Gimpysoft

Good news: There is a Wire blog, Heaven and Here.

Bad news: The writers of the blog have HBO On Demand, so they’re watching the show one week ahead of us Satellite heads.

Guess I’ll have to read carefully. Hell, one of their first posts adresses this very topic:

What this also says is “fuck you, water-cooler,” and that’s another strange side-effect. Even for this blog, the challenge of drawing in the disparate viewers of The Wire will depend in part on how we can manage the expecations of those who have religiously watched the show at its appointed hour, those who snapped it off On-Demand at the earliest possible time, and those who have already downloaded the whole season.

As for “already downloaded the whole season”, believe me, I’ve tried. Apparently my pirate skillz are not what they once were, though. Still, it is somewhat annoying not being able to head over to Television Without Pity’s The Wire Thread to read and discuss the new episode. Really, the only day it’s safe to head over there and not worry about spoilers is Sunday night after the episode airs for real. From 10:00 Central until whenever the next episode shows up on On Demand (Midnight? I’m really not sure.), everybody is on the same page. After that, people are on scheduled dictated by their Television delivery systems.

Those with cable have the episode officially and legally whenever On Demand puts it up. You’d think that the illegal downloaders would be the next group to get it, but actually taking a look on a couple sites right now, only Season 4 Episode 1 is in the wild. There’s no reason people couldn’t video capture the On Demand episode and get it out on the Bittorrent sites, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I wonder why this is? Do they have some sort of ethics and not want the episode to be out there until it has at least aired once? I kind of doubt that. Is it a question of quality? The people who seed TV shows do seem to take pride in putting the best possible video out there, and I assume you wouldn’t get a HD signal On Demand.

Regardless, those of us without HBO On Demand won’t get the episodes until a week later. Another thing about that. I understand that it’s probably a technical limitation that keeps HBO On Demand from being offered via satellite. But NFL Sunday Ticket? That’s only available via DirecTV because of the NFL’s dumb exclusivity agreement. So it’s not any technical limitation that makes me choose between getting HBO On Demand and NFL Sunday Ticket, it’s a bunch of legal agreements between the NFL and DirecTV.

Which just kind of makes me feel like a sucker when I sign up for DirecTV so I can get Sunday Ticket and not have to go to a bar every Sunday because I don’t want to watch the home team. What about renters who can’t have dishes installed? Too bad, no NFL package for you. What about people without a good view of the southern sky? Too bad, no NFL package for you.

But back to the topic at hand.  There’s another The Wire resource over at Slate.  A few seasons ago they had psychiatrists write weekly about that season of The Sopranos.  This season they’re doing it with The Wire, and it’s going to start next Monday.  I remember really liking the Sopranos commmentary, so I think this’ll be fun to read as well.  I wonder who they’re going to get to do commentary… Teachers?  Police?  Former drug dealers?  Also, why hasn’t Heather had anything to say yet?

One last thing…  A friend was in the DC area for a wedding last week, and brought me back some Baltimore souvenirs.  I now have a nice Baltimore shot glass and a bag of peanuts seasoned with Old Bay that were so good I’ve already found another source for them.  Thanks Jen!