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Count Roland posted:S5 has Marlo, Chris, Snoop, Prop Joe and many more, all at their best. The Serial Killer is kinda the main plot but the gangster poo poo, which is probably my favorite part of the show, is too notch. The City Hall stuff is great too, especially how they deal with the fake killer and the fallout. Carcetti’s absolute astonishment after having everything explained to him, followed by everyone in the room working out that they have to keep it quiet, is hilarious every time
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Jun 2, 2023 03:22
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Lester also dated a witness in an active investigation of his so… not great
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Jun 2, 2023 03:44
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After getting her to sleep at his place by scheming. Lester ain’t all sweater vest.
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Jun 2, 2023 03:47
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Lester would never start a serial killer hoax, but eh it was already happening so
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Jun 2, 2023 04:27
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If you want to complain about anything in season 5, it’s how much shoe leather they spend on McNulty backsliding. It’s exactly the bullshit he’d do, but we needed to actually watch maybe a third of what we did. Those scenes draaaaaaaag.
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Jun 2, 2023 05:05
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Xiahou Dun posted:Remember when he went undercover meeting Bernard? Part of that was he showed he knew how to run a no poo poo con. That’s just a thing Lester happened to know. Is there a write-up out there that explains what it was Lester pitched? I had always thought he was just fast-talking, and Bernard buckled from Lester's smooth moves, and the girl continuing to nag him. I didn't realise what he was pitching was actually a thing people really do
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Jun 2, 2023 05:18
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Xiahou Dun posted:Lester spent thirteen years and four months
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Jun 2, 2023 05:24
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Aces High posted:Is there a write-up out there that explains what it was Lester pitched? I had always thought he was just fast-talking, and Bernard buckled from Lester's smooth moves, and the girl continuing to nag him. I didn't realise what he was pitching was actually a thing people really do He was showing off that he can read what numbers someone dials into a phone. In the sainted days of yore this was a legit scam because of things like prepaid phone cards : you had a card and number associated with your account and you’d get a bill at the end of the month, the scammer sees you put it in, the scammer sells that info to someone who wants to make a bunch of long distance calls.
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Jun 2, 2023 05:28
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Xiahou Dun posted:After getting her to sleep at his place by scheming. Yeah when it comes to Lester, all the pieces matter.
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Jun 2, 2023 09:17
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Pirate Radar posted:Carcetti’s absolute astonishment after having everything explained to him, followed by everyone in the room working out that they have to keep it quiet, is hilarious every time Norm cracking up and Carcetti yelling at him remains one of the funniest scenes on TV (for a non-comedy (outside of the sopranos) at least)
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Jun 2, 2023 14:58
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GABA ghoul posted:I was surprised to find out how Baltimore has only something like 500k inhabitants. That's just a mid-sized city, but Avon/Marlo/Joe are still taking in millions per year. Found some estimates that there are ~60k drug addicts living in/around the city, so that actually makes sense. That would be a market worth several hundred millions of $ per year in revenue. The logistics of distributing drugs to tens of thousands of people per day while under constant surveillance is pretty impressive. You need to be really organized to pull that off.
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Jun 2, 2023 15:54
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D maybe just didn't want a car or something because there are a lot of scenes of him spending a bunch of time picking out clothes and everything is new and clean. Plus he's living in a decent sized apartment by himself. Compare that to Poot and Wallace, who are living in a vacant apartment stealing electricity, and taking care of like 5 other kids. D was being taken care of by his uncle.
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Jun 2, 2023 16:14
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Xiahou Dun posted:After getting her to sleep at his place by scheming. He's natural police, so of course a huge piece of poo poo.
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Jun 2, 2023 18:42
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I would say that D'angelo absolutely does matter. At the very beginning D'Angelo has the 221 tower which is just a 24/7 drug selling location and I guess would be considered a lieutenant- Him shooting that rival dealer is what kicks the whole story off. He was making plenty of money for himself and the organisation and then he gets demoted for loving up and is sent back to the pit to work on a salary rather than a percentage.
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Jun 2, 2023 19:06
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There was a book a while back from one of the Freakonomics-adjacent guys who was able to collect a bunch of financial info from drug dealers and it turns out pretty much everyone except the people at the very top are barely getting by paycheck-to-paycheck.
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Jun 4, 2023 17:17
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withak posted:There was a book a while back from one of the Freakonomics-adjacent guys who was able to collect a bunch of financial info from drug dealers and it turns out pretty much everyone except the people at the very top are barely getting by paycheck-to-paycheck. The Freakonomics guys are one of the classic examples of shoddy pop science, so take everything with an enormous bag of salt. Their stuff generally gets laughed at by subject matter specialists for credulously repeating myths and bad methodology. See also Malcom Gladwell.
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Jun 4, 2023 17:25
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withak posted:There was a book a while back from one of the Freakonomics-adjacent guys who was able to collect a bunch of financial info from drug dealers and it turns out pretty much everyone except the people at the very top are barely getting by paycheck-to-paycheck. That was a chapter in the OG freakonomocs. "Why do drug dealers live with their moms" or something similar. e: ^^ yeah if you want to understand these things The Wire is vastly more educational than Freakonomocs. Count Roland fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jun 4, 2023 |
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Jun 4, 2023 17:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:The Freakonomics guys are one of the classic examples of shoddy pop science, so take everything with an enormous bag of salt. Their stuff generally gets laughed at by subject matter specialists for credulously repeating myths and bad methodology. Yeah but the guy did it as part of his thesis for a sociology PhD so presumably he was would have been held to higher standards than those set by whoever published Freakonomics. edit: "Freakonomic-adjacent" wasn't meant to be a point in his favor. withak fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jun 4, 2023 |
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Jun 4, 2023 17:29
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withak posted:Yeah but the guy did it as part of his thesis for a sociology PhD so presumably he was would have been held to higher standards than those set by whoever published Freakonomics. Sure, maybe. If you actually find that cat and read his thing. The Freakonomics crowd citing them however is like an anti-citation. Because just from my own stuff, they pretty frequently are making poo poo up or purposely going with bad research to get a spicier take. (The whole name chapter for instance turns into a cloud of racist facebook uncles if you poke it at all)
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Jun 4, 2023 17:47
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There’s a newish podcast called If Books Could Kill and their first two episodes are hilarious takedowns of Freakonomics and Outliers, recommended.
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Jun 4, 2023 17:53
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Jewmanji posted:There’s a newish podcast called If Books Could Kill and their first two episodes are hilarious takedowns of Freakonomics and Outliers, recommended. Absolutely agree. Everyone should listen as it’s not just funny people but they dive into academic work and get opinions from other academics in whatever field the pop science book purports to teach.
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Jun 4, 2023 18:47
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Yeah I got into them from 5-4 which shares a host. They seem pretty good, but they haven’t touched any of areas yet so I don’t have that check. They’re eventually gonna have to talk about Chinese though, so we’ll see if they fall into any of the usual traps.
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Jun 4, 2023 19:02
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I mean the wire has always done silly things for tv reasons (like Omar and 90% of what he does) but at least they were silly and fun to watch. The serial killer stuff is silly and also kind of boring?
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Jun 4, 2023 19:21
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Finished the series. Season 5 definitely felt better this time around. I didn’t hate the newspaper plot as much, and I was able to get over my dislike of the serial killer plot. This season still has some all timer moments like Clay Davis on the stand, Omar jumping out of a three story window, and McNulty getting profiled by the FBI. The newspaper story only really sucks because Templeton not only gets away with lying, he gets rewarded for it. I guess that’s one of the lessons of the wire.
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Jun 5, 2023 01:04
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Bird in a Blender posted:.
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Jun 5, 2023 04:16
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean the wire has always done silly things for tv reasons (like Omar and 90% of what he does) but at least they were silly and fun to watch. The serial killer stuff is silly and also kind of boring? I've read here and there that the writers actually toned him down from the guy who was the real life inspiration for the character.
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Jun 5, 2023 11:32
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:And it takes a lot of screen time and it’s mostly boring. I found it less boring this time. Finding all the ways the paper paralleled the police was interesting. The newspaper stuff does show how thin the police storyline was though, they needed something to fill the time. Not like I really wanted to spend more time on the fake serial killer.
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Jun 5, 2023 12:22
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I appreciate season 5’s comedy but it does drag a bit. McNulty being called to talk to the journalist he knows is full of poo poo? Hilarious. The FBI profiling scene? Gold. But I admit it’s not the strongest season.
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Jun 5, 2023 12:47
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BiggerBoat posted:I've read here and there that the writers actually toned him down from the guy who was the real life inspiration for the character. yeah I've been under the impression he got the audie murphy treatment
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Jun 5, 2023 13:07
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One of the things they toned down about Omar was the height of the window he jumped out of iirc. Also, one of the guys that helps Omar get padded up in prison is, again iirc, Donnie Andrews who was the primary inspiration for Omar
ShaneMacGowansTeeth fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 16:16
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ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:One of the things they toned down about Omar was the height of the window he jumped out of iirc. Also, one of the guys that helps Omar get padded up in prison is, again iirc, Donnie Andrews who was the primary inspiration for Omar His character gets killed in the same scene where Omar does his Spider-Man stunt, too. I always found that ironic for some reason.
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Jun 5, 2023 17:06
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BiggerBoat posted:I've read here and there that the writers actually toned him down from the guy who was the real life inspiration for the character. I remember the guy it was based on saying yeah non off that poo poo happened or could have happened but it’s fine
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Jun 5, 2023 20:52
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Forgive the tangential at best post please... Wife and I just got new cats last night. Including this little guy that my wife started to jokingly suggest "We could call him Omar...." Whoops. She should have known I would latch onto that instantly and there was no defense to my "Well you can 'name'' him whatever you want, but I'm calling him Omar now" He's even the runt of his litter. I never thought "But Omar's last name is "Little!"" would come up in naming a cat, but it was another nail in the he's Omar now coffin. His "scar" is backwards, but I won't hold it against him. 
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Jun 9, 2023 16:31
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Tony Phillips posted:Forgive the tangential at best post please... Do you say "omar's coming" whenever he's walking over to you?
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Jun 18, 2023 20:47
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Lester don't go to no dance unless he can rub some tit
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Jun 19, 2023 03:12
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Omar is an awesome kitty.
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Jun 19, 2023 09:17
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Just started a rewatch on account of COVID and it took me till the end of the first episode to remember that Lance Reddick died  But also there’s a scene where Stringer is upbraiding D’Angelo for not giving Bubbles’s friend a bigger beatdown for the fake money scheme, and he tells D he “can’t show any weakness”. The conversation ends, Stringer walks away, and D’Angelo looks for a brief moment at the tv playing footage from the Iraq war. Show is good.
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Jun 22, 2023 01:28
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One of my favorite little moments is still when the Barksdales are selling a weak package and their territory is eroding, so they chase off the rival dealers who have better drugs (labeled Bin Ladens) and then repackage their own weak poo poo and call it,"WMDs". One of the fiends worryingly notes that he's not getting a Bin Laden and the dealer assures him that WMDs are just as good. Edit: Actually I think I misremembered. I think Bodie's crew was selling the inferior product as Bin Ladens, then changed the name to WMD in order to convince people they had something new even though it was "the same poo poo, different name". Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jun 22, 2023 |
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Jun 22, 2023 02:10
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it will mass destruct yo rear end
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Jun 22, 2023 11:15
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I had finish a "legendary TV series" on my new year's resolutions this year and it was down to The Wire or The Sopranos. I picked The Wire because it was shorter. Hell of a first season, just finished the second and I've got almost no sympathy for any of the dock workers. They're all just dumb and unlikable in their own ways. Heard Season 3 was the best season so excited to start that tonight! If I've got to compare it to Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul which are the only two other crime dramas I've seen I'm liking The Wire a lot more by this point in the series so if Season 3 really is that good I'm excited to see how it holds up to the Gus Fring arc in Breaking Bad.
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Jun 24, 2023 16:38
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