The Game is the Game, Always.

“For some cold-ass crook gangstaz, y’all carried it like Republicans and s**t.” Haven’t watched this yet, as volume is a consideration at work (and sad to read in the comments that the Slim Charles classic, “If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie,” didn’t make the cut.) Nonetheless, by way of a friend, 100 great quotes from The Wire, distilled into 10 minutes. All in the game, you know.

This ain’t Aruba either.

Detectives Bunk and Freamon, y’all’s transfer has come in: The Wire‘s Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters will rejoin David Simon for his new NOLA show, Treme. “Pierce will play Antoine Batiste, an accomplished jazz trombonist who is now scratching for gigs, trying to support a live-in girlfriend and a new baby, while still carrying a torch for a failed marriage…Peters will play Albert Lambreaux, a big chief of the White Feather Nation trying to bring the tribe’s members home.“

We are Oscar Mike.

“[T]he cameo of a red pack of Skittles in the opening scene of David Simon’s new HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, was a welcome sight, because it signaled that the program was going to be faithful to the smallest detail of the invasion I had witnessed…It wasn’t until later episodes that I realized this miniseries is so realistic it should be used as an educational tool for troops going to Iraq and Afghanistan.” In Slate, former embed Peter Maass sings the praises of Simon & Burns’ (and Evan Wright’s) Generation Kill.

While the ass-hattedness of the hick Sgt. Major obsessed with grooming standards, the Howard Zinn-lite ruminations of the Mexican Sgt., and Ziggy‘s wry way with the perfect quip all seem a little overdone, I’ve found Generation Kill interesting and compulsively watchable so far, and particularly enjoy the “Situation Normal” bungling of the officers. (I would so not want to get stuck in a firefight with the likes of “Captain America” on my six.)

You watch the Watchmen. I’ll watch The Wire.

“I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid.” As a companion to their Watchmen story, EW has a wide-ranging sit-down with Alan Moore, wherein he discusses Zack Snyder, 300, magic, the afterlife, DC Comics, and his favorite television show: “The absolute pinnacle of anything I’ve seen recently has got to be The Wire. It’s the most stunning piece of television that has ever come out of America, possibly the most stunning piece of television full-stop…So yeah, everything else looks pretty lame next to The Wire.”

Speaking of Moore’s critique of Snyder, I felt a similar unease after reading Snyder’s EW Q&A. Says Snyder of Watchmen: “Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan’s] Batman Begins. ‘Batman’s dark.’ I’m like, okay, ‘No, Batman’s cool.’ He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.” Hrm. Ok. I’d have more faith in Snyder’s Watchmen if he didn’t persist in sounding like one of those “Totally Extreme!!” meathead whiteboys from Harold & Kumar.

That’s some Shameful S**t.

The 60th annual Emmys nominees are announced, with plenty of justifiable love for John Adams (23 nods) and Mad Men (16). But, really, The Wire was overlooked again? No Mary McDonnell for Galactica? 2 and a Half Frickin’ Men(?!) over Flight of the Conchords for Best Comedy? I just can’t take these media monkeys or their plastic pantomime at all seriously anymore.

Way Down in the Homer. | Deus Ex Cylonica.

Via What’s Alan Watching?, and much like these Battlestar Galactica images from two years ago, David Simon’s Baltimore goes Springfield. (That’s McNulty & Bunk down at the tracks above, but you probably already figured that out.)

Speaking of BSG, does anyone else feel like Battlestar is on the verge of entering late-season X-Files territory at this point? (Or as Starbuck (and MC Hammer) might screech, WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!) I was never sold on the Watchtower Four or all the Vision Questing at the end of Season 3, but figured i’d see where the show goes thereafter…maybe the Cylons really do have a plan. But this season to me, the Cylon civil war notwithstanding, has seemed mostly meandering and purposeless, and last episode (particularly the Tigh-Ellen-Six stuff) bordered on incoherent and self-parodying. I’m not giving up on Galactica just yet, but the show is definitely starting to lose me.

Exchanging your precious gifts.

They may have lost some luster due to Scott Templeton garnering one for the Whiting/Klebanow regime. Nevertheless, the 2008 Pulitzers were announced yesterday, and they included 6 for the WP, Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought in the history category and a special citation to the freewheeling Bob Dylan “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” Well, ok then.

The Great Debate: Minotaur v. Centaur.

By way of my bro, Underground Online queries numerous celebrities and luminaries on the most pressing issue of our time: Who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a crossbow? Those weighing in on the debate include David McCullough, Ridley Scott, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Marc Singer, and the Battlestar and Wire crews. I was asked before being shown the site, and you can count me in the centaur camp. Screw the dice: If this is happening outdoors and not in close quarters, ranged cavalry > heavy infantry (although admittedly there’s something to be said for the existential Nolte thesis.)

The Forest for the Trees.

“No one went near the theme; everyone stayed dead-center and literal, oblivious to the big-ass elephant in our mythical newsroom…Here’s what happened in season five of The Wire when almost no one — among the working press, at least — was looking: Our newspaper missed every major story.” With the finale come and gone, David Simon has to explain to the press the theme of the season, which they — ironically — missed. (See also: the next post.)

Free-Born Men of the U.S.A.

Fare thee well gone away, there’s nothing left to say. Pour a glass of Jamesons and give the devil (way down in the hole) his due: The Wire, a television show with a better claim than most to the title of “Best Ever” (and definitely the best show ever made about American politics), ends this evening. As such, before one last Sunday round with the men and women of Baltimore, some links from the vault:

“The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America…no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.” Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg sings its praises.

THND‘s Andrew Dignan dissects the credit sequences of the first four seasons.

“Thematically, it’s about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings — all of us — are worth less. We’re worth less every day…The show is written in a 21st-century city-state that is incredibly bureaucratic, and in which a legal pursuit of an unenforceable prohibition has created great absurdity” Creator David Simon discusses the show.

“In a way, it doesn’t make sense to talk of ‘The Wire’ as the best American television show because it’s not very American. The characters in American popular culture are rarely shown to be subject to forces completely beyond their control…’The Wire’ is not Romantic but classical; what matters most in its universe is fulfilling your duty and facing the inexorable with dignity.” Salon‘s Laura Miller makes the Best Show Ever case.

““The Wire” is dissent,’ he says. ‘It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.’” Simon previews Season 5.

“‘You can carve off a symptom and talk about how bad drugs are, and you can blame the police department for fucking up the drug war, but that’s kind of like coming up to a house hit by a hurricane and making a lot of voluminous notes about the fact that some roof tiles are off.” Simon discusses the journalism critique of Season 5.

“The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them.” Simon checks in again at the end of Season 5.

“Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.” The writers of the show make the case for civil disobedience against the drug war.

“All the pieces on ‘The Wire’ matter, which is why the show was so brilliant, and why its small fanbase will mourn its loss after the final episode ends tonight around 10:35…Every character, every moment, is important in some way, and if it doesn’t seem so at first, just take a cue from Lester and be patient until you can see the whole picture.” Alan Sepinwall revisits some of the show’s best scenes, with Youtubes (and spoilers, if you’re not caught up.)

And you know the only thing better than having enjoyed all 60 hours of the show? Having never seen it at all. If that’s you, pick up Season 1 and start from the beginning — you’re in for a real treat.

Update: “The main theme is that…it’s a newspaper that is so eviscerated, so worn, so devoid of veterans, so consumed by the wrong things, and so denied the ability to replenish itself that it singularly misses every single story in the season.” The final episode has aired, and David Simon has emerged from behind the curtain for a last round of interviews. “By the way, if you want to not focus on what the fuck’s going on, read the newspapers. Suffer the journalism, and don’t worry: the big picture will elude you nicely.“