Not really a Rawls moment per say, but I got a good laugh from "RAWLS SUCKS ****" being scribbled on the bathroom wall.

Rawls or Rawls's father is briefly a character in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969. The dialogue is written to sound like him and he's from Baltimore (and named Rawls, and Moore said years ago that he was going to do that). I think a character from Homicide might be there as well.

A scene that really doesn't impact the show but kind of touched a nerve for me was Michael, Bug and Duquan going to 6 Flags.

They are playing games, smiling, high-fiving after holding hands with two girls. Bug is wearing a batman mask being a little boy. They are all just babies and so innocent in that scene but then as soon as they get back in the hood Duquan gets called "gay" or something derogatory for holding a stuffed dolphin and they're right back in that **** hole.

Just made me think about how many kids miss out on their childhood.

The Wire is so great.

i dont see how you can have rawls without that fat sergeant guy

This show has made me do some research and thinking. If I can get on my two feet well enough, I would love to volunteer to be a part of the big brother program in Washington DC.

Maybe I can help someone like Duquan or Randy is some way.

Not exactly sure what you're talking about, but I looked it up and the other character in the scene in the book is named Munch who is a Homicide character.

Oh yes, that's it.... thank you.

i thoguth aboutthis too but it's probably best to start from your own community. there's probably a lot of people in need in your own community and you'll be a bigger help there than an urban city you have no experience in (unless you're from there)

start a boxing gym

I thought Gus was a great character too. The whole newspaper story line, which you know was important to Simon, was entirely held together by the character of Gus.

I was a big fan of Homicide years ago, so I was happy to see him show up. Even better was when Detective Munch (Homicide, and later Law & Order SUV) makes a cameo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ufVdsQiZw

My take on that was slightly different again:

Marlo hears the two guys telling some outlandish tale about Omar and it reminds him of how Omar called him out on the street. By taking that corner he's showing that he's neither afraid nor incapable of getting his hands dirty.

The fact that he didn't tell them his name and there were no witnesses almost implied that it was more for himself than anyone else. It's a bit like the guy in his 30's who pulls a college chick and says to himself "Still got it!". After feeling like a fish out of water at the meeting with the suits he gets back to his comfort zone and reaffirms his identity.

This just made me really sad.

It is more a case that he didn't go the same route as Stringer tried to. He knows who he is, and he is staying true to that.

Some excerpts from The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Slovoj Žižek


Simon is very clear about the concrete historical background of this radical split: We pretend to a war against narcotics, but in truth, we are simply brutalizing and dehumanizing an urban underclass that we no longer need as a labor supply … The Wire was not a story about America, it’s about the America that got left behind … The drug war is war on the underclass now. That’s all it is. It has no other meaning.


This bleak general picture provides the context for Simon’s fatalistic worldview: “The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason.”


The Wire proceeds systematically, each successive season taking a further step in the exploration: Season 1 presents the conflict, drug dealers versus police; Season 2 steps back to its ultimate cause: the disintegration of the working class; Season 3 deals with police and political strategies to resolve the problem and their failure; Season 4 shows why education (of black working-class youth) is also insufficient; and, finally, Season 5 focuses on the role of the media: why is the general public not adequately informed of the true scope of the problem?


Is not Stringer Bell himself a utopian figure: a pure criminal technocrat, striving to sublate crime into pure business?


As Simon himself explains: “Because so much of television is about providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character, a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice seems different in some ways.” In the climactic catharsis of a Greek tragedy the hero encounters his truth and attains sublime greatness in his fall; in The Wire, the Big Other of Fate rules in a different way—the system (not life) just goes on, with no cathartic climax.


This insight is rendered by the final scene of The Wire, in which we see McNulty observing the Baltimore port from a bridge, accompanied by a series of flashbacks and glimpses of daily life throughout the city. What we get here is not an ultimate conclusion, but a kind of proto-Hegelian absolute standpoint of reflexive distance, a withdrawal from direct engagement: the idea being that our various struggles, hopes, and defeats are all part of a larger “circle of life” whose true aim is its own self-reproduction, or this very circulation itself.


The narrative openness of the form is thus grounded in its content. As Jameson puts it, The Wire is a whodunit in which the culprit is the social totality, the whole system, not an individual criminal (or group of criminals). But how are we to represent (or, rather, render) in art the totality of contemporary capitalism? In other words, is not totality always the ultimate culprit?


The point is that the Real of the capitalist system is abstract, the abstract-virtual movement of Capital—here we should mobilize the Lacanian difference between reality and the Real: reality masks the Real. The “desert of the Real” is the abstract movement of capital, and it was in this sense that Marx spoke of “real abstraction.” Or, as The Wire’s co-producer Ed Burns puts it: “we only allude to the real, the real is too powerful.”

Simon himself is clear here. When asked if he was a socialist, he declared himself a social democrat who believes that capitalism is the only game in town: “you’re not looking at a Marxist here … I accept that [capitalism] is the only viable way to generate wealth on a large scale.” But does not his own tragic worldview contradict this reformist social-democratic vision? While putting his faith in rebellious individuals, he is nevertheless doubtful that the institutions of a capital-obsessed oligarchy will reform themselves short of outright economic depression (New Deal, the rise of collective bargaining) or systemic moral failure that actually threatens middle-class lives (Vietnam and the resulting, though brief commitment to rethinking our brutal foreign-policy footprints around the world).

Whatever the outcome, one thing is clear: only when we fully embrace Simon’s tragic pessimism, accepting that there is no future (within the system), can an opening emerge for a radical change to come.

This is incredible

Just finished watching this over the last few months.

The whole thing was very good and it definitely ranks as one of the best shows ever. My biggest problem with it, which stops it from becoming my favorite show, is that it's such a slow burn show and then there is no pay off. I realize this is very intentional and it achieves the desired effect, but it does lower the entertainment value for me slightly. I'm not sure how to rate this critically because it seems like it's my preference rather than a flaw.

Also, based on a first view, I'd rate s5 much higher than most. As S4 was progressing, Marlo was becoming my favorite character. I'd love that whole storyline and Omar's storyline in s5. I agree the newspaper and serial killer stories weren't very good, but more Marlo definitely made up for it.

I viewed him as just an arrogant punk in S3 who wasn't doing what was best by joining the co-op, but I changed my view in s4 and s5. Him, Stringer, Omar, and Michael are probably my favorites.

I watched the show for the first time 2 years ago, and I just re-watched everything but S2 the past month or so. I skipped over S2 because I remember it dragging a lot in places from the first watch. However, jumping from S1 to S3 on the rewatch I remembered a lot of great scenes that I missed from S2. Like Omar testifying against Bird, and the exchange he has with Levy in court. I especially missed the scene with McNulty staying up all night just so he can prove the dead prostitutes died within Baltimore city limits & he gets to pin 13 Jane Does on Rawls Lol.

A couple of things surprised me. I found myself enjoying S5 more than I remembered. I think I paid closer attention this time to the city hall angle and thus enjoyed the Carcetti scenes more. I definitely felt I was able to focus more on the secondary and underlying layers to the city's problems upon rewatch. I was also able to tie more of the ripple effects together and understand the cause & effect relationship more deeply.

I found myself annoyed by characters that didn't annoy me at all the first go around. Senator Clay Davis I found to be very annoying during the rewatch. In my head I was saying to myself "Would you shut up already you hot bag of air?" Bubs' friend Johnny really annoyed me upon rewatch as well. I found myself openly cheering when he turned up dead in Hamsterdam. It was like "Ok. We get it already you're an addict that can't do anything but put needles in your arm. Please die already."

After watching the series a second time, I realized that we never learned anything about Detective Syndor. In S1 we learn that he's married (during the scene where Bubs schools him on why he needs "dead soliders" wedged into the bottoms of his sneakers), but we never see his wife in the series. In fact, we never see Syndor do anything but menial police work. I really felt that was a disservice to his character. Every other meaningful character from the Major Crimes Unit is profiled but him. I mean, he's an integral part of Major Crimes, and they didn't dig any deeper into his character than they did Colicchio from the Western. And speaking of spouses, I could of done without a lot of the scenes between Greggs & Cheryl. Some of it was interesting, but a lot of it dragged. I wanted to scream at the TV, "She's not going to change into the person you want her to be, Cheryl. Get over it already!"

I gained more respect and interest in the Gus character & the plight of the newspaper business in general. Gus is a keen observer of the events and happenings around him. I think S5 did an excellent job of showing how difficult it has become to work in a newspaper and how the people that succeed in that line of work do so only because of their passion for the job. Which is exactly the same for the police officers and school teachers alike.

One other thing that stands out to me from the rewatch. I felt the first time that the street scenes were very gritty and true to life. That said, I've never lived in that environment or even had a friend who has, but I really think the execution of associated gang members who are picked up by the police or seen talking to the police is greatly exaggerated. Like with the Lil Kevin slaying, I just don't think the kingpin of a drug empire like that is going to risk adding another body to the count unnecessarily. Lil Kevin was coming before Marlo to be upfront about any perception that might exist and there was no reason for Marlo to jump to conclusions. The only reason for killing Lil Kevin that makes sense is if some pre-existing transgression had been committed by Lil Kevin, but as viewers, we weren't made privy to that transgression, if in fact it did occur. Killing Bodie also seemed shaky & the order of Michael's death seemed unfounded as well. You even had both Chris & Marlo stating that they didn't feel Michael had or would snitch. I just don't see that happening in real life.

Will probably go back and rewatch S2 now, as I don't think there is a single episode of The Wire that doesn't rate as outstanding or above.

I don't think we needed to see more of Syndor's personal life, he was a good man and a good cop so that is pretty boring. As a cop he wasn't ****** people over like McNutty did, or ****** up like Prez did, he didn't have to deal with the Politics like Daniels had to, and he didn't have the experience of Freeman. He just came to work and did his job. He wasn't whoring around like McNutty or burning his clothes like Bunk(lmfao!), or be in a relationship with other characters on the show like Daniels and Freeman.

I want to rewatch but I just don't have the time. I like S2 a lot.

The reason Little Kevin was killed, imo, was that he had Randy tell Lex where to be in the park, and Randy had talked to the police. The police knew Little Kevin had info on Lex being killed, so he was a loose end that had to be cut off.

As far as Michael...

Chris: I don’t see the boy snitching.
Marlo: Neither do I. But you ready to bet your future on that?

This is not out of line with the character of Marlo. He had others killed for less.

I will say, I thought it was a little out of line that Randy was kind of given a pass here though, after what Kevin told Marlo. At first I thought that maybe it was because he was Cheese's son, but that still didn't make sense to me.

They thought about killing Randy, but decided to put word out that he was a snitch in hopes that he would get bullied and not talk again. Seemed to work.

Baltimore has around 200 murders a year, and I believe it was even higher during the early 2000s when The Wire was set. I don't think the murder rate depicted on the show is out of step with reality, especially when you consider that Marlo is supposed to be a particularly vicious crime lord.

RE: Randy. Killing a middle schooler with no criminal record is going to provoke (force?) a much stronger police reaction than killing a known drug dealer like Kevin.

electric,

You make some really good points. You've actually changed my mind some. I think that you're right that extra background on Sydnor wasn't necessary. Probably the only thing that I'm still holding onto is that there were some wasted scenes covering Greggs' personal life, Daniels & Pearlman, Bubbles, even McNulty too, and that time might as well have been spent on developing Sydnor's story. Although, I'd of preferred more back story on Omar.

That's a good point on Lil Kevin. And I agree the killing is not out-of-line for Marlo's character. I also fully admit that I have no knowledge of how street gangs work, but nonetheless, I have my doubts as to how true-to-life that is.

I would think that an operation like that relies so heavily on trust that you have people that you trust or you don't and it's that simple. Like in S1 when Moreland and McNulty get DeAngelo to write that letter to the dead witness' "kids" (Lol). Avon found out about it, but he didn't have DeAngelo executed for it. I also think that in real life when they do order a hit that they probably go after the full crew. Similar to the way you see in the mafia where they try to wipeout an entire family, take out the offending party & anyone that you think would be loyal to him or harbor resentment towards you for eliminating them. But that's just a guess on my part.

lol wat?