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Just started a rewatch of season 5, and I picked up on something I missed the first time round. The scene where McNulty first gets the idea for the serial killer and changes the crime scene to make it look like a murder, he is completely, utterly, dying with a hangover! Its such a small thing, but having been hungover myself I can totally see how it may have left him really short on patience, not thinking straight and fully prepared to just say "gently caress it" and go with this insane plan.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:40
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Skeesix posted: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! In a later scene, in episode four when they are at another dead body, he also asks Lester "never to tell his priest about this".
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Oct 30, 2013 01:11
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Firstly this line: "where the homeless intiative was shelved at Carcetti's request because it's not something the city can afford right now" Holy poo poo, I missed that in my rewatch and it really puts into perspective Carcettis actions later in the season. He jumps on the homeless thing as a political tool, even going so far as to lambast the Republicans over cutting homeless aid and all the while he had done basically the same thing! I am kinda surprised it wasn't thrown in his face on screen, but then I gues it works better as a little detail. On Saintly Gus, I actually found him a lot more bearable on my rewatch because I noticed just how many times he effectively says "Sir, yes sir" to the bosses. There are actually quite a few instances were he might start to raise a concern, but Klebanow will say something and then Gus will basically say "Ok, you're the boss". (Sorry I don't have any concrete examples). For me that made him seem less like a guy fighting the good fight against incompetant bosses and more just a guy trying to get on with his job.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:13
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omg chael crash posted:Two quick things: I don't think he gets sentenced for any new crime, but being in the room with all the guns was a parole violation and so he has to finish the 7 years he originally got after being arrested by McNulty in season one.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:19
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Jerusalem posted:I'm coming down maybe a little hard, but I think what it all comes back to every time is the fact that the surprisingly one-dimensional nature of Whiting and Klebanow overshadows the idea that the newspaper is missing the point/not getting the "real" stories. Its a point that has been made, but I do have to wonder what the dynamic of the Newspaper plot arc would have been like had Whiting or Klebanow come straight out and said to Gus (or anybody) that they know Templeton's story is a lie, but that a pulitzer winning article could increase sales and save peoples jobs, so they have no choice but to back him?
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Nov 11, 2013 22:22
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Orange Devil posted:At best he might get out the game in a way like Marlo was offered, the difference being, Slim would take it and get out. Would he though? I see Slim as having a good level of self awareness, would he really let himself believe that he could run in the business circles like Marlo was offered and Stringer Bell so wanted? In my opinion Slim would end up the next Prop Joe. He seems to be all about efficiency, he gets poo poo done. I can see him with his network established, sitting back in a small shop and avoiding turf wars unless absolutely necessary.
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Dec 3, 2013 21:51
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I just want to go back to something that has been bugging me a little. Sorry in advance if I don't remember all details here. When Lester and McNulty need some bodies they go to a patrolman that Lester knew, who contacts them first when a report of a body is called in. Lester tells McNulty the patrolmans story, he used to be a detective until one day he had a crime scene, the district commander tried to take control of it from him and he refused to step aside. A few days later he was busted down. And who was the district commander? Rawls of course, always the rear end in a top hat! But here's what bugs me, think back to the scene in season one where Kima got shot. Rawls arrived at the scene and took control like a badass and everybody loved it. But Rawls first words at the Kima shooting weren't "I'm in charge now", they were "What do you need?". It was only after Landsman asked him to that he cleared the crime scene. The Kima shooting scene always showed that although Rawls was an rear end in a top hat, he was also actually good police. But using him in season 5 as the reason the patrolman got busted down takes away from that in my opinion. Not because he wouldn't bust somebody down, but because he wouldn't have created the problem at the crime scene in the first place. The way Lester explained it made it sound like a bumbling Lieutenant messing things up, whereas Rawls was always extremely competent.
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Jan 16, 2014 21:06
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What actually happened to McNulty at the end of the show, was he sacked, did he walk away, or was he actually still a cop? As I recall, Freeman wasn't sacked, he handed in his papers and retired with a pension so the implication was that he had a choice. He could have stayed on, even if back in the pawn shop or some other department a long way from any real police work. But if Freeman had a choice then why not McNulty?
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Feb 7, 2014 21:05
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Naet posted:Marlo bordered on cartoon-ish for me. I could never fully buy into the idea that he somehow outmaneuvered and outmuscled the existing drug organizations. Don't forget that the existing drug organizations were in a bit of a rut. The Barksdales were dangerous but had been gutted, and now Stringer Bell was running around trying to make the drug game civilised, hence all the drug bosses having CO-OP meetings and avoiding conflict. It was pretty much perfect for a chaotic newcomer to take advantage off.
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Jul 5, 2014 14:32
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thathonkey posted:I am in the minority i think but s1 is probably my favorite season (very very tough call to make). Its my favourite season because it is objectively the best season.
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Jul 17, 2014 20:35
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:I just got through season 4 and noticed a great little detail that I didn't see mentioned in the thread. After Omar robs the co-op's drug shipment, he offers to sell it back for 20 cents on the dollar. Later when prop Joe is explaining the situation to Marlo he tells him that Omar wanted 30 on the dollar. Even in that situation he was still scheming to make a bit of extra money. And its that robbery that ended up forcing Joe to introduce Marlo to the Greek, which inevitably ended in his betrayal and death. It was all Omars fault!
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Jul 22, 2014 19:28
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Steve2911 posted:Lester just gave no fucks. For me, up until S5 Lester was the smart guy who had learned the hard way how to operate in the police department. He had spent years in pawn shop and it had tempered him into a good police who also knew there was a game to be played. Season 5 threw that away, out of nowhere he takes this insane risk that the Lester of the early season simply would not have taken. It really spoiled his character for me.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:54
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nuzak posted:I never understood how they worked that out by the way. Fitzhugh called some desk and found that the guy he thought he had been taking to wasn't the guy he though he was talking to? He and Daniels already knew that there was a leak somewhere, so when he called the field office only to be told that the agent he thought was working there was in fact in a different part of the country altogether, it would have set off some alarm bells. Why did Koutris not mention that he was no longer part of that office? Then he hears that Koutris is in fact part of counter-terrorism, and I suspect he knows that counter-terrorism guys would probably have enough pull to have high value informants like the Greek. The phone call told him that Koutris was not what he thought he was. It was just 2+2=4 from that point on.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:01
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I thought it was just the Barksdale name for their drugs, just like in later seasons when its called WMD'S or something similiar. Do we hear anybody shout "Red tops" in later series?
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Aug 2, 2014 08:00
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Stringers problem was that he wasn't half as smart as he thought he was. He had a shallow view of things. His community college gave him the airs of a businessman but he didn't really understand business, he just knew some buzzwords and a few simple concepts, thats why proper businessmen were able to run rings around him. He is the poster child for the saying "A little knowledge can be dangerous", that little bit of knowledge had him involved in things he didn't really understand. He also had a shallow view of the street. Sure, he didn't get where he was by not having some street smarts but once again he didn't really understand the street the way Avon or Marlo did. Had Avon remained in jail leaving Stringer to deal with the rise of Marlo, I suspect Stringer would not have been able to handle Marlo in any shape or fashion.
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Aug 5, 2014 22:00
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gingerberger posted:I think her and Marlo are both genuinely sociopaths, snoop just gets her hands dirty. But how is Snoop any worse than any of the other henchmen, like Wee-Bay or Slim Charles? Wee-bay might be emotional but he has killed dozens of people and showed zero respect for human life. And fans love Slim Charles but he's the one that uttered the horrific throwaway line "Murder ain't no thing...", not long after coolly shooting some kid on Marlos corner.
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Aug 7, 2014 23:27
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Boywhiz88 posted:General conception. It's not like the hood is on the fore-front of social justice and an understanding of gender roles. Or to paraphrase McNulty, "Only met two female police worth a drat and both were lesbians".
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Aug 9, 2014 10:07
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Finndo posted:By the way, one has to wonder: if the police could bring enough heat on the corners to force the trafficking to Hamsterdam, why couldn't they do the same thing to simply force it off the streets? There may be a reason, but it wasn't really adequately explained in the show, I don't think. I got the impression that bringing that heat meant a lot of extra work and so a lot of extra overtime, which I doubt they could afford. They could "bring the heat" for a short time to make a point, but I doubt they could have maintained the expenditure indefinitely.
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Aug 14, 2014 23:08
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In a show full of parallels, I guess Kenard could be the new Snoop!
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Aug 16, 2014 09:18
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KaosPV posted:Does anybody else think that that episode when they show Stringer Bell's library with Wealth of the nations, and him attending economics classes are just like... uh... Trying to hard, and ending up looking dumb? You've almost got it...
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Sep 15, 2014 23:37
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Jerusalem posted:Another thing about Stringer was that he didn't make use of the resources available to him In that same vein, I always wondered why he didn't make more use of his street persona in his business dealings? Without overtly threatening any of the businessmen he could easily have made them aware that yes, he was indeed a dangerous criminal with a lot of dangerous men with guns ready to do dangerous things at his command. Even just that reputation could have given the likes of Krawczyk pause in their plans to rip him off. He was the head of Baltimore biggest drugs gang and they were laughing at him, and he was so wrapped up in trying to look like a serious businessman that he forgot they actually had good reason to fear him.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:14
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I really don't think Carver's situation is really the same as Daniels. Carver has nothing on him, nothing that anybody could really use. Daniels thought he and Herc had stolen money, but that money was returned in the end and I very much doubt Daniels reported it, nobody would even know about it except those three. "Fuzzy Dunlop", Herc took the fall for that, if Carver was implicated at all internal affairs would have done something about it at the time, again I bet his name isn't anywhere near it. "Hamsterdam", again Bunny Colvin very publicly took the fall there. Daniels having his bank account searched is very different to Carver just being employed at the same time as a Major went rogue. Daniels file held the results of an FBI investigation where they even went into his bank accounts, thats a different level to the spurious things we can connect to Carver from watching the show.
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Oct 3, 2014 17:36
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Little thing about the show I just realised, Micheal doesn't get a happy ending! In many ways he is the new Omar, a street-smart loner who robs other drug dealers, and I guess I thought that there was a type of freedom in that for Micheal, he doesn't have to answer to anybody and controls his own life. But whereas Omar was a street legend, its actually highly unlikely that Micheal will replicate that. He's intelligent and well trained so he could be successful, but more likely he will always have to sleep with one eye open and eventually he will just get killed by some random dealer/rival gang member, unnoticed and just another number on the board. Omar always stood out in the show because he was larger than life, a wild west legend different to any other character than perhaps Mouzone. Micheal isn't going to be the same as that, he's just going to die.
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Dec 31, 2014 18:55
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Skeesix posted:I always took Kenard to be a proto-Marlo. To me Kenard just seems to be a wildcard, a loose cannon who is violent enough but doesn't really seem controlled enough to be a boss. In fact the first comparison that comes to mind is Bird. Kenard would more than likely end up as an enforcer. And yes I'm aware I'm talking about a little kid here!
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Jan 5, 2015 18:43
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joepinetree posted:Conspiracy. Think back to season 1 when Freamon tells Prez to mark a call between Stinkum and Bodie pertinent even though they don't mention drugs, just the whole "don't use names on the phone" bit. So if Stringer was a little bit smarter, instead of saying "not on the phone" he should just always end a call like that by saying "I have to go"?
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Jan 27, 2015 20:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It also seemed weird to me that the team made a big deal about learning that pager code 07 was Wee-bay, since Omar knew that and could have told them. Didn't Omar get that info from reading the details wall charts?
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Jan 27, 2015 20:49
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Bleh Maestro posted:And, as far as stringers phone call, they were absolutely celebrating the fact that they got the evidence they needed off the wire to make the arrest. Does this not come back to the original point though. I get that him saying "Not on the phone" could be used as one piece of evidence showing conspiracy, but can it be the only piece? Can they charge him based on that one thing, what other evidence do they have?
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Jan 30, 2015 20:25
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joepinetree posted:They have pretty much everyone around him deep in the game. With this, not only do they get him acknowledging shamrock, but they also confirmed that the phone number on the burner was Stringer's. Show the conspiracy involving everyone around Stringer, show a bunch of calls to Stringer's burner (the ones that were not recorded), and then show Stringer using that burner and acknowledging Shamrock and talking about "hitters." And what will that get him? Proving that he knows people in the game and that they know his number seems very small beans really, would a first timer get prison for that?
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Jan 30, 2015 20:41
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LordPants posted:You have to go get the warrants signed off on, and the people who you need to convince are hard to convince people. "Trust us he's part of this network but he hasn't said anything" doesn't really get you far. If you say "We have a phone call from a guy who we have evidence of him being involved with drug activity calling stringer bell and stringer responds 'not on the phone'" then they whip the pen out and sign that warrant. But could that logic not apply to every single person that Shamrock ever calls, from his mother to the pizza guy? If getting the phone call from known drug dealer is part A and saying something that maybe could be construed as conspiracy is part B, then I would imagine its possible for a creative cop to accuse quite a few people of conspiracy whether they are actually drug kingpins or not. Which comes back to my point, I can accept that the phone call could give the detail enough to convince a judge to sign a warrant, and using that warrant they could hope to find other evidence with which to charge Stringer. But surely they will need that other evidence to charge and convict him? People are saying that the phone call is enough to arrest him, but how can it alone put him in jail, surely there needs to be more concrete physical evidence? "Whats the charge?" "RICO and conspiracy your honor" "Whats the evidence" "A known drug dealer called him and he said "not on the phone" "And what else?" "Thats it, we couldn't find any other admissible evidence of him dealing drugs" "Ok 20 years in jail" I admit my ignorance of American law but there must be more evidence needed than just the phone call?
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Jan 31, 2015 11:11
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Jerusalem posted:The moment that always stands out to me is when McNulty and Diggins are on the water and they point to the old shut down factories and talk about how their fathers worked there, and they say it with pride. See also the reverent tones whenever anybody referred to William Gant, "a taxpayer","a working man".
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Mar 11, 2015 18:46
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speshl guy posted:I recall the woman saying there was a lengthy process to be approved for adoption but he never attempts to go through with it and come back to get Randy later. Carver goes on to do good things, but I feel that if you actually formed enough of a relationship with someone to earnestly consider adopting them in their time of need, one little hurdle of getting certified/approved shouldn't be enough to discourage you forever. I always thought that was the point, he hadn't formed enough of a relationship and deep down he knew it. He was trying to atone for Herc's fuckup and part of that meant saying the words about adoption, but he was never actually close enough to Randy to really mean it. Randy was a symbol to Carver, a symbol of the real cop he wanted to be, but he was not a real part of his family that he would go to any lengths for and on some level Carver knew that.
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Mar 29, 2015 18:58
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Random thing about the wire that has bugged me for a while! At the end of season 2 the Greek abandons millions of dollars worth of drugs in a container on the docks. The detail have found it, but seem totally bummed that the Greek got away and Daniels says something to the effect of "Would have been a hell of a case". Then they get some police guys to sit on the can for weeks/months hoping somebody come looking for it. But, it still is a hell of a case for them! They can still take all those drugs out of the can and put it in front of the media and look like goddamn heroes! No different to the feds earlier in the season, they have a massive drugs haul that the bosses can shout to the heavens about and making the detail look kick rear end. Yeah, I know it would be a hollow victory without nailing the Greek, but in terms of results netting those drugs was still a victory was it not?
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Apr 30, 2015 19:59
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Der Kyhe posted:Well obviously not "stupid stupid" but still, less intelligent and cunning than what he lead himself to believe I always hold this scene up as the ultimate example of Stringer being nowhere near as smart as he thought he was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkLuncXw-P4 Basically he's smugly selling his mobile phone stocks right before the massive mobile phone boom of the 2000's, patting himself on the back and acting clever in front of the lackeys all the while making a horrible business decision!
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Jul 27, 2015 19:52
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I have a question! Is Bubbles sister the nurse that Cutty met in Hospital after getting shot? And why do Cheese and Slim Charles need to buy the connect from Marlo? They were both very close to Prop Joe, did they really have no info on how to contact the greeks themselves?
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May 12, 2016 00:00
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I do understand that both Joe and the Greeks want to keep things simple, but it doesn't follow that his lieutenants would have no clue at all about how to even try and contact the greeks. Both Cheese and Slim are trusted enough to sit in on co-op meetings and to be involved in collecting the resupply, and Slim and Joe in particular were shown to work very closely. And who was driving when Joe went to meet the Greeks? Its just doesn't seem realistic that Joe gave no clues at all to his 2nd in command of how to even get to the greeks restaurant. That would be a level of paranoia not shown by anybody else in the show, considering Chris went with Marlo to meet the greeks and Stringer Bell knew exactly who Avons connect was.
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May 12, 2016 00:25
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Finding the badge would have been a negative in my eyes, The Wire isn't about finding the obvious clue in the bushes. More than that, the murder of the security guard is all the more horrifying because of how callous and meaningless it is, having the badge be some super clue that eventually brings down the killers takes away from that.
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Jan 4, 2017 13:30
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theCalamity posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85FzjM-GkCk A few comments on Lester just reminded me that there is no way in hell he would have helped McNulty with the serial killer thing. That was a definite misstep in my opinion.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:46
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Basebf555 posted:His story is all about how these societal pressures can build up in a person and lead to an irrevocable tragedy. I hated that dumbass Ziggy right up until the pivotal murder scene, and that scene is still one of the most perfect I've ever watched. It perfectly captured that feeling of rage building in Ziggy as he is yet again treated with contempt, that out of body feeling as he goes back into the store with the gun, that release of rage when he is punching the steering wheel afterwards, and then finally the sound stops being a dull background noise and goes back to a clear stereo as the adrenaline fades and he hears the sirens and we know he is hosed. You go from hating him to feeling really sorry for him. Its also funny how we can empathise with him there. He lost the head and did something that completely crossed the line, but the show is choc full of characters who shot and killed other people, we don't feel the same for them because they didn't react the same. It must be a "in the game/not in the game" thing but most characters in the show who shot somebody would have hightailed it out of there, ditched the guns and laid low. Ziggy just sat there in tears waiting for the police to come. I can relate to that.
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Apr 14, 2018 15:15
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Basebf555 posted:Don't you think Ziggy's rear end in a top hat personality is at least in part due to the fact that he's been mostly ignored by his father/hero his entire life? What if instead of putting all his energy into a dying union, Frank instead focused on making sure his son had paths to other careers and lifestyles than just being a dock worker? The strange thing for me is that I don't think Ziggy is completely a product of his environment. Yes he is a small man in a group of burly stevedores and living in his fathers shadow and it has left him feeling inadequate, but it can't be ignored that he is also just a bit of an rear end in a top hat anyway. The show takes pains to put him in situations where you just want him to shut the gently caress up, where he has acted like an idiot, hosed up the deal and it was no ones fault but his own. And yet in the end it still leaves you feeling sorry for him.
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Apr 15, 2018 00:38
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I'm currently watching season one again, and I have to admit I'm not sure why the squad are so upset about Rawls wanting to charge D'Angelo with those murders? They say it would have gutted their case but why? The wiretap doesn't even need to be mentioned, its just a homicide detective reviewing old cases who saw a name, decided to review the scene and found some evidence, why even mention the ongoing investigation? And it wouldn't make the Barksdales change anything up, because its just a detective who was sore at D'Angelo getting released previously, going and finding a way to get him, it wouldn't mean anything else. And once he is arrested he would have been ripe to try and flip, which is what they wanted surely?
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Jun 21, 2018 20:54
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