Blog:

This week I customized my blog with different categories in order to organize my posts throughout the semester. I was a bit confused at first and made pages, only to realize my mistake and make categories, which was much easier. I also added a header photo logo that I thought showed my interests and personality because it is a photo of a certain style of book I collect.

Assignment Bank:

1. I did a gif assignment of contradictory terms in the Wire using the juxtaposed ideas ‘drugs’ and ‘family business’ as my first project for the week.

2. For my second assignment I did a writing piece of a movie review but tweaked it to be about the Wire

3. My third assignment was a visual work for a troll quote in which I tried my best to confuse everyone!

Daily Creates:

1. I did the Flickr Lune where I created my own poem about emails.

2. I chose a favorite mathematical equation and created it through things found on campus.

3. Today I did my last daily create on a self-help tip through SoundCloud!

Reflections:

I also reflected in a post on “Web 2.0 Storytelling” by Bryan Alexander for our reading this week and did a quick post on Kurt Vonnegut’s “Shapes of Stories” video and discussed its applicability in general and to the Wire.

The Wire:

Episode 13-

This was obviously the last episode in season 1 and it seemed to tie everything up in an interesting way. We see Kima alive and healing and I like that when Kima learns about the backstory of the attack, we do too. It shows some dignity and strength that Kima doesn’t just sign saying she saw someone because it is not the truth that way. “Sometimes things gotta play hard,” she says. I think this shows Kima’s integrity, an aspect lacking in many of the other cops. We still see McNulty’s guilt in not having visited Kima yet and how he feels when he finally does visit. He starts to break down and says it isn’t worth it to be a cop and get hurt.

I think this plays into the rest of the episode because while we see both Barksdales go behind bars, the drug war continues. Some cops move up and are replaced by others who will continue in the drug war effort. Stringer and others replace Avon and D’Angelo in the drug dealing business. The hierarchy is simply replaced. The drug war is never-ending and simply repeats and circles back with new people at the top, others at the bottom, and more and more dying. It’s as if McNulty tells Kima it isn’t worth it because it will keep happening and what they did in the case barely made a dent.

McNulty says “West Baltimore is dying” to the Feds who are trying to turn a case that is killing west Baltimore into a political case, rather than trying to shut down the people who are keeping the drug business going and hurting people. We get a real view of this and the repetition of how these people grow up with D’Angelo’s discussion on his life.

D’Angelo is evidently disgusted by what he has seen. “Ya’ll don’t understand man, ya’ll don’t get it. I grew up with this shit,” he tells McNulty. D’Angelo’s family is in the drug business, it’s just what they do and he has grown up in it, despite how he really wants to live. “You just live this shit until you cant breathe no more” He wants to be out and jail is almost freedom, but his mother and family pressure him to continue in the business and not betray them. He may not wish to be, but D’Angelo is part of the game, the game that never ends.

The episode seems to drill in the idea of repetition with scenes that parallel to other scenes earlier in the season, such as when the same drug dealer D’Angelo teaches, does the same to another kid. Or when everyone is in the courtroom again and Stringer Bell looks back at McNulty. Everything has changed, but everything is also the same. Even Bubbles has again lapsed back into drugs and at the very end Omar returns and says “It’s all in the game,” showing the game will never end.

Season 2, Episode 1-

There were a lot of interesting aspects of this first episode in comparison to last season. We get Roland talking about the past case and how no one is doing much these days “I don’t wanna make rank, I wanna work cases, good cases,” he says. We see the same people culminating, but are not sure where the story is going to go. McNulty, the Lt. and Kima are back, but in different places. All of the people who fought so hard in the case that made up the entire first season are now in lowly jobs or moved to a place where they do not serve much of a purpose. There is a sense that McNulty is returning, and he does physically return to the office asking about the dead woman, showing he cannot give up the job. Stringer and some other familiar drug dealers’ faces are back. Everyone seems to be back but displaced somehow, they are not where they belong or where we are used to seeing them.

There is inkling of some sort of crime, but I am not yet quite sure what, possibly smuggling. We go back to the pit and I am trying to figure out how it will all link up for the new season, but we get many female bodies stacked up at the end, which leads me to believe this is some sort of sex trade smuggling turn.

Episode 2-

There is a lot of focus on Avon this episode and we see Avon and D’Angelo’s mother are still working to protect D’Angelo. Avon is trying to get D’s baby at jail so he can see it and wants to protect and help him. “It’s family, man,” says Avon to Stringer. We see other people from last season in jail, and other characters as low-level cops. There is hierarchy even in jail with Avon treated alright, while his friend is not.

We also get more of McNulty. He is being brought into the girl crime story and starts digging into 14 murders and how it happened. But there is more on display in McNulty’s personal life too: he is still drinking, still messing around. “You’re a child,” he is told. Again this season he seems to only care about himself and cannot connect to other people.

The end of the episode was really violent, which makes me think that this season will be a little rougher on viewers, as there have already been 15 dead bodies in the first two episodes, one tortured and murdered before our eyes.

Week 3:

I feel really good about my work for this week. I was definitely more confident in my work and chose daily creates and assignments that pushed me to try things and make further use of the skills I have learned. I’m excited about how quickly I am picking things up and I’m excited to learn more for next week!