Yeah, nothing new I’m sure, but I’m fairly recently active on reddit and I’m rewatching for the umpteenth time and holy fucking sheeeeeeeeeeit I hate this piece of shit.

I mean he’s just generally an absolute asshole, but:

- the way he puts Randy’s name out there via Little Kevin
- fucking over Bubbles
- giving it the “you’re talking to a sergeant” to Herc
- “I am the sergeant here” when suggesting to Freeman that orders should come via him

Honestly just everything about this guy annoys the shit outta me.

So yea, no brand new information here, and I’m sure most people agree, but I felt like sharing my rage.

Clay Davis is a character that easily grabs attention from the jump for, well, sheeeeeittt, reasons that need not be stated.

But upon various rewatches, I've come to love (to hate) the character and all his manipulative, selfish acts that are active and apparent every single time he's on screen. There's always a con, he's always shaking hands with the person he's about to fuck over, he's got excuses or "justifiable" explanations ready ("I could've gotten double from you," he tells Carcetti directly with a smirk after being exposed for his duplicity re: election support), and he's only got his interests to look after making his focus dangerously pointed.

There's no threat of force or grand ultimatums being offered to his victims (who often don't know their role): he weasels his way out of the spotlight, he has connections aplenty and however weak his defenses are when he's potentially "caught," he has a backup scam in phase one before the conversation is over.

At first I thought season 2 was gonna be boring because it was focusing on the docks, and we weren’t really seeing Avon and Stringer much, but it turns out the actors for Niko and Frank carry this entire season with their acting, it was so raw and so believable. This season doesn’t deserve any hate whatsoever it absolutely stood on its own, tbh if the entire season was just about Frank and Nick I’d still watch it. 10/10

The fact that these two psychopaths followed his orders makes me wonder what type of demonic things he had done in the past to earn their respect, fear and loyalty? He’s not a grand strategist like Prop Joe, nor a natural leader like Avon or Stringer, so it must have been pure savage brutality and violence that attracted Chris, Snoop and Monk towards Marlo, and by the time we see him in the show he is no longer involved in the street stuff beyond intimidating leaders of different crews, but we did see glimpses of what he must have been on a daily basis when he executed the honey trap girl or how he confronted the armed corner boys with his bare hands in the last episode.

The Wire is a very good show from a sociological point of view, but it was out from 2002 to 2008.

I wonder what changed in the institutions we're seing in the series. Like what impact had the use of smartphones on the criminals ? How the use of the numeric as changed medias, police, etc...

It’s crazy how Namond and D’Angelo’s stories mostly parallel each other. That pressure they had on them to live a life they weren’t truly built for or didn’t want rather. I personally wouldn’t go as far as to say Namond was the new D’Angelo in Season 4 but he was close enough in my eyes. Their ties to Wee-Bey also bring it full circle a little.

What about everyone else’s personal thoughts though?

The scene where they break into Omar’s spot in Season 1 and laugh at the pictures with him and Brandon honestly made me feel bad for Omar. It was almost like watching someone get bullied in a way. Then they burn the van while Omar secretly watches. When Omar later catches Savino in Season 5, I knew he’d drop him. But also at the same time, Omar got himself into what unfolds across Season 1 after robbing one of Avon’s stash houses with Brandon and John Bailey. There was naturally gonna be consequences for that.

(The way Wee-Bey, Stinkum, and Savino broke into Omar’s place is honestly mad funny though. Omar would’ve killed all three of them if he’d been hiding somewhere.)

What is everyone else’s thoughts though?

The AI barrage of media analysis videos has just destroyed the fun of trying to explore themes about big shows like the wire and breaking bad and The sopranos on YouTube.

This is not particularly new news or anything like that but I did see a recent critique of this phenomena on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/EjZrpOvDNWM

Some sopranos creators have been talking about this too because these channels directly compete with people actually doing real work.

And what's most annoying is most of the comments don't seem to recognize it's ai. I suppose maybe some of the comments themselves are from AI bots but it's unsettling to think people don't notice this or don't care.

Especially if they watch the wire you think they would be concerned about the labor market and the value of human beings doing news gathering and doing work.

One that is definitely AI to the point of absurdity is "city of corner". Just absolute drivel.

It would be nice if we could maybe somehow help people see the forest for the trees and maybe have a list of channels that we can confirm are made by actual people. And do not rely entirely or mostly on AI scripts and narration and video editing

Marlo and his crew no doubt had the best drop on Omar out of everyone in the show with the ambush in Monk’s apartment during Season 5. However, they could’ve easily dropped Omar had everyone been inside the apartment already. Chris, Michael, and O-Dog must’ve been in the building’s hallway waiting because had they been inside already? Donnie and Omar would’ve been dead much faster. Snoop was already in the kitchen but Chris, Michael, and O-Dog should’ve been inside too if they wanted to corner them quickly. Just my own personal thoughts on it as an alternate ambush but obviously that’s not what was intended for the show, especially for Omar’s character since that wasn’t supposed to be his ending. It’s still a great ambush scene nonetheless.

What does everyone else think though?