ToxicUnicorn January 21, 2015 Share January 21, 2015 "Acting on Clay Davis' advice, Burrell seeks to burnish his reputation by ordering the department to double their street arrests. The mandate does not sit well with McNulty, who sets his sights instead on cracking a string of church robberies." -- Once again, the plot summary doesn't give much indication of the power of this episode. All I could think of, during the last scenes of Michael's home life was, "This just keeps getting worse." Last few episodes have seemed pretty bleak. Have to admit, I was glad to see Bubs get one over on Herc. 1 Link to comment
DarkRaichu January 21, 2015 Share January 21, 2015 Lol at the synopsis as IIRC McNulty was barely in season 4 and the church robberies "storyline" got 2-3 lines at most Link to comment
ToxicUnicorn January 22, 2015 Author Share January 22, 2015 It's true. How on earth did Dominic West get top billing when he was hardly on this season? Link to comment
Rinaldo January 23, 2015 Share January 23, 2015 Billing is set by contract. It doesn't fluctuate according to percentage of screen time in a particular episode. West asked to be used as little as possible in Season 4 so he could be with his family in London (he'd missed some big events with them in the previous years), and fortunately this fit in rather well with the intended focus of the season. 1 Link to comment
ToxicUnicorn January 23, 2015 Author Share January 23, 2015 Wow, West had an impressive contract negotiator on his side. Thanks for the tidbit, Rinaldo. Link to comment
Rinaldo January 23, 2015 Share January 23, 2015 Wow, West had an impressive contract negotiator on his side. Not really. He was guaranteed top billing as the series began, which was justified by the importance of the character and his slightly bigger name value than any of the others at the start. Anyway, once that's decided, the order doesn't change (on any series, for any actor) from season to season. He sat down with David Simon as Season 3 was ending and talked about how he'd prefer not to be so central in the next season, and it happened to mesh well with where the stories were going. I think it's one of the coolest things about the whole series actually, that the most central character can be made almost marginal for one season, and it doesn't hurt the storytelling at all. 2 Link to comment
Constantinople January 23, 2015 Share January 23, 2015 It probably belongs in the McNulty thread, but I'm not convinced he's the most central character -- and not even in the sense that Baltimore is the "central character". I'm not sure the Wire really has one. Not really. He was guaranteed top billing as the series began, which was justified by the importance of the character and his slightly bigger name value than any of the others at the start. Anyway, once that's decided, the order doesn't change (on any series, for any actor) from season to season. Is that always the case? It seems as if in Game of Thrones, the credits vary from episode to episode, and not just when a character leaves or joins the show. Link to comment
Rinaldo January 23, 2015 Share January 23, 2015 I don't watch Game of Thrones. If they really change like that in the main titles episode to episode, it's highly unusual, almost unprecedented. In The Wire, note how actors like Andre Royo remain in place in the credits, even if they don't appear in a particular episode. Certainly new actors are added on a seasonal basis, as the story lines go new places, but they don't disturb the contractually mandated first position, etc. -- they tend to be added at the end. (If there was an actor who was entitled to be last, billed "And X as Y," s/he would remain last -- but I don't think that sort of thing was used on The Wire.) I didn't mean to get into a discussion about McNulty as "central character," I was looking for some shorthand to describe how he was relatively pivotal for a few seasons, and then wasn't at all, and I chose my words poorly. I agree that there's no single central character. 1 Link to comment
ToxicUnicorn January 23, 2015 Author Share January 23, 2015 (edited) and not even in the sense that Baltimore is the "central character" I've never understood this point. I can see how NYC is central (in the sense of demanding attention, hard to ignore its iconographic presence) in some of Woody Allen's films. But here? I feel like this could be transferred to anyplace, including the street names and the harbor. Maybe I just don't know Baltimore. ETA: I might've had to look up a definition to make this point. Edited January 23, 2015 by ToxicUnicorn Link to comment
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