The Goat Pen

Bklyn wrote:I will relish the death of Joffrey (sp?). It better happen. His continued existence will make this show unwatchable for me...

It’s March and all of these Wire brackets have cropped up on various websites, so I think that we’re talking about all the faux tourneys and Omar versus Stringer and which season is worst and twenty-five best scenes lists and such — and I speak specifically to that mess, or at least I think I do. Folks slathering that silly shit on the cake weren’t there when the show was struggling to survive, and now, four years later, they’re busy hacking the thing into pop-culture nuggets — which would be cool if anywhere in there an actual idea got discussed or argued or considered. That’s my view anyway, and I let fly.

This ever-expanding drug war and what it’s doing to our society? Boring. The declining American commitment to public education and equality of opportunity? Why talk about that when we can measure Namond against Dookie in the West Baltimore bracket? The notion that an America that uses quarterly profits as its only metric is no longer a utilitarian experiment, that free market capitalism, disconnected from a social compact, has made our country coarse and unjust? Jesus, man, you’re sucking the air out of the room.

To be clear: I don’t think the Wire has all the right answers. It may not even ask the right questions. It is certainly not some flawless piece of narrative, and as many good arguments about real stuff can be made criticizing the drama as praising it. But yes, the people who made the Wire did so to stir actual shit. We thought some prolonged arguments about what kind of country we’ve built might be a good thing, and if such arguments and discussions ever happen, we will feel more vindicated in purpose than if someone makes an argument for why The Wire is the best show in years. (“Buffy,” by the way, was the correct answer to that particular bracketfest.)

Bklyn wrote:Speaking of GoT...what was Arya saying while she was going to sleep every night? It sounded like her list of people she wanted dead, but I was missing at least one of the names. She listed

Cersei
Joffrey
The Hound
and someone else (maybe 2). Who was it?

Then, after the tortures, she added The Mountain to her list but I couldn't catch the other name. Maybe I'll OnDemand it.