20 years ago today: "Got to, man. This is America."

Not if you've been on the Chesapeake Bay in January.

 

Now do the Sopranos...

 

The Fuck scene of Bunk and McNulty in the apartment. The first time I saw it I could stop laughing. But the next few times I saw I couldn’t help but see the brilliance of the scene.

 

It supposedly was a commentary on cops, who can communicate with each other through variations of that word.

 

I bailed on season 5 with the newspaper plot. I’m a big Simon fan - HLOTs isn’t discussed enough as an all time great show, and the book that preceded it has few peers. However, he can be heavy handed at times.

For those other 12 people who watched Treme, I thought the same thing about the restaurant owner plot. Simon was writing with Bourdain, and was a bit of a fan boy about it. So he hammered home the chefs are good/owners are bad theme with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Most of the themes in the show (which famously had a very slow plot) were handled better.

 

Seasons 3&4 the most popular brand name of heroin being sold on the corners has been “pandemic” followed by “WMD, it’s the bomb”

 

FWIW... I think the newspaper plot gets far, far too much shit from journalists. It's probably a bit too much to be watching a story about the city's paper circling the drain, when most of us were getting shitcanned from the industry in one way or another. I didn't even work in a huge newsroom, and I saw parallels for Alma, Haynes, Templeton, Klebanow and Whiting.

I think the McNulty serial killer shit in s5 is way more eye-rolling. In previous seasons, McNulty was shown to be kind of a degenerate alcoholic and womanizer, but he always cared about the work. I think the whole season is better if they ditch that aspect and integrate him into the other storylines better.

 

That may have been because of Dominic West's schedule. After the first two seasons he wanted to be closer to his family. I forget if he ever came back full-time.

 

I thought that was preposterous as well, especially for a show hailed for its realism.

 

I have a gun, you have a briefcase. What’s the difference ?

 

And the look on the store clerk’s face when he finally realized what Snoop was talking about.

 

Earned that bump like a mother fucker.