The Wire, Season 1
Feb. 10th, 2013 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFurtherly in the service of my fannish education, I made good of another new year's resolution, and marathoned the first season of The Wire on dvd. Will listen to the audio commentaries now as well, because the show really is All That.
It was odd at first to see Dominic West and Iris Elba playing Americans, because I had just seen the former as a very creepy and deeply unsettling performance as Fred West, serial killer, torturer and rapist, in Appropriate Adult, and had been introduced to the later via the excellent Ultraviolet. (More recently, he's been playing the title hero in Luther, but I have mixed thoughts about Luther, possibly because it struck me as one of these shows where you have to buy the hero behaving like a jerk because he's a genius and everyone else just has to put up with this.) But I got quickly over the "huh" factor. (Being a foreigner, I can't judge how good their accents are, but I haven't heard complaints down the fannish grapevine, so I conclude that like Damian Lewis and Hugh Laurie, they pass for American unless you know better?) Another old tv aquaintance was Lance Reddick (Mathew Abbadon in Lost and Philip Broyles in Fringe), but I don't think I recognized anyone else. What else has Sonja Sohn, who playes Detective Kima Greggs, been in? Because she's fantastic. Also, I was majorly worried for Kima because names like "McNulty", "Omar" and "Stringer Bell" sounded vaguely familiar via fannish osmosis, but nobody (unless I've forgotten, in which case I apologize) ever told me about this awesome openly lesbian cop who's respected by colleagues and snitches alike. So my worry grew that she would die in the first season, and that was why no one has mentioned her. And then she got shot. And I mentally yelled OH NO YOU DON'T DAVID SIMON; THIS IS SO CLICHÉ!" However, she survived, instead of dying to motivate her male colleagues, and all was well again. (Speaking of surviving women, I was also afraid for D'Angelo's temporary girlfriend who becomes an informer because of the horrible way the dealers treated her fellow stripper, and very relieved she never got caught and made it safe and unbeaten up or killed out of the season. Having struck up a flirtatious friendship with Lester was an added bonus.)
Well, for some qualification of "well". By the end of the first season, the main drug dealer of said season is behind bars, but only for a small part of the years he should have gotten, his chief lieutenant has taken over and the drug business is as flourishing as ever, and the two sympathetic younger dealers with leftover humanity and hopes of getting out are dead and behind bars for 20 years respectively. Otoh, Kima survived, and the rest of our cops of varying degrees in sympatheticness are continuing with the policing, so there is that. The show does a good job of individualizing both the cops and the drug dealers, so you come to care about them (to varying degrees), and serves up a number of interesting slingshots, like "Prez" Pryzbylewski being hopeless in the streets but turning out to be a natural at solving puzzles behind his desk. I didn't count, but the majority of characters is black (in the first season, at least, can't speak for the rest), and there are two prominent gay characters on either side of the law, Kima, and Omar the stick-up man. Friendships exist on both sides as well, including friends-with-benefits, which is what McNulty is with DSA Rhonda Pearlman, who endeared herself to me by not letting the occasional sex get in the way of calling him on his bullshit when necessary and pursuing her own career determinedly.
Vocabulary-wise, I decided to watch the original version instead of the dubbed one but went for the subtitle option to make sure I didn't miss crucial information. In the end, I could follow the dialogue better than I thought I would, given the advance warning, but sometimes these subtitles came very handy. A question: is "I feel you" or "you feel me?" in the sense of "I hear you" or "do you understand me?" strictly Baltimore 2002 street dialect, or is it still in use? Also "shorty" meaning not "small man", which was the sense in which I had heard it used before, but "woman"?
In conclusion: excellent show. Now on to those audio commentaries!
It was odd at first to see Dominic West and Iris Elba playing Americans, because I had just seen the former as a very creepy and deeply unsettling performance as Fred West, serial killer, torturer and rapist, in Appropriate Adult, and had been introduced to the later via the excellent Ultraviolet. (More recently, he's been playing the title hero in Luther, but I have mixed thoughts about Luther, possibly because it struck me as one of these shows where you have to buy the hero behaving like a jerk because he's a genius and everyone else just has to put up with this.) But I got quickly over the "huh" factor. (Being a foreigner, I can't judge how good their accents are, but I haven't heard complaints down the fannish grapevine, so I conclude that like Damian Lewis and Hugh Laurie, they pass for American unless you know better?) Another old tv aquaintance was Lance Reddick (Mathew Abbadon in Lost and Philip Broyles in Fringe), but I don't think I recognized anyone else. What else has Sonja Sohn, who playes Detective Kima Greggs, been in? Because she's fantastic. Also, I was majorly worried for Kima because names like "McNulty", "Omar" and "Stringer Bell" sounded vaguely familiar via fannish osmosis, but nobody (unless I've forgotten, in which case I apologize) ever told me about this awesome openly lesbian cop who's respected by colleagues and snitches alike. So my worry grew that she would die in the first season, and that was why no one has mentioned her. And then she got shot. And I mentally yelled OH NO YOU DON'T DAVID SIMON; THIS IS SO CLICHÉ!" However, she survived, instead of dying to motivate her male colleagues, and all was well again. (Speaking of surviving women, I was also afraid for D'Angelo's temporary girlfriend who becomes an informer because of the horrible way the dealers treated her fellow stripper, and very relieved she never got caught and made it safe and unbeaten up or killed out of the season. Having struck up a flirtatious friendship with Lester was an added bonus.)
Well, for some qualification of "well". By the end of the first season, the main drug dealer of said season is behind bars, but only for a small part of the years he should have gotten, his chief lieutenant has taken over and the drug business is as flourishing as ever, and the two sympathetic younger dealers with leftover humanity and hopes of getting out are dead and behind bars for 20 years respectively. Otoh, Kima survived, and the rest of our cops of varying degrees in sympatheticness are continuing with the policing, so there is that. The show does a good job of individualizing both the cops and the drug dealers, so you come to care about them (to varying degrees), and serves up a number of interesting slingshots, like "Prez" Pryzbylewski being hopeless in the streets but turning out to be a natural at solving puzzles behind his desk. I didn't count, but the majority of characters is black (in the first season, at least, can't speak for the rest), and there are two prominent gay characters on either side of the law, Kima, and Omar the stick-up man. Friendships exist on both sides as well, including friends-with-benefits, which is what McNulty is with DSA Rhonda Pearlman, who endeared herself to me by not letting the occasional sex get in the way of calling him on his bullshit when necessary and pursuing her own career determinedly.
Vocabulary-wise, I decided to watch the original version instead of the dubbed one but went for the subtitle option to make sure I didn't miss crucial information. In the end, I could follow the dialogue better than I thought I would, given the advance warning, but sometimes these subtitles came very handy. A question: is "I feel you" or "you feel me?" in the sense of "I hear you" or "do you understand me?" strictly Baltimore 2002 street dialect, or is it still in use? Also "shorty" meaning not "small man", which was the sense in which I had heard it used before, but "woman"?
In conclusion: excellent show. Now on to those audio commentaries!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-10 10:07 pm (UTC)A question: is "I feel you" or "you feel me?" in the sense of "I hear you" or "do you understand me?" strictly Baltimore 2002 street dialect, or is it still in use? Also "shorty" meaning not "small man", which was the sense in which I had heard it used before, but "woman"?
"You feel me?" or "I feel you" is still in use - speaking as someone born and raised in inner-city Philadelphia from the late '80's forward. It's used more to mean "do you understand me"/"do you agree with me". "Shorty", meaning "one's ladyfriend" is not really in widespread use now. A more common phrase would be "boo", though you still hear "shorty" in some places (an ex-boyfriend from West Philly was prone to "shorty" much longer than anyone else, as was most of that section of the city, but you wouldn't hear it in say, North Philly or NY).
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 06:29 am (UTC)It is most frustrating! With Daniels you get the sense that they know each other very well and that she respects him (and vice versa), but she doesn't hero-worship, so when she tells McNulty that Daniels will fight for the case, it doesn't come out as "he's the greatest, of course he will!" but as a reasoned judgment. With McNulty I get the sense that there was an undercurrent of sexual interest on his side before he figured out (well, was point blank told) that she was playing for the other team, while she has him sized up pretty quickly and is occasionally amused, but mainly they're comrades-in-arms who work really well together. And yes, Herc and Carver were very much fuckup little brothers, first complaining that they have to listen to big sis and then freaking out when someone dares to shoot her.