A couple of days ago I chatted with the gang from /Film for an extended podcast about "The Wire." My segment's up first and runs about 45 minutes, and then I'm told the guys kept right on talking without me, resulting in a three and a half hour epic ode to the greatest show ever.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
What the &*%* did I do?
A couple of days ago I chatted with the gang from /Film for an extended podcast about "The Wire." My segment's up first and runs about 45 minutes, and then I'm told the guys kept right on talking without me, resulting in a three and a half hour epic ode to the greatest show ever.
The best tv serie ever. Everybody must see it to watch a real masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteI liked the shout-out to The Wire on Eli Stone last night, with Dierde "Rhonda Pearlman" Lovejoy playing the prosecutor in a case being heard by judge Michael "Maurice Levy" Kostroff.
ReplyDeleteThanks!! Can't wait to hear it. :D
ReplyDeletethoroughly enjoyed all of the Clay Davis/Rod Blagojevich correlations yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWhile we're on the subject of "The Wire," a German translator discusses the difficulty of adapting Baltimore drug slang into German.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for posting this, Alan. I took the day off today and was trying to figure out what to do with it (I think watching the first two episodes of "Leverage" might be somewhere included in this day).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, tonight I already had plans to introduce a friend to "The Wire." She's extremely excited and now I'm looking forward to it even more than here because I'll be on a 3 1/2 hour high due to this podcast. You've made my day.
Thanks for posting this. I'm about to start season 4 - excited to be able to pick up with your commentary again - so I'll save the file for listening to once I've finished the show and no longer need to worry about spoilers.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of glad you're only in the first 45 minutes, because when I saw the length, I was like, "I don't know if I will make it through three and a half hours of this."
ReplyDelete@Alan
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for posting this, and for joining us on the podcast. It was truly a thrill!
@Linda
Sorry you did not enjoy our discussion. Feel free to e-mail us at slashfilmcast at gmail dot com with feedback. We'd be happy to hear it!
How bout the real life Clay Davis - Jesse Jackson, Jr.
ReplyDeletejesse jr's more stringer bell on that front
ReplyDeleteI just finished season five last weekend, so your timing couldn't be better on this. Thanks for posting it and thanks to all involved for doing this; I thoroughly enjoyed all 3.5 hours of it (though I confess I had to listen to it in chunks).
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, T-Boz - we had to record it in chunks too, so you're forgiven. :)
ReplyDeleteGlad that people are getting into the discussion: the lesson learned from this episode was that even 3.5 hours wasn't enough time to dig into everything about this show. I'm most remiss that we never got to discuss Daniels/Pearlman, two characters that I really enjoyed and that got lost in the broader discussions.
Regardless, I was honoured to take part along with Alan, and look forward to the day when the rest of the television viewing public will have picked up the DVDs and able to join in these great discussions.
@David: No no no! Oh, that's not what I meant; I hadn't listened to a word of it when I had that thought. I simply meant I didn't have three and a half hours to devote to listening. No beef with the content whatsoever; I'm terribly sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm a huge fan of the site and read it every day.
ReplyDeleteGreat discussions, though everyone seemed to think that Michael Lee killed Bodie. It's O-Dog, people!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - I can confirm that this was mentioned in the live chat, and we were just getting so exhausted (for me, it was about 1:30am at that point) that we were looking towards the finish line and didn't get to mention it on the air. I think that they've since made an official correction, so know that your voice (and the others who have pointed it out) has been heard.
ReplyDeleteI listened to a lot of that podcast, if for no other reason than to get nostalgic about the best show ever.
ReplyDeleteIt reminded me of this Hbo Wire season 5 teaser. I've been trying to figure out the name of the song at the end off and on for a year. I figure with all the wire heads around here, someone may know. Help me out if you can, PLEASE! I would be indebted forever
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFNLMeLMdh0
Have been listening to the podcast in bits and pieces, just wanted to correct you guys on the Wallace murder scene from S1 that I believe you got wrong, it was Bodie who was talking all the sh*t to Wallace beforehand but couldn't pull the trigger, but it was Poot, w/ the stronger emotional tie to Wallace, who killed the tension by firing the 1st bullet.
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent. I'll give it a listen to at work tonight.
ReplyDeletestanfield org - false. bodie was the one whose ironic upbraiding of wallace for being weak belied his own reluctance to get on with it. poot yelled at bodie to go ahead and do it if he was gonna do it and bodie pulled the trigger. his shot was poorly placed, though, and poot took the gun and shot wallace a second time to put the poor kid out of his misery.
ReplyDeletealso, the podcast elided one of the great ironies of the wire, when deangelo confronts stringer with those "where's wallace?" questions. d is convinced that the hit wasn't necessary to protect the barksdale crew, but wallace DID go to the police and he DID give up stringer bell. stringer didn't know this, so d's accusations feel really powerful, but stringer's instincts actually ARE in line with his imperative to defend the institution - just like marlo's are when he orders bodie's execution.
Nice stuff, though I have to say that the last 2/3 without Alan was lacking- I found this blog watching the 5th season of The Wire, in part looking for more than a synopsis, and that podcast seemed more of just that..
ReplyDeleteSomething for Alan, or others (this is a late comment, so if no one gets to it, oh well): if (hypothetically) David Simon could go back and re-edit the whole series to make things more cohesive , etc, what would you like to see?
An obvious thing Simon would do is remove the flashback from the first episode, after the witness is killed, but what others? Some things I was thinking: the part of Carver looking wistfully at the brick wall with Michael, Namond, etc's names spray painted on the wall in the montage at the end of the 4th season, the repeated talking about Kima being a lesbian in the first season (not saying it's a problem, it just seemed heavy handed to bring it up repeatedly)..
Another thing is the time Avon, Stringer, Stinkum and Wee Bay strut in slo-mo into the Pit with music over it- Simon et al make a big deal about there being no soundtrack, just music coming from cars, etc so it sticks out a bit. On the other hand the other non-season-ending montage, in the penultimate episode of season 2 (the greek music, with the Greeks sitting around a table, while the file makes its way around FBI headquarters), is amazing and it would be a shame to lose it to adhere to an arbitrary rule..
Other things I can think of are more broad, like pulling a little more journalism things into the first 4 seasons (the only one i can think of is the reporter who holds out the Hamsterdam story.) These are all very small suggestions- you could probably endlessly tweak things in the show, and there's always the danger of Lucasing things- but just more a discussion question- any takers?