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Boywhiz88 posted:It's part of why he complains about losing a few crews to Marlo's package at the co-op, he's losing money! That sentimental motherfucker!
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Sep 10, 2013 19:57
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cletepurcel posted:This reminds me of a little detail that always bugs me: in season 1, Lester and Jimmy run the numbers and estimate the Barksdales' earnings as astronomical. Yet when Marlo sells the connect to the Co-Op for just $10M, they seem to have trouble getting the money together at first (leading to the aforementioned hilarious Cheese death scene). And this is a co-op of several kingpins - Cheese even says "anyone not making that kind of money need be ashamed". Is it just that most of their money isn't easily accessible, or something? Avon was a huge fish at that point. He had all the towers locked down - usually a big crew would hold down at most a few spots in those towers. Then the towers got busted down. Avon still had some premium real estate, but he was pretty diminished by the start of season 3. Cheese could only claim that kind of money because at that point he had taken on all of Prop Joe's organization - oh, and Hungry Man's too. Least that's how I interpret it.
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Sep 12, 2013 02:54
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Jerusalem posted:Chris and Snoop dump their weapons in the water, spooked after Herc's stop. As they prepare to leave, Chris has a moment of instinctual self-preservation and collects the nailgun as well. He dumps it into the river as well, removing the physical evidence that could link him to more than a dozen murders. Snoop is aghast, complaining that he now owes her $800, and Chris just smiles happily, knowing that he is free and clear of any possible charge being brought against him. Chris is a careful, deliberate man who makes few mistakes and covers up those that he does. I was thinking about this shot just recently - that Chris is so cautious about this particular detail betrays a relative ease he has about the rest of the crime. Specifically, he must feel pretty secure that he didn't leave any DNA at the rest of the vacants. this in addition to how readily he digs up Sergei from the courthouse records suggests that Chris has a past with law enforcement! I don't necessarily mean that he used to be a cop or anything, but maybe his father was? Maybe he had an internship somewhere or went to the academy? Given how people have said that Gbenga will talk to people on Twitter, I'm tempted to ask if this was part of whatever backstory he had cooked up for Chris.
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Sep 19, 2013 18:13
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Jerusalem posted:Is it cold of Donnelly to recommend Prez not get too attached, or does that lead to teachers who don't really care/start seeing pupils as nothing but numbers? Here I can weigh in. Donnelly is generally pretty cold-hearted, and the way she phrased the subject to Prez was unnecessarily rough ( I would be seriously pissed to hear a colleague talk about whether or not myself and my significant other should have kids). Still, in substance she is absolutely right. At the end of the day, your students are not your friends and you are damned sure not their parents. They show up in your life for a short time, you get to know them, and hopefully most of them stand up on their own two feet afterwards. That's your job. If you take too much of a personal involvement then you can impede that. As far as Carver, I think he should have put up more of a fight about adopting Randy. At least filled out some paperwork. At the end of the day the only thing Carver did wrong with Randy was to trust Herc. Given where they were at the beginning, this was a reasonable thing for Carver to do, but Carver still bears responsibility. And any sliver of responsibility for something as awful as what happened to Randy's foster parents is huge. Plus I think that of all the boys, Randy could have most benefited from a good situation. twerking on the railroad fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Oct 13, 2013 |
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Oct 13, 2013 12:48
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cletepurcel posted:I wonder if Landsman would have let Bubbles go (and hence let a death remain red) if the clearance rate hadn't already been hosed due to the Marlo murders. Probably not but a nice moment nonetheless, he has a similar one when he tries to figure out why the gently caress Ziggy shot Double G. I think all signs point to "probably not." I think it is also partially even Landsman giving in to the "new day" in Baltimore. Given how long Bubbles has been in the BPD system as an informant, it's possible that Landsman even recognizes the name Bubbles. If so, I could see Landsman deciding that quality policework is going to be a lot easier with a Bubbles around. Re: Kenard. I think the show was very clearly trying to signal both that he is a psycho and that he's Marlo:The Next Generation. That said, I don't think that's why he came up with such a flimsy excuse for taking Namond's package. I think he just works on instinct and he had the package in his hands. Emboldened by his view of Namond as a bitch, he became the Scorpion to Namond's frog and took it. edit: That last line may have been the whitest thing I've ever typed.
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Oct 14, 2013 23:47
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ally_1986 posted:Bubbles kills his surrogate son (Which he bears some responsibility from - if you keep a gun in your house you have a responsibility to take steps to ensure your children couldn't find and use it) This is really just about right.
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Oct 17, 2013 20:42
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Jono C posted:That's the main conclusion I drew, too. Don't forget Cutty's work with kids once he walked away from the game. And how many lives did Carcetti actually improve, with all of the talk he put up during season 3? Well Daniels's life is quite a bit better on Carcetti's account...
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Oct 21, 2013 07:59
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bucketybuck posted:Just started a rewatch of season 5, and I picked up on something I missed the first time round. One of the things that always intrigued me about that scene was that he made the sign of the cross before starting off, as if to ask forgiveness in advance. At least part of the reason is that he never really displayed any religious tendencies before!
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Oct 29, 2013 21:35
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It's too bad about the timing. If I had access to my dvds I'd probably volunteer for a writeup or two as I actually kinda liked season 5.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:19
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Jerusalem posted:Things to consider/discuss! I actually feel like the discipline of Marlo's crew was a bit of a writer's conceit in this season. Namely it was way too good. I mean, Chris was certainly an asset as he really seemed to know how the police worked in a deep and personal way. But everybody under him was just as liable to make mistakes. Sure, they didn't use cell phones, but that opens other weaknesses. You have records from gas stations, you have people meeting face-to-face very frequently. Plus the way Marlo was pissing everybody off in imposing his will, eventually someone's going to crack and help the police. Jerusalem posted:What are the legal ramifications of NOT paying out all that overtime that is owed. McNulty is close to a month's worth of unpaid overtime, that's work that he has done, that was approved and signed off by his superiors - surely they MUST pay him even if it breaks the bank (again). As far as I know they have to pay it, presumably with interest as well. Jerusalem posted:What options does Dukie have? Would returning (or going for the first time!) to High School be possible at this point? Or has he already slipped through the cracks? I thought this is something Michael should have pushed. High school, bad as it's going to be in Baltimore, is going to be a much better environment than the streets. Plus it's something Dukie is actually good at. Plus, since high school tends to get out way earlier than grade school, Dukie could still pick up Bug and stuff. Plus Michael has been around corners long enough to know the value of somebody working as a bank. Of course that might not be realistic. I never got the sense that Michael valued an education in the least. Jerusalem posted:Once McNulty saw the writing on the wall, why not just return back to Patrol? gently caress the overtime, gently caress the MCU, gently caress Marlo and gently caress making the big cases and proving you're smarter than some drug kingpins? He says himself he was happy in Patrol. His drinking was under control, he had a happy and stable family life etc. I can feel sympathy for McNulty's rage to a certain extent, but nothing is forcing him to stick in this high tension/frustrating and emotionally damaging position other than his own pride and stubbornness. I think this is also a writer's conceit. Certainly this was something Beadie and McNulty would have talked about. Jerusalem posted:Am I being too hard on Gus? Especially so early in the season? I actually feel like Gus himself is just fine. OK, so he's a grammar nerd, but I think you kind of have to be to work in a newspaper these days. Who else would have you? The problem with Gus is that his rogues gallery consists entirely of cardboard cutouts. Incidentally, this "who else would have you" business is something that gives me some sympathy for Scott's frustrations. My guess is that he's just as much of a grammar nerd as the old folks in the writers room. He's probably heard the old adage that if you CAN do something else besides journalism then you'd better do THAT. Probably heard it a million times. So if you absolutely HAVE to make it in the newspaper business, you'd better damned well get up to one of the newspapers that will last for the next 30 years as quickly as you can. As far as I can tell, this is the NY Times business plan: sure all the newspapers around the country are dying, but the name NY Times is going to be worth something no matter how the format changes. Similarly, the Washington Post will last because people will always want to know what's going on with political leaders in the US. A smaller city like Baltimore? Well maybe they're close enough that they can get most of their news from the Post. Now if you need to get to one of these papers how do you rise fastest? You beg, borrow, and steal the biggest stories - and that's exactly what Scott does. Similarly, looking back I almost see Alma as having her head in the sand not to see that coming. That bureau she got shipped to forecasts a quick layoff when the Sun closes it down in 5 years or so. But the show treats it more like Lester's demotion to the basement rather than the death sentence that it is. This may be another artifact of Simon's work at the Sun occurring in the early 90s. Back then, buyouts and cost-cutting were happening but the full-on death of the industry was not something people saw coming. Finally, one thing that I really appreciated was the shuffling of people in between politics and teaching and the police force and journalism. Gus starts on the police but goes into journalism. Norman starts in journalism and goes into politics. Prez starts in the police and goes into teaching. It's like a game of "Where does your idealism take you?" Do you fully give into cynicism and end up in politics or do you rage against the dying of the light in teaching?
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Nov 10, 2013 12:13
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Jerusalem posted:Bunk reminds him he is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room so why doesn't he figure out how to get money from this broke-rear end city, and McNulty's reply is to go join the two women in the bar and see if he can pick one up. Bunk and Freamon, who put so much pressure on him to go back to his hard drinking ways in season 4, comment to each other that they thought he was "married or some poo poo", making a joke of his infidelity to a good woman who he was recently so happy with. I'm reminded of the current Incognito/Martin scandal in the NFL. You've done a really good job here in noting how it's not just McNulty who's hosed up here, but that his friends are pushing him deeper down the hole. In the Incognito/Martin case, people are suggesting that the younger man who has been harassed by the crude older man on the Dolphins should resolve his differences by getting into a fight or something. Neither course of action would help a damned thing but this is "how it is" for either an NFL player or a western district police officer. And at first I didn't even notice this messed up little detail in McNulty's story because I don't know "how it is" for a Homcide detective. Nice catch.
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Nov 11, 2013 07:16
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empty baggie posted:Link for reference (at least I assume this is what you're talking about): http://freakonomics.com/2008/01/09/what-do-real-thugs-think-of-the-wire/ All those features are pro-read material. The"thugs" are endearingly fond of that interviewer.
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Nov 27, 2013 08:15
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Orange Devil posted:David Simon wrote a little more on the Head Shot here: http://davidsimon.com/kwame-brown-another-federal-case-another-head-shot/ I think if David Simon felt this way about the head shot, then he should have portrayed its use as something less than an unambiguous good that Bond was too cocky to use.
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Nov 29, 2013 22:45
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Orange Devil posted:If Marlo and Carcetti are parallels, then who is the Greek, the man above it all who stays the King no matter what, in Carcetti's world? I'd say some fatcat capitalist who buys politicians, but I can't quite recall one on the show. Krawczyk is a little too smalltime for this, especially what with his run-in with Omar and Brother Mouzone, but I don't recall us seeing anyone bigger. Levy? The lobbyist Frank Sobotka employs? They all seem to make their living by skimming off money from a steady stream of criminals provided by society.
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Nov 30, 2013 17:40
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Jerusalem posted:Chris doesn't answer, just opens the door to a garage to reveal Snoop waiting with a gun.... and a tied up, gagged, shivering, terrified Hungry Man. Snoops reveals that Hungry Man already poo poo himself and they haven't even gotten started with him, and Chris turns to the surprised Cheese and tells him this is a gift from Marlo.... you give a gift, you get a gift back. Cheese understands exactly what he means, and approaches the man who he blames for his earlier humiliation by Joe with great anticipation. I never really understood why Cheese was so anxious to betray his own flesh and blood to Marlo of all people over Hungry Man, who presumably isn't much more than a 2-bit gangster if he hasn't been brought up before this season. I mean Cheese is not exactly a bright dude, but he sees first-hand that to Marlo, loyalty means exactly nothing. Why wouldn't Cheese just doublecross Marlo to Joe? If Cheese is so hungry for Hungry Man's territory, how much better would a piece of Marlo's territory taste?
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Dec 1, 2013 22:41
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mrg220t posted:And the best part is the other gangsters don't care except for his part of the share. I re watched that yesterday. I was amused to note that fat face Rick threw his cigar on top of cheese's body as everyone left. Good thing the city crime lab ain't worth poo poo!
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Dec 2, 2013 16:42
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Basebf555 posted:Its funny too because you can imagine that many people over the years have wanted to kill Cheese but his relation to Prop Joe would have always saved him. So once Joe is dead Cheese demonstrates just how long he would have survived in the game had he been on his own. He acted like a dick(something he's spent his whole life doing) one time in front of people who didn't respect him and bam he's unceremoniously killed. Cheese wasn't in the game for real until Joe died but he never realized it. Well they respected his money... Excellent point though. I also loved that they just booked out of there while the body was still twitching. No need to be any more sentimental!
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Dec 2, 2013 21:15
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Parachute Underwear posted:There's nothing wrong with people loving and even romanticizing characters so long as they acknowledge their shortcomings, especially when it comes to murderous motherfuckers.  Rumble-Tumble Motherfuckers
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Dec 4, 2013 00:31
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Despite all the poo poo that the writing gets for this season, I feel like "React Quotes" is one of the best-written episodes of the season and probably top 10 for the series. The dialogue is really stellar. Going through the recap I remember several pieces of dialogue that completely and totally stand out for me. 1) Freamon and the pepper steak 2) The worker at Viva house saying how it looked like Scott was just having such a good time! 3) Michael and Dukie shooting guns in the woods. 4) "Like two dudes suckin dick in the army." In spite of how much you end up hating his character, as Simon says you could listen to him read a phone book. 5) Bubbles getting his negative test result. This is on top of the mystery set up in this episode about what exactly Vondas shows Marlo about the cell phone.
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Dec 5, 2013 20:13
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Jerusalem posted:I think it's important for a moment to think about what a step this is for Sydnor. Just from a superficial standpoint, remember that Freamon and to a lesser extent McNulty are old-hands, they've been around for awhile and their careers are closer to their ends than the beginning. Sydnor, however, is young and obviously talented, a kind of replacement protege for Freamon after Prez was run out of the police. He came into the MCU as the star pick, the very best of a bad lot, a guy who was considered a drat good undercover man and detective with a future. His time in the MCU made him realize how much he didn't know, and the successful but cut short Barksdale investigation made him realize how rewarding and relevant true quality cases could be. Now in season 5, he's part of the massive Clay Davis case, his former direct superior is now the Deputy Ops and clearly on his way to being Commissioner, and he has a good working relationship with an upwardly mobile ASA as well as moving in roughly the same circles as the Current State's Attorney who is making a play for Mayor. In short, Sydnor has EVERYTHING to look forward to, and yet he's willing to put it all at jeopardy to bring in a case he feels strongly about. In that respect he is "real police" in the same vein as Freamon and McNulty, something often easy to overlook as they get the brunt of attention. McNulty asks Freamon what he has picked up off the wire and is upset when Freamon tells him there has been nothing (McNulty's first experience with being a Boss and getting angry at a lack of results). Freamon insists they can figure it out though, he just needs a couple of surveillance teams to keep an eye on Marlo's people and figure out how they're using their phones (remember last episode it was,"We don't need surveillance teams, just a wiretap!" and now it's,"We just need a wiretap AND surveillance teams!"). With a sigh, McNulty says the top brass meeting on the homeless murders should get him some more money/manpower that he can peel off and send Lester's way. He heads out the door, and a confused Sydnor asks Freamon a very pertinent question,"What do the homeless murders have to do with Marlo Stanfield? Fantastic writeup, particularly the above portion. I don't think Sydnor's point of view gets much play throughout the series and I like that you really put the pieces together here.
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Dec 15, 2013 19:27
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Jerusalem posted:In regards to unexpected consequences, it often goes unremarked, but Marlo's downfall can be traced to Prop Joe in some ways. If Marlo hadn't killed Joe, nobody would have ever found the copies of the sealed indictments and learned there was a leak in the courthouse. If that hadn't happened, Pearlman would have never gotten leverage on Levy. If that hadn't happened, Levy would have been able to almost entirely blunt the case built against Marlo by Freamon. Chris might have walked and Marlo remained free to run his drug empire without the Sword of Damocles dangling over his head - but Marlo couldn't resist killing Joe, and that cost him everything. Now here I don't think that was really avoidable. No matter what Joe said, he would have come back on Marlo eventually. Marlo was right about that. If you like, the real problem was that Marlo didn't clear out Joe's house before/after killing him. Even throwing aside the sealed indictment thing, who knows what in there could have tied back to Marlo or the Greeks. If anything, that would have been an added bonus thematically to have Joe's house burned down on top of that.
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Dec 16, 2013 09:31
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...an_villain.html I've seen this one posted to my Facebook a few times. I would love for David Simon to do an HBO mini series about this woman. The story has many of the hallmarks of a good story in the wire or treme. Nearly unbelievable and used by everyone for their own games.
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Dec 19, 2013 21:48
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A quick word about the direction in this episode: I recall from the commentary that this one was directed by Dominic West and may have even been his first time directing. I remember because he said that in the lawyer's office he tried very hard to get a camera angle where the horns behind the lawyers desk would at one point be behind his head and look like devil horns. I remember because he said it didn't work out but that sounded to me like a terrible idea. Take that as you like it for some of the other directing choices you mention throughout this episode.
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Dec 21, 2013 14:19
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comes along bort posted:Idris Elba would make an excellent Bond purely because he's a smooth operator with a British accent. That's the one job requirement. For gently caress's sake Roger Moore was Bond. 
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Jan 12, 2014 20:25
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I'd like to especially thank Jerusalem for taking the bull by the horns here. Having done one of these recaps myself I know it is a serious amount of work and the sheer number of these that Jerusalem did makes it that much more impressive! I'd also like to thank escape artist for getting this rolling in the first place!
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Jan 18, 2014 02:20
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thathonkey posted:Yet, it still has to be explained to McNulty They were clearly approaching it from different angles. For both of them it's not so bad if they guess wrong. In McNulty's case he wants to get laid. If he doesn't ask there's a zero percent chance he gets laid. If she is a lesbian then the downside is that he maybe looks a little foolish at the end of the day for most people it's still an ego boost if someone is interested in you. Even if you are not interested yourself. Bird wants to get under Kima's skin. He's expecting a beating. Even if she's not a lesbian she probably won't be happy that he's using that word to describe her.
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Mar 25, 2014 08:08
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Sam. posted:Speaking of McNulty getting laid: Spot on 
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Mar 26, 2014 07:07
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gingerberger posted:The color refers to the vial cap color. I don't think it indicates which drug, I think it's more like branding, but I'm not sure. Pretty much. When it gets put together for selling on the street the whole supply gets the same top. So if you liked the high you got from a red topped vial before you'll get a red top again hoping that it's from the same supply.
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Aug 2, 2014 12:00
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3Romeo posted:I just finished a rewatch of five myself. Nice recap of what made season two so enjoyable. I think you're forgetting one rear end in a top hat move that drove the plot. The murders of the girls in the can! That only happened because one guy wanted to get laid and then got scared about the consequences. Very human reaction... If still inhumanly cruel.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:44
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Boywhiz88 posted:. Uhhhhhh beadie? That woman McNulty talks to before planning out the murders in season 5?
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Aug 9, 2014 10:01
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YF-23 posted:The piss tracks is what they're talking about. I think it's just Simon loving with the fans because he wants people to think still more deeply about his work. That is, the trains are about institutions but there are other metaphors that are still uncovered and him just saying "yup, that's it" would kill the discussion.
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Dec 31, 2014 19:13
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Hard Clumping posted:Michael was never meant to be a proto-Marlo. He was just working towards the lives of himself and his own with no real desire for power. I always took Kenard to be a proto-Marlo.
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Jan 5, 2015 12:24
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NOTinuyasha posted:A shitbox teal Cavalier, intentionally rammed into a pillar of cement twice, and it's still drivable and continues to show up scene after scene. I don't understand why that car had to live to see another day but Nick Sobotka's badass post-apocalyptic LeSabre doesn't start one morning and promptly gets replaced with a bro truck. Season 2's most heartbreaking tragedy right there. Probably because Nick Sobotka is pretty bro-ey, especially once he gets some money.
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Jan 8, 2015 15:11
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Red Crown posted:The coroner puts him at 34 in S5. And you never know, you know that rough looking dude that works muscle for Butchy? That's the "real" Omar. Andrews, I think his name was, unfortunately dead of natural causes now. A long prison stint got him out of the stick up game and he spent the rest of his life trying to make positive changes in cities stricken with the drug trade. My one of those was casting the real Bmore drug kingpin as that preacher that gets Cutty the space for his gym.
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Jan 19, 2015 23:07
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3Romeo posted:Simon's weighing in on the Baltimore riots: http://davidsimon.com/baltimore/ I just listened to a Rembert Browne podcast where a recurring idea was how much the panelists hated the wires influence. The idea being that for someone living in Baltimore, if life already feels hopeless, the wire just reinforces it and drags in poverty tourists who want to see your suffering for entertainment. And then you have people from the show telling you how to act as if they live your reality. I think it's the most potent criticism of David Simon weighing in on things as he does.
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May 1, 2015 00:54
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Toph Bei Fong posted:The use of Mandela is a rather telling example, because while he was by all means an excellent example of the power of non-violent protest to win people over to your side, the rest of the ANC certainly isn't, and hasn't been since winning control of South Africa. The invocation of Mandela here is interesting because he was a saboteur who destroyed property while taking care not to kill anyone. So far that seems to be the end result of the Baltimore unrest.
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May 1, 2015 18:24
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freebooter posted:Something that has occurred to me - why do they make such a big deal of how impossible it is for Rawls to be commissioner because he's white, when the commissioner in the first season is white? Chalk it up to poetic license? In the first season the Mayor was black as well. It's also a matter of whether the Commissioner is the Mayor's handpicked choice (as Rawls would have to be if he were getting a political payoff) vs just some guy who comes up the ranks (like Valchek).
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Jun 20, 2015 00:31
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computer parts posted:The Wire absolutely sounds fake and acted. That doesn't mean bad. My own opinion is that the wire is truer to life than anything else that's been on TV. This doesn't mean it's some true life thing, I mean there's foreshadowing and big arcs and splotches of bad acting or writing, but there's a certain amount of artifice that the rest of TV traffics in and the wire simply doesn't.
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Jun 25, 2015 13:26
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Ithaqua posted:I saw it in a slightly different way... not as a sign of stupidity, just as a sign that he's not as much of a "businessman" as he'd like to be. When push comes to shove, he still reacts the same way as a low-level dealer: Angry outbursts and violence. I'd say that was a major theme of season 3. It gave us this great scene! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGo5bxWy21g
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Jul 27, 2015 19:15
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Data Graham posted:Maaan, that was a nice finale. Loved all the little low-key goodbyes. The wake especially, where everybody's basically parting as respectful adversaries. There's no forgiving the unforgivable, but that aside, they're all bros. Snoop's death was another thing that rang super false on rewatch. It was just a couple of episodes ago that Michael was telling Dukie that you can't hesitate with a gun. Now Michael doesn't know if snoop's got a gun on her anywhere but here he is holding the gun on her in a car where she could just grab it at any time, just for the chance for the script to tell Michael "You was never one of us."
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Feb 28, 2019 14:24
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