At the end of the first episode of The Wire, the homicide detectives turn over a dead body. As we see the victim’s face, there’s a flashback to an earlier scene. The writers are letting us know that this body with a hole in the head is what’s left of a witness who testified against the Barksdale drug gang at the beginning of the episode.
This sequence is semi-infamous because it is the only flashback in the entire five-year run of the Wire. It was, according to David Simon’s commentary, urged upon the creators by HBO, who were concerned that viewers wouldn’t be able to follow the story without the extra nudge. Simon admits it might have been the right thing to do for the first episode, where they were still setting the stage and trying to hook an audience. After that though…never again. The Wire went forward, and if you missed a plot point, you were stuck until it got reshown or you bought the DVD with its miraculous rewind technology.
The Wire, with its labyrinthine plot and characters piled on characters, is definitely meant for rewatching. That first courthouse scene, for example, is almost entirely different the second or fifth time through, when all the players —nervous D’Angelo Barksdale, the oleaginous lawyer Maurice Levy, the cheerfully dangerous Wee-Bay, the not-at-all cheerfully dangerous Stringer Bell — are known quantities. The first go round you watch a bunch of unknowns; the second it’s all old friends.
The increased familiarity allows for some new surprises. For example, the first time we see Stringer, always the businessman, he’s making notes on a pad. Detective McNulty tries to see what he’s writing. Stringer looks up at him over his glasses and turns the pad around…revealing that he’s been drawing a superhero with what appears to be Africa on his chest insignia. The superhero in the drawing raises his fist and declares “Fuck You Detective”.
Stringer the smart-ass project kid isn’t a Stringer we get to see much — not least because Stringer himself tries to bury that kid more and more thoroughly as the show progresses. In the second season, Stringer probably would have been too cautious to have a note pad; by the third, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near that courtroom. We never see any of Stringer’s drawing again, either. So the second time through, that scene seems more like an end than a beginning.
Rewatching though doesn’t always add layers. Sometimes it points out holes, or roads not taken which might have been better explored. One of my favorite moments from the first episode occurs a little later, after D’Angelo Barksdale has beaten the murder rap. The judge in the case calls in McNulty to find out (a) why a key witness changed her story, and (b) why McNulty was in court, since it wasn’t his case. McNulty explains to the judge that D’Angelo is the nephew of the current West Baltimore drug kingpin,. The gang has beaten a number of cases in court, including a past case of McNulty’s. The judge finally asks, “If it’s not your case, why do you care?” To which McNulty replies, “Well who said I did?”
Again, that’s one of my favorite lines of dialogue probably from the series: McNulty (Dominick West) sells it nicely, looking flat at the judge, with an expression somewhere between slightly amused and blandly unconcerned. The point is emphasized later when McNulty chews out his partner Bunk for picking up the phone on a murder call when another squad was up. “This’ll teach you to give a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck!” he says.
The point here for rewatching is, of course, that McNulty actually does give a fuck — way, way too much of a fuck as it turns out. He cares so much that, over the course of five seasons, he destroys his marriage, his career, and almost/maybe a second committed romantic relationship.
Which is all well and good as irony goes. But the thing is…I liked it the first time through better. David Simon on the voice over natters on incessantly about how different the Wire is from other television cop shows — and it is different in many ways. McNulty doesn’t really care about doing right, for example, as he would if he were on, say, Bones. He cares about being the smartest guy in the room and about being smarter than the crooks. It’s not about good and evil for him; it’s about ego. Which is a useful corrective to a lot of cop-show nonsense, as Simon says.
But whatever he cares about, the point is that he does…and that is not especially new in a cop protagonist, on television or elsewhere. There was something really refreshing for me about having our hero declare, boldly and apparently in earnest, that it really was nothing in particular to him if the West Baltimore drug gang beat murder number four, or twelve, or whatever. I kind of like that potential McNulty, that callous decoy McNulty, more than I like the funny, smart, but ultimately perhaps more predictable McNulty that we got.
So we have revealed depths, roads not taken…and finally, maybe a dropped ball. Two thirds of the way through the episode, D’Angelo Barksdale’s crew catches an addict, Johnny, who’s been trying to buy drugs using counterfeit money. The scene is presented as a dilemma for D’Angelo, who (as Simon says in commentary) is not a brutal man, and clearly doesn’t want to order Johnny beaten. But the boy’s ripped him off and there’s little choice; he turns away saying nothing, and walks into the camera, his face held still. Over his shoulder, and from a distance, we see Bodie, Wallace, and Poot start to beat Johnny. We learn later that they hurt him so badly he ends up in the hospital, where he had to undergo a colostomy operation.
The reason this is a missed opportunity is because of Wallace. Later in the season, the D’Angelo crew is robbed; 16-year-old Wallace provides information that leads to the brutal torture and death of one of the robbers. Seeing the torture victim upsets Wallace so badly that he falls apart. His disintegration eventually leads to his own murder at the hands of his friends, Poot and Bodie.
Wallace’s execution is perhaps the grimmest, most emotionally wrenching moment of the entire season. In retrospect, his character is almost as important as D’Angelo’s. And, as a result, the second time through this scene of the beating should be telling us something, not only about D’Angelo, but also about Wallace. The Wallace we know later is so upset by brutality that he first becomes an addict and then turns his crew in to the police. The Wallace here, on the other hand, is so comfortable with brutality that he enthusiastically joins in beating a young man almost to death.
The point isn’t that the characterization is inconsistent. People are capable of different levels of brutality at different times, and there is, after all, a line between “beaten almost to death” and “beaten to death.” Still, if you’re going to talk about that line, you probably do in fact need to talk about it, and the Wire doesn’t. For that matter, Simon doesn’t mention it in his voice over. Rewatching here doesn’t so much add resonance as reveal that there isn’t any. The creators didn’t link what Wallace does here to what Wallace does later. As a result the the possible connections just sit there, looking a little lost.
People often argue that the sign of great art is that you can go back to it again and again and find new depths and meanings. I’m not entirely sure I agree with that. First impressions have their own aesthetic worth; a song that sounds amazing the first time you hear it has achieved something, even if it doesn’t bear up to repeat lisening.
The Wire doesn’t collapse under repeat viewings. Still, seeing that first episode again and again was not entirely beneficial. When I finished watching this episode the first go round I think I was ready to call it great. After seeing it a few more times, I still like it, but I’ve got more reservations.
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Update: The entire Wire Roundtable is here.
Noah, you’re right that McNulty is ultimately something of a conventional character — the alcoholic, over-working cop who plays by his own rules! But the show needs him to care about something, at least in the first season, given how (a) the other police characters are initially written and (b) the department and judicial system are portrayed. Nobody in the unit, or higher up in the dept, cares at all about this “shit detail”. So you need *someone* to push the investigation further. Why not McNulty?
Point well taken, Jones (and doesn’t this feel like old times?)–if McNulty doesn’t care, the show doesn’t happen.
It also sets up the later critique of the myth of the maverick supercop. If they never establish McNulty as the maverick who cares too much, etc. etc., they show packs less of a punch later when it reveals the maverick is more likely to shit all over his friends and patrons than to trouble the corrupt bureaucrats.
Yes, it would be a very different show if McNulty was different. Would it be worse, though?
Or to expand a little…you could have a show in which the special detail accomplishes nothing in particular, but just sort of stumbles along. That would probably be more realistic in some sense. The show has a need for drama; McNulty serves that need. There’s a suggestion there in the first episode, though, that he might not. It’s an intriguing idea; the second time through, you can see that it never pans out that way, which it seems to me is kind of a loss.
Well, by the end of the first season, the special detail *hasn’t* actually accomplished anything except to shuffle around some of the drug players, get Wallace killed, and (at least temporarily) torpedo the careers of McNulty and Daniels. (Am I forgetting anything?)
The same goes for pretty much all the seasons. A couple of people go to jail, a couple of people get killed, careers go up or down but the game remains the same.
Plus, it’s important that the unit seem to make progress early on, for two reasons:
(1) similar to the point Marc made about McNulty (Hi Marc!), the show’s overall critique of law enforcement policy overall, and drug enforcement in particular, would have less bite if policing were shown to be (practically) useless right from the start. (The same goes for the portrayal of governing in S4. Mayor Carcetti actually gets some stuff done early on, before he has to start eating shit)
The endings of seasons 1-3 are so bitter precisely because there’s been a lot of *good* policework done, and it still hasn’t made much of a difference.. Having the unit be more hapless would remove some of the sting, I think and leave the viewer in her complacent assumption that actual good policework could do more, without the need for institutional change.
2) The show was a hard enough sell already: why are all these black people in the show? Why are the criminals so sympathetic? Why is the dialogue so opaque? (Some of my friends, Australians like me, found the accents and slang so impenetrable that they watched with subtitles) Why are they spending so long to solve a single case? Why is the plot so complicated? Why are there so many important characters? Why is it set in unglamorous Baltimore? etc.
Framing the show as a somewhat conventional police procedural, where cops tie together clues to solve mysteries, at least gives viewers some kind of hook at the start. Over the first season, you realise that it’s not really a procedural — not primarily at any rate — but by then you’re probably already interested enough to stick with it. If it had been a Beckettian display of futility right from the start, no one would have watched it.
As opposed to almost no one.
1. is arguable. 2. is basically saying it was as good as it could be for television, which is reasonable but not exactly a refutation of my point.
I actually enjoy McNulty’s performance overall. The cop I never believed was Freamon. He just seemed too good to be true…and I never believed the acting. I just realized that it’s a part you could imagine Morgan Freeman playing, which is not good.
I really liked Stringer as a character though. And I thought it was pretty interesting that he participates in Brandon’s murder…the one murder he does directly participate in, right? I think that’s pretty clearly linked to homophobia — which works nicely against the fact that his most intense personal relationship is with Avon.
And I didn’t know you were from Australia, Jones.
Did you see this? — http://www.avclub.com/articles/david-simon-weighs-in-on-arrest-of-the-wires-snoop,52997/
I’m with you on Freamon, to a point. He is a bit too good in the first three seasons — brilliant detective, voice of wisdom, patient mentor to Prez. But he does get quite tarnished throughout S4 and, especially, S5. And come to think of it, his wooing of Shardene is pretty sleazy, and at the least an abuse of power.
“Mayor Carcetti actually gets some stuff done early on, before he has to start eating shit”
I’d be real careful about using the passive voice on Carcetti. He CHOOSES to put politics first, telling himself the same lie every politician does: “Deep down I really want to do the right thing, so the best thing for my constituents is that I stay in power, even if I have to do the wrong thing to stay there.”
I suppose I can agree that Lester is a bit too good to be true for the first few seasons, but I actually don’t mind that — he’s transitioning back from the property room to a position of power and ability, and once he achieves it, he has no problem burning people and playing his friends and colleagues in order to get what he wants, which takes the shine off a bit. His wooing of Shardene is pretty sleazy, and unfortunately I don’t think it’s meant to scan that way. One of the only major issues I had on rewatching the series recently…
My main complaint about season 1 was that it occasionally played out like a conventional cop drama, with a few very hackneyed plot twists thrown in. The worst was when the cops recruited Shardene as an informant for reasons that seemed ridiculous to me, her information ultimately proved irrelevant to the plot, but it provided some cheap drama between her and D’Angelo.
The show improved in later seasons as it shied away from traditional cops and robbers (or in this case, dealers) and focused on the other social ills that plague the city.
Jeez, everybody hates Shardene. The Freamon/Shardene romance was the thing about his character I liked the best. I don’t really buy that it’s an abuse of power; she’s grown up and seems pretty much able to take care of herself. He’s solicitous and sweet; why shouldn’t she find him appealing? It’s one of the few relationships on the show that isn’t fucked up.
And her info actually was quite important; she told them where the office was, which allowed them to put it under observation, which allowed them to bust D’Angelo and Avon as well.
I really liked Lester and Shardene. It was one of the few really good things that happened on the show – you know, not good but useless, good but tinged with tragedy, etc. They were cute together. I don’t see it as an abuse of power. Lester isn’t shown as someone who can’t be trusted in that way (even in the last two seasons), and Shardene is clearly a savvy woman who knows her own mind. Even if she didn’t fall for Lester and only went with him because he was her best option (and I don’t think that’s the case), that would still be a fine outcome, in my opinion. He’s basically a good man – not dangerous, not abusive – so she could obviously do a lot worse. Assuming she wouldn’t be able to do the math and come up with the right answer diminishes her as a character, I think.
Noah:
“Wallace’s execution is perhaps the grimmest, most emotionally wrenching moment of the entire season. In retrospect, his character is almost as important as D’Angelo’s. And, as a result, the second time through this scene of the beating should be telling us something, not only about D’Angelo, but also about Wallace. The Wallace we know later is so upset by brutality that he first becomes an addict and then turns his crew in to the police. The Wallace here, on the other hand, is so comfortable with brutality that he enthusiastically joins in beating a young man almost to death.
The point isn’t that the characterization is inconsistent. People are capable of different levels of brutality at different times, and there is, after all, a line between “beaten almost to death” and “beaten to death.” Still, if you’re going to talk about that line, you probably do in fact need to talk about it, and the Wire doesn’t. For that matter, Simon doesn’t mention it in his voice over. Rewatching here doesn’t so much add resonance as reveal that there isn’t any. The creators didn’t link what Wallace does here to what Wallace does later. As a result the the possible connections just sit there, looking a little lost.”
Isn’t this, though, the original sin of all popular episodic art– making it up as one goes along, and having to reconcile past and present in retrospect?
At least, when Alexandre Dumas or Charles Dickens published the definite book-format versions of their novels in the 19th century, they were able– indeed, expected– to revise and redact their texts to ensure consistency.
That’s simply not economically possible in a DVD reissue of a TV series; what, reshoots? Are you nuts? At best, we can expect a re-editing of material…I’ve only seen this, though, in DVDs and VHS of feature films, the ‘Director’s Cut’ versions. Never for TV.
The same applies, of course, to serialised comics. Though a few cartoonists, notably Chris Ware and Chester Brown, are willing to redact their once-serialised stuff…
Yes, it’s definitely the result of serialization — and probably inevitable. At the same time…I think there’s a tendency with the wire (promoted by Simon) since it is so complicated and much is thought through, to presume that everything is thought through. It’s worth pointing out that there are holes, I think….
Oh, definitely.
Though, there you get the problem of ‘over-plotting’and general control-freakery.
If a scripter gets a creative idea and it is just brushed off with ‘that’s not in the master plot…’ isn’t that a recipe for fossilisation?
Perhaps…but the point is with the Wallace arc that they’d either not thought his character through yet or else nobody coordinated with the scripter.
It’s not a huge deal or anything. But I noticed it.
It’s an interesting example of how the viewer’s gaze has evolved.
Back in the ’60s, nobody would have noticed such an inconsistency on a series such as ‘As the World Turns’ or ‘Run for your Life’.
Same for comics– until the ’60s (or, arguably, the mid-50s with the DC Schwartz superhero revival) nobody gave a damn about continuity or psychological consistency.
Jason — you’re right that Carcetti corrupts himself, particularly with the decision to turn down the governor’s money. But my memory is that he also finds some of his reform efforts genuinely stymied by external forces…but I could be misremembering.
As for Shardene and Lester: I like Shardene herself. Let’s not forget that she’s the *only* major female character who’s not a cop or lawyer (and she still doesn’t make it into the opening credits!).
But I’ll maintain that Lester abuses his position of authority to crack on to her. Shardene cooperates with the police because of how callously the Barksdale crew treat her colleague, and because, like most citizens, she’s intimidated by the power of police. She eventually becomes concerned for her safety in the investigation, but Lester convinces her to continue…while at the same time using their working relationship to seduce her. Not to mention the 16-year age difference (at least between the actors).
Yes, Lester is likely a good romantic partner–he’s not abusive, he’s smart, he’s a professional with a steady income, he’s not involved in crime (well, not as a perp). Yes, Shardene has limited options for finding a decent partner–is she going to find anyone better at the strip club? And remember how quickly the slightly older women in Shardene’s SES pounce on Cutty in S4, a reflection of how few eligible men they have access to. Yes, they seem to be a nice couple together. Yes, Shardene is a grown adult with full agency.
But none of this means that Lester didn’t abuse his power, or that it’s not sleazy. A good relationship, consented to by both parties, can still be the result of an abuse of power. Maybe Woody and Soon Yi make a good couple; he’s still a sleazebag.
There’s a huuuuugggge difference there. The power relationship between father and daughter is light years away from the power relationship between a cop and somebody helping with an investigation.
I think you also have the relationship wrong way about. That is, he doesn’t use the investigation to seduce her. He uses the fact that they’re falling for each other to get her to move on with the investigation — an investigation she actually believes in, I think, and wants to pursue, but for which she needs support, which he provides. And it’s not like she has no say in how that works; when she says, “I can’t do this anymore,” they stop and try something else.
Really, the Woody Allen thing seems like a complete misreading.
The beating of Johnny Weeks, and Wallace’s role in it, is different from Brandon’s death, and his role in that, in several ways. (1) Johnny is “merely” beaten. Brandon is tortured, mutilated and murdered. (2) Wallace’s participation in the beating occurs in the heat of the moment. His decision to rat on Brandon is dispassionate and calculated. (3) Wallace doesn’t really see the long-term effects of Johnny’s beating. Brandon’s body is displayed in Wallace’s backyard. (4) Punishing cheating junkies is presumably a relatively routine event for Wallace. Participating in a murder is novel, and thus more salient. (5) Wallace’s role in the beating is not crucial; even if he didn’t participate, Johnny would still be beaten by Bodie et al. His role in Brandon’s murder *is* crucial; if Wallace didn’t make that phone call, Brandon wouldn’t be murdered–at least, not at that time. (6) The beating happens in the company of Wallace’s peers. The murder involves him with his superiors, who are adults, and serious–and scary–criminals. (7) Johnny is just a junkie, a figure of contempt. Brandon, although a homo and dope-snatcher, is at least higher in the street hierarchy. (8) Brandon seems closer in age to Wallace. Johnny is indisputably an adult; when Wallace spots Brandon, he is playing pinball at a local hangout. (9) Wallace beats on Johnny. He (kind of) snitches on Brandon. Snitching is worse than beating (exhibit A: Randy Wagstaff). (10) Finally, doesn’t DeAngelo express some qualms about Brandon’s vicious treatment? Boadie couldn’t give a shit, but Wallace takes his moral cues from DeAngelo, to some extent.
Given all these differences, Wallace’s different reactions seem not at all inconsistent. Could the show have made these differences, or Wallace’s thinking about them, more explicit? Sure. But if the show made everything explicit, each season would have been one thousand episodes long.
It’s not that it doesn’t make it explicit. It’s that it doesn’t think about it at all. Even in the voice over, Simon’s totally focused on D’Angelo.
They just didn’t think about it. Which seems like a missed opportunity to me, still.
Yeah, there’s a difference. But you shouldn’t underestimate the (real and perceived) power imbalance between police and citizens.
Who’d have thought that somebody would be trying to convince *you* to attend to power relations!! What is this, Bizarro Earth?
I’m attending to them. I just think you’ve got them wrong!
Still on Wallace: you have a couple of different formulations for what the problem is. The show doesn’t “talk about” the reasons for Wallace’s different reactions. Simon doesn’t “mention” them in his commentary. The show doesn’t “link” Wallace’s earlier to his later behaviour. The show doesn’t “think” about the differences.
To take these in turn: (1) I just argued that the shows doesn’t need to “talk about” the differences, because they’re obvious enough not to be made explicit. (2) Simon’s failing to discuss the issue doesn’t seem to carry much weight, either, for two reasons. First, he only has so much time in the commentary and can’t talk about everything, not even everything important. Secondly, so what if he didn’t think about the differences, or mean to include them in the show? I wouldn’t have guessed that you thought authorial intent determined aesthetic interpretation… (3) The show doesn’t explicitly link the two reactions, but see (1). (4) I don’t know what it would mean for a show to “think about” the difference, or to think about anything, for that matter.
4. A work thinking about its themes is a fairly common metaphor. It just means that it thematizes material, or addresses it, or does something with it.
The show does nothing, thinks nothing, and doesn’t appear to be aware that there should be a link between what Wallace does in that first episode and the kind of person he’s shown to be later. You can fill in all sorts of reasons or explanations for why that’s so, or for what the differences might be, or for why Wallace behaves one way in the first situation and another in the second. When you do that, though, you’re essentially writing fan fiction. That is, ou’re embroidering on the show in a way that doesn’t have much textual evidence to support it. You’re making things up to fill in gaps.
There’s nothing wrong with that; thinking about why the first situation is different from the second and why Wallace’s reactions were different is interesting. But it’s not something that the show spends any time on. It prefers to hammer home the much less interesting, and repeatedly hammered home point, that D’Angelo is uncomfortable with the street. In other words, it spends time belaboring the obvious characterization without thinking about (there it is again) the more subtle and complicated one. I find that disappointing.
I suspect the reason is, hey, it’s a tv show. Which is fine. But doesn’t make it less disappointing, really.
To shift gears somewhat, the dropped ball that bugged me the most was the old woman that Colvin neglected to move out of Hamsterdam. It seemed significant at the time; it showed that Colvin’s “big picture” approach was intrinsically going to fail to accommodate the individual; of course he wouldn’t be able to check every single apartment. That was a really obvious, Screenwriting 101 setup… that they then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with. I was waiting for her to be tragically murdered as a result of Colvin’s maverick shenanigans, or to provide a shining counterexample to Hamsterdam with her pluck and courage, or maybe even something less, you know, predictable. But it was left dangling, and not so much in an “Oh, real life is messy and things don’t get resolved so neatly” way, but more of an “Is there a deleted scene on this disc?” way. (Is there a deleted scene?)
I could be misremembering…but I’m pretty sure they did actually more her out of the apartment and set her up through a witness protection program kind of thing, didn’t they? Am I imagining that?
Hm. Maybe. I stand corrected if that’s true. My main recollection is of the stock “I’ll be damned if I get run out of my own home” scene with Colvin. (I have only watched it once…)
Another element that I don’t know what to make of is the character of Brother Mouzone (?). Besides the fact that he’s kind of a failed comic-book villain (as opposed to Omar, who is a _great_ comic-book villain, and I don’t mean that as a put-down), I don’t really know if there is any point to his educated demeanor other than to make the “dangerous nigger with a library card” one liner. For someone who supposedly obsessively reads every publication that David Simon would be likely to write a guest op-ed for, he sure seems to have not taken any of it to heart. And this discrepancy is something that maybe could have been made into a larger point and just wasn’t. I’m not 100% sure it was meant to, and I guess that’s fine, but man, his scenes play as pointless to me…
Man, I hate Brother Mouzone; IMO, he’s the worst character on the show. Yeah, worse than Gus fucking Haynes. Mouzone seems like a transplant from a much cheesier show; like the Wire suddenly had a cross-over with Dexter.
Brother M is definitely awful, the showdown in the alley between him and Omar should be incredible, but its hamstrung by Brother’s dialogue and general appearance. I cant decide though whether Brother is an opportunity missed, or whether he just shouldn’t be there.
I think his main purpose is his relationship with Stringer. Brother is the upmarket Omar, both existing on the fringes of the drug culture, ‘leaching’ off the drug money as Levy puts it, both with a moral code that they feel sets them apart from the drug culture itself. His only difference is how he appears to stand above the ‘street’ while Omar seems to glory in it.
Basically he’s a killer from another world, the kind of killer who bumps of politicians. In some ways then, he reiterates the Wire’s constant refrain, that everything’s the same, from the street to the mayor’s office. Brother represents the violence and dangers of the ‘upper world’ like Omar does the street. With Stringer permanently striving to reach that upper world, its pertinent that he’s killed by both Omar and Brother, literally caught between worlds as Avon remarks shortly before.
Brother is probably important, he’s important with regards to the main theme of season…3(?) which is Stringer’s attempts to go legit, and to move up in the world. I don’t have a problem with that if that’s the intention, but SURELY writers as good as the the ones on the Wire could have found a way to do that without creating him in a DJ and a plum in his mouth! Its one of those moments where the Wire does exactly the opposite of what it seems to try and do, caricature. Definitely a dropped ball.
I enjoyed Brother Moulzone! He’s definitely not in the same realist vein as a lot of the show, but I liked that about him. He struck me more as a Quentin Tarantino character almost…or someone out of Frank Miller.
And I really enjoyed the scenes with him and Omar. They point out the ways that Omar really is a larger than life character too; more mythic western gunfighter than real street hood. I appreciate those touches where the show shuffles off its realism, if only for a moment or two.
I’m with you on Brother Moulzone. I love those brief moments when the show gets really weird.
I’ve really enjoyed the posts and the discussions. Thanks everyone.
But, it seems to me that many people are interpreting the show within the presumed constraints of “realism,” and finding a lot of scenes or characters lacking on that basis. Of course we may be forgiven for that since that is what the critics are calling it. Still, the term realism has to be qualified when we talk about it. It is true that the Wire shares many conventions of literary realism, especially that of Zola.
But there is an important influence on the Wire that has nothing to do with realism of any epoch – ancient Greek tragedy. This has been discussed numerous times by Simon and others, and features prominently in the show as a device. Clay Davis reads “Prometheus Bound” at the courthouse, Burrell tells his commanders that “the gods will not save you,” the mysterious criminal overlord of Seasons 2 and 5 goes by “the Greek.” In the Wire social institutions are the gods of Greek tragedy: capricious, venal and more than willing to destroy individuals for their own ends.
So with that in mind we do see a lot of characters who are, indeed, “mythical” rather than realistic. Omar is obvious, as is Brother Mouzone. He doesn’t get much face time, but he is obviously one of those characters. Likely from the street, has some unspecified involvement with the Nation of Islam (dresses similar to their paramilitary organization and mouths “Allahu Akbar” when shot by Omar, although the Nation has always been hostile to the drug trade), highly educated, but likely by himself, and with an affected formal manner. These characteristics may not add up to a “realistic” character per se but one who is mysterious, and thus whose arrival in Baltimore is reminiscent of the appearance of a vengeful deity in Greek drama.
Stringer, therefore, has invited death. He has tried to become something other than what he is, and in the process violated the game’s rules repeatedly, and with malice of forethought. And when this happens, it is up to the gods (Omar and Mouzone) to set things right.
I completely disagree with your view of both McNulty and Wallace.
Simon is absolutely right that McNulty is different. The ego about being the smartest guy in the room rather than being Holy-er Than Thou is very important. Even Law and Order, a show that was praised for their realism, had cops who equivocated with the best of them.
As for Wallace, you seem to have missed that Brandon was not just tortured to death. He was mutilated. MUTILATED. One of his eyes was no longer in his skull. There is a huge difference between the violence of beating someone until they are bleeding a lot, something Wallace would have seen more than enough in his life, or even a dead body that was shot and someone who was mutilated. If you think these things are the same, you have just never seen the difference yourself. As someone who was embedded in Afghanistan and worked a crime beat in a major urban city center, let me tell you, more than enough was said just by the description Wallace gave about what happened to Brandon.
Well, I said McNulty was somewhat different from the normal tv show cop. But is he that different from Philip Marlowe? If you broaden your scope just slightly, he doesn’t look all that different.
I think people have different reactions to violence, and different reactions to different levels of violence. I wasn’t saying that Wallace’s character was unrealistic. I was saying that the show fails to do anything with the early scene. I think that’s a misstep still.
“Well, I said McNulty was somewhat different from the normal tv show cop. But is he that different from Philip Marlowe? If you broaden your scope just slightly, he doesn’t look all that different.”
That’s an interesting comparison, Noah, and I’m not sure you’re entirely wrong about McNulty, but it seems to me that here you’ve broadened your scope in a way that actually excludes McNulty. Philip Marlowe is very much outside the system, not a part of it, which is a crucial element of McNulty. Put another way, cops might beat on Marlowe, but even cops that don’t like McNulty would kick the shit out of a street kid who tried to take a swing at him. I think that’s an important difference.
Phillip Marlowe isn’t a TV cop, or even a cop.
The point is that he’s not on TV (thus widening the discussion.) And yes, he’s not a cop…but he’s a detective. Who doesn’t care about getting the criminals, but has other priorities. Is my point.
Another note. To all the people crying about Brother Mouzone. It is based on a real person. Well, actually three real people. I can’t find the interview right now, but Ed Burns (the actual former homicide detective who worked on the show) talked about how people think a lot of the stuff in the show is exaggerated and the truth is actually a lot more insane. Like Omar jumping off the balcony to escape Marlo’s boys. The real guy that is based off, Donnie Andrews jumped from higher, but they were sure no one would find the truth believable.
You may not like something they did, but it is all based on 100% reality. That is why the show works. If they started making shit up somewhere it would stop being realistic. Calling someone unrealistic in The Wire, is not understanding reality.
“Well, I said McNulty was somewhat different from the normal…
TV SHOW COP…
But is he that different from Philip Marlowe? If you broaden your scope just slightly, he doesn’t look all that different.”
Funny, but that is you who said that. If you are going to change the discussion that is fine, but the person you were responding to was basing their comments on your blog post which is talking about both cops and TV. You then reinforce it in your next response.
It is just poor form in a discussion to change directions without agreeing with the other party to change directions.
Oh, come on. The show is fiction; it’s not reported. There are many things on the show that are heightened or tweaked. That’s what makes it fiction.
People involved in the drug trade have said the show gets various things wrong — from the level of insubordination allowed to the number of women involved (too few.) I’ve talked to people who have worked as cops who find things about the cops dicey; I’ve talked to people who have worked in inner city schools who find those portrayals dicey. And, you know, some of the accents are wrong.
Mouzone is great because he’s hyper-real, not real. The idea that the Wire is some kind of unmediated Truth is an insult to all the actors and creators who made a really quite wonderful piece of fiction.
Jen, this is silly. If you think the Wire is perfect in every way, that’s cool. Go with God.
Well, then I guess every interview David Simon and Ed Burns do where they discuss just how insane it is that turning real people into “faux-fiction” (Ed Burns term) gets more people interested in reality than an actual true story in a newspaper, is an insult to their show and the actors they hired and the people they worked with.
I also don’t think the show is perfect. I have also done a lot of homework on the show because I wrote my thesis about it for J-school and can tell when someone just doesn’t have their facts straight. Of course this all just proves Bill Maher and David Simon’s points, so maybe you are right…this is silly. Unfortunately, you probably don’t know why.
“Well, I said McNulty was somewhat different from the normal tv show cop. But is he that different from Philip Marlowe? If you broaden your scope just slightly, he doesn’t look all that different.”
Like others said, Phillip Marlowe is neither a cop, nor is he from a television show, so I fail to see how that is related in any way. You can compare an apple to a teacup all you want, but it will never make sense.
“I think people have different reactions to violence, and different reactions to different levels of violence. I wasn’t saying that Wallace’s character was unrealistic. I was saying that the show fails to do anything with the early scene. I think that’s a misstep still.”
They did do something with the earlier scene. They pointed out the level of brutality inflicted upon Brandon. That is what rocked Wallace’s world. I would hardly call that a misstep. If anything that was painted as clearly as it gets for The Wire given most of what he gives the viewer is a Jackson Pollack by comparison.
I just started watching the series for the first time. Been meaning to for years, but I’m finally getting around to it. A friend let me borrow the first few seasons on DVD months ago and I’ve been sitting on it since. I’m nine episodes into the first season, so it became clear to me after reading too far into this review (and a few comments into this thread) that I need to at least finish the rest of the season before I come back. But I’m glad you guys took a crack at this show. I’m really enjoying it more than I’d expected to for many of the reasons Noah outlined here (before I stopped reading because, well, I’d like to retain some surprises).
Thus far, the show tends to flit between nihilism and justice. But nihilism and despair have to win out when you look at the big picture of the drug problem. I imagine several of the characters who seem to hold the show’s few flickers of hope will be dead on the concrete before the end of the season. I’m glad to know that McNulty won’t be one of them, though.
I’m coming to this late, but better late than never, I suppose…
The problem with your assessment of Wallace is that it completely ignores the scene in which D’Angelo’s growing moral influence over him becomes most apparent. Wallace mentions that he’s been thinking a lot about D’Angelo’s assertion that The Game need not get played the way it does, with its basic lack of human empathy (not phrased as such by Wallace, certainly). He’s figuring out for himself (with an obvious assist from D’Angelo) what his own moral parameters are— a decision more likely to come from having played a pivotal role in the brutal torture and murder of a young man than it would from the workaday gang beating of a white junkie and scam artist. The casual cruelty of childhood often gets left behind as we mature; Wallace’s maturation process was hindered as much by Bodie and Poot was it was helped by D’Angelo, though we *did* get to watch it happen—you just had to be paying attention, I suppose.
And, as someone else noted elsewhere, he wasn’t confronted with the consequences of his violence towards Johnny every waking moment in the courtyard…where he *was* confronted with it with Brandon’s body being dumped almost literally on his doorstep. It’s easy to maintain sociopathic distance from people if you aren’t tormented by their fate at every turn. The horror of Brandon’s death jump started the growth of a seed first planted by D’Angelo. A (callous indifference of youth) to B (dawning awareness) to C (eventual emotional maturity). It’s all right there.
With all due respect (note the season three shout-out…), I think your failure to see Wallace’s early and later actions as consistent with growing emotional maturity has less to do with others reading things that aren’t there into the material to suit their desires, and more to do with your own lack of perception for what is clearly, unequivocally present in the material. It’s not us, Noah, it’s you.
Oh, and you’re also woefully wrong about Brother Mouzone. He was a rare misstep for a show that didn’t make all that many (the last stylistic misstep for example, minus the Spaghetti western Mouzone / Omar showdown in 03×12, was in 02×10, in the wake of Glekas’s murder). No, the show wasn’t perfect. But it was damned close, and Mouzone is one of only a small handful of notable miscalculations. He belongs in a different show altogether…such as the one suggested by Avon’s slow-mo rap video swagger through The Pit later in the first season (which is, by far, the worst misstep in the show’s five season run. It amounted to maybe thirty seconds of screen time, but it wasn’t just stylistically out of place, but *morally* out of place as well. I’m astounded it survived the final edit, and am pretty damned certain it wouldn’t have in the post-Robert Colesberry years).
Hey Helpful. I don’t think that there’s no way you can make the character consistent. I just don’t think that the show does much with that first incident. It isn’t referenced again; it’s not discussed in the voice over; it’s just not integrated into the character by the show (though you can obviously do the work yourself.)