The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

We see Johnny 50 in a homeless camp in s5

Also I don�t think carcetti ever actually does gently caress teresa. She kisses him after they win but he manages to turn her down. Unless there�s another sex scene I�m forgetting

Ainsley McTree fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Mar 20, 2021

# ¿ Mar 19, 2021 23:57

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 05:17

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

th3t00t posted:

I meant unrealistic in how long it took for it to be discovered and made public. 100�s of cops were involved, 1000�s of Baltimore residents partook. There�s no way something involving that many people stays quiet, even with Bunny�s cover story of a pending sting operation.

The show made it clear treating drugs as a public health crisis rather than criminally was the right approach. But a rogue police commander adopting this strategy on his own in 2006 and keeping it secret for months is a far cry from the DA announcing it as public policy during a pandemic in 2020.

On the other hand the serial killer conspiracy blew up once the number of people in the know grew to 5-6.

Yeah that's the part of that struck me as unrealistic too. I guess the season does technically address the question of "how long can a rogue police commander get away with that kind of thing", and him having to work to keep it quiet does come up a few times throughout the show, so it's not like the writers were unaware of it but still; you'd think that like, one of the addicts would order a pizza or something and the driver would be like "what the gently caress is all this" and go tell someone, I don't know how you set up something that big without someone stumbling across it and making it go viral. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the proliferation of camera phones and livestreams and that kind of thing would have been easier in 2004

I've also never been to west side baltimore, maybe there's enough space that you could set up an open air legal drug zone and no bystander would ever stumble across it

# ¿ Mar 27, 2021 17:28

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Oh it's that guy from Sports Night; that show that I've never watched an episode of and yet whenever I see one of the leads in anything I immediately think "oh it's that guy from Sports Night" despite anything else I might have seen him in

# ¿ May 20, 2021 00:19

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

christmas boots posted:

Eh, I wouldn't. They're the weakest part of the season certainly but they're still a big part of the show and the throughline of the season.

Same; they're the low point of the show but I can't recommend skipping them entirely, that'll leave big gaps in the plot. The lowest point of a great show is still pretty good really, just not up to the standards of the rest of it.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2021 00:01

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I would assume the third line of the OP still holds:

escape artist posted:

Important: This thread is not for first time viewers. Even if we are only on Season 1 Episode 1, we are likely to discuss certain plot parallels from the series finale, and we are not using spoiler tags in this at all. In the words of Ellis Carver, "fair warning, you just got."

granted that OP hasn't been updated in a very long time, but my understanding has always been that this is explicitly an open spoiler thread and newcomers read it at their own risk. If people want to be considerate and tag spoilers anyway, that's a fine thing, but it's not the expectation of the thread

# ¿ Jul 7, 2021 17:21

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Jimmy's got a bright future with the CIA if the whole detective thing doesn't pan out

# ¿ Aug 5, 2021 15:12

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

algebra testes posted:

Can we at least agree that Clark Johnson is great and he did a great job directing as well as acting.

Oh yeah, I have nothing bad to say about the acting in season 5; even the actor who played Rich Whiteman or whatever the newspaper boss's name was played the part perfectly well, it was just some of the characters that could have used a little more time in the oven.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2021 01:01

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

werdnam posted:

Oh man, you just reminded me how awkward that was when Jimmy tried to turn the booty call political consultant situation into an actual relationship. That dinner conversation was cringe worthy. And a little sad.

It was satisfying at least to see Jimmy try to show off his one thing that he's good at to someone outside of the cop world and completely fail to impress them. He has the one thing going for him, and it completely sucks the wind out of his sails when it does nothing.

"I do a lot of major cases....a lot of people can't do what we do"

"Oh...*quietly eats a salad*"

# ¿ Aug 10, 2021 15:39

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I also like the little detail that he didn't vote for carcetti

# ¿ Aug 12, 2021 00:11

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

christmas boots posted:

Which season gave us Lester asking for the pepper steak?

That was five: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXv-1CMcUu4

# ¿ Aug 12, 2021 19:38

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Mike N Eich posted:

Season 5 definitely has its warts, the shortened season made everything slightly rushed, I never gave a crap about the journalist storyline and the serial killer stuff was just slightly far fetched enough that it didn�t feel like it matched the verisimilitude of the rest of the series.

However, I thought the street level story was really great and worth the price of admission. Everything with Michael and Dukie, Marlo and his crew and Omar felt earned and a great capstone for their stories. I�ll see how it feels on rewatch though.

Yeah, it's impossible to talk about season 5 without talking about the serial killer and newsroom parts, and they're weak, but the rest of the season is as good as any other for the most part imo.

We also are treated to herc dispelling any disbelief for any idiot that might have still been entertaining the notion that he became a cop because he wanted to help people

# ¿ Aug 13, 2021 17:53

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Yeah as someone who doesn't particularly care about new orleans or jazz, i found treme very hard to get into. i finished the first season, thought it was fine, didn't feel compelled to follow it any further

I did enjoy the exchange with the insurance customer service guy who was denying the flood claim under the explanation that the damage was caused by wind (or something lovely like that), which went something like:

"how do you sleep at night?"

"i drink!"

# ¿ Aug 28, 2021 17:51

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I think I read an article that he was using cocaine during some of the wire, but that he�d kicked it. I guess addiction never really lets you go, this sucks, he should have had a lot of good years ahead of him

# ¿ Sep 6, 2021 22:38

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Sinteres posted:

It's hosed up how many people who die from drug use are people who've previously kicked the habit. Like if anyone would understand the dangers, you'd think it would be them. Obviously that siren song must be alluring as hell though, because it happens a lot.

Addiction is a motherfucker yeah; for some drugs you�re never ever really free of it, you just have to work to stay clean every day.

Dunno if this is the case here, but tolerance is a bitch too; if you manage to kick the habit for long enough, your old normal dose can suddenly become an OD

# ¿ Sep 7, 2021 00:11

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

David Simon wrote a memorial to Michael k Williams for the nyt; it�s as good as you expect, and also touches a lot on why I think a lot of people struggle with season 2 initially, but are eventually won over once it clicks and they realize what the show is really about :

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/michael-k-williams-david-simon-the-wire.html?referringSource=articleShare

quote:

Mike interrupted. �I�m not here about my screen time. I just want to know why we are doing this. Why is the show changing?�

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He pressed the point: �I�m saying, there are all these shows on television, and we made the one that was about Black characters and written for a Black audience. And now, it�s like we�re walking away from that.�

Image

Credit...Paul Schiraldi/HBO
To Mike, at that moment, we were the white custodians of a rare majority-Black drama in the majority-white world of American television, and we might well be walking away from that unique responsibility.

He was asking a big question. To answer, I had to pause and regroup, and reach for an honest answer � the one less likely to please a hungry actor. I told him that we had never imagined �The Wire� as a Black drama, or even as a drama with race as its central theme. We were writing about how power and money are routed in an American city, and being from Baltimore, a majority Black metropolis, we had simply depicted our hometown.

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And a bigger truth, I argued, is that if we don�t now expand the show�s field of vision beyond what happens on the streets of West Baltimore, then we stay a cops-and-robbers drama, a police procedural. But if we build the rest of the city � its fragile working class, its political world, its schools, its media culture � then we get a chance to say something more.

�We want to have a bigger argument about what has gone wrong. Not just in Baltimore, but elsewhere, too.�

Mike thought about this for a long moment. Waiting for him, I still worried it would come down to his character�s work. He had done marvelous things with Omar � his smile and the cavernous barrel of a high-powered handgun were the closing moments of the first season � and he was maybe one more good story arc from elevating his character into a star turn. With the leverage he had already acquired, Mike could have sat there and insisted on the writers gilding his every narrative arc.

Instead, he stood up, curled the early season two scripts in his hand, nodded, and asked one last question:

�So what is this stuff at the port about? What are we going to say?�

It�s about the death of work, I told him. When legitimate work itself dies in an American city, I argued, and the last factory standing is the drug corners, then everyone goes to a corner.

�If we do this season, we also make clear going forward that the drug culture is not a racial pathology, it�s about economics and the collapse of the working class � Black and white both.�

Mike left the writers� office that day and went to work, weaving more depth and nuance into a character that he ultimately made iconic and timeless. And from that moment forward, his questions about our drama and its purposes were those of someone sharing the whole of the journey. It became something of a ritual with us: To begin every season that followed, Michael K. Williams would walk into the writers� office and sit on the couch.

�So,� he would ask, �what are we going to say this year?�

Phone posting, too lazy to delete the ads sorry

# ¿ Sep 12, 2021 21:38

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Jerusalem posted:

since he was usually one of the best parts of any show he was in no matter how good it was (or wasn't).

one last time....RIP king, this didn't deserve you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKakC6Mz_rE

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 02:22

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

If there isn�t, I personally wouldn�t hate it if we talked about it here, it�s a good show

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 15:46

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I only watched the show once, but one line that lives in my head rent-free is the reporter asking the raspy colonel if he's a smoker, and the reply "nope, just lucky I guess"

I say that all the time whenever anything bad happens to me

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 20:43

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

senator o-bond-ma

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 21:31

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Bird in a Blender posted:

Just to clarify, this is the actual guy and not the actor playing him.

That's an important clarification, thank you (I had honestly assumed you were all talking about the actor for some reason, even though now that I look at it, none of you said that)

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 01:03

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Syrian Lannister posted:

My bad, was walking into work when I sent it.

Nah you weren't that vague, i just assume all actors are sex pests lately

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 01:23

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

deoju posted:

Yeah, can't help but think that casting was a meta-commentary on the militarization of the police. Collicheo definitely saw the western as occupied territory, and he definitely gave off an ex military vibe. Look at his haircut. Police departments giving preferential hiring to ex military was policy for a long time, and contributed to the mess we are in.

The first episode of GK also includes the embedded journalist being a colossal gently caress up. I kinda see that as a mea culpa for Simon being too preachy in s5.

Then there's that line in season....3? 4? where Carcetti's riding along with some cops and they're talking about how they wish they could just drop white phosphorus and call it a day. i don't know if it is or not, but that line had the feel of something that simon heard from his irl experience as a cop reporter

Speaking of the reporter in GK, I really love how the thing that finally wins him over with the troops is when they learn he used to write for hustler. just :discourse:

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 14:22

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Orange Devil posted:

BoB is intentionally ambiguous about whether Spiers actually did that or whether it was just a story everyone told each other.

It definitely morphs into a myth, but I feel like when it first happens, we see it from the POV of one of the characters contemporaneously, and he's pretty shook up about it.

Either way though, if I'm remembering the show right, his arc by the end is "ah he's a war hero, who cares"

# ¿ Sep 21, 2021 13:56

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

christmas boots posted:

I got my 73 year old dad watching The Wire and he�s really into it. He just watched the episode where Wallace got killed

My wife watched the whole first season without realizing that was Michael B Jordan until I told her. Talented guy

# ¿ Jan 14, 2022 05:26

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

davecrazy posted:

I saw a stage production of Clue tonight (a adaption of the 1980s movie) and I knew I recognized the actor playing Professor Plum but couldn�t place him. Looked him up afterwords and it was Mike Kostroff aka Avons lawyer.

His "What the gently caress?? Shut up! Stop writing!" scene in season 1 is one of my favorites of the series. Such a counterpoint to all those scenes in law and order where the defense lawyer sits quietly while their client confesses to serious felonies

# ¿ Feb 12, 2022 04:29

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I don't remember if we ever find out specifically what Daniels was doing before the show started, but I was under the impression that it was heavily implied that he was doing that kind of thing

# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 16:09

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

notthegoatseguy posted:

I was working in a hospital in 2006 and we all had to be trained on how to use a typewriter because certain medical records were still transcribed using them.

Government and NGOs often are way behind the times when it comes to technology.

Yeah I interned in a state government Attorney general's office in 2008 or so and there was still a typewriter that they needed to use for certain forms

to be clear, the lion's share of the work was done on computers with at the time relatively current technology, there was just a certain thing that everyone needed that typewriter for

# ¿ Mar 20, 2022 02:59

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Athanatos posted:

Barber using McNulty's "The patrolling officer on his beat is the one true dictatorship in America" justification after arresting every person on a humble was a great other side of the coin moment for Wire watchers.

I've been thinking about that line a lot lately for some reason and I'm glad they brought it up lol

# ¿ May 3, 2022 21:47

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

theblackw0lf posted:

Am I not seeing any other posts? I just see me and V-Men.

You know, with obscure indie shows like this, the threads often don't get a lot of traffic

(i see the same thing)

# ¿ May 25, 2022 21:36

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

pokeyman posted:

It's two posts:

thank you, it was getting to the point where i genuinely wasn't sure if people were doing a bit or not and i was too afraid to ask

# ¿ May 26, 2022 02:16

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Mr. Nemo posted:

But to my Frank is one of the most tragic characters of the show, that scene where he is walking towards the greek...

The first time I watched Season 2 I hosed up and skipped an episode--specifically this one. Imagine my surprise to how the following episode started!

# ¿ May 26, 2022 14:42

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

christmas boots posted:

There's no way in hell that Ziggy votes

Well not anymore, at least

BiggerBoat posted:

This is a common opinion. People shat on S2, especially at the time, largely because if the dramatic shift and total focus on new characters. Viewers wanted more cops and corner boys and found the new focus jarring, myself included. But from an "all the pieces matter" perspective, it's loving great.

Just takes a while to sink in and come together. Reminds me of Full Metal Jacket in that way where it becomes a totally different movie in the second act but still kicks rear end.

When Michael K. Williams died, David Simon wrote a touching tribute that also addressed this, as Williams himself raised concerns about the shift in focus on season 2, and I think Simon's response sums up the show, and season 2's place in it, really well. I can't loving read it anymore because I'm out of free NYT articles but fortunately I already quoted it early in the thread so i"m just gonna do it again

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/michael-k-williams-david-simon-the-wire.html?referringSource=articleShare

quote:

Mike interrupted. �I�m not here about my screen time. I just want to know why we are doing this. Why is the show changing?�

He pressed the point: �I�m saying, there are all these shows on television, and we made the one that was about Black characters and written for a Black audience. And now, it�s like we�re walking away from that.�

To Mike, at that moment, we were the white custodians of a rare majority-Black drama in the majority-white world of American television, and we might well be walking away from that unique responsibility.

He was asking a big question. To answer, I had to pause and regroup, and reach for an honest answer � the one less likely to please a hungry actor. I told him that we had never imagined �The Wire� as a Black drama, or even as a drama with race as its central theme. We were writing about how power and money are routed in an American city, and being from Baltimore, a majority Black metropolis, we had simply depicted our hometown.

And a bigger truth, I argued, is that if we don�t now expand the show�s field of vision beyond what happens on the streets of West Baltimore, then we stay a cops-and-robbers drama, a police procedural. But if we build the rest of the city � its fragile working class, its political world, its schools, its media culture � then we get a chance to say something more.

�We want to have a bigger argument about what has gone wrong. Not just in Baltimore, but elsewhere, too.�

Mike thought about this for a long moment. Waiting for him, I still worried it would come down to his character�s work. He had done marvelous things with Omar � his smile and the cavernous barrel of a high-powered handgun were the closing moments of the first season � and he was maybe one more good story arc from elevating his character into a star turn. With the leverage he had already acquired, Mike could have sat there and insisted on the writers gilding his every narrative arc.

Instead, he stood up, curled the early season two scripts in his hand, nodded, and asked one last question:

�So what is this stuff at the port about? What are we going to say?�

It�s about the death of work, I told him. When legitimate work itself dies in an American city, I argued, and the last factory standing is the drug corners, then everyone goes to a corner.

�If we do this season, we also make clear going forward that the drug culture is not a racial pathology, it�s about economics and the collapse of the working class � Black and white both.�

Mike left the writers� office that day and went to work, weaving more depth and nuance into a character that he ultimately made iconic and timeless. And from that moment forward, his questions about our drama and its purposes were those of someone sharing the whole of the journey. It became something of a ritual with us: To begin every season that followed, Michael K. Williams would walk into the writers� office and sit on the couch.

�So,� he would ask, �what are we going to say this year?�

# ¿ May 26, 2022 19:03

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Yeah, that scene and the one with a drunk (probably) nick heckling the developers as they're opening the condos removes any doubt you might have had about what the stevedores have been up to since S2

# ¿ May 28, 2022 17:02

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Heck, same

# ¿ May 31, 2022 00:29

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

It�s a close race between 2 and 4 but I gotta give it to 4 because

- blew me away the first time i saw it, where 2 needed a second try to click (though this probably isn�t fair, because by the time you get to 4, you�ve been fully shown what the pattern of the show is and you understand how it fits)
- child actors killed it, and those are roles that would have been hard even for adults
- best theme song

# ¿ Jun 5, 2022 00:44

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

MrMojok posted:

There is something really appealing about seeing Stringer go from throwing around terms like �market saturation� and hoping his enforcers will be impressed, to him getting bilked and humiliated by absolute snake Clay Davis

I really love the look that his enforcers give each other in that "market saturation" scene after he says that. Whether you're working in a corporation, or for a deadly drug gang, sometimes your boss shows his rear end and you know you can't say anything, but you can share the moment with a coworker

# ¿ Jun 10, 2022 06:11

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Finally started We Own This City after waiting for all the eps to come out and I'm liking it a lot so far. Particularly how it is a showcase of the Baltimore accent in a way that the wire never fully reached (though not being from there, I couldn't say whether the actors who are putting it on artificially are doing it well or not)

Bernthal's great as the lead, really embodies the worst kind of cop energy very convincingly.

Also i'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize that the overtime slip interstitials were there to directly tell the viewer what year it is in any given scene, that was nice of them to add

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 23:41

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

MrMojok posted:

Yeah, that was a nice, simple device used to help orient the viewer.

Don�t mean at all to try to run you out of this thread, but we were talking about it a lot in its dedicated thread back when it was airing. Discussion has died down a bit now though.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4001457

Oh I forgot there was a thread, thank you! I am behind the curve in all things

# ¿ Jun 23, 2022 14:29

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

christmas boots posted:

Prez blinded a child, but he also killed a cop. Truly a land of contrasts.

Something about the way they say �Prez shot another cop� when they get the call in s3 makes it sound like he�s done it before

I also like the scene after between freamon and uhhhhh I forget her name, I�m ashamed to say, but Daniels asks them for an official statement on whether prez might have been racially motivated, and after he leaves the room they�re low-key like ��it was probably a race thing though, huh�

# ¿ Jun 27, 2022 19:28

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 05:17

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Count Roland posted:

The woman was leaning that way but Fraemon wasn't at all.

My recollection of the scene is him saying that, but it kind of sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as anyone. It was something like:

"For real though, you think Prez would have shot him if he was white?"

"The description called for a number one male"

"I'm just saying..."

*freamon conspicuously ends the conversation*

Maybe i'm reading into it wrong but I feel like on some level Freamon suspected the same. But not to a "put it in the official report" degree.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2022 19:37

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.

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