Television has never seen a better dramatic series than “The Wire.” Period. The Sopranos gave us one of TV’s greatest characters. But if the Sopranos was grand drama, The Wire gave us great literature. I’m convinced that if Charles Dickens was alive today, he’d have been writing for the The Wire.
And he’d have been in good company. In addition to their own considerable gifts for storytelling, producers David Simon and Ed Burns were smart enough to hire a string of the best crime novelists in America to write for the show, and it showed. Richard Price and George Pelecanos are uniquely talented with inner city argot. Dennis Lehane (author of “Mystic River”) has been moving for years toward a form that combines the traditional detective novel with a kind of tragic sensibility.
Most Hollywood-produced cop shows, no matter how large their stable of “consultants,” usually end up with dialog that sounds like….well…..Hollywood. In contrast, The Wire” was consistently able to capture, not only the sound of street language, but its poetry.
Yet, the great dialog wasn’t the reason we watched. (And are still watching. I’ve just started over with Season One)
We tuned in because David Simon and company gave us weekly commentary on modern urban life with a nuanced authenticity rarely seen elsewhere—all packaged in form that was wildly engaging. And Simon did it using a nearly symphonic pattern of narrative layers and interweaves. We saw the wasteful futility of the war on drugs interwoven with the impossible pressures placed on the cops who are asked to somehow eradicate the drug mess…Into those themes was threaded the hypocrisy and compromise that informs American politics….the absurd and tragic state of the nation’s inner city schools….and finally, the profit-driven shredding of the soul of our country’s newspapers.
Stunning. And all presented through the relentlessly human medium of the show’s remarkable cast of indelible characters.
To me it was season four, about the Baltimore school system and the catastrophic affects of No Child Left Behind, that was the best—and the most emotionally devastating.
But this season was brilliant too.
As a new round of buyouts is announced at the LA Times and the ongoing turf battles at City Hall over gang policy manage to fail all concerned….it’s been somehow steadying to know that we’re not unique with our messes. The Wire got there first.
But what about you? Are you a Wire fan? If so, why does it matter to you?
I just finished reading Ms. Chick’s Anti-Gang Strategy. I just want to tell Ms. Chick that she is the love of my life!
The streets have changed for the worse, said Rodriguez, whose 16-year-old son was gunned down in front of Sylmar High in 1990. With many older gangsters locked up, he said, thousands of school dropouts are running the streets without supervision from parents or marching orders from gang bosses.
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The above statement was taken from Steve Lopez’s Article (March 12) quoting fat ass political ass budda belly rubber money in my left pocket “Blinky.”
What is this bullshit?
Using gang felons to control our city children by issuing “marching orders.” This guys supports using gang bosses to stop violence. Oh yeah, stop killing each other, we got better business to run – drug dealing.
Didn’t I tell you guys that a crybaby was going to bitch and cry.
What a great finale, too: Michael becomes the new Omar, dukie becomes the new Bubbles, Sydnor the new McNulty. The more things change . . .
I haven’t quite finished this season (but I’ve been subjected to lots of spoilers already and don’t really care about that) – which was compelling as much because it was the last season and was drawing characters to a close – but I thought that the newspaper storyline was weak and kind of arbitrary. Without Clark Johnson – who helped me connect it to the larger thing subliminally because of his role in “Homicide” – it would have been totally lame. It was also too much a function dramatically (and necessarily) of the McNulty “serial killer” thing which I also found less compelling than most of the rest of the show. McNulty’s mania gave us some very humorous moments with two of my favorite characters, Lester and Bunk, but it wasn’t his best “story arc” by a long shot. Last season about the schools was terrific and important – it was also tied into the larger story better than the journalism thing was this year IMHO. But the best Wire season for me was the third one that focused on Stringer Bell. Great character and great storyline. Also probably a more “classical” storyline than much of The Wire. I’m also going to make a pitch for my other (equally) favorite TV show and state that if The Wire was contemporary Dickens (complete with too many characters) Deadwood was contemporary Shakespeare and were he alive he’d have been writing for that one.
(I still haven’t forgiven Milch for abandoning Deadwood to make a bad surfer show and I wish Simon had written a full dozen or whatever scripts for this years Wire. Doing series television must be a total burnout – even a “boutique series” – but these guys get paid the big bucks to please us and I feel free to whine about these things. I’ll also take a final shot at David Chase for that crappy, self-indulgent Sopranos ending. Any argument over whether it was crap or genius ended when Hillary managed to parody it for an ad.)
Deadwood was contemporary Shakespeare and were he alive he’d have been writing for that one.
Except for the pottymouth aspects of it, I’d agree. My wife called it the c$%@#^#&er show.
David Simon has done something monumental and he’s done it milking a relatively small piece of dramatic turf – the seamiest sides of Baltimore. His body of television work began with Homicide in 1993 that ran for seven seasons and culiminated in a for-TV movie. That was the best police procedural ever on the tube, with rich and textured characters. Then we got Simon’s The Corner as an HBO miniseries, which was excellent. Then The Wire for five seasons. Both Homicide and The Corner were based on excellent non-fiction books authored by Simon. Simon is a brilliant guy, a terrific writer and clearly a genius at managing and keeping together the kind of creative team needed to pull off series TV of the highest quality, but the reason he excelled goes beyond his gifts (and good luck, which you also need to succeed in Televisionland.) Having spent years as a reporter on the beats he eventually dramatized, he actuallly knew WTF he was writing about. Clearly that helps.
Baltimore native Barry Levinson also deserves credit for first bringing “Homicide” to TV and introducing Simon to that world.
Yeah, Randy, but if you prick a c$%@#^#&er does he not bleed ?
Don’t leave out Ed Burns, a Baltimore cop and co-creator.
BTW, Wire fans will love this interview with Simon. It gives some good context to the newspaper story as well.
Me and the other writers over at Highbrid Nation loved The Wire. Actually, one of our guys just did a post today talking about how important The Wire was to viewers as well as the cast.
I think The Wire is one of those shows that most people won’t truly get until years from now. 20 years from now people will look back on the Wire as one of the greatest shows ever created.
We should pause and consider Baltimore as a town that has spawned so many great movies and TV Series: “The Wire”, “Homicide”, “Avalon”, “Diner”, “Tin Men”, “The Corner”, and let’s not forget “Hairspray”.
Funny but when I was in the big Green Machine and stationed at Ft. Meade I found DC much more interesting a place to visit than Baltimore* even though the two were about equidistant. Hell, I even preferred Annapolis but then there were a lot of great resteraunts there. Then Chesapeake Bay comes in a very close second to San Francisco Bay for this Californian!
*Baltimore does have the finest collection of Matisse’s in the US at the Etta Cone collection in the Museum of Art.
On the other hand, it’s possible that the only reason people are saying the Wire is a better show than Golden Girls is because most of the characters are black…
They’re lucky!
Reg, I agree about season 3 as it’s the one for me that veers into the nearly Shakespearian (in a different way than Deadwood, which I really have to rent in total).
But I’m still attached to season 4, because I’d been deep into local education policy at the time and was crazed by what I saw. Yet there seemed no adequate commentary anywhere that got even close to the depth and complexity, and out-and-out illogic of the situation as it was playing out so maddeningly and sometimes tragically in schools like Jefferson, Locke and Crenshaw high schools in LA.
And then along came this show. It got it dead bang, and laid out how the policies could have ruinous effects on very real and very fragile lives, despite the best efforts of caring teachers. Anyway…..
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Hey, Poplock, Glad you read the report! If you’re planning to propose marriage to Laura Chick, you might consider my pal Dr. Jorja Leap instead since she was one of the primary researchers and her sensibilities (and plain ol’ good sense)inform much of the report. On the other hand, she’s married to former LAPD Counter Terrorism dude, Mark Leap. So the marriage might be complicated. But then, hey, I think you mentioned you were married as well, so perhaps there are possibilities….
Oh, Blinky’s okay….even though I don’t entirely agree with the street intervention model. (Longer conversation) Blinky’s group does a lot of good stuff in schools, and he’s a very decent man personally, even though he has his….uh…quirks.
Yeah, Season 4 was worth more than 90% of what passes for sociological research these days put together. Also 90% of journalism. On that note, I said that the newspaper storyline felt arbitrary – and it did for me in the context of the overall show – but it was obviously not arbitrary at all from David Simon’s perspective because he was closing the circle of failed institutions. Unfortunately for the storytelling I thought the connection to the more compelling characters was weak and the whole import got wrapped in two early scenes. The first was the “girl reporter” desperately searching for the first run of papers to find her byline. The second was the veteran getting “let go” to cut costs, then shambling back to his desk and it becoming immediately clear that he was the only guy there up to the task of covering a breaking story. Simon schooling his interviewer in Randy’s link lets the bad news out of the bag – the Big Story you need to know about most dailies is that what you need to know more than likely isn’t in ’em.
The brutal irony of Season 4 was the fact that the boy who seemed most endangered (Namon) ends up with the brightest future and the one with the brightest future (Randy) ends up with the bleakest prospects.
I guess the “Life Imitates Art” moment for me occurs in the episode where the staff at the SUN learns that cutbacks will be made. Right around the time that aired we had the tsuris at the LAT (a “sister” paper) about to fall under the control of Zell the Barbarian!
(Could have been Cindy McCaw though)
The first time I saw “The Wire I thought it was just a show about gangs and violence and passed it by, until I got the word that it was much more than that. Unfortunately I got the word during after the 3rd season.
My favorites “characters” on The Wire were Senator Clay Davis, Omar Little, Detective Lester Freamon and Detective James McNulty. Not necessarily because they provided “commentary on modern urban life with a nuanced authenticity rarely seen elsewhere†but they were simply very entertaining and/or interesting characters.
The addition of newspaper characters was probably the weakest part of the show. The “good†guys were the black editor and Latina reporter and the “bad†guys were the white reporter, white chief editor and white executive editor. Hmmmm…..
Some of my favorite show scenes below;
Senator Clay Davis – they don’t teach you this in law school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAKzIKa03Eg
I’ll take any m’f’s money if he’s giving it away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QpWKu98h3I
Omar Little – I also like mythical characters just like Omar Little.
Attorney Levy to Omar – “You a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs.â€Â
Omar to Attorney Levy – “Just like you, I’ve got the shotgun and you’ve got the briefcase.â€Â
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pKE-JDjYog
Omar Little – Make sure to always ask for a receipt to pick up your clock later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_rLZYtl27w
Detective James McNulty – The serial killer being profiled by the FBI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrD4se0ujxw
Yeah, great Levy/Omar exchange. I’m a sucker for the semi-mythological characters too.
Love the Wire — and deadwood. We don’t get TV – just get gifted (oddly enough) the boxed series as they come out.
Just finished the season on the schools – angry-making and heartbreaking.
Just to clarify the arc of David Simon’s Baltimore saga: he worked for Sun. Got a contract to write about a year hanging out with the PD homicide division. The result was a nonfiction book titled Homicide, published in 1991, which won an Edgar. Sold it to NBC for the series, which lasted 7 years. Simon wrote/produced 42 of those shows. Some of them are stunning–like one-act plays. (Clark Johnson, who played Meldrick, by the way, plays the city editor in the 5th season of The Wire.) But it WAS network TV. The Wire is extraordinary as art and eyeopenign and alarming as social commentary.
Homicide would not be on network tv these days. That scene with Bayliss and Pembleton interrogating the Araber was sheer genius.
Shakespeare actually had many “pottymouth” aspects in his plays; most historians will tell you that his work had various levels of vulgar humor for the high and low brow audiences. But, you have hit on an important vein of truth. Many people, like your wife, don’t want to expose themselves to bad things, like vulgar language or complex problems. This is why a show like “The Wire” hasn’t been acclaimed at the level it should be. It deals with drugs, violence,child abandonment, political corruption, murder. For many who deal with such problems, this was a show that illuminated the struggles that occur daily. It showed the nobility of those who try to help, and the obstacles that impeade them. Some people get that, …but some people avoid it, and click the channel to see what’s up with UGLY BETTY. Some of us give a #@%^ when it’s not our turn to give a #@%^.
“Some of us give a #@%^ when it’s not our turn to give a #@%^.”
One of my top three favorite lines on the wire “The Wire”.
There you go, giving a f*ck when it ain’t your turn to give a f*ck.
-Bunk