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Homicide 1x01-1x03
I finally started to Netflix this after much pimping by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija and after being sick of constantly watching shows that seemed to think that POC either didn't exist, or existed only to support white characteres.
So far, I am really impressed.
The writing is smart and dense. I still don't know most of their names except for Bayliss, Pembleton and Munch (single syllable!), but I can already tell them apart and sort of figure out their basic personalities after just three episodes. I speak as someone who can read fifteen volumes of manga, look up, and then realize she has been mistaking one of the main characters for another the entire time.
It's a show that's been taking a lot of concentration, so far; everyone speaks quickly and in slang. There's not much of an attempt to ease the viewer in. You can tell that this department/team (?) has a history and a dynamic from the get go, which is really nice. We do get Tim Bayliss, freshly come from the mayor, to ease us in, but he really isn't the main character in these three episodes by any means.
Also, I just like that everyone feels like a normal person that I would know. There have been some flashy crimes, but by and large, even though this is the homicide department, you get the sense that these are people who clock in and clock out and try to do their best, but it's not glamorous like some other legal/cop/crime shows I've seen.
And! I feel like I have seen more black people in the past three hours of TV than I have for entire seasons on other shows! Intelligent portrayals too!
I really love that you can tell that the writers have been thinking about stereotypes of all kinds and how to subvert them. I would have yelled in delight just at Bayliss mistaking an Italian-looking guy for Gi---- (Italian name that I am afraid to google in case I get spoiled), only to find that it's a black man. Except that's just one moment out of so many great ones.
The team we're with isn't quite 50-50 POC-to-white, and there's only one woman, but instead of this feeling like the usual Jossian "Lalala we will pretend all people in the world are white males," it feels like the writers are making a commentary on the usual racial and gender breakdown of a police department. This is because they don't ignore the fact that some of the people are black or are women even as they don't make it the characters' sole issue: "This is the Token Black Guy. He will have Token Black Issues."
I particularly love what they're doing with Pembleton; it would be so easy to do the stupid "we must have a white male POV character!" with Bayliss, and they keep slippig out of that. Bayliss seems to be the most privileged one there, and he is reminded of it time and time again. And so far, his relationship with the rest of the team skirts around the "we must bully the rookie" and "The new guy miraculously comes in and solves stuff" plotlines. But I was talking about Pembleton. I like the mentions that he is their best guy, I like his rant to someone whose name I forgot while looking for his car about being there and being resented. The other guy (who reads white to me) brushes it off, but that tension between being the best and the higher expectations that come from being black and being the best seem to inform everything Pembleton does without ever being the only thing about him.
I am particularly amazed by this; both the writers and the guy who plays Pembleton are doing a great job. Also, I love the little details -- how Pembleton is the one most formally dressed, probably because of aforementioned tension.
And all this in just three episodes!
There was an interesting side note on PC-ness and calling the Italian guy "salami" that I couldn't quite figure out; I wasn't sure if the writers were arguing that PC-ness was stupid or that the guy was wrong or both, as I was bitching at my short-row sock toe at that point.
And though they haven't been confronting gender issues as much, it's still there. Much like Pembleton, you sense that the female cop is completely aware of the fact that she's the only woman on the team and what that entails, even as that isn't all of her character. I'm particularly liking her relationship with her partner, who sometimes reads as skeevy but sometimes isn't, and the way a small storyline that could have been stupid "blah blah female intuition blah blah" played out.
Actually, I have been really enjoying how almost all the stories are playing out; they are intelligent and subvert tropes and expectations without rubbing the viewers' faces in it.
Anyway, now I am sad there were only 3 eps. on that disc, because I want to watch more. So far, this is very good, and I'm very impressed.
rachelmanija and after being sick of constantly watching shows that seemed to think that POC either didn't exist, or existed only to support white characteres. So far, I am really impressed.
The writing is smart and dense. I still don't know most of their names except for Bayliss, Pembleton and Munch (single syllable!), but I can already tell them apart and sort of figure out their basic personalities after just three episodes. I speak as someone who can read fifteen volumes of manga, look up, and then realize she has been mistaking one of the main characters for another the entire time.
It's a show that's been taking a lot of concentration, so far; everyone speaks quickly and in slang. There's not much of an attempt to ease the viewer in. You can tell that this department/team (?) has a history and a dynamic from the get go, which is really nice. We do get Tim Bayliss, freshly come from the mayor, to ease us in, but he really isn't the main character in these three episodes by any means.
Also, I just like that everyone feels like a normal person that I would know. There have been some flashy crimes, but by and large, even though this is the homicide department, you get the sense that these are people who clock in and clock out and try to do their best, but it's not glamorous like some other legal/cop/crime shows I've seen.
And! I feel like I have seen more black people in the past three hours of TV than I have for entire seasons on other shows! Intelligent portrayals too!
I really love that you can tell that the writers have been thinking about stereotypes of all kinds and how to subvert them. I would have yelled in delight just at Bayliss mistaking an Italian-looking guy for Gi---- (Italian name that I am afraid to google in case I get spoiled), only to find that it's a black man. Except that's just one moment out of so many great ones.
The team we're with isn't quite 50-50 POC-to-white, and there's only one woman, but instead of this feeling like the usual Jossian "Lalala we will pretend all people in the world are white males," it feels like the writers are making a commentary on the usual racial and gender breakdown of a police department. This is because they don't ignore the fact that some of the people are black or are women even as they don't make it the characters' sole issue: "This is the Token Black Guy. He will have Token Black Issues."
I particularly love what they're doing with Pembleton; it would be so easy to do the stupid "we must have a white male POV character!" with Bayliss, and they keep slippig out of that. Bayliss seems to be the most privileged one there, and he is reminded of it time and time again. And so far, his relationship with the rest of the team skirts around the "we must bully the rookie" and "The new guy miraculously comes in and solves stuff" plotlines. But I was talking about Pembleton. I like the mentions that he is their best guy, I like his rant to someone whose name I forgot while looking for his car about being there and being resented. The other guy (who reads white to me) brushes it off, but that tension between being the best and the higher expectations that come from being black and being the best seem to inform everything Pembleton does without ever being the only thing about him.
I am particularly amazed by this; both the writers and the guy who plays Pembleton are doing a great job. Also, I love the little details -- how Pembleton is the one most formally dressed, probably because of aforementioned tension.
And all this in just three episodes!
There was an interesting side note on PC-ness and calling the Italian guy "salami" that I couldn't quite figure out; I wasn't sure if the writers were arguing that PC-ness was stupid or that the guy was wrong or both, as I was bitching at my short-row sock toe at that point.
And though they haven't been confronting gender issues as much, it's still there. Much like Pembleton, you sense that the female cop is completely aware of the fact that she's the only woman on the team and what that entails, even as that isn't all of her character. I'm particularly liking her relationship with her partner, who sometimes reads as skeevy but sometimes isn't, and the way a small storyline that could have been stupid "blah blah female intuition blah blah" played out.
Actually, I have been really enjoying how almost all the stories are playing out; they are intelligent and subvert tropes and expectations without rubbing the viewers' faces in it.
Anyway, now I am sad there were only 3 eps. on that disc, because I want to watch more. So far, this is very good, and I'm very impressed.
no subject
Frank Pembleton is a *great* character. He's smart and complicated and difficult, and the partnership that develops betweeen Pembleton and Bayliss over the years is a thing of beauty.
As several people already mentioned, the show is based on the book written by David Simon, who spent a year in the Baltimore police department. Many of the characters are based on real detectives on the division, which is one of the many things that contributed to how authentic the characters come across. If I recall, the lieutenant Gee is based on was Italian and white, but they cast Yaphet Kotto in the role anyway because he was so good. Did you catch that rather supercilious-looking black superior officer who was giving Giardello a hard time about Pembleton being a rookie? That's Captain Barnfather. He's a recurring character you'll see, and he's smart and ambitious and more of a politician than a cop, and you get to see him and Giardello and Pembleton in the same room arguing, and it's three intelligent black men butting heads about things that do not appear to be immediately race-related, but the issue of the race is there in the background *all the time* and the show doesn't let us forget it. I love that.
The whole "salami" thing was played for laughs, with Lewis (the lighter-skinned black cop) riling Crosetti up (the bald Italian cop obsessed with the Lincoln assassination.) It came across as something that could easily happen in a real police squad -- cops making fun of one other and being non-PC, but I thought there was a difference between how Lewis treated Crosetti (with exasperated affection) and how Felton treated Pembleton (with resentment) and Felton's attitude had an ugly racist tinge to it. It's a class thing, too. Pembleton is clearly better-educated than Felton, who's not a bad cop, but he comes from a working class Irish-American family with lots of siblings and a brood of children of his own and the dude's got an inferiority complex. It's nicely complex.
Kay Howard = awesome. I love her.
I'm so happy you're enjoying the show!
no subject
Rachel had mentioned the casting thing with Gee, which was nifty when she described it and even more awesome the way it played out on screen.
Howard has been very cool so far.
Also... Pembleton love!