Please remind in the post that there are spoilers. Thanks.
Hey SCMT, the post is going to contain spoilers.
2: You bastard! You deliberately tempted me into looking at this thread!
Dalby is a double-agent. Sorry, there aren't really any clues early in the movie.
SPOILER ALERT! THIS COMMENT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN READ BY THOSE STILL PLANNING TO WATCH "THE IPCRESS FILE"!
My favorite part is when Marlo gets killed. Then suddenly there's a freeze-frame, everything turns to black and white, and spectral Marlo steps out of his body. Then all the dead gangsters from the season appear in spectral form as well. Marlo does an exaggerated shrug and says, "It's all in the game!" Then the studio audience just erupts with laughter.
I'm halfway through Season 2 and leaving this thread as soon as I hit "Post." I'm so fucking addicted to this show, it's killing me. Netflix can't deliver the damn discs fast enough, andf ucking Blockbuster only carries Season 1. Gaah.
I am Chopper. I have two episodes left in Season 2 and Netflix won't get them here until tomorrow, but Season 2 already broke my heart and I just know it's going to get worse with a tidy non-resolution and I can't take it nor stop watching.
7: Oh, Cala. You don't know Wire-related heartbreak 'till you've seen Season 4.
I too am Chopper. I'm nine episodes into season 2, and I can't. stop. watching. And I don't even have a TV.
I really liked the part where wussy white bloggers stopped calling me "motherfucker" and referring to blogging as "the Game, yo."
No, the best part is certainly when Bunk, McNulty, and Zombie Omar fly away in a vintage car. A beautiful hommage to both Grease and Repo Man.
I was shocked when it turned out that Templeton was the one who killed Marlo. A huge plot twist, but in context, I feel like it made a lot of sense. And I was glad that McNulty and Bunk finally got to release some of that sexual tension, though I could've done without the more graphic parts.
I'm about to finish season 4, and will start jonesing for the next set of discs immediately. I'm contemplating the ethics of bringing bittorrent to bear on the problem - is it ok if I then buy the DVDs when they come out?
13: I've done that. When hit by the MUST WATCH NOW urge, I've bittorrented my longings away, and immediately ordered the DVDs in question.
What are the ethics if you bittorrent them now, but were planning not to buy them but get them via NetFlix once they were released? You're still paying your monthly NetFlix fee and you were never going to pony up for owning the physical discs anyhow.
Disclosure: I watched 1-4 on DVD, then signed up for HBO in order to watch Season 5. I watched the next-to-last episode last night and will probably see the finale tonight.
I'm contemplating the ethics of bringing bittorrent to bear on the problem
If, say, one's local video store never had the discs one needed to watch RIGHT NOW because of the moral failings of other customers, who neglected to bring them back on time, and of the store's own feckless employees, who checked them out indefinitely just because they could do so with impugnity, that would not constitute a justification, but might nevertheless be considered a mitigating circumstance bearing on one's violation of certain social norms concerning intellectual property. Just, you know, hypothetically.
15: Netflix as universal justification for piracy -- an elegant solution.
You could also subscribe to HBO for a month and watch the new season On Demand, then cancel the HBO once you're done. With Comcast Digital Cable, you have On Demand by default, so it'd just be a matter of tacking HBO on. It'd be perfectly legal and also cheaper than either renting or buying the DVDs once they come out. And it would help those of us who actually fucking want to talk about the show openly without ruining the lives of those who couldn't be bothered to catch up.
the MUST WATCH NOW urge
It's not just me, apparently.
Kotsko and I are the only ones who have seen all of it, aren't we?
re: 4
I watched that again recently. It's all very mid-90s to profess an admiration for 60s Caine-chic, but sod it, it fucking IS cool.
22: Yes. So we can have super secret and legally privileged conversations about season 5 without everyone whinging.
24: Take it to the Being and Nothingness blog. Problem solved!
"You look good, girl."
That was some scene. Some twenty minutes, actually.
In preparation for tomorrow's post, people should meditate on the Greek saying, in Season 2, "But my name is not my name" and Marlo saying, an episode or two ago, "My name is my name!"
You could also subscribe to HBO for a month and watch the new season On Demand
Huh, I didn't know that. I wonder if it works with the tivo, though. 15 is exactly the situation I'm in, in fact.
I tell you one thing, I could've done without hearing that same damn Journey song.
31: And Tennyson's Ulysses saying, "I am become a name."
32: It sort of does. There is a trick. And one doesn't get "good margins," as it were.
This was probably posted already on Standpipe's blog -
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/85-the-wire/
I have seen the whole series.
Marlo had a great ending. I think two of the most important scenes that explicate the ending of the series come from my man D'Angelo. His speech about The Great Gatsby and his speech explaining chess to Wallace and Bodie explain a whole lot about change.
D'Angelo should've gone to seminary instead of trying to be a ganster.
D'Angelo didn't try to be a gangster.
But you are right. He should have been someplace else.
Hey now wait one second. I recognize that Alessandra Stanley has more corrections under her name than any other writer at the Times, and her mistakes can be wildly outlandish -- getting the name of Everybody Loves Raymond wrong, say, at the time when it was the most popular show on tv -- but get a load of this:
Detective Jimmy McNulty created the hoax to make the collar, and it cost him his job only because he felt compelled to come clean.
41: Yeah, that makes little sense. He did have the moment of integrity where he refused to pin all the murders on the crazy homeless business-card guy, but his job was already well-lost at that point.
37: Black people probably like The Wire more than white people. For example, see here (also: BET)
41-well, clearly that's insane, but I guess if you wanted to be charitable for some reason, you could imagine that the scope of "come clean" is less than the whole world, and it'd be true in a sense.
31-Vondas, not the Greek, I'm pretty sure. The Greek's line is something like "and I am not Greek."
41: she also said that he was new to the murder squad in the first season, which is, generously, reading outside the text.
45: The Bunk - McNulty prequel pins McNulty's first day at homicide to 2000.
43: You know, I wasn't up-to-date on "What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?" before I linked to it... It turns out, all the thugs refused to continue participating after episode 7.
Don't click this link (find on page for '(Andr' will find what I'm referring to) if you haven't seen most of Season 5 yet, but David Simon is claiming that a seemingly impossible physical feat from mid-Season is based on real and even more seemingly impossible events.