yeah prop joe always seemed to have the most pronounced accent. I never knew if that was accurate or not though cuz i've never been to baltimore or met anybody who was really from baltimore who still had an accent. i think i'm gonna start into s4 again this week. I think I can blaze through the whole season in a couple weeks no problem. actually, I could probably get through it by the end of the weekend really...
I agree with the general criticism that, of the four seasons, it's the most uneven, which is to say that it's still great...just not as great. I don't think it's the white-ness factor except to say that S2, to me, feels overly ambitious[/b] and introduces too many new players, with an entirely different subculture, and thus, feels overloaded as a result. I admire the ambition, I just don't think it executes as cleanly as S1 does.
to counter, this is exactly what got me hooked on the show. i enjoyed s1 immensely and appreciated it for all the points it differed from typical cop shows (like law & order). i loved how the story developed and unraveled at a snail's pace and i thought the detail and subtlety were very innovative in a tv show. but it was mostly about drug dealers and the cops who chase 'em. it was simple and elegant.
but the second season is the one that proved to me this show was legendary. i agree that the storyline was incredibly ambitious but i think it somehow managed to accomplish its goals. by the third or fourth episode in, they were expanding the plot to involve:
bunk & freamon, and russell's investigation into the young girls' deaths omar's new crew & his testimony against bird nicky's financial crisis with wife and new baby nick & ziggy business deal with glekas, and willingness to import chemicals for the greek valchek's missing van and his grudge with sobotka and the dock boys avon & d'angelo's distancing relationship in jail stringer's budding relationship with d'angelo's girl avon & stringer's setup of the prison guard and simultaneous warning to d'angelo
one of the best aspects of the show is how many story lines they get into without compromising the intensity of each one individually, or the quality of the show overall.
Having just finished my second full end-to-end viewing of Season 2, I have to agree with Mandrew. I think its (over?)ambition is part of its great success and the fluidity with which all aspects of the city are tied together is nothing short of genius.
I mean, think about it - now knowing what Season 5 will focus on, and having watched the previous four seasons, we all understand that this is not a show about drug dealers and cops; it's about the decay of the great American city. The show, in chronicling that decay, has managed to illustrate it from a diversity of angles unimagineable for normal TV. That not just one show but one season of it could touch on: the war on terrorism, "doing business with the bad guys", union busting, the Baltimore drug trade, police morale, human smuggling, prostitution, politics in the post-industrial economy, and the revolving doors of the justice system - all with a classic cops-n-robbers feel - is just amazing.
It's very loosely based on the experiences of my co-writer, Ed Burns, who was a 20-year veteran of the police department here in Baltimore. He did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a year's time, into violent drug traffickers. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department. And then it was also based on my experiences at my newspaper, which became a sort of hellish, futile bureaucracy. And then while we were writing the scripts, Enron was happening. And the Catholic Church. It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show[/b] .
(my emphasis; I think the treatise about institutions part is so on point.)
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Aha, great old article. It's interesting to see how Simon has maintained his vision for the show since the beginning.
my favorite quote:
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
Here's an interview with Andre Royo, no earth shattering revelations but there's a little info about what's up with Bubs in season 5.
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
totally.
there's no way McNulty "doesn't care" at all. I don't know what David Simon is talking about. perhaps McNulty's character developed in a way that Simon didn't anticipate when he gave this interview.
I agree that cops are often shown to "care" in a real corny way in cop dramas. but the Wire is not an example of this at all.
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
totally.
there's no way McNulty "doesn't care" at all. I don't know what David Simon is talking about. perhaps McNulty's character developed in a way that Simon didn't anticipate when he gave this interview.
I agree that cops are often shown to "care" in a real corny way in cop dramas. but the Wire is not an example of this at all.
The way I took that quote was that McNulty only cares about himself and his job. He's not on some mission or the reformer cop. He wants to bust the guys he's after and that's about it, until he stopped drinking and hooked up with the cop from S2 that is. How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
totally.
there's no way McNulty "doesn't care" at all. I don't know what David Simon is talking about. perhaps McNulty's character developed in a way that Simon didn't anticipate when he gave this interview.
I agree that cops are often shown to "care" in a real corny way in cop dramas. but the Wire is not an example of this at all.
The way I took that quote was that McNulty only cares about himself and his job. He's not on some mission or the reformer cop. He wants to bust the guys he's after and that's about it, until he stopped drinking and hooked up with the cop from S2 that is. How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
I think even that is off the mark though. I mean either he cares about himself or he cares about the case. If it's the latter (even a little bit) then you can't say he doesn't care . The fact is he took concrete steps (before falling in love even) that endangered his career (i.e. going above the chain of command with the feds) but that he felt were necessary for the case.
obviously he's no Bunny. but to say he is totally selfish I think is not accurate either.
speaking of Bunny, here's a cop that cares. a lot. and so even if Jimmy's character arguably falls outside the cop-who-cares cliche that Simon warns about, there is no doubt that Bunny is a cop who cares about things way larger than himself or his career.
How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
and to the extent that characters say this in the show, it's generally the higher-ups with motives far, far more cynical than McNulty's, the ones who can't stand a cop who is really trying to build a case vs. please the politicians, the media, or their bosses. this is precisely why McNulty comes into conflict with people like Rawls and Burrell.
How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
and to the extent that characters say this in the show, it's generally the higher-ups with motives far, far more cynical than McNulty's, the ones who can't stand a cop who is really trying to build a case vs. please the politicians, the media, or their bosses. this is precisely why McNulty comes into conflict with people like Rawls and Burrell.
No, Bunk and almost everyone of mcnulty's fellow cops have also called him an asshole over cases. He acts like he is the only one that can work the case and regularly pisses off everyone around him.
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?[/b]
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
I didn't see it as completely selfish. Of course, it must sting to have worked so hard and long, to be so close to the arrest and have it snatched away from him. But to me, the bigger disappointment - because as selfish as he may be, McNulty's character actually gives a shit about making the world better through law enforcement - is that 'crime' won. I don' think the disappointment is simple and just on a personal level. McNulty has been sitting on the boat, putting in time to catch that fish, to dissect it and see what else he can find out about what goes on underwater. Meanwhile that fish has been pissing off sharks. Just as McNulty's about to reel him in, two sharks come and bite him right off the line.
I think McNulty's character actually gives a shit about making the world better through law enforcement - is that 'crime' won. I don' think the disappointment is simple and just on a personal level.
If i remember correctly, [s03 spoiler alert] he has this little crisis about this in the last episodes of season 3, and that's why he ends up not working for daniels anymore.
I think McNulty's character actually gives a shit about making the world better through law enforcement - is that 'crime' won. I don' think the disappointment is simple and just on a personal level.
If i remember correctly, [s03 spoiler alert] he has this little crisis about this in the last episodes of season 3, and that's why he ends up not working for daniels anymore.
And his decision to stop messing with that horrid campaign manager woman also speaks to his deep respect for the job. He got fed up with her shit talk about cops, etc. in the hotel at one of their rendezvous and left her there.
By the way, she is my least favourite character on the show. She reminds me of a reptile in every way.
There is no question that ego is part of his character, but it's part of every good character.
He got fed up with her shit talk about cops, etc. in the hotel at one of their rendezvous and left her there.
That's not how I remember it. He got wary that she was trying to bleed him for political information. And then later, he realized they had absolutely nothing in common.
He got fed up with her shit talk about cops, etc. in the hotel at one of their rendezvous and left her there.
That's not how I remember it. He got wary that she was trying to bleed him for political information. And then later, he realized they had absolutely nothing in common.
She made it clear that they didn't have too much in common from the get go, but he had other things in mind imo. She was undoubtedly playing him, but her complete lack of interest in his job and condescension towards his world until she needed something out of him was what I was referring to. If he didn't care about what the job stood for or the people he worked with, I think he would have either told her what she wanted to know about Colvin, fed her a lie, lead her along, etc....all so he could bed her again, but he left her at the table instead.
How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
and to the extent that characters say this in the show, it's generally the higher-ups with motives far, far more cynical than McNulty's, the ones who can't stand a cop who is really trying to build a case vs. please the politicians, the media, or their bosses. this is precisely why McNulty comes into conflict with people like Rawls and Burrell.
No, Bunk and almost everyone of mcnulty's fellow cops have also called him an asshole over cases. He acts like he is the only one that can work the case and regularly pisses off everyone around him.
hey whether you like it or not a dude that puts his heart and soul into a case is helping more people than just himself.
like I said he's proven he'll sacrifice his career for the case.
working to advance a case (even at the expense of pissing off his colleagues) does not equal working to advance one's own career.
By the way, she is my least favourite character on the show. She reminds me of a reptile in every way.
I kinda like her. She knows what she wants (some, ahem, private dick) and goes for it unapologetically.
[color:white] She reminds me of a dude I used to know... [/color]
True that. I, for one, always was pulling for McNulty to get back with his wife, who seemed pretty intelligent and fly, just not willing to put up with his lifestyle.
By the way, she is my least favourite character on the show. She reminds me of a reptile in every way.
I kinda like her. She knows what she wants (some, ahem, private dick) and goes for it unapologetically.
[color:white] She reminds me of a dude I used to know... [/color]
lol - by no means do I have a problem with a woman going after what she wants unapologetically. I just don't like the way she goes about it. She's a slimy and totally untrustworthy character imo. I also don't like her face, not that I think she's ugly, but...oh I don't know, she just bugs me.
[color:white] She does have a nice behind tho [/color]
it would've been cool if they did a season on gentrification.
they touched on it a little in season 2 (or 3?) but...
Cosign. Can we have a season 5 redo with this instead of fake serial killer?
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Jonny_Paycheck said:
it would've been cool if they did a season on gentrification.
they touched on it a little in season 2 (or 3?) but...
Yeah, there's the scene where Nick Sobotka is house hunting with Aimee and he's starting to realize that they would not be able to buy the kind of row house that they're looking at. I think gentrification is an aspect of season two's larger theme of the loss of blue collar jobs in American cities and the decreasing place for middle income skilled workers. We see the grain piers that Frank Sobotka was trying to rehabilitate in season two have been turned into high end condos by season five.
I remember an interview with David Simon where he said that if he was going to do another season, he would have liked to focus on the burgeoning Latino community in Baltimore. I'm sure this would have been an amazing season, I wonder what writer Simon would have hired to help out. As far as I can remember the only spanish speaking characters were the guys that Omar teams up with to heist Marlo's package from Cheese at the end of season four. It would have been cool if in the next season we saw what these guys did with their share of the haul.
Comments
fatman
to counter, this is exactly what got me hooked on the show. i enjoyed s1 immensely and appreciated it for all the points it differed from typical cop shows (like law & order). i loved how the story developed and unraveled at a snail's pace and i thought the detail and subtlety were very innovative in a tv show. but it was mostly about drug dealers and the cops who chase 'em. it was simple and elegant.
but the second season is the one that proved to me this show was legendary. i agree that the storyline was incredibly ambitious but i think it somehow managed to accomplish its goals. by the third or fourth episode in, they were expanding the plot to involve:
bunk & freamon, and russell's investigation into the young girls' deaths
omar's new crew & his testimony against bird
nicky's financial crisis with wife and new baby
nick & ziggy business deal with glekas, and willingness to import chemicals for the greek
valchek's missing van and his grudge with sobotka and the dock boys
avon & d'angelo's distancing relationship in jail
stringer's budding relationship with d'angelo's girl
avon & stringer's setup of the prison guard and simultaneous warning to d'angelo
one of the best aspects of the show is how many story lines they get into without compromising the intensity of each one individually, or the quality of the show overall.
I mean, think about it - now knowing what Season 5 will focus on, and having watched the previous four seasons, we all understand that this is not a show about drug dealers and cops; it's about the decay of the great American city. The show, in chronicling that decay, has managed to illustrate it from a diversity of angles unimagineable for normal TV. That not just one show but one season of it could touch on: the war on terrorism, "doing business with the bad guys", union busting, the Baltimore drug trade, police morale, human smuggling, prostitution, politics in the post-industrial economy, and the revolving doors of the justice system - all with a classic cops-n-robbers feel - is just amazing.
What's behind the basic plot of "The Wire"?
It's very loosely based on the experiences of my co-writer, Ed Burns, who was a 20-year veteran of the police department here in Baltimore. He did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a year's time, into violent drug traffickers. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department. And then it was also based on my experiences at my newspaper, which became a sort of hellish, futile bureaucracy. And then while we were writing the scripts, Enron was happening. And the Catholic Church. It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show[/b] .
(my emphasis; I think the treatise about institutions part is so on point.)
my favorite quote:
Here's an interview with Andre Royo, no earth shattering revelations but there's a little info about what's up with Bubs in season 5.
http://www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/28/tv/main3550223.shtml
Season 4 DVD drops tomorrow, I'll be clicking my Amazon package tracker every 15 minutes or so until then.
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
totally.
there's no way McNulty "doesn't care" at all. I don't know what David Simon is talking about. perhaps McNulty's character developed in a way that Simon didn't anticipate when he gave this interview.
I agree that cops are often shown to "care" in a real corny way in cop dramas. but the Wire is not an example of this at all.
The way I took that quote was that McNulty only cares about himself and his job. He's not on some mission or the reformer cop. He wants to bust the guys he's after and that's about it, until he stopped drinking and hooked up with the cop from S2 that is. How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
I think even that is off the mark though. I mean either he cares about himself or he cares about the case. If it's the latter (even a little bit) then you can't say he doesn't care . The fact is he took concrete steps (before falling in love even) that endangered his career (i.e. going above the chain of command with the feds) but that he felt were necessary for the case.
obviously he's no Bunny. but to say he is totally selfish I think is not accurate either.
speaking of Bunny, here's a cop that cares. a lot. and so even if Jimmy's character arguably falls outside the cop-who-cares cliche that Simon warns about, there is no doubt that Bunny is a cop who cares about things way larger than himself or his career.
and to the extent that characters say this in the show, it's generally the higher-ups with motives far, far more cynical than McNulty's, the ones who can't stand a cop who is really trying to build a case vs. please the politicians, the media, or their bosses. this is precisely why McNulty comes into conflict with people like Rawls and Burrell.
No, Bunk and almost everyone of mcnulty's fellow cops have also called him an asshole over cases. He acts like he is the only one that can work the case and regularly pisses off everyone around him.
I didn't see it as completely selfish. Of course, it must sting to have worked so hard and long, to be so close to the arrest and have it snatched away from him. But to me, the bigger disappointment - because as selfish as he may be, McNulty's character actually gives a shit about making the world better through law enforcement - is that 'crime' won. I don' think the disappointment is simple and just on a personal level.
McNulty has been sitting on the boat, putting in time to catch that fish, to dissect it and see what else he can find out about what goes on underwater. Meanwhile that fish has been pissing off sharks. Just as McNulty's about to reel him in, two sharks come and bite him right off the line.
If i remember correctly, [s03 spoiler alert] he has this little crisis about this in the last episodes of season 3, and that's why he ends up not working for daniels anymore.
And his decision to stop messing with that horrid campaign manager woman also speaks to his deep respect for the job. He got fed up with her shit talk about cops, etc. in the hotel at one of their rendezvous and left her there.
By the way, she is my least favourite character on the show. She reminds me of a reptile in every way.
There is no question that ego is part of his character, but it's part of every good character.
That's not how I remember it. He got wary that she was trying to bleed him for political information. And then later, he realized they had absolutely nothing in common.
She made it clear that they didn't have too much in common from the get go, but he had other things in mind imo.
She was undoubtedly playing him, but her complete lack of interest in his job and condescension towards his world until she needed something out of him was what I was referring to.
If he didn't care about what the job stood for or the people he worked with, I think he would have either told her what she wanted to know about Colvin, fed her a lie, lead her along, etc....all so he could bed her again, but he left her at the table instead.
hey whether you like it or not a dude that puts his heart and soul into a case is helping more people than just himself.
like I said he's proven he'll sacrifice his career for the case.
working to advance a case (even at the expense of pissing off his colleagues) does not equal working to advance one's own career.
that's all I'm saying.
I kinda like her. She knows what she wants (some, ahem, private dick) and goes for it unapologetically.
[color:white] She reminds me of a dude I used to know... [/color]
True that. I, for one, always was pulling for McNulty to get back with his wife, who seemed pretty intelligent and fly, just not willing to put up with his lifestyle.
lol - by no means do I have a problem with a woman going after what she wants unapologetically. I just don't like the way she goes about it.
She's a slimy and totally untrustworthy character imo. I also don't like her face, not that I think she's ugly, but...oh I don't know, she just bugs me.
[color:white] She does have a nice behind tho [/color]
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they touched on it a little in season 2 (or 3?) but...
Me too.
Just nudges out Six Ft. Under for best HBO show ever IMO.
Cosign. Can we have a season 5 redo with this instead of fake serial killer?
Yeah, there's the scene where Nick Sobotka is house hunting with Aimee and he's starting to realize that they would not be able to buy the kind of row house that they're looking at. I think gentrification is an aspect of season two's larger theme of the loss of blue collar jobs in American cities and the decreasing place for middle income skilled workers. We see the grain piers that Frank Sobotka was trying to rehabilitate in season two have been turned into high end condos by season five.
I remember an interview with David Simon where he said that if he was going to do another season, he would have liked to focus on the burgeoning Latino community in Baltimore. I'm sure this would have been an amazing season, I wonder what writer Simon would have hired to help out. As far as I can remember the only spanish speaking characters were the guys that Omar teams up with to heist Marlo's package from Cheese at the end of season four. It would have been cool if in the next season we saw what these guys did with their share of the haul.
I just noticed someone.