but, you are aware that there's an invention called Television

[FreddyKnuckles]

last weeks episode of heroes was sweet, I can't wait to download and watch tonights episode!

[YojimboMonkey]

the best part is that he then bitches about "critically acclaimed" "everybody loves raymond" never making him laugh.

I know fuck-all about that Yes Dear show but having had to sit through an episode or two of Everybody Loves Raymond at my folks' house I know this: in the credits of that show when it says

Based on the comedy of Ray Romano

they ought to put the word comedy in fucking scare quotes.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, I mean, "Yes, Dear" is an awful, awful show on every level but at least it's not the shameful display of hatefulness that "Everybody Loves Raymond" was.

[dieblucasdie]

God, I'm so bored by this timeslot.  Will you guys just cancel "Journeyman" and "October Road" already?

I mean, preferably "CSI:  Miami" too but I can only hope for so much.

[heather marie]

I'm all caught up with FNL! Woo!

[jebreject]

Hey did you know that Ray Ramano was the original handiman/electrician on News Radio?

[hannah]

i did

but i don't count

[Andrew_TSKS]

seriously, i would be willing to hazard a guess that there's nothing hannah doesn't know about news radio.

[hannah]

heh heh. if i were still 14, that'd definitely be true, but i think a few facts here and there have popped out of my skull in the past 8 years.

[hannah]

Also, I can't shake the fourth season of The Wire.

Read something on Slate last night that gets right at it. Says Saul Austerlitz:

For most of us, a lifetime of up-by-your-bootstraps conservative mythmaking and reformist political advertisements have convinced us of the absolute truth of two beliefs: that success in life is a matter of personal responsibility, and that political change is simply a matter of will and moral force. The Wire, a didactic show in the best possible sense, has dedicated its fourth season to proving the absolute falsehood of both those statements.... Simon has stated that "this season is to take argument with those who feel that if you're born without privilege, but make the right set of choices, that you will be spared. To do away with that bit of national mythology."

link: http://www.slate.com/id/2149784/entry/2154549/

[dieblucasdie]

I think it's even worse than that.  A lot of the time in The Wire we see individual people who just don't give a fuck managing to get one over on the system here and there:  Colvin in S3 and with Namond, McNulty in S1, Omar constantly.  So, to my mind at least, the "system" failing Randy wasn't half as disturbing as Carver failing Randy.  And Herc failing Bubbles.

[hannah]

Colvin and McNulty fail in those cases, though. Colvin is forced to retire with a reduced pension and loses his Johns Hopkins gig. Avon gets out after 15 or 16 months, and McNulty gets the boat. As for Namond, Colvin only gets him because of a right place/right time thing. Had, say, Prez been in Colvin's shoes, he wouldn't have had the leverage with Wee-Bey. Same with Carver. Nor could Prez or Carver afford to take Namond in. (Incidentally, I love that Wee-Bey and Prez have the same first name.)

[lastclearchance]

So, to my mind at least, the "system" failing Randy wasn't half as disturbing as Carver failing Randy.  And Herc failing Bubbles.

Carver at least tried. I fuckin hated Herc so much by the end of season 4 (this was increased by the fact that I accidentally skipped an episode my first time through (the one in which Herc pulls the reverend over))

EDIT: Which is to say, Colvin turned Carver into someone who tried to fight the system but they both, like everyone, ultimately failed. Marimow et al. turned Herc into the system. And really Carver went wrong with Randy when he trusted Herc.

Sydnor on the other hand walks this interesting middle path. He's not very ambitious so he doesn't try to play the system or screw the system. He seems to know what's "right" but knows how to protect his neck. I wonder how a guy like that moves up in the ranks; the closest comparison I can think of to Sydnor is Landsman, but I'm not sure how the in-between time passes for someone like that.

[guanajuato]

of all the cable dramas, i'm first in line for the wire, second the sopranos. i don't know if some part of my nature revels in violence or i'm attracted to watching alpha males so i can take pointers on how my fantasy-self would behave if i were a criminal.

i rented brotherhood, the showtime series. directly after i got it in the mail, an ex told me she watched some and it sucked, and that it was nothing like the sopranos. she fits dieblue's stereotype of the hbo viewer who has taken hbo's slogan to heart, 'it's not hbo it's ____(fill in the blank cuz i can't remember) nor is she the sort of person to give something a chance if it doesn't offer instant gratification.

but i begin the series doubtfully.

brotherhood is like a combination of the more political segments of the wire, with the more family-orientated sections of the sopranos, it's not as good as either of the above-mentioned shows, unfortunately, but there aren't many shows that can sit next to the sopranos or the wire. but that doesn't mean it's not great. in fact, some of the political slice-of-life sections of the show are more insightful than those in the wire, and some of the criminal sections are more visceral than the sopranos. and, luckily, if you get all the way to the third disc, the best episodes await, any of which can stand head to toe with either the wire or the sopranos.

after brotherhood, i have a feeling i'm not going to find another criminal/political fantasy until december when the latest wire season comes to dvd, so i suppose i'll go back to renting low budget dimension movies.

i hope, if you liked the wire and the sopranos, you watch brotherhood, because i haven't heard much of anything about it, but it has at least a part of the magic...that speaks to our violent inner-lives.

[milesofsparks]

I like the blacked-out spoiler text, lastclearchance.  looks like the FBI came in and redacted stuff.

[lastclearchance]

'it's not hbo it's ____(fill in the blank cuz i can't remember)

"it's not tv it's hbo" and thanks for the brotherhood rec.

I like the blacked-out spoiler text, lastclearchance.  looks like the FBI came in and redacted stuff.

It didn't end up mattering because my post was on white and not gray but I thought I remembered someone requesting spoilertext that way. Also yeah it looks better.

[Andrew_TSKS]

blacked out? to me it looks like it's in bold.

anyway i'm gonna keep using the blucas method.to me, it's herc that fails randy, not carver. carver did everything right except entrusting randy to herc. it's herc that drops the dime on randy and causes the attack on miss anna's house that sends him back into the system. herc is a big time failure and i was so glad to see him get bounced out. he was never a good cop. decent guy, but just too stupid to ever make a good cop.

[lastclearchance]

Well you could say that Herc tried being a cop the "legit" way; he even scored higher than Carver on the sergeant's exam. But then Carver got the stripes from spying for Burrell, and from then on out Herc has been a miniature Marimow. He has no understanding of what is actually happening in Baltimore, and he has no more finesse within the police bureaucracy than he does on the streets (Marimow also lacks that finesse but he's in Rawls's pocket). Herc's got no rabbi so he continues to fail. But he's still part of the system, and so Randy remains Carver's failure because Carver handed him over to Herc. It's a minor sticking point but I think it's an important distinction.

(That really doesn't look like black-on-black text Andrew?)

[Andrew_TSKS]

this is what i see:



also, i thought it was carver who passed the sergeant's exam and herc who had to do the shitty spying? either way, i see your point, but still, even i've got it backwards, without herc's fuckup, carver wouldn't have failed randy. it was herc who ultimately ruined that situation--you can only blame it on carver in the sense that he should have known that herc was too useless to deal with anything. and i think he was too close to herc to ever realize that without it being thrown in his face in dramatic fashion--as with the randy situation.

[lastclearchance]

Okay so the glow function (with which I was not really familiar) always looks like blacked-out text in FF but in IE, varies based on the second value. It's preset to

Code:

[glow=red,2,300]

and changing red to black is enough for FF viewers but for IE users the 2 has to go up (I raised it to 20). My posts should be inscrutable without highlighting now, right? Thus solving the white-on-gray problem. Hopefully I didn't accidentally spoil the Wire for anyone before I figured this out.

OT: Andrew I agree that it couldn't have happened any other way given the characters' history but I still think the fault lies with Carver. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

[guanajuato]

'it's not hbo it's ____(fill in the blank cuz i can't remember)

"it's not tv it's hbo" and thanks for the brotherhood rec.

I like the blacked-out spoiler text, lastclearchance.  looks like the FBI came in and redacted stuff.

It didn't end up mattering because my post was on white and not gray but I thought I remembered someone requesting spoilertext that way. Also yeah it looks better.

that's right! 'it's not tv, it's hbo'. but don't repeat that too often, or you'll fuel dieblue's hatred for hbo because it sounds like people who watch hbo are BETTER than people who watch network. i should have known that slogan by heart having watched enough traci chapman fueled hbo advertisements to want to steal a fast car. brotherhood is worth a try, if you like the wire and sopranos. it's just as unbelievable, as far as how the criminals get away with crimes and dispose of bodies, too. you know, in one episode the feds are sniffing around, the next episode is about one of the crime lords having a gay son and killing himself and how it changes the neighborhood.

[dieblucasdie]

Sydnor on the other hand walks this interesting middle path. He's not very ambitious so he doesn't try to play the system or screw the system. He seems to know what's "right" but knows how to protect his neck. I wonder how a guy like that moves up in the ranks; the closest comparison I can think of to Sydnor is Landsman, but I'm not sure how the in-between time passes for someone like that.

What about Cool Lester Smooth?  Seems to me that, unlike McNulty, he learned something from his banishment.  He continually plays the system without getting into much trouble with the bureaucracy.  He picks his battles, gets what he wants through persistence instead of going outside the chain of command.  Though I guess you could argue that it only works because he Daniels in his corner. 

edit:  I changed your spoiler tag to the color/white one since it still shows up weird when quoted.  Maybe we should just ask Lalitree for a [spoiler] tag?  I don't know, maybe I just have terrible eyesight but the white text on gray is still unreadable to me.

[dieblucasdie]

Is it a little sad that I just spent about 15 minutes staring at the headlines in the new Wire S5 teaser poster, trying to piece together things about S5? 

Since it looks like (actual S5 spoilers) the homelessness issue may play a big role in the City Hall/Carcetti plotline, I'm more and more convinced that Bubs is the character with the happy ending.  Also there's that teaser somewhere that says "And McNulty is drinking again."  Ruh roh.

[heather marie]

DEXTER! This is getting good. It's also becoming a little too much, all at once.

[dieblucasdie]

DEXTER! This is getting good. It's also becoming a little too much, all at once.

I know that episode was craziness!  I'm guessing that previous spoiler I posted is wrong, since there's still 3 freakin' episodes left.  STILL waiting for Lila to DIE.  And the promo shows her going into that bunker/shack in the Everglades.  AND shows her boning Angel.  I'm going crazy here.

Also Deb and Lundy are so, so, so, so gross.  Maybe grosser than Lila, and that's saying something.