Chalk Revelations

Rolin and Co. do not give a fuck about optics when it comes to the writing of this show. They do not care about fandom tantrums or backlash, or anything else, when it comes to the writing of this show.

Rolin said he and AMC are prepared for people to drop the show. That was not a bluff. He talked about this all the way back after Season 1.

For Rolin, he is adapting the books, first and foremost. He is looking at the story, first and foremost.

And in that adaptation, they will make changes for things they think work better in a visual medium, and so that some characters who got sidelined in the books will be more active and have fuller/more connected character arcs (Louis, Daniel).

But as I said before the season started, people really have to take off the rose-colored glasses regarding what this show will or will not do going forward. Because if you really think they won't do something just because of optics, well...

The show will do it. It was always going to do it. Because, for Rolin and this particular adaptation, the characters' arcs and story clearly come first, above all else.

And none of those things have been changed just because Louis' race, or Armand's race, or Daniel's age are different from their counterparts in the books. Those things were always about adding things to the characters -- more layers, more depth, etc. But it never fundamentally changed them into completely different characters vis-à-vis their book counterparts.

Again, Louis was made a pimp to keep his character as one who exploited other people for profit, just like his book counterpart had been.

These things have all clearly been long thought about and planned when it comes to the broad strokes of where the characters are going, story arc-wise.

So yes, some things are going to happen, and were always going to happen. And the race and age changes were never going to change those things that are coming.

* * * * *

And as a side note? I think much of the surprise about all of this comes from people being used to dealing with shows that do care about "fan engagement" when it comes to their writing. I think many people thought that if they were just loud enough (or bullied enough, including bullying the writer's room right off Twitter), the show would totally do the things they wanted it to do.

And are now utterly confused that that tactic didn't work, and it is looking more and more like the show is going to do the things some have been screaming for four years that it better not do.

And that anyone who kept saying the show was very much going to do those things was not saying so because it was something they wished, or were being racist, ageist, or anything else; we just had a clear reading of the story and the signals the show was sending about where it was going with all of this.

So yeah, it's all coming; it was always going to come to this, and there is no way to stop any of it.

And there never was.

And, as I've said, if fandom had been a different place, maybe nuanced discussions about all of this could have happened about it all before now.

Oh well.

In the scene where Smoke teaches the young girl how to negotiate, they're standing in front of of a cafe. The shot of them negotiating is framed so that you see a sign in the cafe window advertising a Ham and Eggs breakfast - in other words, a full meal - for 25 cents. The editing makes sure to put that sign back into frame whenever the question of the value of money arises in their discussion.

Smoke offers her 10 cents a minute and asks if that works for her. She says yes. He says no, it does not and tells her to negotiate higher. The 25 cent sign is framed in the shot when he tells her no, reminding us *why* it's not a good value.

She comes back with 50 cents - which the sign has informed us is the cost of *two* meals. Smoke tells her that's too much and counters with 20, which is just under a full meal but we now know that's a fairly respectable price because we just got the high/low contrast of 10 being too little and 50 being too much.

The negotiation ends with her getting 20 cents per minute and we now know 1) 25 cents is the cost of a filling meal in this environment 2) This girl only needs to do five minutes of work to be able to feed herself for a over day (20 cents per minute times five is a dollar, which is four meals) 3) Smoke has the kind of money to throw around that over a day's worth of food for someone can be to him - as it is to our modern eyes - mere pocket change and 4) Smoke's the kind of person who can both be a violent gangster but also care about teaching this girl how to look out for herself so that one day maybe she too can throw over a day's worth of food around like pocket change.

Combined with 5) you can now use that 25 cents = a meal to do the math every other time money gets mentioned in the movie to understand just how much cash the Smoke Stack boys are dealing with.