"Sell Out with Me Tonight"

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I agree with you, Kai, that the subject-matter of Season 2 was crucial in establishing the complexity of the protagonist - the city of Baltimore - and the point where the city embarked on a path of self-destruction, by allowing jobs with a living wage to disappear. But I thought that Season 4 covered some similarly important ground - trying to define at what point - if any - the city could save its vulnerable kids from slipping into lives defined by violence and desperation. Both great, provocative seasons in their own right.

SPOILERS, for anyone who hasn't watched the show yet:

I consider The Wire among the top pieces of small-screen fiction of all time - possibly even the greatest - but it has its flaws. And one of the major ones is the lack of female characters. Detective Keema Grayson gets the most screen time of any female character, though she could easily be rewritten as a male character. Assistant DA Pearlman is a supporting character who exists mostly as a sex partner for some of the male characters. Season 2, though, is the low point in terms of the portrayal of women. It starts out reasonable enough, decrying the sex trafficking trade, by showing some of its victims - women who died in the process of  being illegally smuggled into the country, and it introduces a new female character, Officer Russell, who works for the port police. But the writers never figure out what to do with this new character, and she fizzles out in later seasons to the role of McNulty's beleaguered love interest. And she's thinly drawn, at best. I never believed that this mousy single mom and former toll-taker would be so hard-boiled and callous as to refer to the dead sex-trafficking victims as "girls in a can." But where the writers really go wrong is in the episode near the end of the season, where they showcase some sex-trafficked prostitutes just to use them as the punchline for a cheap joke about McNulty's sexual prowess. This is the low moment of the entire series, as far as I'm concerned. I wish this amazing series didn't contain such a blemish.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>Sent: Aug 25, 2014 11:19 AM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: "Sell Out with Me Tonight"
>
>
>To me the loss of intensity that came with seasons 4 and 5 was a real 
>disappointment. While the idea to extend the story to the societal 
>spheres of education and the media is understandable, the basic 
>narrative structure is not able to carry it in a convincing way. The 
>plausibility of the action decreases, and moralism becomes more 
>important. Not a good thing in terms of art. Season 2, on the other 
>hand, I perceived as excellent. Without it the whole thing wouldn't make 
>sense. To understand the new drug economy unfolding from season 1 on, 
>you have to know about the traditional economy. The rationalization of 
>Baltimore's harbor and what the unions try to do about it. Only with the 
>economic picture completed like this, season 3 can deal with the local 
>politics in a complex way. And Chris Bauer's screen acting as Frank 
>Sobotka is among the very best of the whole serial. In my opinion, that is.
>
>
>On 25.08.2014 03:18, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>> It's a hard call, but I'd rate the seasons of The Wire, from best to least best: 3, 1, 4, 2, 5.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mark Thibodeau<jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Aug 24, 2014 7:30 PM
>>> To: Thomas Eckhardt<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
>>> Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>, Dave Monroe<against.the.dave at gmail.com>, pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Subject: Re: "Sell Out with Me Tonight"
>>>
>>> Re: The Wire
>>>
>>> Who could possibly prefer season 2 to season 4?!
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Jerky
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
>>> <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>  wrote:
>>>> Am 23.08.2014 12:31, schrieb Kai Frederik Lorentzen:
>>>>
>>>>>   As much
>>>>> as I recommend Adorno's thoughts on classical music, one shouldn't
>>>>> overestimate what he has to say on popular music. And TV-serials like
>>>>> "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad" or "The Wire" (at least the first three
>>>>> seasons are solid gold) can in their artistic complexity not be
>>>>> explained with the relative simple model of the Kulturindustrie, which
>>>>> was born in World War two and thus always emphasizes the relation of
>>>>> media output and political propaganda.
>>>> My take, not being an expert on Adorno, much less classical music: The guy
>>>> did not understand the first thing about popular music. Given the choice, he
>>>> probably he would have preferred Yes to early Beatles...
>>>>
>>>> I am sticking with Robert Christgau: "(...) unless we can somehow recycle
>>>> the concept of the great artist so that it supports Chuck Berry as well as
>>>> it does Marcel Proust, we might as well trash it altogether."
>>>>
>>>> http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/berry-76.php
>>>>
>>>> "The Wire" is simply astounding.
>>>>
>>>> Thomas
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
>
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