The Wire

[Flashman]

As in too far fetched? I knew a chap similar to Omar growing up, they do exist. Unfortunately I knew a lot more like Marlo Stanfield though.

 

[Belushi]

Spend our twilight years learning all the scripts backwards and turning it into a West End/Broadway play.

Or a Musical

 

[London_Calling]

I came across this, apparently it's about half of an article on Salon.com - there are probably spoilers, but not huge ones:

But, like I said, Omar is the exception. The rest of the characters in "The Wire" are trapped, and depending upon their intelligence and insight, they are more or less at peace with that fact. When thinking about the mood, the ethos of "The Wire," what comes to mind (rather than "War and Peace" or "For Whom the Bell Tolls") is a moment in the last book of "The Iliad" when old Priam, the king of Troy, sneaks into the camp of the Greeks to plead with the Greek warrior Achilles to return the body of his son, Hektor. Priam implores Achilles to remember his own father, who hopes to see his son again someday, and who (both men realize) never will.

"A single, all-untimely child he had," Achilles replies, relenting, "and I give him no care as he grows old, since far from the land of my fathers I sit here in Troy and bring nothing but sorrow to you and your children." From the hotheaded Achilles, this comes as a weary sigh. He is far from the father he loves, embroiled in a pointless war, mourning the death of his best friend and facing a grieving man whose son's corpse he has desecrated in a fit of misdirected rage. Someday he, too, will be similarly bereft. Yet how could it be otherwise? These men are warriors, born to fight; this is what the gods who control their destinies decree.

"The Iliad" is only one poem from a series known as the Epic Cycle ("The Odyssey" is another; the rest are lost), full of dead heroes and the fathers (and mothers and wives and children) who mourn them. This story, too, goes on and on. Death, loss, enslavement, the ruination of all their hopes and dreams, and yet in the midst of the world's stony realities, as inevitable as the wine darkness of the sea and the rosy fingers of dawn, there can be heroism, courage, honor. Just don't expect things to change; all of this is part of the game, and in "The Iliad" the game is war.

The characters in "The Wire" inhabit such a world. The gods may have different names; instead of Apollo and Juno pulling the strings, it's the bureaucracy, party politics, the free market: all equally capricious and implacable. Anyone who tries to alter the system -- be it Stringer Bell aiming to turn legit businessman, Bunny Colvin experimenting with decriminalizing drugs in "Hamsterdam" or Frank Sobotka struggling to save his beloved stevedores union from its inevitable demise -- will be crushed. The best they can hope for is to clean up one little corner of their world; Bunny may not be able to save the neighborhood, but at the end of Season 4, < edit > To thrive, you have to learn to fly low and kiss up, and if you're unfortunate enough to be afflicted with a sense of vocation, you play it like that smooth operator, Bunk Moreland, not like that perennial troublemaker, Jimmy McNulty.

In a way, it doesn't make sense to talk of "The Wire" as the best American television show because it's not very American. The characters in American popular culture are rarely shown to be subject to forces completely beyond their control. American culture is fundamentally Romantic, individualistic and Christian; when it's not exhorting you to "follow your dream" it's reassuring us that in the eleventh hour, we will be saved. American culture is a perpetual pep talk, trafficking in tales of personal redemption and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. We don't do doom. "The Wire" is not Romantic but classical; what matters most in its universe is fulfilling your duty and facing the inexorable with dignity.

I can't argue that the classical view is superior to the Romantic one; to even introduce the idea that art is meant to nudge us toward moral improvement and social awareness is to concede to Romantic hope. But for some people, in some places, the classical view is more true, and in such cases, the artist's duty is to show us that these lives are no smaller for that. And it is -- as we always, always seem to forget -- not depressing but strangely exhilarating to see this truth about humanity acknowledged for once. It may not be the only truth, but it's a truth all the same.

How 'bout those apples.

 

[Pie 1]

Just finished S3 tonight.

Fuck.

 

[London_Calling]

Fuck.

Slim Charles: "It don't matter who did what to whom. Fact is, we went to war an' now there ain't no goin' back... If it's a lie, then we fight on the lie. But we gotta fight."

Ref: Iraq.

 

[Dillinger4]

Just finished S3 tonight.

Fuck.

shhhhhhhhhhhheaaaaaaaaaaaaatttt



That article is amazing LC. I like to see The Wire compared to such things as The Iliad/The Odyssey, and it is just about the only thing that has ever been on screen that can be appropriately compared to such epics.

 

[Vintage Paw]

This seems to be the only version available of S2 - read the comments. I don't want to spend forever dl-ing if it's going to be shit quality - I care about that kind of thing, it affects my viewing pleasure you see. It's the same torrent as listed at isohunt and everywhere else I can see.

 

[May Kasahara]

I'll lend you my DVD set if you promise to return them veeps

 

[Vintage Paw]

Ack! That would be the most marvellous thing evah! Thank you And of course, when I send it back it will have with it that print I promised several millennia ago

I'll PM you

*big kisses*

 

[trabuquera]

Text methadone for Wireheads in withdrawal

this verrrry long article from this week's New Yorker contains NO SPOILERS but plenty of tantalising hints about what the final (sob) season 5 holds in store for us. As well as some funny anecdotes from previous seasons and lots of in-depth probing about what makes David Simon's wonderful mind work the way that it does.

Enjoy ...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot?printable=true

 

[Dillinger4]

this verrrry long article from this week's New Yorker contains NO SPOILERS but plenty of tantalising hints about what the final (sob) season 5 holds in store for us. As well as some funny anecdotes from previous seasons and lots of in-depth probing about what makes David Simon's wonderful mind work the way that it does.

Enjoy ...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot?printable=true

Fuck Yes

 

[marty21]

i still have the joys to come of watching series 3-5

 

[London_Calling]

Oh Jesus, a big New Yorker piece on The Wire - it's like a tablet from Mt Olympus. I shall read it on my knees, bowed and in reverence.

Thanks for posting the link.

 

[Dillinger4]

I am doing that now. I have been waiting for a re up for ages.



ETA - Anyone for a lake trout sub?

 

[Dillinger4]

Yeh, Thank You for that link its brilliant!

Simon makes it clear that the show’s ambitions were grand. “ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.”

Just the kind of fix I need

 

[trabuquera]

yeah, dead cheerful innit

 

[Idaho]

I didn't like it much at first, but it has grown on me. Nearing the end of S1 and just finished dling S2.

 

[8den]

Best bit

Once, a man pressed a package of heroin into the hands of Andre Royo, the actor who plays the sympathetic junkie and police informant Bubbles, saying, “Man, you need a fix more than I do.” Royo refers to that moment as his “street Oscar.”

 

[Reno]

yawn !