naive. The whole show is ultimately about power and the systematic ways people use it or fall victim. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 00:12
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BiggerBoat posted:To tell you the truth, and now that I think on it, where the gently caress DID Omar keep all his money? AFIK we're never really shown that unless booking it off the Bahamas counts? butchie e: brucie was one of the dock names shout out to the "the bitch wasnt worth more than a pinkie" storie rip butchie
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Sep 11, 2020 00:24
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Yeah, if Clay Davis had really been assassinated, every single official and staffer who's ever come near the Mayor's office would assume that they're next and that crime has gotten WAY too out of control in Baltimore to the point that it's even likely to touch them. It doesn't matter if they all secretly had knives out for Clay Davis, he was one of them and the ruling class has solidarity. Not just Baltimore's politics but the national media would have looked at Baltimore as some kind of third world hellhole where drug gangs are so out of control that even State Senators are getting assassinated. Whatever political pressure wasn't there to end the gangs before, will be there now. With that, the entire weight of the feds would come crushing down on Avon's little operation; the whole thing would get scooped up and torn apart looking for whoever killed Clay Davis, because suddenly they'd care. Much like shooting Kima made the cops suddenly care and show some solidarity for the first time in the series. Outmaneuvering that many investigators would not be an option. Nor would continuing to exist and thrive in Baltimore in a little symbiotic relationship with the "dope on the table" police theatrics and Levy and greasing all the right neighborhood pockets like was possible for the gangs previously. Avon was savvy enough to spot the problem of power immediately and laugh at the idea. Happy Thread fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 00:30
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escape artist posted:Steve Earle's son died of an overdose recently, at the age of 38. I remember hearing about it that morning on the radio. They played his music and it was the saddest drive I’ve had to work in a while, and my state is dealing with covid and wildfires and the skies have been raining ash for days. 2020 is way the gently caress down in the hole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pXYG1ZITk
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Sep 11, 2020 06:39
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escape artist posted:"Pogue Mahone" is a phonetic approximation of the Irish phrase for kiss my rear end, so this made me laugh That's exactly why they were named Polk and Mahone.
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Sep 11, 2020 23:49
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Who signs the overtime slips?
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Sep 13, 2020 04:14
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BiggerBoat posted:
aside from butchie being his bank, he was also known to be a robin hood type figure, giving drugs and money back to the people. this gave him a little more of a barrier against the major players (im thinking in particular of the addict mother that gives him shelter when the barksdales are trying to hit him in season 1) edit: speaking of butchie, i forget, was it just prop joe who knew about his friendship with omar? or was it like one of those things like the sunday truce that are just honorably ignored by everyone until marlo came into the picture? God Hole fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 20:35
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Yeah, that makes sense. He was always just shown living in a normal row house and never really flashed a lot of cash. I forgot about Butchie. GOd drat I wish this thread had more action because I keep listening to podcasts, watching recaps and delving more into it and there's always another layer to it or things I missed. SO loving good. I've grown to liking it more than The Sopranos over time just for its sheer depth. I still think the holy triumvirate of great TV is The WIre, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos but my ranking has shifted. The key to all 3 I think is how there are no perfect characters or well defined heroes. Everyone is flawed but their motivations are clear. They also all are really good at show don't tell. And while I'm thinking about it, I never hear Simon's Treme brought up here, which I liked a lot and has a lot of the same actors. It didn't have much of a following but I thought it was pretty great. Maybe a little slow at times but very cool. Anyone watch that?
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Sep 13, 2020 22:02
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The police are the most effective gang so long as they're the ones white people feel good enough about to pick up the phone and tip off about anything unusual happening. Having eyes and ears through the entire non-involved population would be a huge advantage versus a large organization that can't get any Intel from the citizens. For that same reason I think Omar always had an advantage over Marlo. People would reach out to him if there was danger because he had that trusted Robin hood reputation, which isn't nearly as good as having a formal police dispatch answering phones, but it's still something. Meanwhile Marlo attacked the public and sought only to be feared by them; he didn't bother treating the public any differently than a rival gang or an extraneous underling. They say that when cities devolve into chaos, when warlords start popping up for lack of any working power structure, the gangs that are doomed long term are the ones that attacked civilians. Once the public turns on you you're done. I don't think Marlo would have been any exception to that. Even in a world without police, the public are going to turn to someone like Omar and feed him intel before they give Marlo any.
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Sep 13, 2020 22:07
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Happy Thread posted:The police are the most effective gang so long as they're the ones white people feel good enough about to pick up the phone and tip off about anything unusual happening. Having eyes and ears through the entire non-involved population would be a huge advantage versus a large organization that can't get any Intel from the citizens. "the one who wins is usually the one who feeds the masses". the black panthers REALLY started getting attention from the feds once they had begun setting up networks of food distribution in low income and minority communities.
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Sep 13, 2020 22:37
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Happy Thread posted:For that same reason I think Omar always had an advantage over Marlo. People would reach out to him if there was danger because he had that trusted Robin hood reputation, which isn't nearly as good as having a formal police dispatch answering phones, but it's still something. Meanwhile Marlo attacked the public and sought only to be feared by them; he didn't bother treating the public any differently than a rival gang or an extraneous underling. like when Marlo gave away money to all the kids?
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Sep 13, 2020 23:42
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BiggerBoat posted:And while I'm thinking about it, I never hear Simon's Treme brought up here, which I liked a lot and has a lot of the same actors. It didn't have much of a following but I thought it was pretty great. Maybe a little slow at times but very cool. Anyone watch that? Treme was a fascinating and somehow extremely comforting submergence into New Orleans culture. It kind of stumbled freeform around just being itself rather than seeming to have any direct main plot line, which is pretty on-point considering so much of it is about Jazz - just this rich celebration of a very unique American city in the aftermath of a natural AND manmade disaster. I don't think it had the legs of something like The Wire because it lacks the density and drive that series had... but it also wasn't TRYING to have that density and drive, it just... was. And that was enough, really.
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Sep 14, 2020 01:30
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I think I lacked the familiarity and/or fondness for jazz and new orleans that that show seemed to require. Although I will always remember the excellent exchange between Clarke Peters' character (I think) and the insurance agent that was denying his post-katrina property damage claim that went something like: "How do you sleep at night?" "I drink  "
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Sep 14, 2020 01:41
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Ainsley McTree posted:
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Sep 14, 2020 02:48
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escape artist posted:like when Marlo gave away money to all the kids? I saw it argued earlier in here that that was more of a flex. Beyond that I think of it as a way of cheaply buying the complicity of the public -- since anyone who accepted the money was no longer on any moral high ground to complain about him. He made this motive clear by insisting on everyone being handed the money one by one while loudly acknowledging the money came from Marlo. Or, it forced people like Michael to openly reject Marlo's money in public and make their opposition known. Come to think of it I think the previous poster mentioned Marlo's true goal at the time was to root out locals working against him, right? Marlo only spared Michael because he saw a potential soldier. When Omar gives money away, I picture it being more of a personal act where people come to him in need directly, not some mass publicity stunt. Happy Thread fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 03:17
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Ainsley McTree posted:I think I lacked the familiarity and/or fondness for jazz and new orleans that that show seemed to require. Although I will always remember the excellent exchange between Clarke Peters' character (I think) and the insurance agent that was denying his post-katrina property damage claim that went something like: Oh God, it was so maddening hearing,"Your house was damaged by a flood and you only had hurricane insurance" and ignoring that the flood was caused BY the hurricane, because you know that wasn't made up for drama, that poo poo actually happened to a lot of people. Edit: In Wire related stuff, I'm up to season 3 in the Way Down in the Hole podcast series now and it's still great. Also I love how they start season 2 making GBS threads all over Ziggy as a one-note character and by the end they've really come to a more sympathetic take on him. The line they use which I love was something like,"He was a one-note character... because the circumstances of his life only ALLOWED him to be a one-note character." Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 03:21
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I think Treme was very similar to The WIre in the sense that it's really the CITY that is the central main character. Treme just didn't have quite as many dramatic, dark and violent hooks to bait enough viewers into watching it I don't think. A show about struggling musicians, working class restaurant chefs, day laborers, a few cops, people struggling with relationships and some artists in the wake of a devastating hurricane doesn't quite have the gravitas of dope dealers and fiends ripping and running as cops chase them around. Plus, we never got to SEE the storm, just the aftermath. What I mean is, the sort of titillating and gratuitous elements that are pretty central to capturing a TV audience weren't really there for Treme and a lot of people found it boring, and in my opinion missied the point. I didn't. But it still hooked me pretty good and subverted my expectations, which is always fun. Like The Wire, the acting, the writing and the characters were loving fantastic and nothing was rote. For instance, Goodman's suicide was totally out of loving nowhere when everyone reasonably expects him to be The Star moving forward. I think it would have done better in the ratings had they shown Katrina hitting and added some of the darker elements of the Superdome shelter and poo poo like that but I much prefer the way Simon portrayed everything, showing characters DEALING with it all. ... Speaking of out of nowhere and subverting expectations, I was catching up with The RInger: Down in the Hole podcast and they brought up Rawls being seen in the gay bar near the end of S3, which I absolutely love and had totally forgotten about. Everyone did. It's NEVER touched on again or ever becomes central to the character in any way. It's never explained. He's just THERE for like 4 seconds. In any other show (a lesser show), they would have felt compelled to either explore his sexuality or otherwise introduce some side plot where he was investigating the club for some reason and go into why he was there in an attempt to explain it (see: Vito in The Sopranos). The Wire just goes "Rawls was in the background at a gay bar. Yeah...so what?" and leaves it at that. The dude on the podcast put it well and said something like "some things in life are just never resolved" and that hit pretty well home for me.
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Sep 14, 2020 21:37
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So I think I know the answer to this, but the pretext for stopping D when he got arrested was that he spent an unreasonably short amount of time in New York before he drove back? This seems like a flimsy reason for a fishing expedition yes, the answer is cops can do whatever they want But why didn't D refuse until he got ahold of Levy? Seems like he's had enough run-ins with the cops to know not to say poo poo without his lawyer.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:06
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escape artist posted:like when Marlo gave away money to all the kids? I viewed that more as like creating soldiers for his burgeoning crew and business. Like how they specifically discuss Michael right away as having potential. I'm pretty sure Omar is the only person to ever spot someone? I know he's selling drugs to a young mother so it's not the most courageous act, but within context of show obviously he shows the most empathy to the innocents and on other hand ruthlessness to his enemies.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:40
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knox posted:I viewed that more as like creating soldiers for his burgeoning crew and business. Like how they specifically discuss Michael right away as having potential.
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Sep 14, 2020 23:13
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knox posted:
Bodie did also. I think it might have been to Michaels mother?
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Sep 15, 2020 00:03
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BiggerBoat posted:Rawls being seen in the gay bar near the end of S3, which I absolutely love and had totally forgotten about. Everyone did. It's NEVER touched on again or ever becomes central to the character in any way. IIRC "Rawls sucks cock," is written on the bathroom wall when Landsman is wiping Bubble's puke off him in season 4. But that's it really.
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Sep 15, 2020 00:24
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Yeah but without the gay bar scene that wouldn't imply anything
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Sep 15, 2020 00:58
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Avon gives Cutty the money for his gym - I think it counts. It's not for influence or a show of power or anything either, he doesn't want it to be known. I mean, in s4 they have the young Avon boxing photo up on the wall. It may not be known he was the investor, but he is a part of the gym.
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Sep 15, 2020 01:24
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Avon gives Cutty the money for his gym - I think it counts. It's not for influence or a show of power or anything either, he doesn't want it to be known. Avon also chuckled when Cutty hit him with the figure he had in mind that he was real nervous about even bringing up.
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Sep 15, 2020 01:43
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GoutPatrol posted:I mean, in s4 they have the young Avon boxing photo up on the wall. It may not be known he was the investor, but he is a part of the gym. That's great because it's clearly something Cutty did on his own, Avon wanted his name kept off because he was just doing a guy he liked a favor and nothing more, but Cutty wanted to show his appreciation. Also re: Rawls, yeah I'm a gigantic fan of how it's just this one moment that adds an extra little wrinkle to the character for us as viewers, but never actually changes anything about how the character is written or even portrayed. He was a huge rear end in a top hat before, then we find out he's gay, then he continues to be the huge rear end in a top hat he always was.
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Sep 15, 2020 01:48
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GoutPatrol posted:I mean, in s4 they have the young Avon boxing photo up on the wall. It may not be known he was the investor, but he is a part of the gym. Cutty was also a dedicated company man who spent 14 years in prison instead of cutting (ha) a deal with the state. There's presumably some sentimentality and some practicality in Avon's lack of hesitation to give him the equivalent of pocket change for his project.
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Sep 15, 2020 02:14
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I dunno I kinda felt the Big Reveal that Rawls is gay was the definition of an inconsequential detail and obvious attempt to add ~complexity~ to a character that had been pretty 1.1 dimensional, without understanding that his portrayal that way is already very effective for the narrative and didn't need to be "fixed" so to speak. It's already easy to infer that he's closeted from all his homophobic exclamations so seeing him in the bar reads are very "Here, idiot! Do you get it now? Do you?!" to me.
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Sep 15, 2020 02:45
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I strongly disagree. For me, it seemed that it was pointing out these people are far more complex than the surface level look most of us get at them, and we don't truly/fully know any of them. There's a whole suggested backstory to Rawls given by that one scene, but it's outside of our experience/knowledge, just a tantalizing glimpse of a greater depth we're not privy too and which also isn't actually particularly relevant to the story being told. He remains the huge rear end in a top hat he always was, he doesn't change up, but now we're at least aware that there is a whole lot more that built him into the man he is rather than just springing up fully formed one day. It's one of the issues I have with season 5, where Klebanow and Whiting never get any depth or even suggestion of depth that the likes of Rawls, Burrell and hell even Valchek got. They're just cardboard cutouts for David Simon to vent at his old bosses about.
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Sep 15, 2020 02:53
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Van Dis posted:I dunno I kinda felt the Big Reveal that Rawls is gay was the definition of an inconsequential detail and obvious attempt to add ~complexity~ to a character that had been pretty 1.1 dimensional, without understanding that his portrayal that way is already very effective for the narrative and didn't need to be "fixed" so to speak. It's already easy to infer that he's closeted from all his homophobic exclamations so seeing him in the bar reads are very "Here, idiot! Do you get it now? Do you?!" to me. It's good because it's not a big reveal. Sometimes being gay is totally incidental to a character. Adding gay doesn't add complexity, it's just something someone can be, like a redhead or a coffee hater. The scene it adds the most to is Landsman's story about intrusive thoughts about McNulty while he's jerking off. It makes Rawls laughing even funnier because he grasps how horrible that would be on multiple levels!
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Sep 15, 2020 02:56
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Jerusalem posted:I strongly disagree. For me, it seemed that it was pointing out these people are far more complex than the surface level look most of us get at them, and we don't truly/fully know any of them. That's exactly what I'm thinking about, because I think Rawls already got that hint of complexity in this scene: General Battuta posted:The scene it adds the most to is Landsman's story about intrusive thoughts about McNulty while he's jerking off. It makes Rawls laughing even funnier because he grasps how horrible that would be on multiple levels! because in that scene, we learn that Rawls is capable of some kind degree of forgiveness and grace. That's the polar opposite of his characterization in every other scene and does actually add something compelling to his character, and more importantly it develops the theme that realistic characters are complex and not just stand-ins for concepts (Marlo is one of the more notable offenders here). That's why Rawls' appearance in the gay bar feels so gimmicky to me, it completely fails to add to that theme or his character.
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Sep 15, 2020 03:02
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escape artist posted:like when Marlo gave away money to all the kids? someone never had raytheon come to their high school job fair and hand out cool notebooks and stickers!! General Battuta posted:The scene it adds the most to is Landsman's story about intrusive thoughts about McNulty while he's jerking off. It makes Rawls laughing even funnier because he grasps how horrible that would be on multiple levels! *first watchthrough* huh, kinda seems like rawls really does want to put his middle finger up mcnulty's rear end *second watchthrough* yep. called it.
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Sep 15, 2020 04:13
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Van Dis posted:That's exactly what I'm thinking about, because I think Rawls already got that hint of complexity in this scene: People aren't gay to add to a theme or character. They're just gay. They're tall or short, they're thin or fat, they're straight or gay or bi or whatever, it's just a trait people have.
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Sep 15, 2020 05:17
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Avon giving money to Cutty I think falls back to the respect he had for him, both in Jessup, and when he walked away from the game in season 3.
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Sep 15, 2020 05:32
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