Since I am addicted to On Demand, I’ve been watching this HBO series the last couple of weeks. I’m on the early part of Season Three; Season Four is supposed to begin in September. Has anyone seen this?
I have to say that overall, I’m really liking it. It’s basically a cop show set in Baltimore, focused on a special detail that tracks medium to large cases. Season one was about cracking a drug circuit (which is still ongoing), the second season was a port investigation, and the third is also drug-related but has widened to treat city government corruption.
I started watching this because a student of mine recommended it to me (I do listen to my students too much). It actually paid off. The show is well-written and complex in dealing with intricacies of the police, the courts, the city govt, and the various criminal organizations. The show is not simply about good vs. evil, although the allegiance lies more with the cops. All the details of how the investigations are conducted are incredibly fascinating (the phone taps, wires, etc.) but the show is also very interesting on race, gender, and sexuality. The drug dealers are mostly black, but in season two an international criminal set-up led by “The Greek” (who isn’t really Greek and of unspecified European origin) smuggles women, drugs, and other high-end goods using port workers who are mostly of Polish origin. Race is also significant among the police, since for instance only the black cops can be undercovers in a drug operation. Another fascinating element is sexuality; my favorite character is Omar, who is a kind of Robinhood character that steals from drug dealers. He is by no means a “good” character, since he would kill if it’s necessary. And by the way he sleeps with men, although the question of whether he’s “gay” or not hasn’t really come up.
This is in some ways very similar to “The Sopranos,” especially the storylines dealing with the drug dealers. It made me wonder why it hasn’t caught on in the same way. Anyway, I recommend it highly.
I very much like The Wire. I initially did not watch the first season because it looked like a ‘Law and Order’ police procedural from the previews, and even the title implies smart police catching the bad guys. But Reynolds turned me on to the show, and I subsequently watched all three series.
If I had to pick a similar show, I think I pick Deadwood rather than Sopranos because the language is so important to The Wire. There are simply astonishing exchanges among the drug dealers — one of the best being when one is explaining chess to another and describing what each chess piece does in terms of neighborhood power and hierarchy — both at street level and between the leaders of the rival gangs. And then there are a whole set of wonderful performances, esp. Stinger Bell, Omar, Bodie and Bubbles. As you see in season 3, the tension between Stringer and Avon captures the conflict between a certain glamor of low level drug dealing and violence, and a capitalist-oriented focus upon money only and insulating oneself from the streets.
The cops are a little less interesting to me, though there are again some great performances. I also thought the local union leader in season 2 was one of the best drawn TV characters since Tony Soprano: a mess of conflicting impulses, good, bad, anguished.
Anyway, a year in which you get 13 episodes of The Sopranos, followed by 13 of Deadwood and then 13 of The Wire, is a pretty good TV year.
The NYTimes had a piece comparing “The Wire” to a novel; I think its density of descriptive and moral fervor regarding the tangled networks of social power easily makes the show the best social novel written in America in the last ten years. (And before that I might lean toward Richard Price, who served as a writer this last season and was an inspiration the previous.)
The show’s creator, David Simon, is also the guy behind “Homicide” and “The Corner,” both of which began as book-length investigative journalism, and both of which were great reading and then great tv. (The first season of “Homicide” is straight out of his book; thereafter, it goes its own way.) There’s also a great article from the Times about the complexities and tensions of race in representation written during the filming of “The Corner.”
But I’m getting all good-for-you–the show ain’t merely didactic, right? It’s slowly mesmerizing; once you get its rhythms (of plot, of character, of language as Chris notes), it’s hard to turn it off.
I’ve read the fourth season takes on the education system; I’m not really sure how nor is it clear who is returning and who is not (the final episode of season three had closure written all over it) but I’m in. I have to admit it took me a while to get into season one with its adament refusal to supply necessary exposition to the uninitiated as well as its unwillingness to differentiate characters through easily grasped performance gestures, etc. And it does juggle upwards to twenty morally ambiguous chracters, not all of whom appear episode to episode. But once you lock into the narrative, its an all-consuming vortex of pleasure.
Thanks to Jeff, I’m now entirely caught up in season 4. I’m terrified about what will happen in the last (or last 2?) episode(s). Buried in the great, great discussion that’s lasted all season on Slate, between Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James (2 other big fans), one of them quoted Simon as saying that “this season is to take argument with those who feel that if you’re born without privilege, but make the right set of choices, that you will be spared. To do away with that bit of national mythology.”
I don’t think there’s a better television show on now. I think this has been the best of the year, and put the seasons together and The Wire may be the best show ever on television.
And in the next, final season, I hear Simon, the former journalist, wants to turn the show’s excoriation of institutional failings toward the press.
I agree. This series is very strong, and each episode is building. Sunday’s (the penultimate episode) is full of foreboding. The contrast in the lives and attitudes of the four school friends, from first episode to most recent is dramatic, and “the new Michael” is terrifying. Almost every moment and every subplot is gripping. My only regret is the limited use made of McNulty and Griggs.
The final episode lives up to the season but that’s all I’m gonna say.
Nice.
A long and perhaps overly uncritical New Yorker profile of David Simon led me back to ‘The Wire’ recently. I’m watching all four seasons, trying for one episode a night, in preparation for Season 5 in January (the Season 4 DVD is released in early December). I finished Season One and just started Season Two. The novel analogy that Reynolds mentioned above is spot on, and as the seasons progress, and the cast of characters expands, I’m in awe of the way the writers keep all the balls in the air while simultaneously providing a compelling central storyline. Is there another show with as large and strong a cast of black actors?
I don’t usually encourage or laud cultural representations of political economy in my classes, but I told the students in my urban political economy class to use the writers’ strike to introduce themselves to ‘The Wire.’ A bunch of them held a marathon viewing over Friday night and Saturday and the online class discussion board indicates that they seemed to really dig it. And of course you get to discuss race… There is a lovely exchange early in the second season when Herc tells Greggs that the white drug dealers he is dealing with are so much worse organized and security conscious than the Barksdale crew that different police rules should apply to them. “Affirmative action?” Greggs replies.
i won’t read this thread for the protection of my viewing pleasure, but i did read this latest comment of yours, chris, and, what a coincidence, we have been cramming the wire, season 1, though for the first time. we finally got on the bandwagon. hard to say anything intelligent (or not) yet — i wonder if anyone could after season 1 — but, wow, what a discovery. took me only 4 years.
i do wonder, though, what you mean by “I don’t usually encourage or laud cultural representations of political economy in my classes.” or maybe i simply don’t understand why. what do you teach, chris? you are not a lit professor, are you? i always assumed you were. and why watch the wire in connection to the writers’ strike?
Gio, I’m flattered that you’d think I am a literature professor, but no, I teach political science and I think it shows in my sentence construction. The only link to the writers’ strike is that there is less other stuff on TV at the moment (Colbert, Stewart, etc.) so why not fill your TV viewing needs with watching The Wire?
BTW, I heard from an organizer with the WGA that Jon Stewart strongly opposed the strike, and even held a captive meeting of writers, while Stephen Colbert declared his support for the strike and even signed up as head writer to show that support. I love Colbert.
as an aside on the writer’s strike, the collateral damage is being suffered by the production crews on shows, who’ve mostly been laid off for the duration of the strike. actors are apparently offering to help writers out with expenses in an act of solidarity. hopefully, someone will spare a thought for production staff who earn far less.
back to the wire: i’ve actually been cramming my way through the show as well, courtesy hbo ondemand’s replaying of all 4 seasons in preparation for the last. i’m done with the first two seasons and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the third in the cablebox buffet tomorrow. i like the show a lot as well, but perhaps because of sunhee’s relentless advocacy of it over the last year (she started watching it before me) i think my expectations were so high that even a show this good couldn’t quite meet them. i liked the first season a lot; the second, while also good, seemed to trade in too many of the same narrative rhythms.
the bigger problem with my response, as diagnosed by sunhee, is that i am revealed to be a sucker for character-driven shows. i just don’t find the characters on the show to be that interesting. sunhee points out that the show is avoiding the desire for individual story and focussing relentlessly on systematic corruption. i completely get that and laud it, but too many of the characters seem too one-note (and one-expression). i don’t mean to set up a bogus “sopranos vs. the wire” scenario, but just one paulie walnuts or little carmine would have been great.
but this is a minor quibble. it is a great, great show, and i’m sorry to be discovering it only as it is about to end.
i should like to echo arnab’s perplexity. is it possible that a show like the wire may gain from being watched in weekly spurts rather than episode after episode night after night? it’s good and it’s riveting, but if i didn’t see one more episode my heart would not break.
simon told me that i feel this way because they last two episodes of the first season (that’s where we are at) are less compelling than the previous ones (they needed to pull in loose threads).
but maybe, like arnab, i long for characters i can fall in love with, and, let me tell you, jimmy mcnulty ain’t one of them (though bunk and freamon are great).
That’s interesting. I do find it utterly compelling (I haven’t opened a Netflix envelope since I started watching). I wonder about the quality of the characters. Certainly if you look at the police, I agree. But if you look to the street, I find Omar, Bodie, Stringer Bell and Bubbles (and the union leader from season 2) all intricately-drawn and sympathetic characters.
stringer bell is amazingly cool, and omar my favorite character, easily. i’m liking d’angelo a lot, too, especially the way he walks. but also the way he struggles.
gio, i had to go through a 2 week drought between season 2 and season 3 on hbo ondemand. i was very impatient. i agree with you about mcnulty.
i think sunhee’s critique of my response is a good one. there is a way in which television (or other) narratives that focus on characters, rather than systems as composite characters, participate in a kind of ideological masking. and i do also agree that there are many compelling characters here. so, i don’t really know why i’m not as in love with this show as i was with the sopranos.
but can i express my annoyance at constant lauding of this show’s alleged novelistic pleasures? why the hell is that a worthy thing in and of itself? and it isn’t as though there is only one kind of novel either. is this a kind of nostalgia for a particular kind of novel/narrative–really, the 19th century english novel? middlemarch on the streets of baltimore. now, i love middlemarch but i like crime and punishment and beckett too.
would you, or sunhee through you, or sunhee herself, expand of the ideology behind this masking?
systems over individuals is sunhee; the ideological masking part is me. i clarify this so that mike may aim his apoplexy appropriately.
to put it reductively: investment in characters may stand in for an obsession with a libidinal narrative of the individual, as opposed to of the social systems that connect and bind individuals. the wire leans towards the latter, quite consciously subverting our desire to follow characters around and burrow deeper into them–mcnulty gets shunted off to the sidelines in season 2, an entire cast disappears in season 3 etc.. (sorry if these are general spoilers.)
I’m with you, on that stuff. I think Sunhee’s argument about systems is fantastic and apt. Your stuff on masking I can take or leave, but I’m willing to play nice since Sunhee won’t post and I have to rely on you to get her excellent ideas.
I will push back on the novel thing. I will throw out this claim: novels can be about social systems in ways that films cannot (perhaps Berlin Alexanderplatz refutes this claim, but–hey wait, that was a tv movie) and television really could but … well, rarely (never?) does.
What makes The Wire stand out for me as novelistic–in the sweeping-social-milieu-sort-of-novel way is that by season 4, we’ve got a constellation of characters who fascinate me/us but do not stand apart from or outside the show’s relentless concern with the manifold facets of “the game.” (McNulty a case in point; he changes and then moves to the sidelines, as you’ve already noted.) Further, by season 3 it becomes clear that the first two seasons, which did adhere more to a year-long arc and a sense of ‘central’ narrative, have trained us to read every subtle cue in the way a character talks, to see parallels across very disparate sorts of professions…. as Sunhee says, to read the socioeconomic and political and rhetorical system called Baltimore (or America).
You’re right that there are many kinds of things we call a novel–but my point is that this kind of thing (engagement with systems and institutions) is particularly suited to that genre…
okay, season 4, which i’ve just finished, convinced me: this is the best dramatic series i’ve ever watched anywhere. (i qualify “dramatic” as it would be unfair to set this up against the benny hill show.) and having caught up, i buy mike’s thesis about the show’s novelistic structure; or rather, how novels and long-arc television series can do similar things that shorter-form genres/mediums cannot. is any of simon’s other stuff worth watching?
I’m just starting season 4 myself, but I also agree. It’s a remarkable thing, and I havent seen anything else on TV like it (or the movies).
That it got through 5 seasons with a low profile and low ratings says some good things about HBO. Still, I can’t help wondering how much richer the fifth season would have been with a 15 episode series rather than 12. (I think season 4 was also shortened?)
Also, it seems a lot of people I know are coming around to this show now and becoming fervent admirers. Maybe the overdue end to Sopranos brought a batch of people over to the Wire side?
Also, watched Pirates 3 last night. There needs to be a 60 minute re-edit of this film excising any scene not containing Johnny Depp. Some nice effects, but an utter waste of time.
there’s going to be a sixth season, and it’s going to be a comedy!
According to a number of sites (I haven’t checked yet), season five episodes of “The Wire” begin tonight on HBO On Demand (sans laugh-track I assume). All episodes will appear on the Monday before the “official” release the following Sunday. So get your Wire on for New Years!
I checked; it’s on!
I just finished season four and since I don’t have HBO, that’s it for me until the just started season 5 hits DVD, sometime in the future. I am no longer amazed at how good this show is, I have simply gotten used to its quality at this point, but it did manage to throw me for a loop in the final couple of episodes. Nothing’s safe here.
I’m probably wrong, but I seem to remember that the first scene of the first episode is in the courtyard of the Towers with Bodie talking to a recently freed D’Angelo. Is that right? Oh well. Crushing stuff.
d’angelo dies in season 2, so i’m not sure what you’re watching.
This season actually starts with McNulty shadowed by a younger, cooler cop named Chachi. Other than that, I’m HBOless.
Jeff, Arnab–help a poor man with a cassette….?
yo mike, you’re welcome to come down here anytime for an ondemand marathon.
Will do! I’m on sabbatical, home from NY in a couple days–maybe I’ll just move into your basement. Stock up on booze and cheese popcorn.
Mike, you are always welcome at my home on a Sunday night, but I’m a DVR man these days so no tapes. You have broadband; just torrent the damn thing. Very easy. I’ll come over and show you.
Arnab: what part of FIRST EPISODE are you unclear on?
My point is that Bodie was the there at the very beginning and seemed more of a barometer for the “blue collar” drug dealer than anyone else. It was Bodie who railed about the destruction of the towers at the beginning of season 3, and as he said in the arboretum with McNutty, he was never short on the count… damn.
Yeah, I miss Bodie too. He was right there on that couch in the towers in the first episode and I would have liked to see him still hanging out on some corner, with a scowl on his face, spitting out of the side of his mouth, at the end of season 5. Blue collar is right because, like countless US industrial workers, he had a ground-level view as his particular industry was subject to corporate takeovers, changes in technology, and profit squeezes. It appears that soldiers are as disposable as industrial workers.
I’m finally up to speed–without HBO, I’m finding my way to the episodes through (ahem) alternate channels.
Quickly zipping through the first 3 episodes, it struck me that they seemed far more schematic in their plotting. For instance, ep. 2, someone is having a conversation about Marlo, next scene we cut to Marlo. On top of that, there seems to be some heavy weather being mapped in the various storylines — ‘big’ stories dependent on plot in ways that seemed a break from the patterns of previous seasons. (We got a lying-ass reporter, McNulty faking murders, etc.) It’s not to say that we’re not still watching a story centered on ‘the game,’ the City, the systems which trap ALL of the characters. But it seemed surprisingly … well, generic. Well-written, but a shift…?
It hit me though, in episode 3, that two of the central storylines have a neat slant rhyme to them. The reporter Scott is cooking stories, at the cost of substantive reporting on “context,” while McNulty is cooking stories on dead homeless guys to produce some upstairs attention to shit that really matters. Storytelling. (And this series, for all of its cult status and critical acclaim, has yet to be nominated for an emmy, has yet to win big ratings, hasn’t caught fire….. its stories too convoluted, too demanding, too contextual.) Are they playing a game on us, “giv[ing] the people what they want”?
What if this season is not just adding newspapers to the systemic critique at which the show excels; what if this season is also getting a bit meta-, getting at how we (Americans?) seek something from our stories/narratives which undermines our ability to engage substantively with the world? What if this season is about the uses and abuses of (too-simple) stories?
Is “The Wire” season 5 riffing on the problem of narrative in American culture?
[And–sure–I’m pleased to see Omar on deck. I still choke watching Bubbles, as the excellent Andre Royo continues to hit me emotionally. I love the pleasures of these plots and these characters. But “The Wire” is most astounding, for me, in the way it has for 4 seasons been a show where individual characters of necessity–as in real life–do not drive the narrative. It is a show about social structures and systems, and people trapped in them. The show has resisted giving us the story we want, the ‘human interest’ of the kid in the wheelchair trying to find money for the game, the too-simple reduction of our multiple failures into one bad-luck or bad-ass protagonist. The show’s fucking heroic ambition is to tell a story of society. So, I’m rambling–but this gets at why I think there’s some kind of signal difference to this season, that isn’t merely Simon getting pissy.]
There are like five or six narratives being juggled–complex narrative threads and juggled quite well–and only two of them seem to comment on each other (the story fabrications in the newshouse and the policehouse). I understand your desire for something more (it does seem to be a bit symmetrical though, so far, I’m less critical about what’s happening three episodes in than you are), but time will tell if there is some meta-critique on “the problem of narrative in American culture” at work. It’s also their final season. I don’t think this show’s going to end with a cut to black and a blast of Journey. Then again, I’m pretty damn certain there will be no bows and ribbons.
i am sorry to say that the first three episodes have left me cold. i have to remind myself, however, that each season takes 3-4 episodes to really hit its stride. so maybe there’s hope yet.
i think omar is going down. i think this season will showcase the fall of all the loose cannons, trying to operate with a notion of ethics outside the system or on its margins: mcnulty, lester, omar. simon has to kill our romantic expectations the way scorsese does at the end of gangs of new york.
meanwhile, mike is denying his love of the characters on this show only because it will hurt his thesis about the show’s emphasis on narrative. he’s slippery like that–a veritable commissioner burrell of interpretation.
still watching season 4. it’s very hard not to read this thread. in anyone else in awe of felicia pearson (snoop, the psycho butch killer)? what a character! (please don’t tell me if she gets killed. not that i care). she plays herself! gee whiz.
she’s still alive and dangerously alluring . . . for what that’s worth
okay, i’m five episodes in and not really hooked yet. there’re only five to go.
and it looks like i’m right about the downfall of the mavericks and the eventual survival of the corrupt old-guard, even as they’re supplanted by a new amoral breed.
Yeah, I’m five in and though there was some excitement following ep 5.3, I am now officially disappointed by many of the plot threads. It all feels a bit too symmetrical this time around.
I have ONLY watched up to episode 3 so far. I didn’t have time to track down ep. 4 on the net.
Then someone told me that the LA Times announced – in the headline – what the major plot point was of episode 4.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/vignettes/la-times-seemingly-unfamiliar/
you are guys are watching this online?!? how???? can someone kindly email me and tell me? (if the info is above, sorry, but i’m too scared to look).
Check your email, G. (And you others: mininova has up a torrent of the first seven episodes…. pretty good stuff, too.)
listen, plebs, i have hbo. and i have ondemand, which means i get my episodes a week early. don’t include me in your illegal activities. why, i have a good mind to set my buddies, the lawyers for the military-entertainment complex, on you.
Great post and follow-up comments on “The Wire” up at NYTimes, way better than Slate’s half-assed work this season. No spoilers, they’re just up through episode 4….
the slate gang are too obsessed with the depiction of the newspaper, but hey, it’s fair enough. whatever the reasons, this season so far is a huge let-down after the first four.
Okay: it’s not as good as season 4. Nothing is. I still find it pretty engrossing, and I love these characters, so that–even when an episode underwhelms–I’m pretty consistently entertained, moved, enlightened. This season actually reminds me of season 2, which also seemed more misses, fewer solid hits.
NO SPOILERS–
That said, as I have no will power I’ve watched through episode 7. Episode 5 has some oomph, and a great ending; episode 6 is really damn good, and I’m now ready to anoint Ed Burns the best writer on the staff. Ep. 7 was written by Richard Price, who I love, but I didn’t love the show–which suffered from the kind of overly-schematic, overly-familiar plotting some of us disparage above.
MINOR SPOILERS POSSIBLE:
But even in that episode, even when this season falls down or feels clunky, there’s a thesis–hell, a set of arguments–building real steam and force through each episode. It’s not just “symmetrical”, or generic, but I think I’ll go back to my point earlier: it’s slant rhyming. The reiterations (McNulty’s scheme so much like Bunny’s earlier scheme with a no-drug-war zone; McNulty become a kind of “boss” in the office as a result of his trick red ball; the doubled fiction-making of sneak reporter and anti-system cop) are part of the show’s Big Idea, and it is a Big one: the system, whatever maverick agent or idea comes along, will reproduce itself.
The Slate mob are not just obsessed with newspapers, they’re obsessed with THEIR ideas of journalism. The whole series seems so narcissistic, even as they complain about Simon’s narcissism in the newspaper plot. Meh.
you’ve watched through episode 7? only five have aired.
ah-i see that critics were sent the first 7 episodes in december. well, episodes 6 and 7 will soon be mine.
I’ve seen six episodes now and while in the past “The Wire” has been compared to a great novel (Dickens is often invoked); season five strikes me something lesser than the previous four (though I am in agreement with Mike when it comes to season two). Perhaps it is best to compare season five to a strong, complex yet accessible graphic novel.
the newspaper plot has indeed unhinged the slate reviewers. they’re now complaining that the show doesn’t do enough to emphasize the lives of black men who aren’t drug dealers. have they somehow not noticed just how large a percentage of the cops and politicos are black?
that said, that quibble does get to an inconsistency. one of the most moving points in the series was an episode or two ago when cutty gently tells dukie that there’s a world outside the street. dukie asks, “how do you get to the rest of the world from here?”; cutty responds, “i wish i knew”. but the show does have characters who’ve made that transition. so even if cutty doesn’t know, the show knows, and i think it might do a little more with that. it was at the heart of bunk’s confrontation with omar–it would have added texture for it to resurface in bunk’s conversation with randy in a recent episode (thanks to my compressed viewing i’ve completely lost track of what happened in which episode in which season).
I love how I’ve been part of the conversation without even posting. Yes, my ideas are damn good!
About season five (spoiler):
The first few episodes weren’t very exciting for me either, but now I am into it again. Arnab’s main problem with it, as he tells me, is that the serial killer stuff is too unbelievable–how could McNulty be so stupid, etc. My response to it is that it doesn’t need to be believable–believability is related to our desire for a logical foothold in the plot, and it’s also related to character–what one character does with a certain motive to propel the plot in a certain way. What I love about this season is that those links are severed–despite what McNulty and his double at the Sun intended, the story has its own legs. Essentially this season is about spin and hype–narrative engines of their own making.
The other part of this season–Omar and Bubs–is also interesting. Bubs’s transformation is more obvious, but I also think Omar is transforming. Arnab disagrees with me on this, I think, but Omar’s moral code is deteriorating (his injury a clear symbol of this). In episode 7, Omar killed the guy even though he didn’t need to; in fact, in the previous seasons he would not have killed him. Last time when things got personal, he went after Stringer Bell. Other than that, the game was mostly structural (he’s was just messing with the system before). So now, I actually see him adopting the code of the street, which has also transformed with Marlowe. (Stringer Bell started it, actually, despite Barksdale’s old school ways.) I guess I have less to say about Bubs’s transformation–but could these transformations be saying something about or contesting the idea of “getting to the rest of the world”? Where is the rest of the world any way? Don’t they already have other worlds close to them? This season does explore a different part of the city, where the homeless live, and Bubs manages to get there (from the kitchen to the dining room–this was about movement). Come to think of it, the news reporters also have to move in and out of different worlds–I am just thinking as I am writing this–but maybe the answer to dukie’s question is that there is no other world to get to–only other parts of the same world, that perhaps Bubs has managed to get to.
By the way, I like what your getting at with the following questions, Mike. I think they’re central to what this season is about:
“What if this season is not just adding newspapers to the systemic critique at which the show excels; what if this season is also getting a bit meta-, getting at how we (Americans?) seek something from our stories/narratives which undermines our ability to engage substantively with the world? What if this season is about the uses and abuses of (too-simple) stories?”
Omar’s code may be crumbling, but his superpowers are on the rise . . . still, no matter what he is able to accomplish with a game leg, his movements are swift, highly charged and specific. Plus, I’ve never seen Omar so determined to exact revenge. Hell, I’ll watch this character drink a slurpy! Nevertheless, I still think Mike’s desire that the show is self-reflexive in its determination to interrogate the spectator’s desire for proper (and banal) narrative closure says more about Mike’s need to maintain his love for the show than the show itself.
I think Jeff is a poopy.
Doesn’t have to be either/or, doesn’t have to be intended. I think The Wire’s unmistakably and explicitly dismissive of “Dickensian” storytelling, of the emphasis on personal stories. In fact, it’s almost a problem that the show was TOO explicit about its critique. And I think McNulty and Lester have had conversations about the allure of the serial killer, making that move explicitly meta- as well (even if also overdetermined).
I am repeating myself from a goodreads discussion, but: The serial-killer cop & reporter plotlines are thematically consistent, continue a through-line on Simon et al.’s thesis about systems and individuals[, as SunHee argues so well above]. Even in terms of narrative structure, I think the stories work well, work cleanly to make the argument. Unlike previous seasons, I think they are dramatically less interesting; this show’s always been masterful at complementing its journalistic argument with the best kind of focused, character-driven observation. The serial-killer plot line tilts the balance, emphasizing the former.
And the newspaper stuff fails not because of Simon’s weak point about the news but because we do not watch the work, we do not get inside the business of reporting the way we have with every other profession (slinging, policing, teaching, politicking, and scavenging for drug money). Instead, The Sun is a world reliant upon conventions we know, rather than a precise observation of how things are done. Which is a shame. I’ll cop to the show being weaker, perhaps weakest of the seasons, but–I still dig it. I like this thesis, and I buy the sociology and narratology of the writing, even if the character stuff has become thinner.
Next Sunday’s episode is pretty damn good. Many of our fears and frustrations are actually acknowledged and confronted, and, based on two specific scenes, I am now inclined to agree there may be some meta-critique at work in this season’s narrative arc. This was probably the first time I’ve enjoyed an episode this season from start to finish.
So? What do you think?
I had doubts about the season right up through episode 7, but the last 3 sold me. I don’t think season 5 will rank up there as the best (close competition between 1, 2 and 4 for that), but it all ultimately made sense to me. The implausibility of the serial-killer plot, and the caricature of the newsroom execs. served to put the characters in situations that allowed Simon, Burns and the other writers to explore moral ambiguity, and the frustrations of trying to do a job within massive bureaucracies. At the end of the day, ‘The Wire’ has always been about the street to me, and that stayed true, whatever happened at City Hall or in the Newsroom.
SPOILERS
I loved the parallelisms: Michael for Omar; Dukie for Bubbles; Marlo for Stringer Bell.
Slim Charles taking out Cheese, and the lack of sentimentality of the other dealers, followed by Slim Charles sitting down with the Greek was a near perfect arc.
McNulty and Feamon had to get away with it. The integrity of the show required it. And McNulty and Daniels both made big compromises, but they retained a moral line in the sand beyond which they wouldn’t go.
Has there ever been a show that painted delicate, nuanced portraits of so many characters — from the regulars to the extras — and managed to make those characters remain comprehensible throughout so many plot twists and narrative turns?
Marlo maybe for Avon? Stringer might have escaped; he liked the business world. Marlo is terrified there.
One other parallel: Leander in the judge’s office, a new McNulty. I was taken by the promotion of the dingleberry Valchek, as well.
But I’m blathering. The parallelism–the tidy neatness of the show’s narrative structure–would be annoying if it wasn’t counterbalanced by, as Chris says, such a careful constant attention to backstory. There is barely a character who doesn’t have a personality and a context we’ve been privy to. No one gets reduced to their function in that narrative structure. (Well, ‘cept maybe the newspaper folks, who are almost nothing but embodied theses.)
Seasons rank: 4, 3, 1, 2, 5. But, still: a helluva great show most years, and cumulatively astonishing.
This episode felt as if it were written by Alan Ball (as Claire drives her car into the unknown during the final ep of “Six Feet Under” she imagines–or the script gives us the unvarnished truth–all the things that will happen to the people she and we have come to know). In “The Wire” McNulty does the exact same thing in the finale’s final moments. The best thing about last night’s show was the pre-credits sequence and Kima’s unapologetic apology at the bar entrance. I found most everything else a bit too tidy (though Cheese’s death was particularly sharp). I’m with Mike: 4, 3, 1, 5, 2 (well, I bump up 5 a bit given its the season ender and all).
i loved the second season. frank, nicky, and bede are forever part of my life. i wish ziggy had died, though. little twerp. can’t believe he killed the fucking duck.
I too am a big fan of the second season. Just nice to see some blue collar workers and a union on TV. Leave poor Ziggy alone: the duck didn’t have drink. It should take some personal responsibility like Bubs.
unions! so true! i fear that most americans don’t even know there are unions any more. couldn’t find a local’s office in their cities if they had a phone book in front of them and all the time in the world to read it. another valuable educating job the wire has done for us.
and, about the wire‘s educating mission, check this out y’all. something valuable in this.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/85-the-wire/
except, of course, for the Americans who still belong to unions. There are some–though, of course, academics don’t much come into contact with them.
well, this academic manages to be in contact with quite a few of them, but whatever. how often, though, have you heard unions mentioned in our current pre-presidential debates, except when this or that union endorsed this or that guy/gal? why do unions give away endorsements for free, anyway? what the heck are they getting back?
High-priced prostitutes flown in from New York City?
anyone disappointed in the ending? not the entire episode but the last few minutes? the two great scenes were the offing of cheese, and the ambivalent moment with marlo on the street. which brings me to the day’s literature professor pet peeve:
on the slate discussion of the final episode david plotz says:
dickens privileges overarching story over characters? and his characters are not as compelling or interesting as his plots? and has he checked out the plot or ending of middlemarch? i think david plotz should not be allowed to make literary references.
what is interesting also is that in the same discussion plotz and goldberg are then confused by the last scene with marlo. but it doesn’t seem to occur to them that this is exactly the kind of ambivalent moment that they think the wire was not about.
i’m with chris and gio: season 2 is what hooked me. i would rank the seasons thusly:
season 4–better than anything i’ve ever seen on a dramatic television series (i qualify because i think we have to grant that the benny hill show was better on the whole).
season 2–there’s more to a city than gang violence, and it takes incredible chutzpah to marginalize your primary cast for the bulk of a season, and then entirely disappear that season’s cast for the rest of the series. and frank sobotka is in my top 3 greatest characters on the wire.
season 3–though i must admit that it is the season i remember least clearly.
season 1–very good, but not great.
season 5–the last few episodes were epic. but too much slack in the first 4 episodes, and a finale that was just poorly directed. no tension at all.
“frank sobotka is in my top 3 greatest characters on the wire.”
i take the other two are kima and mcnulty.
i didn’t really care for either so much, though i liked kima far more than mcnulty. my other favourites:
bunk
jay
bunny colvin
slim charles
commissioner burrell
omar
the boys
cutty
valchek
norman
mayor royce
I thought Kima was almost completely wasted after the third season; a big disappointment, because I liked her a lot. My favorites:
Frank Sobotka
Bodie
D’Angelo
Omar
Bunk
Stringer
Cutty
Prop Joe
Snoop
Bubbles is my least favorite character. I groaned whenever he hit the screen during the last two seasons.
jeff, why do you hate the homeless?
somebody really doesn’t like The Wire : http://www.counterpunch.com/reed03152008.html
Reed’s full of shit on this one. (And on a few other things, too.) I kind of like the counter-move to knock the halo off of David Simon, and to ground this great show back in its real situation (it’s a *show*, and the socially-transformative potential of pay-cable is probably even more limited). I am both a fan of this show and a proponent of pop culture as a tool for critical social engagement, but writing a column (or a blog) about how great the show is doesn’t equate to doing something…. so it’s nice to see some barbs.
That said, he ignores the production context of _The Corner_ and _The Wire_, which have been addressed in the NYTimes & WaPost and elsewhere for their attention to community organization/engagement, for the conscious diversification of crew and production team as well as cast, etc. And Reed’s take on these shows’ representations strikes me as a holdover of his battles to challenge certain kinds of social realism, a claim about reductive stereotyping that itself depends on a reductive viewing style.
i don’t agree with reed’s take on the show, but he does ask some compelling questions. for example:
this is not the fault of the wire, and i think reed wilfully ignores the fact that we see almost as many black characters in the police force as we see on the streets (not to mention season 2), but there is a commodified blackness that dominates the entertainment industry (from books to music to tv to film). this simulacrum of black thug culture is like a lower form of mob culture, whose cache it aspires to, and i think part of the reason the wire never caught on the way the sopranos did is that it’s not quite there yet on the cultural barometer. and a large part of the appeal of the show to many of the people it did catch on with was exactly the thug life bits. again this is not the fault of the wire but it bears remembering.
by the way, returning to the question of gender that gio raised above, here’s an interesting take from one of the ex-gang members sudhir venkatesh watched the show with. he asked them what they would focus on if they had directed the show, and here’s what one of them said:
For anyone who misses The Wire as much as I (this makes me want to start again at season 1 and keep watching: http://therumpus.net/2009/11/100-greatest-quotes-from-the-wire/
You equivocating like a motherfucker. I use that often in committee meetings.
i remember every single one of these quotes. well, almost. what a show.
Hey all. Why hasn’t anyone asked about me? “Where’s John? Wish he’d pipe in. Isn’t he watching it like the rest of us?”
I grabbed the box sets of all 5 seasons from the College library back in July. Alicia and I made it through 3 seasons pretty fast before we got stalled. We watched the last two episodes of season 5 this afternoon.
Who the fuck among you dares to say Bubbles is his/her least favorite character? Oh…it’s Jeff. I forgot he hates the homeless.
We loved this show…every season, great. Looking back, I’d say seasons 2 and 4 were our favorites. But every season is great, in its own way.
My favorite scene of all: “Fuck.” “Fuckity fuck fuck.” “Fuck me.” Etc.
As for the ending of the whole series, who can say it could have ended another way? It seemed to me that narrative unity–the parallelisms, Michael the new Omar, etc.–was just a happy by-product. It wasn’t the writers’ motivation, is what I’m saying. The series ends with a kind of underture, perhaps a concise presentation of what we’ve known all along, or pretended not to see, which is that you can clear, but you can’t hold. This is true of the court system, the political system, the education system, the law enforcement system.
Has anyone yet said Jamie Hector is magnificent? The scene in prison, when he learns Omar had been calling him out and no one told him. “My name!!!” Jesus, the acting on this show is the finest I’ve seen on television.
I want season 6.
Hey, did you see the news? The real mayor of Baltimore was convicted of embezzlement. Stealing gift cards meant for the poor. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!
Yes indeed. As good as television gets. As for the rank ordering of seasons, I mostly agree: 2, 4, 1, 3, 5. Season 2 deserves more praise.
i concur with everything john says, including the fact that we all thought but forgot to say, “WHERE IS JOOOOOOOHN???????????”
there is no way there can be a single favorite scene of The Wire that does not include omar. sorry john, you are wrong on this one.
also, no way there can be a favorite scene that does include mcnutty. just think about it, joooooooooooohn!!!!
Gio, McNulty is in that scene. He’s with Bunk, scoping out a crime scene. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!
john, please to reread comment 77! :)
Gio, please to [sic] rewatch said scene
i know that scene by heart. it’s not hard. haha.
Good interview with Simon….
At last social scientists have an excuse to teach courses organized around The Wire: http://www.slate.com/id/2245788/pagenum/all/#p2