From 8pm-9pm on Tuesday (Dec. 2), Jonathon, Nicky, Lauren, Nicholas, and I had a discussion about Season 4 Episode 10:”Misgivings” of The Wire. Jonathon started the discussion by sharing some screenshots of scenes from the episode that really struck him. On in particular was when the  (asshole) police officer caught the boy who is really good at stealing cars. Instead of arresting him, the cop decides to break several of this kid’s fingers. We all agreed that it was completely wrong from the cop to punish the kid like that, and several of us had a difficult time watching it. Nicholas mentioned that this show has elements that reflected news events happening currently, but just all agreed and decided to not get into the issues of today. That led into Lauren’s point about how gruesome it was to see Michael’s dad murdered by Chris and Snoop. That was one of the most difficult scenes to watch in the series yet. (Although after watching this week’s episodes…i’ve decided this entire show is just the saddest thing ever.) I also then brought up how it was interesting that even though nobody actually said what Michael’s father did to him, we all can assume what it was (molestation, assault, abuse) and so even though his death was very brutal, I personally was glad to see his character go. Nicky also shared some screen shots, particularly all of the camera shots with tables in them. There was quite a lot of them, and we discussed how the lighting, and the position of the people at that tables symbolized different things. For example, when the lighting was dark, it was because it was a serious moment, and when it was lighter, it was supposed to be a more inviting moment. Furthermore, whenever the politicians were sitting at the tables, they were always on the opposite end from where the camera was. This could symbolize how politicians are not always in tune with the average citizen (aka the audience member, the viewer). We also noted how when it was politicians around the table, there were a few of them, and that meant that a few amount of people make decisions that affect many, whereas the scene where the school administrators are around a table, there’s more of them, so the decision is better represented.

I tried to record our video discussion, but unfortunately I used the wrong google hangouts. I did not use googles hangouts on air, but instead, regular google hangouts. I tried to also use a software called Snag It that I had downloaded in order to capture the audio and video from my screen but the application kept crashing and not saving what it had recorded before crashing. I have some pictures to prove we did talk together online (below), but nevertheless since I volunteered to be the point person, it’s entirely on me that I don’t have the actual video of the discussion.