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Stare-Out posted:He got it even worse than that in the end; Omar's legend overshadowed his own by miles and Marlo, having never been aware of Omar's challenge, was basically labeled a bitch on the streets. And since he had to leave the game, there's no way for him to prove that claim otherwise anymore. Marlo lost, and he lost hard. I figured Marlo would violate his deal and end up back in prison because of this. He can't stay out of the game with all that hanging over him.
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Jul 5, 2014 14:11
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I've been watching Oz, and a shitload of The Wire's actors were on it. Lt. Daniels, Herc and Lestor Freemon all show up within 3 episodes of each other. And Bodie's a regular.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:16
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drunken officeparty posted:I'm watching for the first time. I just finished S1 E2. I literally do not understand anything the cops ever say or why people get angry. "Oh no he talked to the lieutenant judge at the district prosecutors deputy major department office. Let's yell at him." Jimmy's bosses will not listen to his pleas for resources to take down the Barksdale gang, so he is stirring a bunch of poo poo with a politically well-connected judge that he happens to know. That judge is spreading Jimmy's reservations all over town and forcing Jimmy's bosses to act, which makes them look like assholes for not acting already.
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Jul 16, 2014 23:20
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drunken officeparty posted:I mean I understand the very basic gist of what is going on to move the plot forward but they talk about all these different offices and branches and ranks and how they interact with each other and my eyes just glaze over understanding none of it. The inner workings of law enforcement become clear pretty quickly. I found the criminal conspiracy is harder to figure out because it's a lot more focused on unspoken hierarchies and bonds of trust. For law enforcement, the judge complaining to Deputy Commissioner Burrell (who is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the whole police force) leads to a "detail", where officers and detectives get pulled off their normal duties to run a new investigation. Burrell has no interest in actually working the investigation, because it will not result in immediate arrests that he can make political hay out of, so he tries to make sure the detail is staffed by the worst people possible. So Herc, Carver and Kima get pulled from the narcotics division, while McNulty gets pulled from Homicide. Bunk is McNulty's partner in homicide, but despite showing up in probably every episode, he is not on the detail. Pryzbylewski, a well-known idiot who is related to a high-ranking police commander, gets put on the detail, as well as Lestor Freamon, who has been stuck on a desk job for 13 years. All of the schmoes on the detail report to Lt. Daniels  Also important, even though she doesn't show up much is Assistant States Attorney Rhonda Pearlman  She is there to make sure that the case the detail is making is solid and offer advice about what evidence the detail needs to get to make the case stronger. She doesn't command any officers, but what she says goes nonetheless.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:05
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McNulty vs. the bridge column is the best scene.
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Jul 20, 2014 05:37
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frenton posted:I watched the Wire for the first time with subtitles on as well. They were on by default and I just left them on. It took me some time to understand all the abbreviations and things the cops use. DNR's? Do not resuscitate? What does that have to do with phone calls? Dialed Number Recorder. It's the device that records all the numbers any phone number dials. It's the thing that lets them make those phone maps so they can see who's the central node in the group.
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Jul 20, 2014 08:19
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Steve2911 posted:What the gently caress was Brother Mouzone anyway? He was like a cartoon character that came and went without anyone pointing it out. Yeah, so many of the characters are well-drawn because they're based on people David Simon knew. But I really doubt David Simon knew anyone like Brother Mouzone.
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Jul 28, 2014 06:56
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pokeyman posted:I love how when the streets are all abuzz with the (for once, true) rumour of Omar's death, the journalist at the newspaper doesn't even give a second glance at his name. The biggest, most fearsome/mythologized name in one world isn't even recognizable in the other. Two of the biggest moments for the newspaper plot line are the paper passing on the stories of Omar and Prop Joe dying. For all the flak that story line gets for being too black-and-white, the city editor and the cops reporter aren't actually all that great at covering the community; they just look good when compared with the incompetent managing editor and the fabricator.
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Jul 28, 2014 20:48
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thathonkey posted:Minor point but it is Fruit that Cutty has dead-to-rights but cant pull the trigger despite Fruit having ripped him off on his coming home package. Oh god, he'd show up once or twice in the later seasons, and it's always like "Jeez, this rear end in a top hat is still kicking around?"
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Jul 28, 2014 21:28
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thathonkey posted:I think he goes to jail for a few years (due to whatever they were able to charge from his involvement in Kima's shooting) and by the time he's out, Avon and Stringer have fallen and he starts muscling for Marlo. Haha, I think I mistook him for Fruit in the third season as well.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:36
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Spoilers Below posted:For those of you who think Mouzone is too unrealistic, read up on the Nation of Islam. The bow tie and suit combination coupled with the stoic self-control and focus on education strongly suggest he's one of them. He's not nearly as out there as you might think. It's not the obvious Nation of Islam stuff that makes his character unbelievable for me. The NOI is openly racist and anti-semetic and has a history of violence, but contract killing does not seem like their style at all.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:19
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Jerusalem posted:Part of the issue there is the loss of institutional knowledge and a lifetime of connections/networking due to the cutbacks, but Gus is so busy fighting the good fight at the newspaper that he's made it utterly irrelevant to the reality of Baltimore. Yeah, I think the big hit to the team is really the courts reporter that takes the buyout early in the season. Gus is certainly disconnected from the community and not making a good effort to reconnect, but the person who should really be doing that is the reporter, not the city editor. But Gus' team after the buyouts is Scott, a rookie cops reporter, and a courts reporter who is somehow supposed to cover both the state and city courthouses, and it's just not enough.
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Jul 29, 2014 00:15
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Spoilers Below posted:Well, he's also drinking alcohol in his hotel room, which is strictly forbidden by their tenants. I always assumed that he was a former NoI member who had struck out on his own, but retained many of the trappings of his previous lifestyle. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Mouzone seems to be a man of principle. His principles are completely twisted, but he seems very sure of them and seems to believe he leads a noble life for adhering to a moral code. Being a gun-for-hire is just such an dishonorable profession that I have a hard time believing Mouzone would fall into it.
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Jul 29, 2014 00:21
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Jerusalem posted:I think there is a bit of jealous guarding of positions going on too. Given the nature of the buyouts, you'd think the departing reporters would basically make some kind of effort to take the younger staff left behind around to meet their contacts and introduce them. That way at least if the relationship falters or the reporter fails to make proper use of them, it's because THEY weren't capable/prepared, as opposed to being left to twist in the wind while the "retired" reporter gets the satisfaction of seeing everything go to hell now that they're no longer around. Yeah, the reporter who gets pushed into taking the buyout does seem to somewhat enjoy listening to Gus bitch about how bad things are when they meet for drinks. The paper gets a bit of an uplift though, as they promote the guy who profiles Bubbles to City Desk Editor when they demote Gus. At least the new guy is capable of making connections to people who actually know what life in Baltimore is like. If he were ever inclined to ask, Bubbles could give him the entire org chart of every drug gang from memory.
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Jul 29, 2014 00:32
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Basebf555 posted:I think the newsroom stuff would have been better without the serial killer plotline. I would have enjoyed more focus on the newspaper trying and failing(or not trying I guess) to cover the poo poo that we've been watching for 4 seasons. That is a major function of the serial killer plot but it ends up overshadowing the real point. Not trying for the most part. They do start the season with several of them standing around watching a giant fire.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:03
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Ainsley McTree posted:I dunno, Lester was always established as a risk taker. Right from the start even, the whole reason he was in the pawn shop department was because he did something that he knew the bosses didn't want him to do. He didn't even need to do it to make his case, he literally just did it because they told him not to. Then there's the whole thing with the subpoenas of political figures (I can't remember which season that was in) that he suspected was going to get him into a world of poo poo. The illegal wiretap on the fake serial killer is...a bit of an extreme raising of the stakes from that, I'll admit, but Lester's disregard for the consequences of his actions was part of his character from the beginning, I thought. The corruption was what he always deep-down wanted to chase. He managed to use the investigation to flip Clay Davis and got really, really close to Levy, which would have toppled the whole house of cards.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:36
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comes along bort posted:I'm not so sure Templeton fabricated stories just for career advancement purposes as much as it seemed the only way to ensure he would have a career in journalism at all given the ongoing consolidation of ownership and shutting down desks. I think you're right on there. Templeton makes a lot of noise about advancing to the Post or the Times, but he's also operating in a system where people are getting clipped left and right for no discernible reason. That's not to say his fabrications are easy to forgive; the vast majority of reporters I've known are in the Alma mold, who wouldn't dare betray the readers by making poo poo up. I could totally see Season 5 as being someone's favorite, especially if they've worked in news media. The characters at the paper are not well-developed, but the archetypes ring really true. The out-of-touch managing editors, the navel-gazing line editors, the know-it-all copy editors, the well-meaning but green rookie reporters, all these people are drawn right from real newsrooms. I imagine teachers could see their own archetypes in Season 4 with Prez being super naive and the veterans being burned out and the researchers starting the season looking in all the wrong places.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:43
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Anyone involved in law enforcement (or hell, the drug trade) who can speak to the realism of the central plot of Season 2? The huge shipments run through the port just seem like such a big risk for a cartel to take.
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Dec 26, 2014 23:27
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TommyGun85 posted:the problem as I see it would be with the Greeks reaching out to the elected head of the local union who then involves a worker (horse) and two of his family members without the Greeks having issue. It's a complicating factor for sure. But the big issue I have is that they're bringing it in in one big bulk shipment. So if that goes down, they lose millions of dollars and everyone in their local network goes to prison for a long, long time. I would think real drug operations bring in large quantities by having a constant stream of small shipsments coming in. But I don't know anything about how that stuff works, so for all I know David Simon based this plot point on a real-life cartel.
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Dec 27, 2014 00:04
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geeves posted:A massive amount of product is thrown at the US borders and harbor entry points with the knowledge there will be some loss. There is so much at any given time in every city that you probably know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who can make a call and get an eightball or quarter or more of cocaine within an hour. We read about the idiots and people who make stupid decisions or the unfortunate who have been forced to mule. There are too many foreign goods to hide drugs among to search it all, even if it needs to be cleared by customs. You're talking about entities that have so much money they can basically throw several tons of drugs several different ways knowing some will be found to see what works. They've even made makeshift submarines which if you've seen a documentary about them is basically hell on sea from the poor ventilation, etc. drat. Within an hour you say ...
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Dec 27, 2014 00:37
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freebooter posted:I remember saying nobody in the Wire apart from rear end in a top hat characters like Rawl and Valczek get happy endings, but that's definitely not true. Off the top of my head Bubbles, Carver and Daniels are all in an indisputably better place by the end of the series than they were at the start. Namond and Bunny And of course Randy, who has now learned to see through the system's bullshit and will surely use this knowledge to lead a fulfilling, self-actualized life.
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Jan 5, 2015 09:06
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Watching The Crown and it's so weird seeing McNulty as Prince Charles.
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Dec 8, 2023 19:55
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deep dish peat moss posted:I saw an interview with him about The Wire and it really threw me off hearing him with an English accent It's gonna sound mean, but I'm surprised at how good he is in The Crown. He wasn't really called on to do a lot of capital-A Acting in The Wire outside of some stellar drunk acting.
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Dec 8, 2023 20:19
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I think Poot comes off poorly because he's basically always paired with Bodie, who is an S-tier character/actor. It's always Bodie and this also-ran he hangs out with.
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Jan 29, 2024 15:53
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Levy's the only real winner
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Jan 30, 2024 05:31
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Konstantin posted:The simple fact was that there wasn't any more money. Bodie and the other Barksdale people were getting their package from Marlo or Joe, they had no reason to pay Avon a cut. I'm sure he had some money put away and he had various fronts that may have been paying him a small amount, but it wasn't enough to keep paying DeLonda as he had been. Wee Bey seemed to indicate to her in their last conversation that he could keep taking care of her. I assume he had squirreled away a lot of money based on that.
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Feb 24, 2024 00:39
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surf rock posted:- The best thing going for Marlo or his crew is how much of a weirdo Snoop is. Also, what a perfect name for her. I liked her sincere look of distress at the loss of her nailgun. Fun behind-the-scenes stuff: Snoop was actually a Baltimore gangbanger in a previous life and Snoop is her real nickname. Robert Chew is an acting coach and coached several of the child actors on the set.
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Feb 28, 2024 04:45
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theblackw0lf posted:Does this mean it’s improved? lol No everyone knows it doesn't work but it's still done everywhere
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Feb 28, 2024 19:41
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surf rock posted:- With the press stuff, I know it's accurate for when it's set, but it feels more like a time capsule than anything resonant now. They thought they were struggling with the first few rounds of buyouts/layoffs and unfilled positions, but the endless waves of devastation that came after makes this feel like a fantasyland. It just stands out to me because so much of the show still feels so contemporary, and this is the last season so you'd expect it to feel the CLOSEST to the present day. The obliteration of the media outside of the NYT has just been staggering. It's loving wild that the Sun has a Johannesburg bureau to shutter.
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Mar 2, 2024 05:14
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Cranappleberry posted:Poot is a shoe salesman. That got a young woman pregnant. Now he's Married... Always starting to recount his glory days as a teenager and then stopping himself because he realizes the story he's about to tell will traumatize his children
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Mar 5, 2024 16:38
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surf rock posted:(editor's note: I included one joke ranking in the above list, see if you can find it!) Snubbing Fuzzy Dunlop
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Mar 6, 2024 05:02
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surf rock posted:People here are so wild for Poot; I thought there would be something this season to justify it but I guess it's just a meme. What I remember about Poot: awful name, wore lovely polo shirts, pushed Bodie over the edge to kill Wallace, sucked at running the pit, fled Bodie's death on the corner, worked at Footlocker. Terrible. Tray Chaney was putting in pretty middling work as Poot, and he's almost always paired up with J. D. Williams, who is putting on a clinic in every scene and makes Bodie one of the top 5 characters in the whole show for most viewers. Poot is basically an accessory for Bodie, only exists to be a foil and sounding board to give Bodie more to do.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:00
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Orange Devil posted:Watch We Own This City next and do recaps please. 
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Mar 6, 2024 22:01
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Show Me A Hero is also real good. Did not get as much heat as We Own This City, but is right up there in quality in my mind
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Mar 7, 2024 06:52
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V-Men posted:IIRC, Chaney had originally auditioned for WeeBay. Even though they with with Hassan Johnson, they created Poot because Chaney had impressed them so much. God, this is just so hard to picture.
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Mar 8, 2024 15:36
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Ainsley McTree posted:Yeah, i mean obviously he'd bring a different energy to that character i'm sure, but he's so young-looking, I can't see it either. Right, Poot was never really menacing so I don't want to assume the actor just couldn't do it, but he's got such a baby face.
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Mar 8, 2024 15:43
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