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    The Wire dialogue query

    OK, this is a long shot because I don't suppose any of you who have the DVD (or access on any subscription service if available) will feel quite so hugely generous with your time as to check this for me, but what the hell, here goes anyway.

    Season 2, Episode 6 ("All Prologue") of The Wire opens with a pre-credits teaser, being the start of Omar's testimony for the prosecution in the murder trial of Bird. The last exchange in the teaser before it cuts to the opening credits is where the prosecution attorney asks Omar how he can have been robbing drug dealers for several years and lived to tell the tale. Omar shrugs and replies " [something something], I suppose". I can't make head or tail of what Omar says. It sounds like "date or time, I suppose", which makes no sense to me. Can anyone shed any light on it? Is he saying something different or is it that "date or time" makes sense as an answer to that question in some way that's gone over my head?


    #2
    Found on youtube with captions, he says:

    "Day at a time, I suppose"

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      #3
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0kelLEWNNw

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        #4
        Thanks ad hoc!

        Edit: sorry, should have said "thanks v much to both ad hoc and matt j"!
        Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 27-05-2020, 00:46.

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          #5
          ....that's how we do.

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            #6
            Such a great scene- thanks EEG for the reminder.

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              #7
              This entire section of the show where Omar decides to testify against Bird has some of the best dialog of the whole series.

              "Mr. Hilton, are you the second coming of our Savior?"

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                #8
                The dialogue in this show is so good, but one of my favorite scenes (as I think I have posted before) is the one where Bunk and Mcnuttty go out to the crime scene where Deangelo killed Barksdale's suburban college lady. The scene probably lasts 90 seconds to two minutes and all they say is "fuck" in about 50 different ways.

                And now I will have to find time to read this one tonight:
                https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/the-...uck-scene.html

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                  #9
                  I remember reaching for the subtitle button watching Snoop in the hardware store

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                    #10
                    "So what man? You earned that bump like a motherf***er, man. Keep that shit."

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                      #11
                      I don't think I could choose my favourite scene, or favourite bit of dialogue, from The Wire. It's just all so damn good, the best drama I have ever seen, by a mile. (Also, I've yet to see S4 and S5 - I'm currently re-watching all of S1 to S3 before I move on to S4.) But yes, the court scene with Omar would certainly be up there, especially the bit where he knocks Levy off balance with his "you and me both" comment.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                        I don't think I could choose my favourite scene, or favourite bit of dialogue, from The Wire. It's just all so damn good, the best drama I have ever seen, by a mile. (Also, I've yet to see S4 and S5 - I'm currently re-watching all of S1 to S3 before I move on to S4.) But yes, the court scene with Omar would certainly be up there, especially the bit where he knocks Levy off balance with his "you and me both" comment.
                        Season 4 is sooooo good. Can't say the same about Season 5 (as many folks have posted at various points and in various Wire threads) but a high water mark had already been set that it is hard to maintain that high quality.

                        BTW, I read an interview with David Simon (and maybe I posted this before) that he had thought about a season 6 that would focus more on the immigration experience related to the drug war but he didn't have the kind of insider connections that made the writing so good on this show. That is, he had ex-cops and beat reporters working on the writing team and those experiences made the show better than other shows that focus on police/crime that are just so bad (e.g., CSI).

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                          #13
                          I know The Deuce didn't get the love that most of Simon's shows get, but we really dug it. It did, however, have a great Wire-esque line. After a guy meets his violent end, another guy walks in and says "Damn...y'all murdered the shit out of that motherfucker."
                          Last edited by WOM; 28-05-2020, 23:40.

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                            #14
                            Funny, I just did a full rewatch while Mrs. Inca watched it for the first time. She had previously made me watch Game of Thrones, and she was looking for a new show and I was always mentioning the Wire. It is such a dark show and depressing in a lot of parts (Season 4 and pretty much most scenes with a kid in S5) but it's just so astoundingly good and enjoyable. I think I would go for S3 as being my favorite, with Stringer and Avon on the rooftop jumping out at me as a scene that isn't mentioned all that much because it doesn't really have any of the classic lines, but it's so tense and filled with dramatic irony.

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                              #15
                              I did exactly the same (rewatching while my girlfriend saw it for the first time) at the end of last year / start of this one, Inca. It was a lot like my returns to Iguaz? Falls, in that I remembered it being amazing but I'd forgotten just how amazing. Even series 5, while still my least favourite of the run, was stronger than I remembered it. My girlfriend loved the rooftop terrace scene with Stringer and Avon as well. After a first episode or two where she'd largely stared frowning in concentration at the screen, D'Angelo's chess explanation was the first point where she broke off and said, 'Oh that was good writing.' And at the very end of the penultimate episode of series 3 (if you've seen it, you know the one I mean) she just sat staring at the TV in shock for pretty much the whole duration of the closing credits. After nine years of trying to get her to watch it, it was such a joyous experience to finally be seeing her reactions to it.

                              And EEG, you're in for a treat. Series 4 is just astounding.

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                                #16
                                Hmm ... can anyone see the spoiler tags on my post? I can't.

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                                  #17
                                  Clarke Peters currently has a thing available on BBC Sounds about the hidden/secret/forgotten history of Black Music in Europe from 1900 on if anyone is interested.

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                                    #18
                                    Treme had its moments (and perhaps one of the best monologues in any of Simon's productions when David Morse talks about the effects of Katrina on his police officers), but The Deuce has, for me, been the best show after The Wire. The magic of The Deuce was mixing real people and places with fictionalized people and places (and not in a cheesy way like Vinyl). Many of the porn producers and the owners of peep booth shops were real dudes.

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                                      #19
                                      Does anyone know why Series 3 of The Deuce disappeared so quickly in the UK? I went to watch it a few weeks after it aired and it was no longer available On Demand. Someone fall out with someone else? Contractual problems?

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                                        #20
                                        Video Essay by Jason Mittel on "How Black Lives Matter in 'The Wire'"

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by danielmak View Post
                                          but The Deuce has, for me, been the best show after The Wire.
                                          The Deuce (great series) had one of the most touching final sequences I've ever seen.

                                          The weakest part? Seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal as any kind of sex symbol. Good actor....but porn hottie?

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                                            #22
                                            OK, another Wire query for you lovely people, this time concerning the logic of the plot.

                                            In the final (I think) episode of S2, McNulty's FBI agent friend Terry Fitzhugh discovers that his FBI colleague Koutris, who he thought was in the San Diego office, had in fact been transferred to an East Coast (DC I think) anti-terrorism unit a year or so earlier. From that single piece of information, Fitzhugh deduces (correctly) that Koutris is the probable source of the leaks to the Greek and Vondas. How does that work?

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                                              #23
                                              I think it relies on Fitzhugh’s knowledge of the field -the FBI protect gangsters and drug smugglers in exchange for tip-offs about terrorists. Therefore Koutris’move to the counterterrorism unit means it’s highly likely The Greek is protected.

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                                                #24
                                                Thanks Nef. I thought that was it (and the whole FBI going soft on gangsters in exchange for terror intel came up in The Sopranos too of course), but it didn't seem to me to be particularly clearly presented. There seemed to be strong hints in previous episodes that Agent Koutris was a corrupt bad egg, acting entirely off his own bat, with a personal link to "the Greek", rather than someone implementing FBI policy.

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                                                  #25
                                                  I think rhat the point is from David Simon's point of view there are always bits of the narrative you can never know. You can't tell why the Gods are cruel. But they are


                                                  [We've] ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We've basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy, and applied it to the modern city-state. [. . .] What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no good reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it's the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.
                                                  As you say there were

                                                  strong hints in previous episodes that Agent Koutris was a corrupt bad egg, acting entirely off his own bat, with a personal link to "the Greek", rather than someone implementing FBI policy.
                                                  Both of those things can be true, of course.

                                                  and as The Greek says



                                                  "my name is not my name" ..." I'm not even Greek"



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