(Video is NSFW! Contains profanity and adult subjects.)
"So if Snot always stole the money, why did you let him play?" "Got to. This America, man." Every season of The Wire opens with a scene like this. A scene that tells you (in mostly oblique overtones) what you're about to see. The opening scene of The Wire sets the tone and also provides David Simon's mission statement for the show. This is not your average cop show -- it is a show about the slow death of the American city, eaten from the inside out by the institutions that run it and reside in it.
The Wire is a show that reveals itself slowly, building storylines and characters at a pace that seems a bit strange upon first watch. In the first season, it feels a bit like nothing is happening at all, and then all of a sudden, a lot of things are happening all at once. You have to pay attention. Everything that you see pays off in one way or another. As Detective Lester Freamon (one of the detectives assigned to a unit that is tasked with taking down major drug trafficker Avon Barksdale) says early on in the show: "We're building something here, Detective. And all the pieces matter."
One of the things that can be intimidating about the show is the large cast of characters. There are probably about 75-100 characters on the canvas of the show, and as the seasons go on it expands and changes. Every year there are new faces and characters to learn, but don't expect the show to hold your hand throughout -- the writers throw you into the deep end of the pool, seemingly mid-story, and says: "Swim."
It sounds like a lot of hard work for a television show, I know. Most people who sit in front of the boob tube's warm glow are just looking to turn their brains off and be entertained for a few hours, which is only natural. But sometimes, if you allow yourself to think of television as something more, something that can educate and expand your worldview and transcend entertainment, you find yourself rewarded.The Wire seems like hard work at first, but as you get deeper and deeper you find yourself completely drawn in to this story, this world, these characters. You become intellectually and emotionally invested and, as the show reveals itself more and more to be the Greek tragedy that it is, you find you cannot look away. All the pieces do matter.
Instead of watching one episode at a time of this show, I find it works best in chunks, so that's how I'm going to be discussing it as well. This post will cover Episode One, "The Target", Episode Two, "The Detail", Episode Three, "The Buys", and Episode Four, "Old Cases". There will be no spoilers for upcoming episodes.
The first scene, embedded above, introduces us to one of the integral characters and the catalyst for the events of season one, Detective Jimmy McNulty. He's an intriguing character, interested in doing good police work, yes, but more obsessed with proving himself to be, as another character will put it, "The smartest fuck in the room." It's his actions that propel the plot forward. We see him attending the trial of D'Angelo Barksdale, nephew of Avon, the man who has slowly been taking over the West Baltimore drug trade. His number two, Stringer Bell, sits in the back of the courtroom and attempts to intimidate the witnesses, William Gant and Nakeesha Lyles. Gant chooses to tell the truth and point to D'Angelo as the killer. Ms. Lyles, however, obviously uncomfortable, chooses to go along with the Barksdale organization and say she never saw D'Angelo. Young Mr. Barksdale is acquitted, of course, which propels McNulty into the judge's chambers, where he tells Judge Phelan of the many murders committed by these particular gangsters, and that they are major players in the drug trade. Oh, and of course, the department at large is completely ignoring these guys.
Well, Phelan calls the Deputy of Operations and, after McNulty writes up his report on the matter, Deputy Burrell orders that a detail be set up to investigate the Barksdale organization. McNulty's Sergeant, Jay Landsman, warns him that this case could end in his reassignment from Homicide. “Where do you notwant to go, McNulty?” You really shouldn't answer that question, as he is reminded in a later episode.
As the detail starts getting assembled, it's clear that the brass are sending a clear message, explained by the detail's leader, Cedric Daniels: "Don't dig in." In addition to Daniels' Narcotics team, consisting of Kima Greggs, Ellis Carver, and Thomas "Herc" Hauk, the detail also consists of McNulty, alcohol-soaked Detectives Polk and Mahon from Property, Detective Lester Freamon from the Pawn Shop Unit, Detective Leandor Sydnor, and Detective Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, a seemingly incompetent "hump" from Casualty who's been bounced around in the department many times but never fired because his father in law, Stanislaus Valchek, is the Commander of the Eastern District. What is one of the first things Prez does upon his arrival to the detail office? Accidentally shoots the wall with his service weapon. Yeah.
Just to further hammer home the point that this detail is not ideal for good police work (yet), in the second episode we see Carver, Herc, and Prez go on a drunken journey to the projects at two in the morning. This leads to Prez pistol-whipping and blinding a young drug dealer in one eye. It also leads to our first real glance at who Daniels is. He steps up for Prez, telling him exactly what he needs to say to avoid serious trouble. Based on Daniels' recommendation, Prez gets to stay in office and help the detail in other ways.
What I found interesting, in watching these initially, is how David Simon and Ed Burns, the series' creators, didn't shy away from showing the problems inherent within the Baltimore Police Department. David Simon was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun when he met Ed, a Homicide detective, while he was on assignment for his book, Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. These guys know what they're talking about. There's a palpable sense that they've lived through this. They've seen good police like Lester Freamon get assigned to shit assignments like the Pawn Shop Unit, for the simple offense of actually doing police work. They've seen commanders demand "buy busts" and "dope on the table" -- things that, as we will see, are more about making the department look good than actually solving the drug problem in any way. Those things won't nab you a player like Avon Barksdale. He's too smart, too careful and surrounded by good soldiers who won't roll over on him and the organization for reduced sentences if they get arrested.
Another thing I love is that, unlike most police procedurals, the show takes you inside the world of the drug dealers. We see them having conversations about Chicken McNuggets, playing checkers on a chessboard (leading to one of the best scenes in the entire series as D'Angelo lays out the rules of the game for co-workers Bodie and Wallace), playing basketball, and even having giant family barbecues. They're humanized in a way few shows would ever bother to do with their "villains." But on this show, as in life, there are no moral absolutes, nobody is all good or all bad. They're just humans trying to do the best they can in a screwed up world where maybe the only real opportunity they see for themselves is slinging heroin on a street corner. It's a sad reality. We see that for the most part these are not stupid boys, which is illustrated on a few occasions when Wallace points out that Alexander Hamilton was not a president and also when D’Angelo displays his chess knowledge. The writers do such a terrific job of showing their audience that nobody is all one thing. The cops are not all good, and the drug dealers certainly aren’t all bad. They’re simply born into a life they can’t escape. These guys could have had the world in front of them, if their world wasn't so small.
The characters on the street (and in the police department for that matter) feel real. They're so well written and acted that I can almost believe I'm watching a documentary. Take, for example, Andre Royo as Bubbles, Kima's Criminal Informant. Looking at him, you believe completely. He's such a lovable character, even as we know he's a junkie and we see him scamming drug dealers and stealing copper piping with his partner in crime, Johnny. Bubbles feels as though he was plucked off of the street and given lines (something that does happen, frequently, on The Wire, just not here).
After William Gant is murdered, presumably for identifying D'Angelo in court, we see D’Angelo start to question how things are done. He questions why so many people have to die for them to do their job, saying that the only reason the police are even looking at them is because of the bodies piling up. He struggles with his conscience, disagreeing with the beating of Johnny, which of course is far more savage than his offense (trying to buy dope with fake money) warrants. D’Angelo rebukes Bodie for his bravado for breaking out of the juvenile facility he was put into, telling the story of the murder of Deirdre Kresson.
I love that scene because D’Angelo telling the story pays off when we see Bunk and McNulty go through that crime scene, uttering nothing but variations on the word "fuck", and figuring out exactly what happened. One of the signature scenes of the series, it's damned funny, and damned impressive police work. See what I mean about everything paying off?
I want to touch briefly about the introduction of my favorite character, Omar Little. We first see him casing and then robbing the Barksdale stash, and then again in the next episode, selling off the stash and being affectionate with his boyfriend, Brandon. I love this particular bit of exposition, because they don't make a big deal of it. They're just openly affectionate with each other, and completely oblivious to how uncomfortable they're making their other coworker (robber? partner in crime?). The show doesn't treat it as a huge deal, but you can clearly see how in love Omar and Brandon are. It's a nice little subversion of people's stereotypes, because when you think "thug who robs drug dealers," their sexuality is nearly always just accepted as straight. But you wouldn't necessarily expect someone who's so tough and dangerous to be gay, and I love that it just is. It's a fact of who he is, and not presented as anything but.
There's so much going on here, so much exposition and set up and plot, plot, plot, but it never feels boring for even a minute. Sure I got a little uninterested watching Kima Greggs and her girlfriend Cheryl canoodle and tease each other, but even in those scenes we get the great line "For you, Kima. A decidedly confused white boy," when McNulty shows up at their door drunk in the middle of the night. I'm not too interested in Kima and Cheryl as a couple, and their love scene that ends episode four feels like it doesn't fit. I'm not watching a romance, I'm watching a cop drama. Thankfully there's not a lot of romance on the show going forward. It's definitely not one of those shows that will focus on the romantic entanglements almost to the exclusion of all else (I'm looking at you, LOST, with your completely superfluous love triangle!). And there's not very much else here to be bored by. The dialogue is funny, dark humor at it's best, and the stories are engrossing. Even as early on as the fourth episode you really do start to care about these characters. You want to see McNulty succeed with this case. You want to see Prez prove himself to be useful to the detail. You want to see D’Angelo find a way out of the life he's living. You want better lives for the corner kids, who are dealing drugs in lieu of doing homework or reading or playing sports.
But The Wire isn't about giving us what we want. It's about showing us the ugly truth behind the things we might see every day. The Wire shows us how every day, human life becomes devalued as the dark sides of capitalism and bureaucracy infect every corner of our society. If you're watching the show "correctly", you're probably angry about all of that. You should be. But this America, man. What else do you expect?
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