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chesh posted:That was the moment I went from "this show is pretty good" to "gently caress, now I'm addicted, this is brilliant." Likewise. Somebody else put it best when they talked about how that scene really makes you focus on seeing the details the way they do, instead of having it spelled out. Very nicely done.
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Dec 12, 2012 23:28
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escape artist posted:Oh you clever one. Don't say that, your avatar will cap my rear end and you'll end up doing the two days. It's beautiful. I love it. ETA: Especially not having to dance the spoiler dance. Any other show I'd agree with the whole 'It's been off the air forever' school of thought on spoilers, but The Wire should be unspoiled for all future generations. So it's awesome to have a thread purely for those who've finished the journey. ETA YET AGAIN: And since we're approaching ep 2 and the whole McNulty tumbling down the hill scene, let's think on the symbolism involved in the song he's listening to. The whole 'scared away from the machine and not the cop' is a good catch on that scene. Randomly Specific fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 13, 2012 |
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Dec 13, 2012 19:39
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There are some other folks in the show who tend to skate by much like the Greek. Clay Davis certainly has some king qualities about him, and Carcetti is moving into a stratosphere that will keep him comfortably employed for the rest of his existence.
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Dec 15, 2012 07:19
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AAA DOLFAN posted:I'd argue he didn't. He was about to hit Marlo hard, likely killing him and his top lieutenant. Yup. There's a reason everyone was surprised that Marlo was standing up to the Barksdale gang. Marlo's crew at that point was basically a jumped up corner crew that nobody gave any real shot against the numbers and firepower that Avon's people could bring to bear. Sure Marlo had Chris and Snoop, but he didn't really get any serious manpower until after the Barksdales collapsed altogether. That's why Chris and Snoop were looking for prospective soldiers and training them up in S4.
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Dec 16, 2012 01:37
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escape artist posted:Thanks for saying this is better than Breaking Bad. I enjoy Breaking Bad, but drat if it doesn't bother me-- to an unreasonable extent-- when people say it is better than The Wire. I'm the same way. I enjoy Breaking Bad, though the last half-season and especially the mid-season finale kind of killed it for me. (Not going to get into that here.) However, while Breaking Bad is good TV, it's not the best in my admittedly purely subjective opinion. What really makes The Wire the best of all time for me is that there is not one single episode that I feel like skipping on a rewatch. Even the not-as-awesome newsroom scenes are still perfectly watchable, they really mostly pale by comparison to the excellence that everything else was executed with. I don't have any other TV show that I've ever watched. It's kind of like Star Wars, which is not a piece of high art. However, the genius of the original was that there were no slow moments, no place in the movie where you feel like it's slow enough to run to the bathroom and skip the scene. The Wire is like that, as a series. All the pieces really do matter in the end. ETA: I will say this, though: The Wire is heavy. There are a lot of shows that I'll throw on as casual background noise, popcorn fun stuff. The Wire always makes me think every time I watch it, which in a weird way does make some other shows more fun on occasion. Randomly Specific fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 05:04
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Skeesix posted:One thing I love about the wire is how with very few exceptions, e.g. the montages wrapping up the seasons, there is no artificially inserted music. Everything is being listened to by someone in-scene. What I really appreciate about that is how much it makes the montages stand out. I could easily watch the S2 montage leading up to Sobotka's demise a hundred more times, because the music was so evocative and it so neatly tied together all the strings of his impending gory demise.
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Dec 18, 2012 06:29
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The Rooster posted:One thing that stood out for me is when Ziggy aces Double G, they use that shaky blurry camera to demonstrate his mindstate. I don't think they do anything like that anywhere else. It's another case like the S2 montage where it works to beautiful effect. Ziggy's shooting is a total collapse and the scene takes you right into the middle of it. Then it's followed by that very solemn Landsman scene with the confession, and the solemn Landsman scenes always have a fuckload of punch.
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Dec 18, 2012 09:24
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chesh posted:I really can not class The Wire with anything else. Yes, it is a TV show in that it aired on the television. But I can not compare it to any other television, because it is so distinctly, so completely, different. It literally (IMHO) transcends its medium. It is a visual novel. Visual novel is a good way of putting it. What I've realized about the way it's so perfectly paced is because it is one large narrative that requires every single episode to really work properly. There's no filler, no jar episodes. Everything flows from one scene to the next, one episode to the next, and all the pieces really do matter in the series.
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Dec 19, 2012 01:45
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CaptainHollywood posted:It really is. Unlike most shows where it can be identified by certain "episodes", the Wire gets differentiated by it's "seasons". There's never really been a discussion on which is the best "episode" of the Wire, and there shouldn't be. And no worst episode, either. The discussions always turn around this scene or that scene, or the characters, or as you say the seasons. On my rewatch I'm noticing Rawls more and more. God, dude must've been the biggest shithead terror when he was out on the streets.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:19
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cletepurcel posted:Also it always sends chills down my spine when I hear Daniels dress down the three of them. Really the guy could be just as intimidating as Rawls when he wanted to be. "To be continued." Hands down the best scary Daniels scene. He's the kind of guy that you're actually relieved when he starts chewing you out because then you at least know where his head's at. His seething anger in the elevator made McNulty about six inches tall in that scene. The threat with Rawls is public humiliation- he has no qualms about punking the living poo poo out of people in front of everybody, because he's a loving bully. One tidbit I just noticed tonight that's interesting: Rawls is, to my recollection, the only white cop to drop an N-bomb in the series. Yet when we get our little glimpse of his alternative lifestyle, it's not just a gay bar but a predominantly black gay bar. I have no idea if Simon was doing one of his deep metaphorical things there or not.
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Dec 23, 2012 01:26
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Gangringo posted:My favorite Rawls scenes are between him and McNulty after Kima gets shot. He's a bully and an rear end in a top hat but he's got principles. I don't know. I thought on my first viewing that was a sign that he had some kind of principles, but he spends the rest of the series burning everybody who comes near him. I can't think of any other principled moments he had, and he would've burned Carcetti at the end if he hadn't been given the carrot and stick treatment. Landsman is the one you see showing more principle in the series, what with his attempt at extracting McNulty from the poo poo he got himself into in S1, his handling of Bubbles, etc. He's still going to watch out for number one, but catch him at the right moment and he'll do right by you. However, the Kima shooting really did bring out the best in everyone. Rawls actually shows real leadership rather than Machiavellian assholery, Burrell sits with Kima's girlfriend after the commissioner waves the situation off, Landsman is serious and on the trail, Daniels does everything he needs to do, Lester rallies the troops. McNulty gets drunk. Okay, maybe it didn't bring out the best in everyone. The other Rawls bit I like from that ep was the 'gently caress your money' scene with the DEA agent.
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Dec 24, 2012 00:59
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John Jhonson posted:Something that never occurred to me when I first watched this show, amidst all the debate over clean vs juked stats, is just how clueless even the brightest cops seem to be. People like Daniels, Freamon, and to a degree McNulty are very adamant that more patrols and more sweeps of corners do nothing to reduce crime, while building major cases is the only way to really combat the problem. All throughout the show there are a number of speeches made to this effect, and for a long time I went along with it, as it seemed clear that these guys were fighting the good fight. That comes back to the game aspect. 'Protect and serve' is in there, but for guys like McNulty and Freamon and to some extent Daniels the job is about winning the game more than anything. 'Quality work' is what lets them get at the bigger players, take rooks and bishops and knights and maybe even checkmate the king instead of collecting a pile of pawns. That's what made Colvin so unique, because he tried an approach to actually fix the problem and then focus on going after the guys who cause real problems.
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Dec 27, 2012 03:39
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hobbez posted:Just finished season 2, it was just as good as season 1 imo. They got so close to getting the greek. Im incredibly frustrated. You really probably want to wait to finish the series before you get back into this thread. The other thread is mostly safe from spoilers, but we're happily hammering out the spoilers in this one.
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Dec 27, 2012 05:26
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Jerusalem posted:What I like about that is that McNulty is just self-aware enough to recognize this flaw in himself, but not enough to actually make a change. Even when it seems that he has (in season 4) we quickly see him fall back into his old habits and in the end the job has to be forcibly taken from him for him to finally be able to let go. He's got an addiction-prone personality. The thrill of the hunt, the booze, the women, the main thing that mostly keeps him on the 'right' side of the fence is that he's got the badge.
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Jan 7, 2013 02:49
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OregonDonor posted:Escape Artist said it best, but season 2 parallels the death of the (traditionally white) working class with the effects of urbanization explored in season 1 and beyond. Also, Frank Sobotka is probably one of the most honorable characters in the entire series. I've got to admit a bias here though, because season 2 is my favorite. I'd argue that. From the moment he didn't wash his hands of things after the can of dead women, Frank became a knowing part of the slave trade. I can understand why he did it, but his hypocritical bellowing about having a wife and sisters at the detectives never sat well with me. His only concession to the whole business was that they needed to know if they were holding a can with women in it so they could not bury it in the stacks and risk asphyxiating another load of them. His involvement in the drug trade is murkier, it is profiting off of death and suffering but at a much greater remove and with more self-serving justifications available. But if you knowingly make a direct profit from the movement of slaves, you can't really be described as 'honorable.' That is actually one of the deft touches of season 2. Other than McNulty's obsession and Beadie's personal involvement, most people want to just write the whole thing off. Every form of authority involved can't wait to call it accidental so they can close the case and not dig into the perpetrators, the first thought that the brass have when they bust the bordello is 'Oh god, don't publish the client list!' Outside of McNulty and Beadie, the only one to really take personal umbrage at it is Kima. The scene where McNulty gets 'overwhelmed' is played for laughs by most involved, without any consideration of the women who were doing what they're forced to do. If you're looking at the details of it, the often-dismissive way that the season treats the slave trade is more effectively disturbing than if they'd dwelled on it in a voyeuristic fashion, because that's the way that most folks shrug it off in real life.
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Jan 9, 2013 01:36
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Frank couldn't have done diddly squat to prevent the slave trafficking, and if he had tried more active measures he probably would've been killed. BUT. Regardless of being unable to stop it, he still accepted profiting from it. Yes, he threw a tantrum and started to pull back, but in the end he folded with a weak-rear end condition. From that moment onward, he was very directly buying the well-being of his people with the suffering of slaves. Most of Frank's activity could be argued as gray-area because he was fighting for the survival of his people, but this is one stark line where he chose wrong. That complicity furthermore carries over to the others who were in the know like Nicky and Horse. What's shown in the series is that out-of-sight, out-of-mind perspective that lets this crime continue. It's treated as a bad thing, but hey, these guys are SMUGGLING DRUGS. MCU can get a wiretap up for drugs in a jiffy, just go through exhaustion and fill out the stack of paperwork. Get a wiretap on a slave operation? Nuh uh. Just reluctantly bust them and ship them back and accept that they'll be packed into the next outbound from 'Le Harvey.' Seriously, how out of whack is the system when we'll spend untold billions to fail at drug interdiction and turn loose the full power of the Federal government on the issue, but barely even look at the slave trade? That's what underlines season 2 for me.
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Jan 9, 2013 03:06
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FrozenVent posted:Ro-ro does require a certain amount of stevedoring (they gotta lash those trailers and cars, or unlash them, then have someone drive them off), I'm guessing comparable to container. Steel isn't bulk cargo - it's break bulk, and it's pretty drat labour intensive (Cut lashing, forklift to hatch opening, sling to crane, crane out, unsling unto truck / train car), but I don't know how much steel Baltimore actually handles. With regards to getting the women out during the trip, yeah they'd have to have somebody on the inside to work the stowage so that'd be possible. They weren't supposed to be getting them out to work the crew, they were supposed to be getting trips out for the bathroom and so on. But given the scale of the operation having a insider arranging ground-level stowage (or at least ladder-accessible) wouldn't be a big deal. I wondered about the vent pipe myself, but it made for easy storytelling and it's a minor detail, so I let it go at that.
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Jan 9, 2013 15:26
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. I've never worked containers extensively, but as far as I've been told that's not how you ventilate a container full of stowaways.
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watt par posted:I wouldn't say Levy's the mastermind in any hierarchical sense. It's more like Mancur Olson's notion of stationary versus roving bandits, except instead of functioning as the state people like Levy are there to create an environment within the state in which major drug trades can operate. Obviously the show's take is spelled out in the courtroom scene where Omar's on the stand pointing out the similarities between him and Levy as parasites on the drug trade, but Levy's role as intermediary between the illicit and legit world is deeper than that. Levy does on occasion take direct part in the business. What struck me about his corruption was his knowingly setting Lyles up to for death in S1 when he tells Avon and Stringer they need to close off their vulnerabilities. He knew drat well what he was saying when he told the two drug lords that they needed to protect themselves and got them to listing their potential weak spots, then he cheerfully absents himself from the discussion of the actual details of the impending murder(s). The cheerful cynicism of his foreknowledge of Marlo's doom was just another bit of evidence.
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Jan 10, 2013 18:16
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And both are punished for trying to break the game. It's something I hadn't really connected. Honestly, the Stringer/Bunny connection always felt a bit out of place for me, like it existed to fill a spot. But thinking on the parallels, and there's a bit there. Both of them tried to civilize the game, from the opposite angles. Also, the scene where Bodie goes to Stringer after getting picked up outside of Hamsterdam is bleakly funny. "Well you shouldn't sell drugs."
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Jan 14, 2013 16:10
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Unzip and Attack posted:It's an interesting point about Stringer trying to "reform the game" but I have to disagree. Stringer was often the voice of caution against violence with Avon, but he also wanted to straight up murder a sitting State Senator because he felt he had been ripped off, and he had D murdered so he could sleep with his girlfriend (though he rationalized it as D being a weak link to everyone else). Stringer was never a legit businessman despite how hard he may have tried to appear that way. Pretty much every scene involving String's legit businesses ended up with him losing his temper and yelling at his hired help or his business partners. The scene in season 2 where D talks about The Great Gatsby is, in my opinion, a direct reference to Stringer trying to pretend to be something he's not. When McNulty finally gets into String's apartment he finds these pristine books, one of which is Wealth of Nations. My guess is that String never read that book. String's displayed knowledge of economics was never insightful - it was always shallow and I think the show was trying to demonstrate that he was misguided. Taking a few basic econ courses at a Community College doesn't make a person become Steve Jobs. String only wanted to be a businessman until he faced obstacles - then he showed his true colors. Stringer and Davis was the class nerd getting played by the prom queen and then seeing her laugh about him as she runs off with the jock king. He was the nice guy and hiked through the snow with her printer and everything. So then he snaps and goes straight to the ladder theory. Dead on about his apartment, though. The funny part of that is that Jimmy took the Smith book seriously. Also the katanas are further evidence of Stringer's goony heart.
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Jan 15, 2013 16:45
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Mescal posted:Here's how I imagine this origin story. You mean Jimmy McArdle.
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Jan 28, 2013 21:30
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Con: Frank Sobotka remains horribly overrated to me. He's thieving, only concerned for his group of people, but then that gloriously self important "we used to make things, now we just stick our hand in the next guy's pocket" - like he's so noble in his stealing? I don't know, he's commonly regarded as this hero struggling against all odds, but I see him as overwhelmingly selfish. I'm the one who gets on Frank for basically walking on the can of dead women. Yeah, he angsted about it for a bit, but ultimately he puts his conscience away and crawls back in with the Greek. However, what is noble in Frank's struggle is that he's one of the few in the game who isn't out for his own interests. The money isn't flowing back into his pocket, he's not living like a king. He's banking it and using it for the union and to advance their interests. When he bucks tradition to run for his office again, it's believable that he's doing it not for his own interests, but for the union. Basically Frank is the anti-Carcetti of the series, but even so he still comes out dirty because he's playing the game.
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Feb 2, 2013 04:19
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Parachute Underwear posted:The thing is that Frank does deserve to get knocked for how he ultimately got back in business with the Greek after the can of dead girls, but the alternative was walking on the Greek and losing what appeared to be his main money pipeline. Without that money, Frank couldn't get the time of day with anyone important (or even set up meetings with them through his lawyer) and would find it far harder to help out struggling union guys, or injuries like New Charles. Oh yeah, he did it for a good end, but there's no escaping the fact that from that point onward he was knowingly prioritizing the economics of his own tribe over the slavery of the women. He was hair better ethically than the guys who were tasering women for going to the convenience store or whatever. In a theoretical sense I can forgive the drugs because the justifications on that are much easier for a guy in his position to make- people want to buy the product, it's not his business what people put in their body. But slavery? No, that's a very sharp line that gets crossed and it makes him, Nick, Horse and whoever else is involved knowing parties to the slave trade. The worst part is when he throws that rant at Beadie about the respect he has for women, he has a mother and sisters, etc., then goes ahead and facilitates however many mothers, sisters, and daughters being sexually exploited, raped and abused. It's The Wire and nobody's a spotless hero- his conflict on that is a big part of the early season. Like I've said before, the entire season is a prime example of how sex trafficking is a near-invisible crime, because as soon as the MCU busts the bordello the entire sex trafficking angle pretty much vaporizes and they return to their focus on drugs. The women they scooped up will go to one of those holding cells like Jimmy visited in search of an identity for his Jane Doe, they'll be shipped home and then they'll be on the next container heading west. Busting the bordello accomplished jack and poo poo and other than the tale of Jimmy being overwhelmed by the prostitutes it's hardly ever spoken of again. Absolutely nothing was accomplished by their single bust and they knew it.
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Feb 3, 2013 23:30
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ChairMaster posted:The point of the Bordello bust wasn't to stop human trafficking or even hinder it, it was just to gather information for the case they were working in the first place. Besides, nobody accomplished anything on the large scale in The Wire, people generally weren't even interested in that, aside from Lester Freamon and McNulty. Everyone knew they couldn't stop human trafficking any more than they could stop the gang wars or the war on drugs. The only person who ever really did anything towards making a difference was Bunny with Hamsterdam, and we all know how that turned out. Yeah, but what the show reflects are the priorities. The bordello bust was, as you say, simply a piece of a larger puzzle and a joke that becomes a department legend. But when the FBI finds the coke in the paint cans, it's a huzzah moment. Both actions are equally futile, but one gets major press coverage as a 'win'. As for Frank supporting the evils of the drug trade, I was referring to how he could rationalize it to himself. With the slave trade, there's no good rationalization for it- he just swallowed the evil and took the profits in the end. That's the key distinction- it's one thing to rationalize away things that are happening at a safe remove, another to see them carting out the bodies in your own house the way Frank did. The thing is that's what makes Frank such a great character, though. When push comes to shove, he makes an ugly, ugly decision. There's no story if he goes and talks to his brother until he has a moral revelation and decides the checkers should fly right until the port closes.
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Feb 4, 2013 17:29
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Jerusalem posted:That's why I like it (and The Wire, obviously) because assigning right and wrong as labels is a simplistic solution to a complex problem. Hamsterdam is a HORRIBLE idea, a nightmare, an ugly and disgusting thing. But so is the alternative, and what Hamsterdam has going for it is that it takes all that ugliness and horror and it puts it all together in one place, giving you a concentrated look at exactly what was going on (and is STILL going on) in the world. Shutting down Hamsterdam and bulldozing the buildings is a bandaid/placebo to make people feel better about their "outrage", like something has been done. But the problem is still there, it's just spread out thinner. You get the real sense of that when Bunny takes the Deacon down to see it. Bunny is seeing what he's done overall for the Western District. He's thinking of the corners where they aren't having to pick up bodies, he's thinking of how the citizens can actually go out on the streets now. Because of that, he's somewhat blind to the horror of Hamsterdam. The Deacon comes in and sees that yeah maybe he's doing good elsewhere, but right there he has a swamp that's eating people. +1 vote for 'bump' over 'buck'.
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Feb 7, 2013 02:44
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DarkCrawler posted:Oh yeah, and nobody can tell me that Herc is more bad then good after this. When he gets confronted by all his mistakes at the end and booted off the police force? Counterpoint: multiple brutality charges, none upheld but all of them valid. Herc had a certain amount of tribal loyalty, but unless he identified you as part of his tribe he didn't give a poo poo. I actually think that the scene with Bodie's grandmother was a bit of a turning point for him- he was going to try to reach out and be nice, then they find his card in Bodie's pocket and from there on he's pretty much gently caress-it. None of the characters are black and white, but Herc was pretty much 'hump' defined.
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Feb 8, 2013 00:14
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I'd never put Herc on the tier with Marlo or Levy or even Rawls either. Hell, a good example of a straight-up bad guy would be Walker. You can even understand where Herc's coming from- he's a not-bright guy who's been treated like a not-bright guy his whole life. Hence why making sergeant and receiving the due respect for being a sergeant is a recurring issue for him. Is he straight-up mustache-twirling malignantly evil? No. Does he have redeeming moments? Sure. He's like any other character on The Wire, you can't say that any of them are pristine examples of anything. The closest you have to pristine characters are the self-inserts of Colvin and Gus, and even they fail upon closer examination. As for the rest- McNulty is a chaotic neutral train wreck, Daniels and Kima tune up Bird, Omar swore at least once, etc. The characters you'd say are good have bad moments, and the often bad characters (like Herc) have their redeeming moments as well. What really sticks out for me as a Herc moment is when he's having his conversation with Carv in S5, talking about Carv diming out Colichio to IAD. He's all but admitting that he respects Carver for being a better man than him and a better cop. Herc would've never even thought of crossing the line on that one. Problem being that he takes that example and turns around to continue being Herc because he's human and he is what he is and probably will never change.
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Feb 8, 2013 03:46
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Lester specifically cultivated the people he felt were capable of doing proper investigative work. He didn't cultivate Herc because Herc didn't belong there and basically was only good for the menial tasks. He trained up Prez, he trained up Sydnor, and he even tried to mentor McNulty a bit, but he wasn't going to waste his time on Herc. We didn't see it in screen time, but he undoubtedly gave Kima plenty of pointers too. Was it the best move politically? No, but Lester was only somewhat more politically savvy than McNulty to begin with. As for Herc's perception of his work, he thought that the cowboy routine was the job. Bust heads, intimidate, show the flag. He was happy as could be when he was rolling with the Western DEU. He totally misses Colvin's dissatisfaction with their little rampage to chase the runner in early S3 because he thinks the good guys won another one.
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Feb 8, 2013 16:33
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I think it's one of those little of column A, little of column B kind of deals. String probably had no respect for D for most of their lives. He was the weak one that only made it because Avon was looking out for him. (Irony here being that Stringer probably wouldn't have gone very far without Avon's ruthlessness either.) Then D nearly flips on them, and then he's sitting there with twenty years and nothing much to think about past the fact that a single phone call could set him free. Add in that String gets the raging boner for D's girl and it all comes together as a justification that completely vindicates his moving in while at the same time eliminating a vulnerability. In the end he had every reason to do it and no reason not to.
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Feb 9, 2013 23:06
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SubponticatePoster posted:See, I read the whole Stringer getting with D's girlfriend thing as Stringer making a very calculated move to keep her happy and quiet. It's not like it was an odious task for him, but he didn't need her talking to anybody if she got pissed off about D being in prison. If it weren't for the dinner scene at the community center I might agree with you, but that scene seems to be pretty blatant foreshadowing that Stringer had some interest.
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Feb 10, 2013 03:34
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Fellis posted:I always thought of Slim Charles as one of those pawns that made it to the other side. Its not hard to imagine him as a corner boy and when we meet him he is an enforcer for the Barksdales. After that goes south he then manages to make his way into being Joe's right hand man. But when Marlo dismantles the co-op and tries to give him some territory: "...sorry man but I ain't no CEO" I see Slim ending up in the yard with Chris and Weebay sooner or later. He's the shooter who takes the rap and does the years. watt par posted:Couple slight nitpicky corrections to the last write-up: when McNulty and Kima are discussing her sexuality, McNulty says he should've known that she was gay because the only female cops he's known that were worth a drat were gay, not that the only female cop he's worked with was gay. Which is somewhat ironic considering Beadie turns out to be okay po-lice. Beadie did good on a major investigation, but it wasn't the sort of life she wanted to live. She couldn't/wouldn't develop the sort of professional detachment the others had to have in order to do the job, which is why she went back to policing the harbor after the case was done. That's the thing about The Wire- all the 'success stories' involve people who find a relatively obscure corner and carve out a niche in it where they can stay safe and sane.
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Feb 13, 2013 01:38
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Jerusalem posted:I've always been a little confused by this scene, is it supposed to paint Omar in a positive light, showing that he doesn't care purely about money or that he has a soft touch for children? Does it show he can be manipulated by junkie sob stories that a harder dealer (say, Bodie for instance) might reject out of hand? I think it's another result of the writers not having quite figured out Omar's character just yet, the nearest we see to this type of behavior again in the future is the children that are so excited to see Omar in season 5 where he is "retired", running up hoping for gifts. Omar running her a 'tab' of sorts there was banking for the future. Think ahead to the part where Weebay and company are burning his van and he's watching from her squat with her kid in his lap. The money only has a very limited value to him- he lives in vacants and stays permanently in the wind. He regularly rebuilds his cash flow with stash robberies, and playing a bit of Robin Hood supplies him with a network of eyes and ears as well as other potential favors down the road. The child dealer may or may not be out of character (I'd think Omar would see that as simply giving a hopper a chance to earn a buck) but him being generous with the drugs he steals is entirely in character IMO.
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Feb 13, 2013 22:23
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Jerusalem posted:That's something I hadn't considered and makes a hell of a lot of sense, thanks! Thank you for the excellent writeup.
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Feb 13, 2013 22:51
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Slo-Tek posted:I seemed to me like Omar's relationship with Brandon to be pretty chicken-hawk exploitive. Brandon is just barely (if) an adult. Way less creepy when he was making time with 'Naldo and Dante, who are more clearly partners in the business, and legal to drink. I'd say he was intended to be street samurai pretty much from day one. While it did get to the point of being borderline action-movie by S5, we're just a short walk from this intro to 'Man's gotta have a code' and 'Omar don't scare.' Brandon was clearly younger and vastly more immature than Omar, but I don't even know if the latter is so much a function of age difference as upbringing. Brandon seemed like he came from a bit more middle class upbringing and viewed it more as a game. Brandon never came across as barely legal to me, just immature and carrying that sense of youthful immortality.
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Feb 13, 2013 23:08
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I'm somewhere in between on this. I don't see her as being as bad as Namond's mother, because the sense I got from Brianna is that she really did regard this as a family business and that protecting the family and the business was the way of life she was raised into. Namond's mother was strictly about herself. So it does come back to being a product of her environment. Furthermore if D had gotten with the family program he would've probably gotten out much earlier. But he took a course she didn't expect him to take. For all that, she was a knowing part of a ruthless and murderous criminal syndicate so she's only sympathetic to an extent. As for McNulty's end of it, I didn't see his conversation with her as being deliberately malicious on his part. He was basically calling it like he saw it in a very nonchalant fashion. From his point of view, she didn't come across as being a caring mother. It was more of a "I was trying to do a thing here, but nobody gave a poo poo, so gently caress it. My life goes on just fine." No mistake, McNulty's an rear end in a top hat and not just the gaping chasm that we all possess. But this wasn't him being overtly malicious. It's just a byproduct of his eternal frustration with anything that gets in the way of him winning a round in the game, maybe tinged with a bit of genuine liking for D. Although I'm not sure if he really connected with D and liked him the way he genuinely came to like Bodie. That may have been an affectation on his part, part of the cops and robbers game.
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Feb 16, 2013 19:33
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Parachute Underwear posted:Again, though, she didn't learn anything in the room that she wasn't already ruminating over. She went to see him to confirm what she thought happened. Oh yeah, I'm sure at the time he initiated the whole thing by going to Donette he was working the case and trying to drive a wedge in to get her or somebody to flip. It's just that by the time he sees Brianna he's already filed it away under a lost cause and really doesn't give a gently caress. It's not that he's looking to kick her much, my take is that he's just being matter-of-fact. Brianna was in the life, Brianna convinced D to take the years. He was hoping that Donette, who as far as he knew was just the girlfriend and had no active part in things, would be upset because her boyfriend and the father of her child got murdered. Hell for all he knew at the time he goes to Donette, Brianna might've been in on the whole thing. I don't really think he ever gave a gently caress about D. In fact when you think about it Jimmy only really gets attached when he's out of the game- S2 when he's exiled to the harbor patrol gulag, and in S4 when he's walking the beat.
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Feb 16, 2013 20:04
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The other thing that String ran into was that he was at a strata in his game where nobody would just blatantly rip him off the way Davis did. Between that and his naivete about how it worked- basically that people on the legit side didn't do each other that way because they didn't have to, he was a lamb to the slaughter there. He really should've gone to Levy first. The sense I always got from the final Avon/Stringer scene wasn't that they picked up that the other was selling them out. It was more a wistfulness because they thought they had the other one cornered and hated the necessity of it. The scene is beautifully wide open for interpretation on that, though.
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Feb 19, 2013 02:21
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Jerusalem posted:It shows how committed to their particular chosen way of doing things they were too. Stringer's betrayal is arguably the "lesser" one because the idea is to put Avon back in prison and leave Stringer to run things his way (working with East Side/Prop Joe, not warring with Marlo, not bringing down police attention on them etc), and presumably Avon would still be living like a king in prison and his sister would be getting a large cut of the profits. I hadn't really considered that aspect- String's betrayal was rather humane in the sense that he probably saved Avon's life. Stringer always was the voice of caution, the one who found a way to bring the level of hostilities down. Left to his own devices, Avon probably would've kept picking fights until major portions of the city's underworld united to end him. Another thing that just occurred to me- all the security measures we saw in S1 were probably Stringer's scheming. Avon handled the tactical situations and the war strategy, but you have to figure that Stringer was the one who came up with the beepers, the payphone code, and so on.
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Feb 20, 2013 05:38
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Jerusalem posted:Actually in the episode that escape artist is doing a write-up for RIGHT NOW ( Yeah, that's paranoia (healthy paranoia in his situation), but I'm referring to the structure they had in place on the streets with the beeper code and all. That strikes me as something that Stringer would've put together. Unzip and Attack posted:Stringer indicated that he was willing to have a State Senator murdered because he let himself get fleeced. As cautious as Stringer seems to be compared to Avon, he's still more than happy to use murder at the drop of a hat. I doubt Avon would have ever considered killing someone like Clay Davis, even if he had cause. The Clay Davis thing wasn't something that Stringer would've ordinarily done, I think. He was pissed off, humiliated, and he snapped. Like I said, Stringer was at a level in the drug game where nobody would've so casually and boldly ripped him off and it put him seriously off his game.
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Feb 20, 2013 20:31
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), we get to see that Avon is extremely paranoid about security. He has all the phone lines removed from his girlfriend's house because she gets ONE hang-up phone-call (D got the same from Lester and it never even occurs to him that it could be somebody testing/confirming D's number), refuses to use a payphone that he used once already that week, and bitches out Wee-Bey when he suggests that Avon is going a little overboard.
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Avon was the top dog, the motivator and the one that people believed in and fought for. Stringer may have been something of a better plotter (with the previous mentioned limitations in accounting for other people's counterscheming) but he wasn't really the guy people believed in. Avon was also the one who was willing to personally get bloody and do business, which wasn't at all Stringer's thing.
Randomly Specific fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Feb 20, 2013 |
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Feb 20, 2013 21:37
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