The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

[Spearmint Rhino]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

a school rucksack full of spoilers, etc etc

EPISODE 3 'HOME ROOMS

One of the funniest opening scenes (Omar in his blue silky pyjamas going shopping for Honey Nut Loops), and one of the most shocking closing scenes (the schoolgirl slashing the other schoolgirl's face open).

Good to see Omar back, and back to his old tricks. I was worried that they'd either have written him out completely or turned him into some sort of Boy Scout after his life-changing meeting with Bunk.

The electoral dirty tricks campaign from Royce seemed all too true to life. I bet shit like that goes on all the time. Baby Nixons, mini-Watergates, undetected or at least un-prosecuted.

Tell you what cracked me up this episode: the consortium of drug lords (Prop Joe, Slim Charles & co) apparently hiring an actual hotel conference room for their meeting. Brilliant touch.

Another brilliant scene, and I'll lift the description direct from the HBO episode guide:

The Mayor calls a private meeting with Herc, inquiring about his career goals. Briefed about this very outcome by Major Valchek earlier, Herc feigns surprise as, Royce, after establishing Herc's loyalty, offers to make a call to push Herc's name to the top of the sergeant's list and then move him off the mayoral detail and back into another assignment. Herc expresses gratitude "Don't mention it," Royce intones precisely.

The scene with Colvin the part-time security guard trying to cuff a hooker-beating hotel guest was also nicely-done, if a little on the obvious side.

And another classic 'Evil Rawls' scene, this time with Freamon.

Incidentally, I've always wondered why Kima & co never get spotted by the crims when they're sat in the car taking photos. Well, finally she did.

Love the new nickname 'Prezbo'.

[jason voorhees]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Now when I say Season 4 is a documentary, I mean scenes like the face slashing. Violence in schools happens so fast, so sudden, and unfolds incredibly cruelly. All for something like shining a light in someone's eye, or making fun of someone's shoes, or something completely inocuous.

One day I was substituting for this idiotic concept of a class. It was a high school (I suppose Secondary School,) with ages 15-18. For some reason they put these hispanic kids ages 12-14 in the high school, in one room with no windows. It was like a quarantine.

Most of the kids were there because they never went to school their entire lives (be it in Guatemala or Honduras or Chiapas Mexico,) and they couldn't go to the normal schools with the normal English as a Second Language crowd.

So I'm sitting at the desk one day in a class of 40 kids in a room about 10x10 metres big. I hear one kid on one side of the room laughing. Everyone kind of gasped. It was quiet for a second. For another second. For another second. Suddenly this one kid on the complete opposite side of the room shot up, leaped on the desk, jumped on all the desks across the entire class, and came down with a Superman punch on the back of the head of the kid that was laughing.

The kid that was laughing hit the desk and the floor, and started convulsing on the ground. He ended up with a bump on the back of his head the size of a softball.

Ordinarily I can read a classroom, but not knowing Spanish, I wasn't able to understand that the laughing-come-convulsing kid said that the puncher's father was a goatfucker in Honduras, and all Hondurans were goatfuckers.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Series 3 spoiler but fine if you're on series 4

Spearmint Rhino wrote:

Tell you what cracked me up this episode: the consortium of drug lords (Prop Joe, Slim Charles & co) apparently hiring an actual hotel conference room for their meeting. Brilliant touch.

Didn't they also do this in series 3 a couple of times? Wasn't Stringer Bell in such a room (and meeting) when he ordered the hit on Omar? And in such a room when he found one of his people taking notes on the meeting, leading to one of my favourites exchanges:

Stringer: "What the fuck is this, taking notes?"

flunky: "Well, Robert's Rules says you gotta take minutes so that they can be approved at the start of the next meeting."

Stringer (snatching the notes away): Motherfucker, this is a criminal conspiracy!

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

I should say, so that we get biases out of the way here, that I am particularly fond of series 4 because I basically *am* the dude from University of Maryland. We educational researchers rarely get sympathetically portrayed in the media.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

The Stringer Bell meetings were in the funeral home that they used from series 2 onwards.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Now you made me wiki this.

Stringer Bell chairs a meeting of high level drug dealers in a hotel conference room. Also in attendance are Proposition Joe, Kintel Williamson and Fat-Face Rick (representing the Veronica Avenue dealers). Afterwards he finds Shamrock taking minutes in order to comply with Robert's Rules of Order and quickly reminds him that no matter how organized, they are still participating in a criminal conspiracy.

You may be right about the other meeting, though.

[diggedy derek]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Incidentally, I've always wondered why Kima & co never get spotted by the crims when they're sat in the car taking photos. Well, finally she did.

One reason they are so close taking photos of the crims in The Wire – so close they'd surely be spotted so quickly – is a televisual one. It'd be very difficult to film the stake-out scenes if it was all seen through a telephoto lens – they need to be able to pull back to a longshot, just to give some sense of visual context.

I guess in real life they'd be doing it from a few hundred yards away, but it wouldn't be a very visually interesting scene.

This was pointed out in one of the commentaries, if I remember correctly.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

yeah Simon says that the police would be nearly three times as far away as in the wire to avoid detection. They don't do it in the show because it would just be shit television and would lose all sense of immediacy.

[Soccer Scrimmage]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Apropos of the "Roberts Rules of Order" scene from season 3, the character whom Stringer upbraids for taking notes, Shamrock, is played by the real-life head of the Believe campaign, which we were talking about above.

As jv said, don't google the Believe campaign if you haven't seen season 4 yet.

[Felicity, I guess so]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

I basically *am* the dude from University of Maryland.

You a Chuck-e-cheese lookin' muthafucka?

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Yes. Yes, I believe I am.

[Felicity, I guess so]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Not that I have the slightest idea what Chuck E Cheese looks like. Presumably vaguely Italian, with a goatee?

[Felicity, I guess so]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Or maybe not:

[Spearmint Rhino]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

Now you made me wiki this.

Stringer Bell chairs a meeting of high level drug dealers in a hotel conference room. Also in attendance are Proposition Joe, Kintel Williamson and Fat-Face Rick (representing the Veronica Avenue dealers). Afterwards he finds Shamrock taking minutes in order to comply with Robert's Rules of Order and quickly reminds him that no matter how organized, they are still participating in a criminal conspiracy.

You may be right about the other meeting, though.

Ah, Kintel Williamson's actually been on screen? I thought they were doing a Mrs Columbo/Maris Crane with him.

[Spearmint Rhino]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

EPISODE 4 'REFUGEES'
"What did you learn today?"

Well...

We already knew Marlo was cold. Unnaturally, reptilianly cold. What's emerging is that he's actually retarded in some way. Emotionally stunted. And extremely childish. Stealing lollipops - lollipops, ffs! - to humiliate a security guard, and forcing someone to give him their favourite piece of jewellery, like a school bully.

(And, by the way, the glimpse of the security guard's discarded badge in the grass as Chris and Snoop were re-boarding up the derelict house was as chilling and horrifying, in its way, as any of the show's more graphic and bloody moments.)

It's as though David Simon & co are suggesting that that kind of emotional retardation is, if not a necessity, then certainly an advantage when it comes to rising in the 'game'.

I don't think I've enjoyed any Wire scene as much as Marlo himself getting humiliated by Omar when he held up the poker game. I don't care if he's right that "this ain't over". For now, all that matters is that he got a taste of his own medicine.

Away from the Marlo situation, one other scene amused me. Someone saying, about Rawls, "He's the one in City Hall getting his ass chewed", and Rawls walking away with an enigmatic smirk.

An unusually large amount of scenes I didn't 'get' in this episode. Impenetrable and confusing conversations and meetings. It's only from reading the HBO site and the Wikipedia page that I know what the hell's going on.

Speaking of which, it's only from reading the HBO episode guide that I found out that Bubbles' adopted kid is called Sherrod. Every time he says it, it sounds like 'Charade'.

Still don't know why Michael did a runner from Cutty's car, but I suspect I'd be risking spoileration if I asked you guys, so I'll just wait and see.

Even as I was watching Ray Foerster, I was thinking that the actor playing him is one of the oldest-looking people I've ever seen who isn't actually dead. Then the credits roll and it turns out Richard DeAngelis did indeed die soon after filming.

[Purves Grundy]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Good post. I hadn't made the connection about the badge and the lollipop guy until now. Trouble is, I daren't go near the HBO site again after accidentally picking up a massive series 5 spoiler. Careful how you go there, SR. They're givcing shit away in article titles.

I'm actually quite optimistic that they aren't going to make a big deal out of Rawls' orientation. It's like "we didn't mention it before because it was never relevant and we aren't going to make a big deal out of it now, either. It's just a thing about him, y'know?"

Prezbo's progress is making fior nailbiting viewing. I mean, apart from anything else we know he's got serious issues with his volatile nature. You're willing him to do well not just for his sake, but because you're terrified of the consequences of things going badly.

About Dukie, I'm not sure if they've cast him right. I know you shouldn't get into physical determinism and shit, but I'd find his status and background a bit more believable if he looked a bit more runty, you know?

And as for the others, it's horrible to see the way things are going. It's like I said about Bodie and how much betterhis life might have panned out in another environment. They're right at the moment where they're going from viewing the world through the prism of childhood (local oddballs being voodoo shamen; cutting school to sell sweets) to the world telling them the bad news (that local oddball kills people - and you helped; cutting school to sell drugs because to do otherwise ios to lose face and end up marginalised and friendless like Dukie or something).

No laughs in this series at all.

[Guest]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

I don't agree that there's 'no laughs'.

Infact, I felt that the writers consciously drew back from what they were doing with Omar's character in season three (when The Bunk destroys the myth) to team him and Joe up as comic relief. Which was understandable given hiw fucking gruelling the kids' storyline is.

[Wyatt Earp]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

The Marlo character, and his arc, are mesmerising, I think.

I've found it hard to contribute to these threads because I can't quite remember what happened in what episode, and I have a pathological fear of dropping inadvertent spoilers. But I think it's safe to say that Marlo's rise, and its various consequences and [toro]sequelae[/toro], make you ask yourself questions that are very hard to answer. When you find yourself getting nostalgic, on West Baltimore's behalf, for the good old days of Barksdale and Bell, you know things are bad.

My take on Carcetti, incidentally, is...

Tell you later.

[Purves Grundy]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

I think that maybe you should lose that last sentence.

[Purves Grundy]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

But talking of Carcetti it seemed to me a couple of episodes back that just as the American Religious Right is counting down the days to the Second Coming of Christ, so it seems that the American Left is in a similar mood waiting for the Second Coming of Kennedy. Carcetti definitely seems to press the Kennedy buttons, and there was even one scene where Carcetti's wife is dressed in a full-on Jackie O outfit - a pink two-piece with a black braid.

[ad hoc]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Why is it pronounced Carketti and not Carchetti?

Snoop is the only character who I really find it hard to understand. In fact sometimes, I've had to turn on the English subtitles and go back and watch scenes she's in.

Agree with Wyatt on Marlo (and Chris). The actor playing him has a really powerful presence while seemingly doing very little. It's a masterful performance, I think.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

The resolutely English pronunciation of names is something of a recurring theme -see also Pryzby-loo-ski, and some others that I've forgottne.

[Spearmint Rhino]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Purves Grundy wrote:

I think that maybe you should lose that last sentence.

Too late. (For me, at least.)

Oh well. I kind of guessed that's the way things were heading, anyway.

[Wyatt Earp]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Spearmint Rhino wrote:

Purves Grundy wrote:

I think that maybe you should lose that last sentence.

Too late. (For me, at least.)

Oh well. I kind of guessed that's the way things were heading, anyway.

I'm really sorry. But I'm really not saying, you know, anything about anything, other than that this is The Wire and there are few out-and-out angels.

I will cut, though.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Wire Series 4 (no longer spoiler free)

Re: Carcetti. Until quite recently in the US, non-anglophone names would regularly get anglicized (which usually means a phonetic reading) within a generation or two in the states (think of "No-ter Dayme"). Thus, a name like Benoit becomes "Ben-oyt" rather than "Ben-wah".

It happens more slowly if the name belongs to an ethnic community of some size - Italian names in NY/NJ probably don't get anglicized as fast as they would elsewhere in the country. I think Baltimore is light on wops so it would be quite unusual for anyone to pronounce his name "properly" (i.e. "Carchetti").