It’s interesting HBO picked up the eight-episode show, which I hope was due to an interest in the rising creative class and DIY movement in this country. It’s also interesting that HBO is acquiring web-originated content, because I’ve been surprised by HBO’s lack of a cohesive online strategy. I say this not just as an outsider who’s disappointed whenever I visit their website or try to watch their content online — or as someone who wondered what they were going to do with HBO Lab (answer: nothing) — but also as someone who’s pitched an online project to them twice. Exhibit A is their whack embedded player:

I tried to resize it, but HBO’s technology hasn’t caught up to 2007. Impressive, guys. Instead, here’s the YouTube version:

The Neistat Brothers airs on HBO every Friday at midnight.

Has anyone seen the show? What do you think?

I watched this episode on TV and, in terms of the DSLR cinematography, thought they did a terrific job –specifically in how they control highlights (the overhead spotlight that roams most of the episode is totally convincing as a helicopter spotlight, yet the scene is always perfectly exposed and the bluish light rarely blows out to “electronic white”). Their camera switch was justified by the cramped underground setting of the episode (although I thought they could’ve gotten even more claustrophobic with the DSLR). From a writing standpoint, the episode also delivers, as the crux of House’s character is that his dickishness makes him a better doctor. What would be worse, then — being a bastard and being right, or compromising and being wrong?

After you’ve watched the episode here — or if you caught it on TV — let me know your thoughts. How did it look to you?

From Michael saying, “you look good, girl” just before taking a life, to Frank lamenting at the docks, “we used to make stuff in this country, now we just put our hands in the next guy’s pocket” there is no shortage of pullable soundbites that aren’t profanity-laced tirades (these aren’t really tirades, but “profanity-laced tirade” is such a common term it’s kind of hilarious).

To do The Wire more justice you’d have to pull some longer exchanges, such as these few I pulled from Bill Moyers Journal:

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: So for the time being, all teachers will devote class time to teaching language arts sample questions. Now if you turn to page eleven, please, I have some things I want to go over with you.

ROLAND “PREZ” PRYZBYLEWSKI: I don’t get it, all this so we score higher on the state tests? If we’re teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?

TEACHER: Nothing, it assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving. The scores stay down, they can’t.

PREZ: Juking the stats.

TEACHER: Excuse me?

PREZ: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and major become colonels. I’ve been here before.

TEACHER: Wherever you go, there you are.

Or:

NAMOND BRICE: Like y’all say, don’t lie, don’t bump, don’t cheat, don’t steal or whatever. But what about y’all? What, the government, Enron, steroids? Yeah, liquor business, booze– the real killer out there? And cigarettes, oh shit! You got some smokes in there?

FEMALE TEACHER: I’m trying to quit.

STUDENT 2: Drugs paid your salary, right?

HOWARD “BUNNY” COLVIN (an ex-narcotics detective): Not exactly, but I get your point.

NAMOND BRICE: We do the same thing as y’all, except when we do it, it’s like, “Oh my God, these kids is animals!” It’s like, it’s the end of the world coming. Man, that’s bullshit. ‘Cause this is like, what, hypocrite? Hypocritical.

Or:

HOWARD “BUNNY” COLVIN: You put a textbook in front of these kids, put a problem on a blackboard, or teach them every problem on a statewide test and it won’t matter, none of it. ‘Cause they’re not learning for our world, they’re learning for theirs. And they know exactly what it is they’re training for, and what it is everyone expects them to be.

SUPERINTENDENT: I expect them to be students.

COLVIN: But it’s not about you or us, or the tests or the system, it’s what they expect of themselves. I mean, every single one of them know they’re headed back to the corners. Their brothers and sisters, shit, their parents, they came through these same classrooms, didn’t they? We pretended to teach them, they pretended to learn, where’d they end up? Same damn corners. They’re not fools, these kids. They don’t know our world, but they know their own. I mean, Jesus, they see right through us.

To really do The Wire justice, just watch the whole show. A few times. Available on DVD.