Jim and Marty

[bjobsessed]

maggiethecat said:

It has always amused me that Marty damns Jim for not being a team player. Apart from getting along with Tom (and who wouldn't?), is Marty really a team player? Fisk certainly doesn't seem to think so.

I don't think so either. If he was, he would have known when to quit with all the comments. Part of being a team is at least trying to get along. He never did for a lot of the series. He had his moments, but on the whole...not really. (Until Doggone anyway).

As far as the disability thing goes, when that's your life, you learn to deal with it. I did a long time ago. It is what it is and people are people. I think Jim was learning that by the end. I think he was realizing that if he didn't try so hard that it would happen naturally.

And I also agree that Marty or anyone else for that matter would be intimidated by Jim and the fact that he is obviously very good at what he does.

[bjobsessed]

I probably would have told Jim to get over it. Stop trying to be better that everyone else and just do your job like you always did. I think he needed some "tough love" himself in the beginning (like he gave to Pete). If he'd come in quietly and done his job, it might have lessened some of Marty's hostility. Then again, after seeing the way Jim solved cases, maybe not.

[mlm828]

bjobsessed said:

I don't disagree with you, but I always wondered if Jim would have had the "bull in a china shop" attitude if he hadn't been blind.
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I know Jim was pushing too hard to prove himself and Marty was probably pushing too hard the other way, but I've done the same thing. You want to be accepted so you try too hard and therefore create the very problems you're trying to avoid. I kind of think that's what Jim did. Of course, I think Marty would have given him a bit of a hard time no matter what just because he was Marty.

You're absolutely right; Jim's blindness is a big reason for his "bull in a china shop" approach. As he told Lyman in the Pilot, he has to try harder than everyone else. I think Jim is a hard charger by nature, but the need to prove himself because of his blindness made him even more of a hard charger. And you are also absolutely right that Jim's efforts to prove himself provoked at least some of Marty's actions. I've never felt that the Jim-Marty conflict was a one-way street.

bjobsessed said:

Some of the things I'm going to say now don't pertain to Marty, but you never know what he may have been thinking sometimes.

Alot of people think the disabled should "stay with their own kind," that we're dumb because a part of our body doesn't work, we're deaf and therefore shout (Glen Semple), are like a piece of glass that will break if touched, and can only get jobs stuffing envelopes to name a few.

I second maggie's comments about having to deal with such people.

I don't think we know enough to conclude, one way or another, whether Marty is one of them. However, if he were one of them, I don't think he would have told Jim that he'd earned his place in the squad. On the other hand, he didn't say this until the last episode, and he could have learned from working with Jim during the preceding four months.

Oops! More posts crossed in the ether. This was written before reading bjobsessed's two preceding posts.

[bjobsessed]

I think Marty's attitude was a bit of both, although we'll never know. He probably had to grudgingly admit that Jim was good at what he did and that he was not as much of a liability as he first thought.

Like I said, if Jim had been a little quieter, some of the hosility probably could have been avoided.

I never take the "I'm gonna prove myself" routine. I just do whatever I can for myself. If I'm asked if I need help and I don't, I politely say no. I only ask when I absolutely need it. Whatever people are thinking disappears over time as they realize that I'm no different that they are.

Sometimes people act nasty and ignorant because they are afraid of what they don't know or understand. Never thought of this before, but do you think Marty was a bit afraid/nervous to have Jim around?

No matter what you think, if Jim and Marty hadn't conflicted so much, we wouldn't have had those great scences in the locker room.

[maggiethecat]

bjobsessed said:

Like I said, if Jim had been a little quieter, some of the hosility probably could have been avoided.

I never take the "I'm gonna prove myself" routine. I just do whatever I can for myself. If I'm asked if I need help and I don't, I politely say no. I only ask when I absolutely need it. Whatever people are thinking disappears over time as they realize that I'm no different that they are.

Sometimes people act nasty and ignorant because they are afraid of what they don't know or understand. Never thought of this before, but do you think Marty was a bit afraid/nervous to have Jim around?

What great questions and points to chew over! And thank you, bjobsessed, for sharing a truly valuable prespective on this issue for us.

First of all, is Marty nervous being around Jim because, somehow, the blindness makes him nervous? I come down on the "no" side of this one. I think it's Jim's abilities as a detective that freak Russo out! Does Marty seem the least bit intimidated when, in the first locker room confrontation, he hits Jim with his "belling the squad" plan, and then, when Jim tells him he's not going anywhere . . . Marty stares right into Jim's eyes with all the hostility he can muster and says,"Good luck with that." So yeah, I don't Marty is nervous about the disability as much as he's nervous about Jim, in any shape or form.

I also think you're right in that Jim exacerbates his problems in the early episodes by pushing, by trying to hard, by -- as Russo says -- always having to "be the guy." But when Karen finally calls him on always acting like he's got something to prove, his terse, blunt response says it all. "I do."

And he really does have something to prove, not only to the department he sued and his co-workers, but also to his doubtful wife. And, above all, to himself. "If it turns out I can't do the job, I'll leave," he says to Fisk that first day. So, basically, the sword hanging over his head is one he put there himself.

So, yeah, he pushes. Can't say that I blame the guy.

[doobrah]

We have to remember, too, that Marty's attitude is colored by the very public battle in the news of Jim trying to get his job back. Despite having everybody's back at the bank and paying the price, we are told that Jim's reinstatement was politically motivated so the mayor could be re-elected. Based on that alone, who wouldn't be skeptical whether he could do the job when he walks in the new precinct. So Jim has to fight two perceptions: the attitude that he can't do the job blind, and he's there only as a favor to the mayor.

Conversely, if Jim had survived the bank unscathed and was transferred to the 88th as a detective with seniority, would Marty push so hard? Would Jim push so hard? Probably no on both counts.

[bjobsessed]

doobrah said:

We have to remember, too, that Marty's attitude is colored by the very public battle in the news of Jim trying to get his job back. Despite having everybody's back at the bank and paying the price, we are told that Jim's reinstatement was politically motivated so the mayor could be re-elected. Based on that alone, who wouldn't be skeptical whether he could do the job when he walks in the new precinct. So Jim has to fight two perceptions: the attitude that he can't do the job blind, and he's there only as a favor to the mayor.

Conversely, if Jim had survived the bank unscathed and was transferred to the 88th as a detective with seniority, would Marty push so hard? Would Jim push so hard? Probably no on both counts.

Forgot about the polictical aspect. Marty probably looked at Jim as a charity case and wondering why they were the ones that had to get stuck with him. After all, he's only here because it's an election year and everybody admires him but feels sorry for him at the same time.

Even if that was the only reason Jim was given his job, the end result is the same: a chance to prove he could still do his job. I'd push too if I was him--just not in such a bold forceful way.