"The Wire" Nostalgia -definitely spoilers

Cafe Society
1

I’ve watched the series through 5-6 times, I think it’s the best piece of fiction ever put on film. It is very realistic. So I wanna keep it alive in thought, wanna ask about characters and things we didn’t see happen.

Best criminals: Omar obviously. My favorites are slim charles, avon, and michael.- They aren’t so cold as Marlo & Co. They also keep their cool.

Best cops: mcknulty and lester. jay was awesome as well, probably the best at being a cop in practice… More importantly, do you like Kima? I don’t
What we really wanted to see, but didn’t, and the outcomes.

Omar vs. Marlo - who woulda won? I kinda think Marlo, he only demonstrates his killing ability in 2 scenes, but in those 2 scenes; you see why hes on top-dual wielding pistols and straight up hitting everything, he was better with 2 than snoop and chris were with 1.

Clay davis dropping the soap; enough said.

Marlo going to jail: marlo was just so evil, i didn’t like how he ended, in terms of bias… as a story ending it was perfect, … he was top dog because of his coldness

Questions about the future:

carcetti for governor? nope

mcknulty- 30 years down the road gets pulled into a special investigation, cracks a big case…just like lester

daniels- starts doing well, his past comes out, huge scandal, everything goes back to the way it was

the greeks stay the greeks, always been that way, always will be that way

slim charles unites the city, for a bit then marlo or another cold mofo takes over - maybe kernard down the road when he gets outta jail

cutty - cutty becomes a motivational speaker, a good one too

love opinions so please tell me ur thoughts, not necessarily on mine, just waht u think about the show

being a jerk will not be tolerated

2

I love The Wire too. My favourite cops were McNulty and The Bunk. Also, I did quite like Kima. The best criminals were definitely Omar and Stringer Bell. Not sure what I’d like to have seen, although in the final episode it’s strongly implied that Carcetti did make Governor.

3

Michael taking over from Omar was the most exciting thing for me.

4

Actually, it wasn’t implied; it was stated outright.

In the final musical montage, we see a ceremony with Bill Rawls in the uniform of the Maryland State Police. He is shaking hands with Carcetti, who says, “Congratulations Superintendent. Welcome aboard.” In response, Rawls says, “Thankyou Governor. Happy to be aboard.”

This storyline also makes sense, given that Carcetti’s character was loosely based on Martin O’Malley, who was elected Mayor of Baltimore in 1999, and then, while still Mayor, made a successful run for Governor of Maryland in 2006.

For me, one of the most depressing storylines was that of Duquan, who was clearly on the way down Bubbles’ path to full-on heroin addiction.

5

McNulty and Lester were both forced into retirement in the last episode. Lester seemed fine with it because he was retiring to his young ex-stripper wife and his miniatures (in that order), but I don’t know what McNulty was going to do with himself as an ex-cop. He didn’t seem to be good at anything other than being a cop, and there were even parts of that he couldn’t manage. Maybe he wound up with a decent paying job running security for some companies, or maybe he drinks himself to death.

Daniels seemed more or less OK with how things worked out for him. He was disappointed he couldn’t stay as commissioner, but he understood his past corruption made it impossible and he wasn’t willing to pay the price it would have cost him to try to keep the job. At the end of the show you see he’s a practicing lawyer.

That seems believable to me. Certainly Cutty was one of the few guys in the show that you found yourself rooting with almost no reservations.

6

clearly it’s been too long for me haha… i coulda sworn mcknulty got sent to some back room somewhere pushing papers, yeah totall forgot about daniels

btw i knew i was forgetting someone major when i was listing my characters, ol bunk, one of the best

7

I just loved that Stringer Bell went back to school to learn to be a better organized crime kingpin. Makes me think there should be some kind program for it, with courses in money laundering, how to avoid leaving incriminating evidence at a crime scene, disciplining your henchmen, etc.

“I am a Master Criminal, and by that I mean I have a Master’s Degree in Crime”.

8

it’s called law school

9

One of my favorite characters was Slim Charles and his reaction to Cheese’s “I’m the boss now” speech was truly WTF, didn’t see that coming but satisfying.

I liked the blind guy, Butchie, too.

10

yes, yes, yes, yes

butchie was awesome, sucked what happened to him, once again, shows how damn evil marlo was haha

slim was such a g… i had 3 fav slim moments - the one u mentioned (cheese was awesome as well, method man is like one of my favorite rappers so that made me so happy when he came in); when stringer was trying to get him to kill clay davis and he’s like telling him he’s nuts calling it “assassination shit”; and when omar’s about to cap him- that showed a lot about him, he’s one of those guys who knew what he was into, he was just ready for it, like get on with it, then omar let him go; i loved that

11

All great moments!

I’d say Dukie was sadly worse off than Bubbles. First of all Bubs seemed to have some survival skills - entrepreneurship, creativity, and charm; on the latter, drug dealers indulged his hat thing and police officers gave him more than they should have for informing. Secondly, he had a sister who was living a reasonably normal, “civilian” life and Dukie had no-one like that. He was headed for a young death, I think. So so sad.

Sky Atlantic in the UK has just started rerunning series 2. Even though that series was the hardest to get into it’s ultimately an emotional punch to the gut almost as sad as s4. Frank walking to his death is just horrible.

I hated the cynicism of some of the police almost more than anyone else- when Jay or whoever says that no-one gives a shit about homeless people so not to waste time solving their murders. But it’s an honest depiction of ugliness.

Favourite characters- Frank, Beadie, Bunk, Omar, Shardene, D’Angelo, WeeBey, Randy, Namond (yes, the little bully Namond - I thought the kid acting him did a great job and he had a hideous mother), Prezbo, Carver, Bunny, Norman (Carcetti’s spin guy - so funny) - hmm, probably missing plenty.

12

I’m re-watching for the second time (making this my third viewing) and, yeah, it’s a great show. One of my favorite lines is from season 2 and seems a throwaway line at first (though it’s the line that opens the episode.) Frank Sobotka and Vondas (sp) are standing at the park on the waterway, Frank insisting he’s not taking any more cans and that he’s out of the business. Vondas doubles the fee, but Frank is insistent and demands that he is going to meet The Greek before anything happens, closing with “I don’t need the trouble or the money - I got a union to run!”

Vondas, at an impasse, looks out across the water to what Frank is staring at, the closed down Bethlehem Steel plant.

“They used to make steel there, no?”

That’s some cold-hearted shit right there.

Fave characters: Bunk, Landsman, Rawls, Stringer, Marlo, Levy, D’Angelo, D’Augastino, Perlman, Bunny, poor, tortured Frank Sobotka.

Plotlines they could have cut: Serial killer, newspaper and Gus, Cutty. Wasn’t the biggest Bubbles fan either.

I will say, one area where the show fails is the computer program they developed to show cans moving from the ship to the stacks. It was so obviously designed with the idea of “write a program that shows to a TV audience what the hell is going on here” that when it is onscreen it kind of breaks the verisimilitude for a moment or two.

13

You know, I’ve always thought that Gus was a Mary Sue or, more likely, Author Avatar for David Simon (or what David Simon might have thought would happen to him had he stayed in newspapers.)

14

I could go on about many things from this series, but I’ll just say that season four, which of course concentrated on the Baltimore school system, was one of the most heartbreaking, and at times uplifting, things I’ve ever seen in any visual medium. Damn, those kids were so real to me!

Oh, and a favorite scene: teaching chess in terms of drug dealing. Kind of brilliant.