HBO
It has been ten years since the final episode of The Wire on HBO.
David Simon and Ed Burns created a masterpiece that is still relevant in how it addresses societal ills. Anyone who has ever watched all five seasons has told someone else about the show. Quite frankly, this is the greatest television show of all time.
The Wire is better than anything that can be copped on a Baltimore corner. The Wire is more gripping and raw than a Prop Joe package. Unlike other drugs, every time The Wire gets fired up, it is just as good as the first fix, and sometimes even better as some subtle nuances are noticed.
The Wire has gone relatively un-watched by the masses. David Simon and Ed Burns, these two guys who lived and breathed the ways of Baltimore and seen the systemic bureaucracy at large for what it was, legal and otherwise, got tired of the rot and made a show. The show they made was damn near perfect.
The dedication of serious fans has endured. If two people in a debate have both seen The Wire, it seems to go a lot smoother, guaranteed.
Why has The Wire remained under the radar for a decade? It aired before the so-called “Golden Age of TV” was fully realized. It is a slow burn that requires attention and some intuition. The first box release wasn’t on Blu-ray, it’s that old, so lots of people don’t even know about it. Timing is everything.
In a quick ranking of characters and seasons, I would die on that corner for Bodie to this day.
1>4>2>3>5 ….. If one disagrees, there is a comments section below. But remember, “…Come at the King…”
HBO
The Wire, Season 1
Season 1 could stand alone as a great piece of moving picture art. It methodically detailed the inner politics and hierarchy of the policing apparatus and the structured levels of living and decisions of the drug trade. The show could have started by cutting into any initial street scene homicide investigation. McNulty answered a phone in homicide; the victim just happened to be Snot Boogie.
McNulty is a champ; people’s feelings be damned. The show is as much about McNulty — as McNulty does not think the case is all about himself and a need to feel smarter than everyone else. A job needs to be done. Leads need to be chased. Targets need to be investigated. Most importantly, his ego needs to be recognized. After all, only a few natural police exist.
He can see angles that others cannot, for better or worse, which leads him to cut corners, most usually just making it worse. McNulty gets to drop the bracelets, usually. The results are there in the end, yet everyone is upset. What did he do?
He is busy-man America. Landsman and Rawls are the System –mucking things up and just getting in the way. Drunk at the wheel, playing everything loose, with just a wisecrack of a plan, but getting enough results to keep the world off its tail. Jimmy McNulty, American Everyman.
The Bunk is just humble — well, actually, he may not be all that humble. Rawls and Daniels are both hiding secrets and playing the office games to stay ahead of the eventual come to Jesus moment all men that strive for rank and stature must face. While a man must have a code, the Game requires compromise from all — no matter which side of the law one falls.
Avon and Stringer. B and B Enterprises, RIP. The intro music of those two walking into the Pit to run shop was brilliant. Avon and Stringer watching the SWAT team was pure comedy but spoke to what threats they took more seriously.
WeeBay head of security. His name, it will find you where ever you go, so step lightly and be humble. No one wants to be the first pawn off the chess board. Everyone wants to wear the crown, though few are willing to make the sacrifices. To lose to crown though, all it takes is being slow or late one day.
Season 1 shows both McNulty and Dee suffering the consequences of action without full respect of their peers. McNulty gets nothing but two barrels of grief from his bosses. Dee credits his stature in the game mostly to Avon trying to bring him along since he was a pup.
McNulty wants to get the job done with no bosses to muck up the investigation. Dee wants to do business without bodies. Neither is shown to be remotely possible throughout the series.
Season one shows the principles and the necessity in having great leadership and a clear chain of command. In America, when The Wire aired, how drug gangs and police forces dealt with internal strife and outside interest were the metrics which determined success.
In most drug organizations, it is impossible to fail upwards whereas The Wire shows such a promotion the norm in bureaucratic circles if you have the proper rabbi or favor owed. It is no wonder that drug cartels seemingly have won the politically declared and police waged war on drugs. The competition level to exist — much less succeed — is exponentially higher with far more fatal risk in the streets than the downtown precincts.
As The Wire has faded into time, the problems of America it addressed have remained. Solutions to the problems face more obstacles in red tape than criticism of the ideas. This delays any progress. This enables negative practices with negative consequences to become more ingrained. The War on Drugs continues to be a blight on America if you can even call it a war.
HBO
The Wire, Season 2
Season 2 really does get dogged on by viewers with little taste for a slow methodical pacing. Once all five seasons unfolded, the importance of Season 2 becomes magnified.
Most everything in America comes through a port of entry or moves by way of commercial trucking vehicle. Illicit contraband like drugs or illegal immigrant sex trade slaves is no different. Season 2 mapped the scale, the reach and the inevitability for all — not just the addicts formerly scoffed at before the opiate crisis hit white America. Season 2 shows the upper management of supply and the lowest of demand.
Spiros and the Greek knew their hustle, their market, and their mark. Move all over, never leaving a trial. Get the drugs in, shuffle some dodgy paperwork, cash in when the cops catch wind. Offer a struggling man with a passion more money than he is ever seen, enough to maybe save his way of life. Who could say no?
Season 2 found Avon Barksdale in prison running the same hustle, looking for the same angles. Stringer is free, focused on being strictly business. While Avon does not realize he can come out of prison and live nice without the Game, Stringer failed to realize he couldn’t buy himself out of what brought him to be a man of means and property. Avon wanted his corners. Stringer wanted to move off.
Avon’s prison stint seemed to be a nice strategy boot camp, a place to hone some skills and pocket some favors. He was gaining even more street cred running a prison. Ziggy’s future prison sentence is probably not going so well. I doubt he is allowed on the same fence as WeeBay or Chris Partlow, though up on the same charges from the same network of the Game. It’s all the Game.
Burrell and Rawls are still trying to consolidate power and keep the subordinates in line. They, like Stringer, focus only on this year’s stats. Really, who cares about a two-year-old murder that doesn’t count for this year’s pay raise? Why take on a whodunnit murder when it can be passed off on the next guy’s loss column. Why now should anyone worry about “Where’s Wallace?” Why should McNulty care about a prison suicide stat?
The boiling fury of the steve-doers and other working stiff blue collar American tradesman and even some union lifers are the ammo of modern political battlegrounds. Frank felt betrayed by the system. It’s only about money, not men and their lives. America today has many Frank Sobotka’s.
The new modern port with all the new computer and automation technology was the death knell. Frank Sobotka was paying politicians to stem the inevitable tide. The industry was changing. The money was following the profits of change. Frank just threw bad money after bad, until his tide came in.
The politicians dealt with the problem only when their bag man forgot to employ a bag man. The unions deal with the problems creatively and will never snitch if things go south. The drug dealers will save their own hide.
It is arguable that Omar showed strong moral foundations despite his occupation. This code had helped insulate him from being caught in a setup. Season 2 showed the great and honorable Working Man had the most heart and belief in their endeavors, in their fellow man in the same struggle.
What honor in that they were the only group with no one to turn on fellow workers. However, they’d been set up as the patsy holding the empty bag; they were getting screwed over. Maybe the Omar’s of the world were on to something and could still be held honorable, if not eventually accountable.
HBO
The Wire, Season 3
Season 3 introduces all the characters that would be coming for the crown. The incumbents are mired in stagnation. Internal politics have prevented progress. Outside pressure brought about rushed poorly planned decisions. Burrell even mentions this “crisis of leadership.”
The pace is more furious, the stakes have been raised. Major Crimes and in-depth case files are established, but commanders use the force on whims or force horse trading favors. Even that is a hard sell when the unit is at a dead end and talk of ending the wire surveillance.
The Wire shows operational conflicts when interest become divided on both sides of the law. With any blemish used as a weapon, all the characters had to navigate political minefields. All of those except those with power, leverage and money — in that order. No one wants to have to get a real job.
There is competition for crowns on both sides. Marlo knows full well the nature of wearing the crown; Carcetti barely understood the obligations of the crowns he seeks. Again, The Wire shows it takes more wisdom and hustle to survive in the wild, whichever wild you choose. It is safe on the boat, pawn shop, or evidence. However, one can get lost there for 13 years, 4 months.
Season 3 focused on the efficiency and willingness to break rules for all the show’s major characters. Senator Clay Davis is perhaps the best role ever of a corrupt politician. McNulty and Bunk are forever partners at odds. Lester Freemon and Prezbo found a paper trail and started following the money, but the bosses killed the operation with a trigger that was light.
Marlo and Chris, with an assist of two from Snoop, start consolidating power and territory but must establish some boundaries on operational decisions. Rawls and Burrell’s friction leads to a new understanding of how things are going to function. Avon and Stringer begin their split as Avon transitions from post-prison to war mode.
The Hamsterdam experiment showed the other extreme of not enforcing drugs laws while not regulating the market either. It’s ugly, and only a temporary fix at best. Once the truth gets out, Mayor Royce and Commissioner Burrell have no choice but to shut it down.
Avon faces the same choices. He could take the hit for Stringer getting tangled up with Brother Mouzone and Omar, or he can make the choice to shut it down. In both cases, a decision was made to live another day, even if each finally came around to the ideas they helped kill.
The tough decisions on leadership and the cost of attaining positions of power lead to compromised characters. Standing on principle for an idea that is right is enviable but not always a wise long-term strategy. It could not only cost one the crown — but their lives.
HBO
The Wire, Season 4
Season 4 of The Wire had the best opening scene to open a season. Season 4 also introduced those kids — poor, barely a sliver of a chance to make it and it breaks your heart kids.
They had been relegated to the background, but now the audience got to see the daily lives of all those forgotten kids. The opening quote for the Season 4 premiere was “Lambs to the slaughter…” and it fit the whole season concerning most every kid in Edward Tillman Middle School.
Anyone who has seen season 4 would get a flashback reading the poem “Because I Ain’t Got a Pencil” by a Baltimore youth. In season 4 The Wire began showing how all the pieces fit, where each action by a person goes to cause unintended consequences and how each gets there.
Sure, the drug game kept moving while Barksdale and Stanfield’s crews battled for corners. The political players fell into the same behaviors as those preceding them. But those kids, they don’t deserve being ignored. But then again, deserve has nothing to do with it.
In Season 1, the kids featured in the Pit were already in the game though at different levels. Wallace was a child on the fence, though Bodie was hardened beyond his years. Now the difference was even more pronounced. Though it is striking that after all those years as police, the first time Prezbo seems shocked is when one student cuts another. To the kids, it is just another day while it affects Prezbo through his whole weekend.
By using the educational system as a political tool, the kids receive less of an education in school than they do on the street. It is more important for the kids to learn the streets because the schools aren’t teaching them much except how to game another system. That may be all the knowledge they need, as Clay Davis perseveres through legal troubles.
Fact is, most of these kids would be better off learning from Bubbles and Cutty instead of what the Baltimore City School System was offering. Small and focused classes like Bunny Colvin ran always get applauded but never widely applied.
It was important for the new leaders to establish stability and order. City Hall and the city political apparatus comes to fall in line under the Carcetti administration. Prop Joe and Slim Charles fall in line under the menacing Marlo dictatorship. Teachers are hamstrung by the government mandated curriculum. And the kids, they suffer it all.
HBO
The Wire, Season 5
Season 5 shows the facade of it all. We all see the actors who wish to keep the public from seeing all the pieces, much less how they fit. Now, we must be skeptical of all information and ask ourselves more “what aren’t they telling me” over “what is the meaning of what they are telling me.” However, the information is presented to us and it’s assumed someone tried to shine shit and call it gold.
Season 5 leaves us with many questions chiefly, what can be done to make things right? Well, depends on your convictions. How resistant will the system be to change? Can one beat the Game? Could we believe any news announcing a result either way?
Controlling the news in a changing information environment is crucial to all of the politicians. The insight into a dying newsroom and the changing dynamic of news consumption through sensationalism were prophetic.
McNulty and Lester had Stringer by voice but lost the satisfaction of arresting him to Omar and Mouzone’s violent nature. They found an opportunity to continue making a difference in the murder rate in Marlo Stanfield but had peddled the approach to chasing Avon Barksdale. They had to sell a lie to find the truth.
Carcetti had to sell the lie of empathy for homelessness safety to get elected. He was in a jam and need some good press. Scott Templeton wanted a better job and had to sell the lie that he could write news instead of making it up.
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The Wire, at its best, exposed facades, depicted the obstacles and laid bare the realities of the situation inner cities of America were facing. Some of the newspaper writing storylines of the fifth season weren’t as moving as the first four seasons. That seems to be on purpose, as an indictment of the newspaper wanting to be more exciting than the news.
It is almost like it does not matter journalistic integrity is dead, but it is dead on paper, which in the digital age, does not count.