heywood-wakefield · baden-powell · baader-meinhof

It's very angry at the world, though. So very angry.

For my money, the theme of the show is "America is broken." I haven't seen The West Wing, so I don't know how it scores on the Hope Meter, but I don't think it's overtly hopeful, per se, although there are glimmers here and there. But it's definitely not emotionless; in fact, it's one of the more emotionally engaging shows I've watched because they are people, not robots. Very very much people. So much people. These are human beings, through and through.

P.S. This.

but i was moved to comment since you mentioned my FAR AND AWAY favorite television shows of all time (lost and sopranos).
i think what i like about both of them is the attention to detail.
they are both shows that really reward you for paying attention and tracing detail. (cf. lostpedia)
lost by figuring out a puzzle, and sopranos usually by (increasingly inside the more microscopic you go) jokes.

i watch bsg and i "enjoy" it, but it does tend to break down pretty quickly under scrutiny.
for example, i read somewhere that the identities of the final FOUR, were decided upon well into third season filming.
this drove me insane, and (probably because im obsessive and nerdy) cheapened the experience for me

it was also striking to see lost cast as cold or emotionless, as in a few episodes at the end of this season that just finished, there were, for me, EXTREMELY powerful and wrenching emotional pinnacles reached.

not that im seeking out a debate or anything, i was just pulled into the conversation by these points

Maybe it's a job or writer thing, actually -- I don't really watch from the perspective of a consumer anymore, because it's like watching a stage magician. At some point you have a choice:you can be sad because you know how they did the trick, or you can make watching them do the tricks the entertainment, rather than being surprised. It gets me into trouble with the readers sometimes.

Like, I know the story that Lost is telling, and I know that the characters are all expendable and have the emotional importance to the overall plots, or I know the story BSG is telling, so I don't care about the big "reveals" and "secrets" and huge plotlines and whatever, because they're still approaching the endpoint at a constant rate.

Making shit up, whether it's Lost or BSG, doesn't really bug me, because that's what storytelling is: making shit up. But I think any show -- to soothe the tension between the fact that it's a story with a beginning middle and end, but also a story that's being told sequentially, as it's being written -- has to at least give the appearance of knowing WTF it's doing, even if that runs counter to actual storytelling as a process.

I thought it was about a respectable drug dealer named Omar, the labor class, the F word, and like ... the fourth estate. That's literally all I know about the entire show.

In all seriousness, this show makes you love characters you should hate, gives nuance to even the worst bad guys, and never pretends that the good guys are always good while at the same time letting humanity shine through at all times. But the most beautiful thing about it, I think, is that although (like BSG at its best) "The Wire" is pretty searing and heartbreaking social commentary, it's also a love story about Baltimore. Really, you will love it.

"Whenever anybody says something is "just good," with no qualifications or explanations, that's a flag that you're dealing with people's actual inside-the-head stuff."

That's how Farscape is for me. This may mean I'm nuts, but that show is what the inside of my head looks like all the time. Even moreso than with Buffy, and I didn't know that was physically possible.

It's the kind of work, The Wire, that shouts at you that we are better than what we allow ourselves to be.

A.

http://tinyurl.com/3spuzq

A.

The message is that inner cities are basically war zones, and not one is safe, and that the things that politicians and other structures do to fix things in reality might contribute to the harm. It breaks your heart, certainly, and not in artificial ways like Lost does (i.e. killing off characters left and right), but in a genuine way. I know that at the End of Season 4, which is about inner city school (which is where I'd like to teach, someday) I was heartbroken for the kid characters that were featured, as the writers spend the whole season making us care about these new characters, and making the viewers hope that not all of them are doomed to repeat their parents' mistakes, but then it just takes your hope away but without manipulating the outcome. It's definitely a balance that is missing from many TV shows, including BSG.

I doubt it will happen but even so, The Wire not robots. It's America. This much I'll say up front. And if you reall want to go deep, watch Homicide Life on the The Streets. Those are the roots.

Athenae emailed me you were recapping Generation Kil and I am thrilled. I can't wait to see your stuff.

I think the dominant theme is the machine of a city.

For me, The Wire is about forgotten people, helpless people, people nobody looks at; and how America, despite the hype about the tempest-tost homeless, doesn't save them. The point is to be angry. The point is what D'Angelo does at the end of "Cleaning Up": shouting the name of a thrown-away child, even after everyone else has left the room.

The titular wire is hooked up to a pay phone, but it's also a wire we're walking, and we think there's a net somewhere down below, but there isn't. That's what it's about.