[keybored]

I love unions in American fictional media. The Wire seasons two is centered around the dockworkers who take bribes and are arguing about how corrupt they should be (I’m biased since it’s the most boring season by far). Ozark features a union on the periphery which is introduced by a man carjacking a truck and kneecaping the driver with a shotgun. Can’t wait to see what’s up next.

[kadoban]

> I’m biased since it’s the most boring season by far

That season has really grown on me over time and rewatches. It has a lot of great character work on Omar, Avon, Stringer, McNulty, Prezbo, Freeman, etc.; Ziggy, Nick, Sobotka is peak tragedy with a lot of fun along the way.

You may be right that it's not as exciting as other seasons, but I personally would call it boring and it sets up and deepens _so_ much of what comes after.

[AtlasBarfed]

Well, the kicker about how boring the season is so they kept redirecting to the drug gangs rather than the purported focus of the season

[kadoban]

Every season in The Wire is a mix of new and old groups of characters (except the first of course). Is s2 really notably extra focused on s1 characters? If it is I didn't notice, though I can't say I've counted either.

[dylan604]

Season 2 helps explain how the drugs come into the city. It shows how the cops get reassigned to hammer on which ever nail is currently sticking its head up once they've hammered the current one back down. It shows how nails can work their way free and pop their heads back up requiring the attention of the hammer again. If only the cops could figure out how to use screws instead.

[bryik]

Don't forget the classic film On the Waterfront. Considered one of the greatest movies ever made and adapted from "Crime on the Waterfront," a 24-article series by the New York Sun's Malcolm Johnson that received the second prize ever awarded for Local Reporting, in 1949.

> In a vocation where loss of limb (and even life) was not uncommon, prospective workers — in a field disproportionately comprised of working-class African-Americans and whites of Italian and Irish descent who did not benefit from the upward mobility of the G.I. Bill — were forced to offer kickbacks to syndicate representatives at the daily "shape-up," in which prospective workers were forced to compete against each other to secure work irrespective of union membership. At any time, workers could be virtually blacklisted from subsequent employment for arbitrary purposes in the union's "blue books," their jobs often requisitioned by members of the syndicate who were completing prison sentences.

https://www.pulitzer.org/article/underworld-syndicate-malcol...

[jen20]

Thanks for the reminder - I’ve been meaning to watch this for a decade now!

[ahepp]

There's some interesting background the movie as well, with Elia Kazan's testimony to anti-communist tribunals in the US.

Plus it has an incredible score.

[readams]

It's not just fictional media. https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-vcrs/infiltrated-l....

[readyman]

Yeah, just ask the DOJ!?!?!? Is this supposed to be a joke? Unions in the US have been corrupt ever since the Taft Hartley act kneecapped them, but it's absurd to take the DOJ's word for any of this.

[triceratops]

> I’m biased since it’s the most boring season by far

Heresy!

[dylan604]

I love that season. The most boring season to me is the 5th season where they jumped the shark and the stupid journo. I really like the "Greek" and his crew, especially Vandos. His line about "why can't they just kick the ball with their feet" cracks me up with his confusion over basketball.

But why do you seem to have this thing that union members are above committing crimes like those depicted you've called out? We know that unions are heavily influenced by organized crime. Why do you think that even if the union isn't controlled by OC, why would you think individual members wouldn't be susceptible to working side hustles?

[keybored]

I don’t think that unions or union members are above that. I think it’s funny that they are consistently portrayed that way in the media.

[dylan604]

and why might that be? because your normal day to day person that pays their dues, goes to work, gets paid is a boring story. there's no news there. there's no there there. union member gets caught committing a crime while using their position in the union or with the protection of the union is news and plenty of people find that interesting. nobody cares about some start up, but tell the story of how the startup became a rocketship to the moon because their founder created a bro culture that rewarded shady practices of using the information they collect on their users to try to make those reporting on the shady practices look bad, then you have a much more interesting story. There's never been a biopic made about the founders of Lyft, like for Uber. Never was a biopic made about Tom and MySpace like there was about the Zuck.

[keybored]

Okay fine. I was naive about the influence of organized crime on unions in America. And if you’re gonna make a union a central thing in a crime series (The Wire) then it doesn’t make sense for it to be “legit”.

[mezeek]

You skipped right over Sopranos