Third in David Simon's brutal and gritty Baltimore version of the Law-and-Order franchise, after Homicide (all seasons out on DVD, though perhaps not with the NYC crossover episodes) and the drop-dead searing mini-series The Corner (available on DVD and HBO sometimes repeats it On Demand). Simon explains, in Q & As on the HBO Web site posted after Season #2, such quotes hereafter referred to as "Simon Says", that I'll re-post excerpts here as who knows how long HBO will retain the comments: "Ed Burns and I wrote The Corner together. That book is a subtle argument against the drug war. But we both felt that since the book was for the most part a microcosm of that war in the tale of a single open-air drug market, there was more to be said about the nature of the disconnect between law enforcement and the drug culture. And we felt that this could be accomplished through a narrative like The Wire. The show also owes a debt to Richard Price's magnificent Dempsey books, and Clockers in particular, which first demonstrated the narrative power of a split-POV between police and their targets."
Inspired by true events (Simon as quoted in Newark Star Ledger 8/6/2006: "God is not a second-rate novelist. God knows what he's doing, and if you just take what actually happened and marry it to where you want to go, it's better than if you thought of it yourself."), Baltimore is a major character, its architecture, ethnic and racial antagonisms, music, food, geography, and especially its politics, are particular, yet so resonant to Any American City (which is more effective than the anonymous city in the almost-as-good-and-classic cancelled EZ Streets (only 3 episodes available on DVD; sometimes showing on Sleuth TV). Simon Says: "I think The Wire is subtle but genuine of the real in this city. It is not the work of Hollywood types coming in from out of town and slumming, finding fault with a place they barely know. It is the work of East Coast rust-belt writers, most of them from Baltimore proper, speaking to the problems, failings, joys and humor of a city they love. I live here in the city. I am angry at much that has happened here and grateful for much that has survived and in some cases, continues to endure.
This is the Best Novel on Television Simon Says: "The show is crafted as a visual novel; most of episodic television, even when its very good, is crafted as a series of short stories. It was initially hard convincing HBO that we could do a "cop show" that would be distinctly different from network fare, cop shows being the storytelling backyard of the other networks. They needed to see several scripts and then they needed to get a sense that the show would build as the episodes progressed, which is kind of what happens when people pick up a book and read it, chapter by chapter. . . You have to consider that the nature of a novelistic television show is that each chapter builds on the previous, so that the pace accelerates. That means that the first episodes of any season are much like the early chapters of a long narrative. They set the stage, introduce characters and begin the plotting that will result, hopefully, in the payoff. Tellingly, the first episodes of first season were a revelation not only for viewers, but for HBO as well. [Simon added a year later: It took Ed Burns and myself more than a year to come up with the first three scripts and then rework them to the satisfaction of Carolyn Strauss and Chris Albrecht at HBO.] Trained to watch episodic television, many people were stunned to find that the show was deliberately pacing itself much more slowly and intricately. Some people were bored, but others were drawn in. The moment when I knew we'd be alright was when Chris Albrecht, then the head of programming for HBO, said he was glad that each episode was getting better. That was a good sign, he said. To me, they were all good episodes in that they were progressing the single story exactly in the manner intended, but Chris's impression was important. Many people pick up a book and read it to conclusion with the same sense that each successive chapter leaves the reader more involved and more committed to finishing."
Simon Says on who he is writing for:
See David Simon's interview with Nick Hornby in the August 2007 The Believer online magazine. See David Simon's fan interview with Jesse Pearson "The 2009 Fiction Issue" of Vice Magazine for insights on the making-of-this series and his oeuvre. For what may be the complete compendium of Simon interviews and series news.
The key to following the story is conceptualizing corrupt, warring bureaucracies, The Law and The Out-Laws, with the focus on the pressures on middle management on all sides; for the second season add the waterfront and the drug wholesalers, for the fifth add the newspapers. It is particularly trenchant about the blind eye of the FBI post 9/11. Simon Says: "But I can only add that we are not selling hope, or audience gratification, or cheap victories with this show. The Wire is making an argument about what institutions - bureaucracies, criminal enterprises, the cultures of addiction, raw capitalism even - do to individuals. It is not designed purely as an entertainment. It is, I'm afraid, a somewhat angry show." He reiterated a year later: "Since day one, this show has been about what institutions do to the individuals who serve them or are supposed to be served by them."
Each episode does take two+ screenings to understand, let alone trying to start watching not from the beginning of the series, such that Slate provided a weekly critical guide to help get you to watch, with commentary by TV writer David Mills, journalist/author Alex Kotlowitz and a filmmaker of Hoop Dreams, among other resources. The opening quotes, provided in the HBO online episode summaries so I haven't been always repeating them here, are pithily important guides to each episode's theme.
Background on what else drove the music selections for Season 4 from: Bow Down to the Wire by Dave Walker, in Times Picayune, 12/9/2006 (this may be more than a fair use excerpt) : “Lucky New Orleans viewers who've found the show know they've seen -- and heard -- plenty of us in it. This season, the show's soundtrack was salted with New Orleans music, with snippets of songs by The Iguanas, The Wild Magnolias, Deacon John, Raymond Winnfield and The Meters slipping into, under and out of the action. And, as a bonus, [the] finale concludes with Paul Weller's version of Dr. John's "Walk on Gilded Splinters."
For The Wire Rap That’s Pure Baltimore By Jon Caramanica in The New York Times, September 10, 2006 (this may be more than a fair use):
I initially categorized it as a hunkfest (and funny connection between the resident hunks of The Wire and Deadwood) but that turned out to be just an added bonus. And there's a bunch of hunky formerly dead cons from Oz resurrected as complicated cops. But you have to try not to fall too much in love with any one character, as Simon Says: "On this show, the characters -- how they are presented, what they do, what becomes of them -- are there to serve the story we are trying to tell. The story does not serve the characters; if we are anything more than hacks making a TV show, it has to be the other way around." He continues: "But nothing lasts forever, and if it does, it usually lasts to diminishing results."
By Chapter 2 - The Detail already got his shirt off. As Simon Said two years later: "As to love/sex scenes, they come when the story dictates and are not gratuitous, or at least we hope they aren't. And one thing that viewers never consider: Some actors/actresses are reluctant to work undressed. Won't say who, but it is something to consider above and beyond the intentions of the writers." Davis corrects that when "Prez", "Herc" and "Carver" are drinking beer and arguing about the case, "American Woman" is playing by the Guess Who (from their 1970 album of the same name). Jeremiah let me know that while "McNulty" is drinking in his car, "Love is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia plays.
Chapter 3 - The Buys "McNulty" was in bed with a woman -- yet another hard-driving, ambitious Jewish woman lawyer on TV "Rhonda Pearlman" (played by Deirdre Lovejoy) who I discuss elsewhere in the context of Critical Guide to Jewish Women on TV but, unusually, she's earthy and vulnerable below the rumpled toughness -- foreshadowed by her listening to Lucinda Williams sing "2-Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" (from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road which was on my Best of '98).
In Chapter 4 - Old Cases by Simon and Burns his supervisor agrees: It's not Jimmy's fault. Jimmy is addicted to himself. It's a fuckin' tragedy. He's come to believe he's always the smartest fuck in the room. It makes him an asshole but it's also what makes him good po-lice, while the lover of his lesbian partner's response to his attempts at off-hours camaraderie for doing genuine police work together amidst the corruption and apathy is That's one confused white man out there! (Terrific choice of Nina Simone's "Sugar in My Bowl" leading into the scene.)
In Chapter 5 - The Pager, by Burns and Simon, his police skills are paying off and being resentfully recognized, while his negotiations with his ex-wife for child custody are a total failure. (And there was even relevance to my job at the time: the Judge gives the Deputy Commissioner helpful and accurate fundraising advice: Did you ever think of bringing in private resources to help you? I have a connection at the Abell Foundation.)
In Chapter 6 - The Wire by Simon and Burns, he finally gets his kids for a night --and brings them to the morgue with a drug-dealing CI, because as the Major's spy protests, He's got this fuckin' case in his gut like a cancer. "Wha?" retorts the revenge-seeking higher-up, He doesn't drink any more? A poster on the HBO BB says the jazz piece at the end is "Fleurette Africaine" off of Duke Ellington's Money Jungle. Another poster reports that "Wax Music Box" by Cytoplastik, a local experimental electronic composer, is playing when "Avon," "Stringer" and "Stinkum" walk into the projects.
Chapter 7 - One Arrest, story by Simon & Burns, teleplay by Alvarez, not only do we see him drunk with his partner (with a memorably metaphorically vulgar conversation about their relationship), but when he sobers up, he returns for sympathy to the arms of the attorney: I love this fuckin' job but they're gonna do me. On the HBO forums "MichaelLittle" says the song playing when Stinkum is in the car and the cops are on his trail is "Analyze" by Sharpshooters.
In Chapter 8 - Lessons he uses his kids in a game of "I Spy" on the #2 drug dealer (to the tune playing in the market of The Tokens' popularized version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" according to the Alvarez book) then pushes his partner into a drunken accusation of You're no good for people, Jimmy. Damn, everyone around you, Christ. . .
In Chapter 9 - Game Day by Simon and Burns, he's hectored his fellow cops into following the constitutional rules for the wire tap and caring about bringing down the elusive kingpin (Stupid criminals make stupid cops. I'm proud to follow this guy.) -- then resists running after an opportunity to see him at his sponsored basketball game - We get him by the voice alone or else we don't get him -- and cheats on the wire tap log. Thanks to fan Jeremiah who identified "Rock the Nation" by Michael Franti and Spearhead from Stay Human on "Avon"s car radio when the cops are tailing him after the game on a merry innocent chase.
In Chapter 10 - The Cost by Simon and Burns, his wife hauls him into court to keep him from endangering the kids, and he convinces her he still loves her-- and is only, No. Yes. A little continuing the affair with the attorney that she had a detective follow him to discover. HBO BB poster methvschef thinks that "Hater Players-Blackstar" by Talib Kwelli & Mos Def is playing when "Kima" approaches her doom.
In Chapter 11 - The Hunt, it's his bureaucratic enemy who gets him through a guilt-ridden Post-Traumatic Stress-- You are a gaping asshole, but believe it or not, not everything is about you. --and he lashes out at ambitious lawyers: Everybody's got a fuckin' future. -- except him.
In the penultimate of the season Chapter 12 - Cleaning Up, story by Simon & Burns, teleplay by George Pelecanos, he regrets pushing the case: It was just a way for me to show how smart I was. The Lt. that he sparked says into his face: You can stand there dripping with liquor smell and self-pity if you got a mind to, but this case, it means something. Now.
In the ironically titled season finale Chapter 13 - Sentencing by Simon and Burns, "McNulty" gets a "Nicely done" from the #2 drug dealer, the judge, the very excited state's attorney, and his boss (You do not make it easy, Jimmy, I got to admit you got some stones on you. But did you really . . .) -- before getting the fatal question: Where don't you want to go? Jeremiah let me know that while "Bodie," "Poot," and "Wallace" are having chili dogs in the restaurant, "Put Your Head on my Shoulder" by Paul Anka plays. The closing song on the first season finale was "Step by Step" from Jesse Winchester's Let the Rough Side Drag album on Stoney Plain Recordings.
HBO slyly promoted the second season as: "A new case begins. . ." with an image of a body floating in the harbor. (USA pretty much stole most of the plot from for its Traffic mini-series, more than from the BBC series or Soderbergh movie, though with less cynicism.) Simon Says: "The waterfront is, to us, cinematically beautiful. Those cranes are gothic. And we were looking for a world that would represent for the working-class in Baltimore. We could have done the steel mills, but they are bankrupt, or the GM plant, or some other union-wage industry, but the port felt right." A year later he reflected on the second season: "When we did the port story, we used the actual CSX grain pier as a location and indeed, that facility has been idle since it was damaged several years ago. Traditionally, idle piers around the outer and inner harbors of Baltimore have been targeted for residential/commercial development for the last two decades. When we began filming the second season, the CSX pier was not so targeted, and our writing that the longshoremen were concerned that if it wasn't repaired, the developers would get to it -- that was fiction. Except that by the time we finished filming, a group of developers had proposed condos for the grain pier. Last time I went by there it was fenced off for the redevelopment and, alas, 'you'll never see another grain ship in Bawlmer, my friend.' Life imitating art, I suppose." (See how the shipping business has gone to China in the documentary Manufactured Landscapes). The Alvarez book identifies that in an episode where "Frank Sobotka" is worried about a lost container of contraband that's 1972's "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) by Looking Glass "playing on a beat-up radio."
The mix of corruption, good intentions, class and ethnic and racial tensions are again intimately intertwined in Chapter 14 - Ebb Tide by Simon and Burns; "McNulty" takes a bribe, but is then irresistibly drawn into being a good cop on a homicide even when his bureaucrat-oozing cohort snorts that Fuckin' McNulty is the 'Prince of Tides' marooned out in waterfront patrol - It's all about self-preservation, Jimmy -- something you haven't learned, -- as he works meticulously for hours to plot jurisdictional "murder po-lice" revenge on the Colonel who demoted him. Director Ed Bianchi beautifully used sounds as sonic metaphors for how people living in the same city occupy different perceived spaces -- from the bluesy bar band (The Nighthawks doing the ironically significant "Sixteen Tons" in a longshoremen's hang-out to the Polish kid listening to the old punk of The Stooges' "Search and Destroy" (from Raw Power, according to folks on the HBO BB) to when a young punk Baltimore drug dealer is sent out-of-town for the first time and freaks because he can't understand why he can't get his usual radio stations and is completely alienated by listening to A Prairie Home Companion on Philly public radio.
In Chapter 16 - Hot Shots by Simon and Burns, director Elodie Keene leisurely created elegiac images (with so much character-appropriate ambient radio-listening music that I couldn't ID it fast enough, including a lovely cover of "So Fine") as the seed is planted for the old investigative team to be gradually re-round up to facilitate a major's personal, implacable revenge. "McNulty" has been butting in some more - It's got me thinking is all. I worked some things out in my head -- while his ex-partners skewer him that it was that altar boy guilt talking, he mocks, But what do I have to be guilty about? HBO BB posters ID'd "Cisco Kid" by War playing as "Uncle Avon" proves he is in charge, even in jail.
In Chapter 17 - Hard Cases by Simon and Joy Lusco Kecken, Keene focused on the meanings in silent exchanges of looks, between spouses, between bosses and underlings. Most significantly, between the Colonel and "McNulty", such that as the old team is being reunited for internal political purposes - Except McNulty. No McNulty. Nothing that even resembles the son of a bitch. He quits or he drowns. That's the only thing that gets him off the fuckin' boat so help me God." "Gilligan" himself is being uncharacteristically introspective, as he hands over the divorce papers to his wife: Signed and notarized. I don't want to argue about the money. I want to get back together. Ambient music continues its thematic importance. "McNulty" is listening to classic soul music, with songs by the Velvelettes ("He Was Really Saying Something"), Frankie Lymon ("I Promise To Remember"), and Irma Thomas ("Ruler Of My Heart"), as he pursues his old and new case on his own time. His former partner invades the longshoremen's bar by controlling the jukebox, eschewing country music (identified in the Alvarez book as Gram Parsons's "Streets of Baltimore") for a Ray Charles oldie. The cops and the longshoremen are all listening back for the future. Also heard in this chapter: "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf and "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" by Tammy Wynette.
In Chapter 18 - Undertow, by Simon and Burns, the criss-crossed relationships are being revealed -- from the docks to the drug dealers, the port to the prison, with many ironic chuckles on race and bureaucracies. But "McNulty"--My detecting days are over-- is out on his own, even up to NJ, trying to trace his floater-- I kinda feel it's on me to find her people. . . You seen what happens down at the morgue when they can't ID a body? I have. That's Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" on at the pizza parlor where the port policewoman plays her CI. Folks on the HBO BB report that the song playing during rooftop surveillance is "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" by Akrobatik from the album Balance.
The Chapter 19 - The Prologue, by Simon and Burns, is in effect the end of Season #1 as loose ends from the first case are literally tied up. "McNulty" delivers his star witness to court, gives up on finding his floater's family for a funeral (Fuck it. Let her go. Just a way to pretend I was still a murder po-lice.), reconciles himself to "retirement" out on the boat (On a good day I catch crabs and count seagulls.), and moderates his drinking to have a reconciliation date with his wife (And fucking the waitress? she cynically suggests. I don't do much of that anymore either, he claims). So, that's everything that pissed you off -- the drinking, the women, the work. I want another chance. -- earning him just a fuck for the road before she kicks him out of the house again. Is that it for him on the case now that his colleagues are just beginning to figure out how to untangle the criminal connections around the docks? This chapter has cameos that Simon Says: "Also Richard Price, who wrote Clockers, Samaritan, The Wanderers, and other notable novels and screenplays, was in the prison library when Gatsby was discussed. That was homage. For those of you who have read Clockers, it is clear that this show owes a debt to that remarkable book."<
In Chapter 20 - Backwash, by Simon and Alvarez, director Thomas J. Wright (new to this series, but not to network dramas), plays on a continuing visual theme of characters sitting outside on the stoops of their different Baltimore houses, enjoying their very different views and neighborhood lives. There's "McNulty" still trying with his ex-wife and kids (he's just a stubborn kind of fella, after all), but she says definitively that she just wants to be friends: "I can care, but how the hell am I supposed to trust you?" We got country music-turned-gospel at his counterpart's funeral, and "Love Child" by the Supremes on the bar juke-box used as a very funny joke on "Ziggy," about whom Simon Says: "Accents are touch and go. It isn't possible to use an actor pool of Baltimore performers only, so the actors often have only a passing sense of the Bawlmer accent. When we can do it, we do. James Ransone who plays "Ziggy" is a Bawlmer boy and we encouraged him to use the accent. He has, delightfully. I've known twenty characters like him, and indeed his character is based very loosely on a legendary longshoreman named Pinkie Bannion, who used to take his duck to the bar and repeatedly expose 'pretty boy' and all else. As they said in Bawlmer about Pinkie: 'That boy ain't right.'"
In the pun-filled Chapter 21 - Duck and Cover, by Simon and Pelecanos, "McNulty" has returned to his roots, doing all the things his suspicious wife thought he wouldn't give up. Drunk, he crashes his car as he sings along to the Pogues' "Transmetropolitan" (as Andrew L. insisted correctly -- from their album Red Roses for Me): "This town has done us dirty/This town has bled us dry/We've been here for a long time/And we'll be here 'til we die/So we'll finish off the leavings/Of blood and glue and beer/And burn this bloody city down/In the summer of the year/Going transmetropolitan." He still manages to bed a waitress. His voice cracks as he confesses, Who am I? Captain Chesapeake? [a reference to a local "Captain Kangaroo" type TV show host] I need to get off that boat. I need a case. If I'm not good for . . . to his ex-partner, who pleads to his boss to get "McNulty" on the multi-tentacled detail. He's a picture postcard of a drunken fuck-up but when he's on a case. . . That's as close to the man comes to being right. You know that "McNulty"s back when he walks in, just as the team agrees that they need a whore to catch a whore, protesting What the fuck did I do? And he easily picks out the john who'll get him his "ticket to the dance": Lying to your wife is easy. It's looking your kid in the eyes that's the hard part. The grin is back! This episode was written by noted D.C. crime novelist George Pelecanos. See the Salon interview with him about his and Simon's novelistic approach to The Wire . And at a CNN interview with Simon that says the he is preparing the plots for a renewed third season.
Chapter 22 - Stray Rounds by Simon weaves all the story lines together in a complex corrupt pattern and "McNulty" is the comic relief. There's an inside joke that he has to trick the Madam that he's from way out of town to get into the brothel, so Dominic West gets to use an imitation of his native English accent and silly Brit slang "Spot on" as the code word for the bust (which he forgets). So Jimmy gets all spiffed up in a suit to pick a prostitute, "Decisions, decisions -- I'll take two," and when they strip him and quickly and efficiently get him off, he protests about his violations of regulations, "There were two of them. I was outnumbered." Mary Wells's classic Motown "You Beat Me To the Punch" was playing in the longshoremen's bar as a comment on "Ziggy's" argument with "Nick".
Chapter 23 - Storm Warnings, by Simon and Burns, opened fittingly with Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line." McNulty, sober, is in his element in police work, bringing in FBI computer software gimmicks, using his experience out on the contraband-captured police boat to do surveillance, and figure out, innovatively, how to triangulate a text message source for tracing. Will he put other links together that some of his blundering cohorts are missing? That was Joan Jett's cover of Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" wryly commenting from "Ziggy's" car radio.
Chapter 24 - Bad Dreams, the penultimate episode of the season (written by Pelecanos and the first one to be directed by noted Spike Lee cinematographer Ernest Dickerson-- with Simon doing a Hitchcockian cameo as a Member of the 4th Estate), had McNulty and his detail, thanks to a FBI mole and what, as the Lt. throws down, "even for a supremely fucked-up police department this takes the prize," just miss tagging the big guys, The Greeks -- though McNulty atypically puts in a PC protest, "Hey, lay-off those Greeks. They invented civilization." (And his partner retorts: "Yeah, and ass-fucking too.") "njmandal" on the HBO BB ID'd: "The two songs at the end of the episode were sung by the late Stelios Kazantzidis. At the restaurant, the song playing was 'To Psomi tis Xenethias (Bread in a Foreign Land).' The song played very loudly at the end is a less well known song from the same album, 'Ena sidero anameno;' it's actually a steamy love song. The artist was a favorite of lower class Greeks and immigrants most of his life although he became more trendy in the 90's. He died last year, unfortunately. A gritty singer who was not glamorous, he sang about workers, immigrants, and failed love. The music would almost certainly be played in a Greek restaurant in the U.S." "Suspire" adds: "Also there appears to be at least two different versions. . .one where the tone isn't quite so dark and he is singing the chorus duet with some chick. It's from his album Palia Laika." The Alvarez book says that one of the Greek songs is "She's Gone, She's Gone" by composer Vassilis Vassiliadis. Simon Says in reference to the Greek cultural references: "George Pelecanos is to be credited with the Greek phrasing. And if you are into it, you should check out some of his earlier D.C. novels which feature a Greek-American protagonist who has some McNulty-like characteristics as well. His later novels aren't as heavy on Greek culture, but they are excellent in their own right. Try The Big Blowdown to start." Considered by AV Club as one of the "essential episodes".
Third Season - The rules change. The game stays the same.
From an interview with The Man at HBO:
For season three, Simon will write three episodes, Pelecanos, Price and Ed Burns will write two episodes each, and [Dennis] Lehane, Joy Lusco Kecken and Rafael Alvarez will write one each. "The trick is finding a story that everyone wants to tell a piece of, and still feel connected to the whole," says Simon. "It's like we're building a building, You don't want anyone to feel like, 'Well, I can't control the other floors, but the third floor of this building is really beautiful." He continued later in the year: "We work out the storylines in detail before we begin filming every season. This happens by Ed Burns, George Pelecanos, myself, Bill Zorzi and at times,
Dennis Lehane [podcast interview includes Wire insights] and Richard Price, getting into a small room and annoying each other for many, many hours. That's the heavy lifting of the show, plotwise." He noted: "This season, is, however, an allegory for the tragedy ongoing in Iraq, something that only a few people have picked up on."
Chapter 26 - Time After Time, the season premiere, by Simon and Burns, was filled with delicious ironies -- they have "the wire" all right, but it's not turning anything up, except one talkative drug dealer who "If that idiot worked for us, he'd be a deputy commissioner by now." "McNulty" is less central but he's still resentfully going out on his own sniffing for clues through old files, determined to get the top dealers ("You don't look at what you did before, you do the same shit all over.") When his annoyed colleague complains: "It's you against the world, is it?", he, as usual, protests: "What the fuck did I do?" Other of the cops are aggressively full of themselves, frustratingly chasing dealers in circles while blasting the updated theme from Shaft on their car radios. The notorious public housing towers are intentionally blown up as an impotent reminder of 9/11 -- that we're losing the domestic war on terrorism, against drug dealers who are destroying our cities, as well as recalling The Pruitt Igoe Myth in St. Louis. For my discussion of Rhonda Pearlman as an unstereotypical Jewish woman character on TV in this season. Davis says: The song playing during the opening wiretap sequence is 50 Cent's "In Da Club."
In Chapter 27 - All Due Respect writers Simon and Richard Price (commentary on this episode by the latter on Season 3 DVD) were still ironically laying the groundwork web of relationships, while "McNulty" is doggedly following up on D'Angelo's death--the character who has been the Rosetta Stone throughout the series-- that everyone else wants to call a suicide. HBO BB posters are reporting "Stand Up" by Ludacris played when a rival dealer drives up on the corner and "Atomic Dog" by George Clinton played during the dogfights.
Chapter 28 - Dead Soldiers, teleplay by Dennis Lehane, story by Simon (commentary by the latter on Season 3 DVD) and Lehane, was full of gritty, ironic poetry and funny, brilliant lines from beginning to end. His fellow cops ask "McNulty" where he was: At the library. Yeah at the prison library where he vividly demonstrates that D's death was no suicide, to their protests that We're supposed to be finding less murders not more. But they grudgingly josh that he's "here in spirit" as they pick their next focus to fixate on, and his lesbian colleague moans that I'm turning into McNulty as she recounts her drinking and infidelity to avoid returning home to her partner and baby. That's the Pogues doing "The Body of an American" in tribute both to the dead cop and the late actor/executive producer of the series, Robert F. Colesberry. Simon Says: "If it is not a tradition for the detectives to lay one of their own on a pool table and sing "Body of an American," it should be." (Mikey1962 says we also hear them singing Shane McGowan's "Sally MacLalane".) JThornton 13 on the HBO Forum says that's "In My Life" by DJ Technics playing at the party Cutty went to with Bodie.
In Chapter 29 - Amsterdam, by Simon and Pelecanos perfectly crystallized "McNulty"s problems and brilliance, as both po-lice and a man. According to a fan post on the HBO BB: "The track playing in the background at the party was done by a local Baltimore club producer named DJ Technics". Posters say that another background song was Biggie Smalls doing "My Downfall" from Life After Death, which Jay Z has also sampled and that the song playing in the fancy wheels is "Splash Waterfalls" by Ludacris. Davis says: "In the background of the bar when "McNulty" and "Bunk" are drinking 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' is playing" (maybe by Marvin Gaye).
Chapter 30 - Straight and True, by Simon and Burns, is the out and out LOL funniest episode of the series. (Simon in an interview with Alan Sespinall in The Newark Star Ledger 8/6/2006: "You can't do a show this dark and not make it bearable (without) the humor.") "McNulty" scores points all around for his dogged po-lice work, then is roundly put down by the classy one-night stand he picks up in front of his ex at the school open house for his kids. An HBO BB poster reports: accompanied by "Stringer", "when "Avon" was throwing his prison clothes out of the window, War's 'Me and Baby Brother' was playing in the background." Davis says: "When "Avon" and "Stringer" are in the club, the song playing is Lloyd Banks' 'On Fire.'"
Chapter 31 - Homecoming, by Alvarez and Simon, had "McNulty" as the keystone in a very complex interplay among the machinations of law and outlaw. First he brags that he'll re-hook up with his one-night stand - What kind of detective would I be if I couldn't find a white woman in Baltimore? But his boss turns down his dogged following of the criminal mastermind - Fuck respect. He ain't right. His new partner wryly notes: With you on the other side of the argument, he'd rather be wrong. . . Not that you'd ever go in back of anyone's back on anything like that. Which of course he does, to his old friend, now a Major looking for innovative ways to deal with drug dealers, who accepts his inside info: You willing to backdoor on your lieutenant like this? You ain't changed Jimmy. It's always about your case. Ironically, "McNulty"s counterpoint has also lost in his efforts to turn the dealers into an organized cartel of businessmen - and the bodies are piling up in Baltimore again, forcing the higher-ups to reluctantly be open to "McNulty"s angle. The virtual lack of music was very significant in this episode- as any other series would have cheapened up the tension with unnecessarily dramatic counterpoint. Davis says: "In Hampsterdam, Jay-Z's 'Dirt Off Your Shoulder' is heard."
Chapter 32 - Backburners, by Simon & Joy Lusco Kecken has "McNulty" in vintage form, as he defends his backdealing against his boss who has gone to great lengths for him: I'd have gone to the devil himself. . .I did it because it had to be done.. His boss confronts him as you piece of shit and he tries ineffectually to justify his actions: I know you went out of your way to get me off that boat. As bosses go you're the best. But "Daniels" is implacable: When the cuffs go on Stringer you need to find a new home. You're done in this unit. Sheryl Crow's "Are You Strong Enough to Be My Man?" is ironically playing on the stereo as the crafty councilman plots his future with his wife and campaign advisor/"McNulty"s lover. He crashes her event in D.C., to the confusion of staffers as to what a Baltimore cop is doing there. He realizes he's out of his element when Jameson Irish whiskey isn't being served and is instead offered Bushmills: That's Protestant whiskey but laughs when the bartender notes the open bar makes the price right. He breezes late back to The Detail, Sorry, I woke up in the wrong town. His female partner wrinkles her nose - You smell like sex. Can't you even take a shower? I was late to work he leers in response. According to posters on the HBO BB, that was LL Cool J's "Head Sprung" playing on the radio of the two hit men. But even "McNulty" is set back on his haunches by "Hampsterdam" -- both for the audacity of creating it without the Bosses' knowledge and how it's turning into a circle of hell.
Chapter 33 - Moral Midgetry, by Simon and Price featured the Big Man - Clarence Clemmons of The E Street Band, perhaps as an HBO in-joke what with bandmate Little Steven being featured in The Sopranos. He played a similar role to Steve Earle's "Waylon" in the first season. "McNulty" was his usual obnoxious fulcrum - crucially moving the action forward for internecine warfare on both the Street and the po-lice, as he confronts "D'Angelo"s "Livia"-like mother about her son's death that only he investigated as a murder: Frankly, no one's gonna do shit about it anyway. I'm not supposed to give a fuck, but I kinda liked your son. All things considered, he was a pretty decent kid. He just got squeezed between the sides. But I was looking for someone who cared about the kid. Whew, he even drew tears out of her! But on a "road trip" with his lesbian partner the cad drolly describes how he arranged infidelities to his ex-wife as lotsa extraditions. I brought back something like 500 fugitives in a five year period and even puts the moves on her. That was Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" ironically playing at the minimart. An HBO BB poster reports: "DC/Baltimore bluesman Daryl Davis was the first person "McNulty" and "Kima" interviewed on their burner quest. He was the store clerk behind the counter." That almost sounded like Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" playing in the country police station such that McNulty misreads the local cop as a cracker (he points out to "Kima" that her partner is a real asshole -- and she has to act surprised). An HBO BB poster thinks that "Everybody in the Club Gettin Tipsy?" by J-Kwon was playing in the club when Marlo picks up Avon's bait. Davis says: "While "Colvin" and the Deacon are in the billiards parlor, James Brown's 'The Payback' is heard."
Chapter 34 - Slapstick, by Simon and Pelecanos has "McNulty" with all his faults flying. He goes out on a booty call while he has overnight custody of his kids. He's in work on Sunday: No life, no marriage, no kids, no problem. What the fuck else am I going to do? . . .You know something Lester? I do believe that there aren't five swinging dicks in this department who can do what we do. I'm not saying that like all chest out and shit, it's just, you just think about it. There's maybe 3,000 sworn, right? 100 or so are bosses, so not a fucking clue there. A few more hundred are sergeants, lieutenants, most of them want to be bosses one day, so they're just as fucked. Then there's 6 - 700 house cats, you know desk men. In the patrol department there's probably a little bit of talent there, but the way the city is right now that's probably 100 or so guys chasing calls and clearing corners. I mean nobody's nobody's post [?], building nothing right. CID's the same. Catching calls, chasing quick clearances, keeping everything in the shallow end. Who else is there out there can do what we can do with a case? How many are there really?. . . Ed Burns. . . Oh they bring it in, but there's not many. There's not many. We're good at this, Lester. In this town we're as good as it gets. . Fuck, yes, natural po-lice. "Det. Freaman" puts him in his place with a pungent monologue back, including: The job won't make you whole. The job won't save you Jimmy until the next case. It won't fill your ass up. "McNulty" wavers: I don't know. A good case. . . "Freaman" shoots right back: Ends. They all end. . .The next morning it's just you in the room with yourself. "McNulty" ripostes, but stubbornly insists: . .until the next case. . "Freaman" won't let up: . . Hey, a life, Jimmy.. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you wait for the moments that never come. "McNulty" also overplays his hand with the lover, cutely asking for a dinner date to expand their relationship. While we learn more about "McNulty"s biography (that he spent a year at Loyola before he dropped out to marry his knocked up girlfriend), it's painfully obvious, with the U.S. Capitol in the background, even as he lamely tries to repeat his braggadocio monologue, that he's not in her class - heck he didn't even bother voting. She as a campaign manager is a CNN junkie; he falls asleep to the History Channel. An HBO BB poster reports that was OutKast playing in "Gerald's" car.
Chapter 35 - Reformation, by Simon and Ed Burns features McNulty in very uncharacteristic introspective mode. His boss is still burning against him - We're all pieces of shit when we're in your way. He ruminates to his partner on the latest relationship that's turned to shit via a special floor in her fancy hotel: Feel like I don't even belong to any world that even fucking matters. . . Some sneering fuck was calling upstairs to give me permission to go get laid. First time in my life I feel like a fucking doormat. Like anyone with any smarts would do something else with his life, like earn money, or get elected. Like I'm just a breathing machine for my fucking dick. I'm serious. I'm the smartest asshole in three districts and she looks at me like I'm some stupid fuck playing some stupid game for stupid penny ante stakes. She fucking looks through me. The episode has a theme of every character who feels like a big fish in one pond getting their comeuppance as a small fish in another pond. The Councilman's wife was reading a crime novel by Dennis Lehane, who has also been writing for the show this season.
Chapter 36 - Middle Ground, by Simon and Pelecanos, was positively Shakespearean - and finally earned the series its first Emmy nomination, for writing. (But Simon really is this pessimistic, Simon disdains the comparison: “It's funny you should say that, because the portrayals in Deadwood are in the Shakespearean model. On The Sopranos, there's an awful lot of Hamlet and Macbeth in “Tony”. But the guys we were stealing from in The Wire are the Greeks. In our heads we're writing a Greek tragedy, but instead of the gods being petulant and jealous Olympians hurling lightning bolts down at our protagonists, it's the Postmodern institutions that are the gods. And they are gods. And no one is bigger.” Amidst breathtaking confrontations among the druglords and political and legal machinations by the law--with a forgiving handshake between McNulty and his boss as they savor what will be a Pyrrhic victory on the wire tap after the judge warned him Jimmy, what's done is done. For your own fucking sake, just let it go., "McNulty" actually Does The Right Thing - his D.C. political operative ex-lover suddenly reappears in his life, but with a quid pro quo proposition as she suggestively fingers the hotel card key while plumping him for info on the Baltimore Police Department. He denies knowing his colleague who initiated Hampsterdam and then actually walks out on her! There was a lot of ambient music playing in backgrounds in many scenes that I couldn't catch or ID. HBO BB posters claim "White Tees" from 'Dem Franchise Boyz was playing when Bubbles was selling white tees. Another poster says that the background to a "McNulty" scene is "Little Bit of Soul" by Music Explosion. On the HBO BB JimKing says that "A Place Nobody Can Find" by Sam & Dave is playing inside the barbershop as "Brother Mouzone" confronts "Avon" about how "Stringer" tried to have him killed.
Chapter 37 - Mission Accomplished, the season finale by Simon and Burns, had characters shaken to the core. (commentary on this episode by Simon and producer Karen L. Thorson on third season DVD) "McNulty" is practically in shock over "Stringer's" body: I caught him on the wire. And he doesn't fuckin' know it. He later admits to his old partner: I'm tired. The wheels are turning in his head as he re-evaluates his life --even though he covers up for his lesbian partner as she screws around like he always did. He looks up a Port Authority cop/single mother he had flirted with last season. I was in my old district tonight. Which is where I used to feel pretty good I think, when I wasn't so angry there anyway. . . I finished something today. (A case? she asks.) More that that. It's like everything I poured into a glass came out the bottom and I just kept pouring like the thing had a hole in it, y'know. Maybe things that make me right for this job made me wrong for everything else. (She invites him in for a drink.) Not tonight. But if it's not too late I wouldn't mind meeting your kids. "Daniels" offers him the possibility of continuing to work for him on The Detail if he can trust him. "McNulty" surprisingly demurs: It's better for me if I do something else. It's not you, it's me. The Western [District] feels like home. We last see him happily in uniform walking as a beat cop and joshing with the local residents -- exactly what the community had said in the previous episode they felt makes for good policing. Ironically, his boss's promotion is over that district. I've read mention that Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" is heard. The closing song is Solomon Burke doing Van Morrison's "Fast Train" from Don't Give Up on Me (which made my Best of 2002).
But how is it, once again, that The Wire didn’t make EVERY critic’s Best of 2006 list? Here’s one at least: TV Guide 12/18/2006 – Matt Roush: “HBO’s devastating urban epic of Baltimore is the opposite of a standard TV crime drama (of which there are too many). More like literature in its realism depth and honesty, The Wire reveals breathtaking flaws in city politics, law enforcement, and, this year, the school system, where four eighth-grade boys face a violent, uncertain future.”
Chapter 38 - Boys of Summer - "McNulty" is sobered up on the beat, happy living with "Bedie" and her "ankle-biters", even as his colleagues keep trying to tempt him with booze and work You're too damn good to be humpin' calls. They complain He's in the wrong fucking place. . . For us yeah, for him? He is still just as cynical as he dumps the anti-terrorist training manual and saves the binders: Back to school for the kids. "Det. Freaman" is now key as he's mystified by this phase of the drug war, How do you hold that much real estate without making bodies? and the less technically adept detectives up on the wire and the computers mourn I miss Prez man I do. . . I hear you.. But "Prez" is getting his first taste of a parallel bureaucracy- the school system. He's hired even before he's certified just on the basis of his credential: I was police. In the city. He's brought right to a messy classroom: So this is me. Watch for the camera angles as the silences in the visuals are even more telling then the spot-on dialog and you'll feel a bit queasy the next time you go by nail guns in Home Depot. Much of the episode and the season, recalls the Oscar-nommed doc about the tough tactics in the Newark mayoral race Street Fight even as it remembers another former Maryland corrupt politician: One man's shithead is another man's Vice President. . . Truer now than it ever was.
Chapter 41 - Refugees continued the series' tradition of leisurely waiting until the fourth episode of each season to get everyone in place (symbolized by "Bunk"s drunken plaint in the cop bar: Where's McNulty?) and set up the basic confrontations. It was in the 4th episode of the 1st season that the titular mechanism got set up - and now the 4th of this season when it was disconnected. "McNulty" in effect passes his stubborn wise-ass baton to "Det. Freaman" as he grins: Guys like you never learn. In my first watching, I couldn't understand most of what the dealers said in the teleplay written by Dennis Lehane, with a story by Burns and Lehane. But it didn't matter because Jim McKay's direction was so superb that I'm going to pull out my tapes of his previous TV and other films and I immediately nom him for an Emmy for Best Directing, as if the Academy notices this show. The camera was brilliantly restless, roving like a drive-by observer around all those reflecting tables of very different meetings - from poker games to ministers to teachers to barflies to campaign strategists of very different campaigns, all woven together with very complex editing. Unlike virtually all TV directing there was a minimum of close-ups. Instead, the camera moved along in long shots on ensembles of reaction to speakers and empty corridors of streets and hallways. Black and white faces and body language passed by in what could have been pantomime, if the story wasn't also so compelling, though one must have watched this series from the beginning to pick up all the subtle issues - otherwise you wouldn't GASP when "Omar" takes on "Marlo".
In Chapter 42 - Alliances by Burns and Simon, "Prez" is trying to get control of his class with incentives, but the kids are full of back talk, and virtually the whole class ends up in detention -- until they talk him out of that too. And then easily help him break into his car where he's left his keys. "Marlo" is recruiting the kids just like the military: We always in the market for a good soldier. But no wonder one of the students is freaked out - he has personal knowledge that there's no zombies: No special dead. Just dead.
Renewed after just one episode of the 4th Season to universal ecstatic acclaim and even editorials in newspapers around the country! Per HBO Co-president Richard Plepler at the summer Television Critics Association presentation, The Wire will come back for its final season in first-quarter 2008. "The fifth season, says Simon, will focus on America's 'culture of violence,' which encourages people at all levels of society to solve their problems with aggression instead of diplomacy." (from "Down to The Wire: Why television's best crime show ever may not be coming back" by Matt Zoller Seitz, 12/19/2004, Newark Star-Ledger)
From the AP: “Fans Await Closure Of HBO's `The Wire'” By Jake Coyle, 11/5/2007: “HBO has kept firm ties with Simon . . . He and writing partner Ed Burns . . . are now producing a miniseries for HBO titled Generation Kill, based on Evan Wright's 2004 book about Marines in Iraq. Simon hopes then to do a series about musicians in New Orleans.” (out on DVD) (Nominated for 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries and David Simon for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special for the "Bomb in the Garden" episode, as well as for Outstanding Art Direction For A Miniseries Or Movie, Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries Or Movie, Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special, Outstanding Sound Editing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special, Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Miniseries Or A Movie, Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special, and Outstanding Casting For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special ) (updated 12/18/2010)
How to Watch and Listen
I decided to do a "McNulty"-centric and music-centric episode guide.(though with the Fourth Season I switched to "Prez"-centric as West eased out then). Most of the fans were otherwise crazy about "Stringer Bell" but, as Tim Goodman in The San Francisco Chronicle put it on June 22, 2005 three years later after I first thought so in "They steal, they cheat, they lie, and we wouldn't want it any other way -- the timeless appeal of the anti-hero: The Wire, which has logged three densely literate, brilliantly nuanced seasons, portrays the workaday lives of Baltimore police in the same ethically slacked, real-world gray zone that permeates McNulty's life. The drug war marches on, barely held back by understaffed, underfunded cops. The system is bankrupt of ideas, and Baltimore is losing the battle. But in McNulty, viewers get that one guy, that one flawed guy, trying to put the world to right."
Opening/Closing Music Themes
First Season
How can you not love a stubborn, complex rebel tryin' to do the right thing who responds to the state's attorney's post-coital plaint that he's an asshole with, what becomes a trademark response What the fuck did I do? (each chapter that's intonated with different emotion and meaning). Simon Says: "McNulty was the most difficult character for us to define initially. There is the complex mix of genuine talent and intellect and all those self-destructive impulses." Jeremiah let me know that in Orlando's, Ja Rule's "Down Ass Bitch" plays.
"McNulty" creates "Collateral Damage" even among his friends in Chapter 15 by Simon and Burns, as he sets different agencies at war with each other, all unaware of how the criminals (new ones and the ones from last season) are brutally dealing with the homicides themselves. The Deputy fumes: I happen to know my man in the marine unit intimately and I know he is the most swollen asshole in American law enforcement. Even his ex-partner says, You're not the run-of-the-mill asshole, Jimmy, you're a special asshole and fumes He's dead to us as his machinations saddle them with seemingly unsolvable homicides. As Lyle Lovett's "Goodbye to Carolina" (from I Love Everybody) plays in the background, his lawyer lover complains: Last night you were too drunk to fuck. Today you're too hung-over. What's the most useless thing on a woman? A drunken Irishman.; so he blithely notes we're good together then shrugs that he'd rather get back with his ex-wife. But the opening quote is his philosophy: They can chew you up, but they gotta spit you out. As to the stereotype of the drunken Irishman, Simon Says in reference to all the various ethnicities on the series: "If you watch this show, you know that every single ethnicity and religion that comprises a modern American city has been in some way insulted and abused by the behavior of one or more characters. The traffickers in the high-rises are black; the drug suppliers this year are Greek and Israeli and Russian/Ukrainian. "McNulty" drinks too much? An Irish-American stereotype perhaps. The malevolent major who misuses his power is Polish-American, and his worst excesses come because of a moment of ridiculous Roman Catholic pride. And "Morris Levy"? Uh oh, someone inform the Anti-Defamation League that the corrupt drug lawyer is decidedly Jewish." An HBO forum poster notes that's Aretha Franklin's "The House That Jack Built" playing in the longshoreman's truck when he's pulled over for a breath test. I wasn't able to catch the jazz that's playing in Avon's room, er, jail cell.
Chapter 25 - Port in a Storm, the Season #2 finale, finds the union reeling -- but all the criminals and the corruption just swirl and eddy on, from the opening and closing that are dialogue-less, finishing to the tune of Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright." (Earle was in Season One as ex-junkie "Waylon"; this is the title song of his album.) The East Side cats are laying down with the West Side dogs, "The Greek" isn't even Greek, and McNulty goes back to flirting with the prosecutor. Simon Says: "I will say that it might help if viewers thought of "The Greek" as more than a specific character. In the second season story, and in the world of The Wire, he represents an elemental force. He is pure capitalism, amoral, utterly rational, and unencumbered by ties to community, nation-state or humanity in general. Regardless of whether we see "The Greek" again or whether the detail catches up to him, can you ever really catch or contain such an elemental force?" Gregg provides that's Baltimore native Joan Jett and the Blackhearts covering Credence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" (from the album The Hit List) playing at the longshoremen's bar.
The draw for the high-wattage writing talent, Simon says, is ability to control the final product. "This is a writer's show," he says. "If you're already telling stories in the medium of a novel, the equivalent is a long form season on HBO. I think part of the appeal for someone like Richard [Price], who's had a very long and successful career as a screenwriter, is that here the writers are in control. It's not like in features, where once you turn in the script, it's the director and the studio and the stars who exert influence."
Simon further lashed out on 12/26/2004 at fans at online BBs who he felt had completely misunderstood the conclusion of Season 3:
"[I]t is just about killing me reading posts on this site and others where some viewers have genuinely taken a wrong turn.
Like we spent twelve hours doing something thematically and with a great deal of detail -- and yet, in some viewers' minds -- the political hyperbole wins the day nonetheless. Come to think of it, I guess that's kind of realistic in way."
He cooled down a bit three days later, but continued:
Fourth Season The streets are talking. . . No Corner Left Behind
While I'll have to get around to posting the text of interviews that are no longer up on the HBO site, see this insight into the work of Ed Burns on the series.
Simon Says: "The writers have planned two additional seasons because with a show like this, you must plan several seasons in advance. . . I think the writers have enough steam for a couple more seasons after this one, maybe a few sidetrips included. More than that and we will begin to hate each other, this Wire universe and all it represents. Dramas need to have a beginning and an end, and I have never been comfortable with the idea of trying to sustain a story past its appropriate and most meaningful end. . .I would very much prefer to leave The Wire at its ultimate end, which would involve another two seasons, give or take a sidetrip or two. But if it ends here, there are 37 hours of drama that are, I believe, as smart and resonant as anything written about the American city at the millennium. And I would include not just television in that assessment, but film and literature as well. Boy that sounds smarmy and arrogant. But you asked how I would feel if it ends here, and so..."
Simon said. . ."This is basically going to be the beginning of a new arc. The thing that we tried to convince HBO was that there was more to be said about the American city. It's gratifying to have the opportunity to continue to explore this urban universe that we created. While we only got the order for one season, the feeling is that if we execute well on season four, we'll be back for another." From an interview with Ed Burns in the 11/20/2006 TV Guide: “You’ll never look at Baltimore—or any city—the same way again. . .It sounds brutal and depressing, yet we try to keep the show very human and very intimate so that people care about the characters.” Oy, care is putting it mildly as each kid’s arc is unpredictable and you’ll cry and scream.
From the blog of Newsday's Diane Werts on the summer TV Critics Press Tour: "Wire writer-producer Ed Burns used to be a police detective and became a social studies teacher. Wonder which task he found tougher? "When you step into that classroom after being 20 years in the street,' he says, 'you think you are pretty tough. And you find out real quickly that you are not. It tested things that nothing else in my life tested.'"
Chance Encounter with Jim True-Frost
Fifth Season -Read Between the Lines.
From Rocky Mountain News July 20, 2006 by Dusty Saunders: [HBO's CEO Chris] Albrecht says the response to season four will determine if creator David Simon's five-season arc of stories will be completed. . . The fifth, if one is produced, will concentrate on the media. 'We'd ruffle some feathers on that one,' says Simon, a former print journalist."
An additional Simon quote in USA Today, 7/13/2006 by Robert Bianco, from the same session: "'In our own heads, we have a five-season arc. ... They all connect in a way that explains why we are what we are and why we can't get out of our own boxes.' The goal is to pose a question he's unable to answer: 'Why is it the richest, most powerful country in the world can't solve its fundamental problems when it comes to places like Baltimore? And there are a lot of places like Baltimore.'" TV Guide's Matt Roush blog posted different quotes from the same session between HBO and TV critics in July 2006: "Albrecht isn't yet willing to commit, taking a wait-and-see approach to episodes he describes as, what else, brilliant. 'There's definitely a sense that life goes on after this particular season, and you could certainly tell more Wire stories.... There is also a thought that you don't necessarily have to wrap everything up.'. . . Simon reiterated that he had mapped out a five-year arc after finishing the show's third season. If the show were to go forward, the fifth season's theme would focus on the media. 'I want to take a very careful look at how all of what we've been portraying on The Wire has been perceived, and how it is that it never quite gets back in any honest fashion to the people. . . Quips Simon: 'Would that we be grit-less and simple, we'd be fine.' But, he insists, "I don't think the show is any more complex than any modern novel with multiple POV.... It is complex by the standards of television." He's also added his thoughts about a potential Season 5: "I'd be a lot more confident if the messy situation with Deadwood hadn't happened. But that's a different story, and let's hope HBO takes the high road and gives this most excellent series a fifth and final year. Having seen all 13 episodes -check out my review - I can tell you that while this particular season's story has a satisfying arc, the elements are in place for one more dynamite season, and fans will not be happy if it's canceled. The best we can hope for is that critical acclaim will help drive more viewers to the show this year, and maybe HBO's strategy of moving its movie night to Sundays as a lead-in will also do the trick. And if not, HBO needs to live up to its "not TV" motto and disregard ratings where a show this uncompromising, this powerful, is concerned."
My Younger reports that Simon at the Block Museum Q & A vented ire at the Tribune Company that he felt had decimated The Baltimore Sun, so the role of 50% cutbacks in reporting staff on the press's ability to cover hard news will definitely be included in Season 5. In Simon really is this pessimistic, Simon says he hopes Spike Lee will direct an episode, but he’ll probably be busy with his Katrina-inspired NBC series.
HBO posted three short prequels, “Bunk and McNulty 2000”, showing their drunken first day as partners, “Proposition Joe 1962” showing how he got his name as a kid, and “Omar 1985”, showing that he early challenged how things are done in his neighborhood. Two backgrounds on the series, “The Last Word” and “The Odyssey”, with too much critics’ superlatives and too few plot summaries, were to try and help newbies and remind loyal fans. I know from friends who I importuned to watch that they still didn’t get it after the first episode: “So where’s the great acting?” I begged them to stick with it. After all, this is the show that has featured more great African-American actors than in the history of television combined. But someone new to the series wouldn’t be crying like I am at what’s happened to the four boys from Season 4 each time we see them now. According to Diane Werts in Newsday 8/12/2008, the DVD of “Season 5 Final season extras include snazzy half-hour documentaries on urban disintegration and the role of the media; six cast/crew commentaries”.
Official song with scene list. More links with past seasons – from the Judge in Season 1 who with McNulty got the whole ball of was rolling and watching the Mayor’s press conference was Season 2’s angry ex-dockworker “Nicky” (the estimable Pablo Schreiber who so deserved his Tony nom for his Broadway acting I saw in the revival of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing).
Next up is Treme in N’Orlins: Says Dave Walker in The Times-Picayune, July 10, 2008: “To research the script for the pilot, a prospective first episode of a drama based in the New Orleans music community, Simon consulted with Donald Harrison Jr., Kermit Ruffins and Davis Rogan. Eric Overmyer, a sometimes New Orleans resident with writing and production credits including . . . Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire, collaborated with Simon on the Treme pilot script and is expected to write and executive produce for the series. . .Location scouting has already begun in New Orleans. Casting will begin soon, but production issues surrounding the practicality of shooting during hurricane season could affect the show's time line. "If it were up to me, I'd shoot it in the fall," Simon said in a recent interview. If the pilot pleases HBO, shooting on regular-season episodes could begin as early as late winter or early spring provided subsequent episodes could be written in time. Simon said he expects the casting mix of imported actors and locals to match the cast mixture of the Baltimore-set The Wire, which used non-Baltimore actors for most of its lead roles. "We're looking to use local people when we can," he said. Though the show's main storylines will focus on musicians, other elements of the city's unique culture will be spotlighted. One of the pilot script's principal characters, Simon said, runs a restaurant. The pilot story begins two or three months after Hurricane Katrina, Simon said. If Treme goes to series, each season would advance New Orleans recovery story by one year.
From an interview with Ed Burns in The New York Times, After ‘The Wire,’ Moving On to Battles Beyond the Streets by Michael Wilson, 7/6/2008: "His next projects include a feature film about a true but unlikely romance between Donnie Andrews, a Baltimore holdup artist who robbed drug dealers (and inspired the character Omar Little on The Wire), and Fran Boyd, a crack addict who recovered with his help and married him last year (and was also a character in The Corner). [Featured in From Two Broken Lives to One New Beginning by Ian Urbina, in The Times, 8/9/2007, that backgrounds Burns' and Simon's involvement in their lives.] . . .After that Mr. Burns hopes to make, with Mr. Simon, a period mini-series about the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886. . .“We’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a working man,” he said. “There was a flush of money, and we’ve forgotten our roots. These stories have a power because it’s when men stood up.” . . .“I’m not a fatalist,” he said. “I’m very optimistic. In America, before we notice things, things have to become bad.”"
Reunions:
References to The Wire in Pop Culture and Posthumous Appreciations
As the series came out on DVD, it gained more and more fans, famous fans discovered it, and posthumous references pop up:
“Come New Year's, wine guru Robert Parker, rapper Mims and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner all expect to be in the same place: curled up on their couches at home, watching the premiere of the final season of The Wire. Says Mr. Kushner: ‘It's my favorite TV show -- and I watch TV a lot.’, per Lauren Mechling, in The Wall Street Journal, 1/2/2008 in "The Wire" Central To HBO's Post-"Sopranos" Strategy.
From “A Very Busy Mama” Q & A with Amy Poehler in Newsweek 4/21/2008: “Q: What cereal are you going to have? A: Right now I’m down with Honey Nut Cheerios because that’s what Omar eats on The Wire.”
PAJIBA picks the 100 Greatest Quotes from The Wire.
In “A Festival Not to Be Taken Seriously, Unless It Is” by Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, 9/27/2008, described “the inaugural Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival began with the awards ceremony. . .On opening night. . .Patrick Borelli, a comedian and friend of Mr. Mirman’s, . . .won an award for Best One-Man Show, which he performed only at the ceremony, not solo but with audience members using paper puppets on sticks: an imagined sixth season of The Wire revealing rampant corruption in the Baltimore zoo. He plans to display his award prominently in his office.”
From “The Joy of the Ensemble” by Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal, 10/17/2008: “As every devotee of The Wire knows, the most fertile soil for ensemble acting these days is TV.”
The New York Times "Modern Love" column featured a poignant essay Down to ‘The Wire’ on 4/19/2009 by Natasha Sajé. Here's excerpts: "Tyrone and I never watched TV together -- at least we didn’t until last fall, when his lymphoma came back. We knew then what we were in for, months of waiting for the injections of Campath to knock down the cancer, and fear that it wouldn’t. We knew there would be many homebound evenings, so I put all five seasons of The Wire on my online DVD list. Sitting together on our couch in Salt Lake City during those months, Tyrone and I couldn’t help reveling in The Wire. There was so much that we recognized as true. . .[W]e married at City Hall, without ceremony or family. By then we had settled in Baltimore, the city of The Wire, where we stayed for 18 years. . .We watched our sick city as it declined and rebounded, then declined and declined, mired in a cycle of drugs and crime, as ever-present as the boy rolling a tire down an alley in the opening sequence of The Wire. . .Every morning and every night -- up until the last 36 hours, when he couldn’t speak — Tyrone would say to me: 'Another day. I’m glad to see it.' We celebrated his ability to read the newspaper, to eat the flan I made, to sit with me in the den and watch yet another episode of The Wire. . .Tyrone and I sat on our couch in Salt Lake City and said, “I feel you” to the memory of Baltimore, to illness, to realism. When he became so weak he couldn’t leave the house or even make it up the stairs, he could still rally for an evening of watching people kill one another and toss the bodies into boarded-up houses. "
Even years later, on 10/24/2009, The New York Times was still referencing the series in the "Travel Section": "36 Hours in Baltimore" by Joshua Kurlantzick: "If you watch HBO’s police drama The Wire you might think that Baltimore is filled with drug dealers and crime ringleaders. But in truth, the city has attracted a different breed of misfits: artists. Lured by cheap rents and warehouse spaces, artists and photographers have flocked there to claim the city as their own. Once rough neighborhoods like Hampden and Highlandtown have been taken over in recent years by studios, galleries and performance spaces. Crab joints and sports bars now share the cobblestone streets with fancy cafes and tapas restaurants. But against this backdrop, there are still the beehive hairdos and wacky museums that give so-called Charm City its nickname."
TV Guide 12/7/2009 cited The Wire in its Best of the Decade perspective (also in AV Club, and there are probably a lot more out there if I looked for them): "David Simon: Creator/executive producer of The Corner, The Wire and Treme: His unflinching, exposition-free and often bleak portrayal of the city of Baltimore and the war on drugs is one of the most entertaining pieces of social commentary ever on television." Asking him to look back and forwards, Adam Bryant interviewed the ever trenchant and eloquent Simon in "The Reporter: David Simon Creates Commentary Disguised as a Cop Drama on The Wire" for a lot of insights on the making-of-the series.
The Onion zinged an appropriate satire at some of such encomiums: "NEWS IN BRIEF: TV Critics Admit To Never Having Watched The Wire, January 25, 2008 | ISSUE 44•04, New York—Despite heaping lavish praise on the HBO crime drama The Wire , television critics across the country admitted Monday that not one of them has ever sat down to watch an entire episode of the show. 'The Wire has done what no other television program has come close to achieving—namely, presenting the life of a decaying American city and doing so with the scope and moral vision of great literature,' said New York Times critic Virginia Heffernan, who was surprised to hear that the groundbreaking series had already started its fifth and final season in early January. 'It sounds fantastic. I really wish I had HBO.' Many reviewers from top media outlets assured reporters that they would start watching the Peabody Award–winning show just as soon as the first season reaches the top of their Netflix queues."
Dominic West answering New York Magazine Vulture’s Mike Flaherty on 8/15/2011: “Last year you made an appearance on “Dr. West,” the opening track of Eminem’s album Rehab. How did that come about? I adore him; I think he’s brilliant. He’s watched The Wire four times through and I said to him, ‘You know, you should get out more.’ But, amazingly, he just rang me up one day and asked. He said he was in rehab and he had an English doctor who was helping him, and that he’d heard I was English and thought I’d be a perfect type of a guy to play his doctor on the album.”
Given how few critics, let alone viewers, joined me in appreciating the show from the beginning, I find these retrospective accolades from Johnny-come-latelies amusing if welcome: From The HBO Auteur by Wyatt Mason, New York Times, posted online 3/15/2010: "Given the role in which Simon himself has lately been cast by critics and viewers, expectations for Treme couldn’t be higher. By the time The Wire reached the end of its run, commentators went from posing the coy question, 'Is The Wire the best show on television?' to making the bold statement, 'The Wire is the best show on television'— boldness that soon seemed spineless once seemingly everyone defaulted to calling it simply, 'The best show in television history.' In the two years since The Wire concluded, a pitched battle of ongoing praise has upped the comparative ante. If likening Simon repeatedly to Dickens and Dreiser, Balzac and Tolstoy and Shakespeare hasn’t proved adequately exalting, Bill Moyers lately freshened things up by calling Simon 'our Edward Gibbon,' while the literary critic Walter Benn Michaels went so far as to suggest that the beauty and difficulty of watching The Wire in English — the multifarious 21st-century English of Baltimore detectives and drug dealers — compares with that of reading Dante in 14th-century Italian. It should go without saying that Duke; the University of California, Berkeley; and, next term, Harvard, are offering courses on the series, seminars focused not merely on the sophistication of its storytelling but also on its sociological and political perspicacity."
The Avon Barksdale Story: Legends of the Unwired: DVD that "chronicles the meeting between the real Barksdale and Wood Harris" who played him. "The two tour the actual locations depicted in the program, while Barksdale's mother sheds lights on her son's upbringing and her own struggles. 72 min." (3/14/2010)
College courses use The Wire
Maybe because he's British is why this sounds like an odd comparison, but the new "Doctor" Matt Smith was quoted in TV Guide 4/5/2010: "Watching Dr. Who is as addictive as The Wire or The Sopranos."
"New David Simon Project To Investigate Happy, Upper-Middle-Class Streets Of Wilmette, IL"-- satire in The Onion, May 15, 2010
British satirists got in the 2012 Christmas spirit with The Wire Monopoly game, albeit with a few inaccuracies due to misunderstanding Baltimore and the U.S.
Twice in one week The New York Times used The Wire for ironic comparison (more than it did while it was first screening): In the Business section, 6/4/2010, Stephanie Clifford wrote about Bravo's fan-driven reality TV series in "We’ll Make You a Star (if the Web Agrees)": "It’s hard to imagine, say, David Simon, creator of The Wire, replacing drug-selling plots with romantic ones because HBO, its network, conducted research showing that was what audiences wanted. But some analysts say Bravo’s rather superficial programs are just as innovative as HBO’s esteemed lineup." Then Randy Kennedy in a 6/6/2010 story about the FBI's retired stolen art investigator's book, "His Heart Is in the Art of Sleuthing": “Priceless can read at times, not unpleasantly, as if an art history textbook got mixed up at the printer with a screenplay for The Wire.”
Not just in the U.S.: "Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it? . . .With his party having won 6 of the [Reykjavik] City Council’s 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of The Wire.. . .[He] is now the fourth mayor in four years of a city that is home to more than a third of the island’s 320,000 people. . .The Best Party, whose members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene, formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch The Wire and take notes)." From "Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected" by Sally McGrane, The New York Times, 6/26/2010
From Is It Okay Not to Love ‘Treme’? in The Wall Street Journal, "Speakeasy", 5/22/2010: "Some fans of The Wire are giving the new series time, hoping that Simon will be able to pull off another addictive show. 'To some degree, his track record means that people are more than likely to give him the benefit of the doubt,' says Ben Greenman, a novelist, and an editor at the New Yorker. Greenman began watching The Wire a few seasons into the show’s run on DVD in hours-long chunks. He is hoarding episodes of Treme on his DVR to try to replicate the experience. So far, he isn’t captivated."
The Wire Alumni Watch 2010 and into early 2011 and late 2011.
The New York Review of Books only discovered the series, via DVD, in the issue dated October 14, 2010, In the Life of The Wire by Lorrie Moore, combined with consideration of books about the series.
Nicolas Rapold in The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/2010, compared watching the re-release of Shoah to: "single-day showings of all portions of long films, which taps an urge for immersion familiar to anyone who's sat down on a Saturday with a DVD set of The Wire and barely made it to work on Monday."
In Wire and Fringe star makes music, too" by John Carucci, Associated Press, 1/10/2011: "How did you end up doing so many groundbreaking television series? [Lance] Reddick [who was promoting his first, jazz album, Contemplations and Remembrances] : I was never interested in television. I always saw it as a means to an end. Like so many actors, I was only interested in doing theater and film. But Oz changed television. It was the beginning of HBO's reign on quality, edgy, artistic stuff. Stuff that harkens back to great cinema of the '60s and '70s. When the opportunity for Oz came up, I jumped. And when I read the pilot for The Wire, as a guy that never wanted to be on television, I realized I had to be on this show."
Look how many times Alessandra Stanley references The Wire in her review of a new FX series in The New York Times, 1/10/2011, "With a Life on the Ropes, Seeking Redemption in the Ring": "But circling around the ring are characters who once would be called Dickensian and nowadays are likened to people in The Sopranos or The Wire. . . Pablo Schreiber (The Wire) is Johnny, Patrick’s younger brother and business manager, or mismanager. . .And the secondary characters who cajole and provoke him are superb, including Reg E. Cathey (The Wire) as Barry Word, a witty but ruthless boxing promoter who wants to own the sport — and Patrick’s comeback fight. . . The pedigrees behind the camera may be a greater selling point, assurance that Lights Out won’t become a rejiggering of hoary clichés. . .Clark Johnson, an actor who played an idealistic newspaper editor in The Wire and who directed the final episode, is one of the directors."
The debut of Fox's The Chicago Code, 2/7/2011, set off similar comparisons: "Stirring Chicago’s Corruption Stockpot" by Ginia Bellafante, in The New York Times, – "Natives must have hungered for a more expansive evocation of their hometown, one that explored the dirty genetics of a place that gave rise to both Al Capone and Rod Blagojevich. Citizens were possibly even irritated when Baltimore received rich dramatic excavation in The Wire before their own city had even been skimmed. Chicago taught Baltimore everything it knows." And "This Time The Good Cops Get A Shot" by David Bianculli on NPR's Fresh Air: "The Chicago Code quickly finds its way. It borrows a little from The Wire, HBO's landmark series about entrenched, corrupted city institutions, and a little from EZ Streets, the vintage Paul Haggis cop series that gave equal weight to its good guys and its bad guys. But those are great places to start."
Even a reference on PBS, in April 2011 – In Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton director/producer Michael Pack and writer/host Richard Brookhiser use a (bleeped) scene from The Wire of the drug dealers discussing with incredulity how it could be that there is one dead white man on a greenback who wasn't a president to demonstrate the lack of knowledge about the guy on the ten dollar bill.
Heather Hendershot in "Losers Take All: On the New American Cinema", The Nation, 5/30/2011 edition: "If the ethos of the New American Cinema has endured, it is not on the big screen but the little one, TV, where today’s multi-channel, niche-audience environment allows for long-term character development, genre innovation and aesthetic risk-taking. Rather than bemoaning the tragic loss of [the production company] BBS, and assuming that the black hole of the superhero franchise has swallowed up any remains of innovation not devoured by Jaws, we might point to programs like The Wire as signs that complex, character-driven American drama did not perish in the late 1970s. Yet what has regrettably also lingered is the snobbism of much of the New American Cinema—hence, the ridiculous idea that TV can be good only if it transcends TV, as in the slogan 'It’s not TV. It’s HBO.'. . .Embracing a complicated seriality, sometimes in terms of plot but even more important in terms of character development, the best of contemporary television is simply more compelling than most contemporary American cinema. So enough with the hand-wringing about the decline of directorial autonomy, and the grumbling about the mind-numbing sameness of the franchises that crushed the New American Cinema more than thirty years ago. The New American Cinema is dead. Long live the New American TV."
The Wire as 1970s Hanna-Barbera Cartoon in a "Why Don't You Caption It Contest" (6/7/2011)
USA Today's Pop Candy Blog: "Metal Monday: A novice begins her journey" by Whitney Matheson, 6/27/2011: "Some people decide to spend a summer reading War and Peace. Others declare this is the season they'll finally watch The Wire." (She's listening to metal music for the first time instead.)
In Newsweek, 7/4/2011, "The Most Dangerous Show on Television" by Andrew Romano: "When Breaking Bad returns, it should have the sort of momentum that helped convert cult favorite The Wire into a canonical drama at the same stage in its run; years of 'you have to watch this' buzz, both in the press and around the water cooler, seem poised to pay off." Presumably this description of its Season 4 also parallels The Wire: "That’s the addiction: getting to know a person so well, through television, that when he goes bad, we can begin to comprehend something that real life simply doesn’t allow us to comprehend—how people become dangerous."
Even a reference on tween’s cable channel Nickelodeon, but as Rick Porter pointed out in a Zap2It Blog on 7/18/2011: “We're guessing that the crossover audience between iCarly and The Wire is, give or take a few parents who watch the former with their kids, pretty much nonexistent. Which could explain how a clip from iCarly that spoofs/pays homage to The Wire and which aired in January 2010, is just now being discovered online.” The episode “iSaved Your Life” by Peter Tibbals and Eric Goldberg originally aired January 18, 2010. (I’m not going to even go into the coverage of the sad news that Felicia Pearson, who portrayed "Snoop", who is satirized in this exchange, was jailed in 2011.)
In the “Respect” episode of the American adaptation of the dark comedy Wilfred (aired 7/21/2011 on FX), written by Michael Glouberman, the titular Australian-talking-dog-as-human reassures his nerdy, woebegone minder’s moan: What am I doing with my life? Nothing. with the compliment: How many people can watch a whole season of “The Wire” in one sitting? Not many I wager. That shit is dense!
In the “Object Impermanence” episode of the 7th season of the marijuana comedy Weeds (aired on 8/1/2011 on Showtime), written by Stephen Falk, an annoying student in a college criminology class pesters the New York police detective: How accurate is “The Wire?. . .Have you ever seen “The Wire”?
There was another sit com reference, in the “Out in the Burbs” episode of Suburbatory (broadcast on 1/11/2012 on ABC), written by Bob Kushell & Corinne Marshall. An undercover copy comes to the high school investigating steroids dealers prompts the Asian-American guidance counselor to trill: This is very exciting! It’s just like “The Wire”! A week later (on 1/19/2012 on NBC) in the “Rivals” episode of Up All Night, written by Caroline Williams, the parents plan on watching The Wire once they finish Friday Night Lights. Similarly, in Jane by Design (on ABC Family, 3/6/2012), set in a suburban high school, “The End of the Line” season finale, written by series creator April Blair and Paul Haapaniemi, had a white bimbo gossiping about a student who spent a night in jail: He got shanked. His friend rolls his eyes: Do you even know what that means? The mean girl gives an answer that makes little sense or accuracy: Of course I do. I watch ‘The Wire.’. (3/7/2012)
Aasif Mandvi, in a comic report on the 11/3/2011 episode of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, used The Wire for a comparative measure of addiction on a sliding scale between cigarettes and hot dogs, as in: “I’d rather die than give up watching The Wire?” Another comparison followed in Jon Stewart’s opening monologue on 12/14/2011 about the U.S. spy drone captured by Iran. President Obama is seen declaring at a press conference: “We have asked for it back.” Stewart’s incredulous analysis: “You’re acting like we lent them Season 1 of The Wire. ‘Hey I’m gonna want that back’.”
David Simon and Michael Kenneth Williams were interviewed in the The Crusader episode of PBS’s America in Prime Time survey of television archetypes (first broadcast 11/20/2011). They discussed “Omar” within The Wire. Simon was emphatic in negatively comparing and contrasting the murders in Dexter.
In an interview with Kate Murphy in The New York Times 2/12/2012, Jimmy Wales, “founder and the public face of Wikipedia”: “I’m always looking for something to watch on iTunes because I travel on planes all the time, and I like to have a nice long list. I like the modern genre of really complicated TV shows — something like Lost or The Wire, with many characters, very interesting story lines and so on.”
David Simon and The Wire were commented on in the same first week of April 2012. Sarcastically lionized by Ben Kessler in “Mad Mania: ‘Smart’ TV and the Gray Flannel Ego”, in City Arts, 4/3/2012: “Mad Men, like The Sopranos and The Wire before it, now enjoys a singular cultural status. Neither pop nor art, it is smart TV. And smart TV, we’re told, is not for analysis or even entertainment; it is to be dutifully let into our lives, much as we’re meant to bring in the newspaper every morning. Smart TV is a unique kind of aesthetic nonentity, but even nonentities have to come from somewhere. Mad Men’s creator Matthew Weiner, like HBO’s three Davids (Chase, Simon and Milch, of The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood respectively), has a media profile that mixes elements of many leadership archetypes—he’s part film director, part producer, part CEO. Because they preside over a vast creative apparatus rather than yoking themselves to any particular aspect of production, Weiner and his fellow smart showrunners are presumed by journalists to be above the unfortunate susceptibilities that plague the individual artist.”
In an implicit reference to The Wire, Michael Kenneth Williams returned as biology professor “Marshall Kane” on Community for the, um, dead-on satire of Law & Order, “Basic Lupine Urology”, written by Megan Ganz (on NBC, first broadcast 4/26/2012) to say he’s learned from his years in prison: A man’s got to have a code. Advice that gets repeated to a female student as: A woman’s got to have a codette.
Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker, 5/21/2012, “Primary Colors: Shonda Rimes’s Scandal and the Diversity Debate” compared that network (on ABC) series with a black female lead to: “And surely one reason that viewers took so long to catch on to HBO’s The Wire was all those black male faces.”
If You’re Jonesing for Something Similar to Watch
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online; recent reviews are now counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter. Earlier of my full film reviews are at IMDb's comments, where full credits are available, and click through if you find them helpful. I am also a member of Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
The Brazilian TV series about Rio's favelas City of Men (completed in the film City Of Men (Cidade Dos Homens) ) eerily, sadly, and equally as strikingly shows how it's the same the whole world over for inner cities wracked by drugs and corruption. (I'll expand on the comparisons after 10/4/2007.) In Sin Nombre, the same cinematographer, Adriano Goldman, follows another sadly similar fate for boys in a gang in Mexico. The nonfiction version is Which Way Home (I briefly reviewed it in Part 2: The Kids Are Alright at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival).
Similarly, Gomorra shows how young children are brutally initiated into lives of criminality in Naples.
In Manila, Philippines, per the 2007 Tirador (Slingshot), directed in a similar style by Brillante Mendoza (seen at MoMA’s Contemporasian Series).
Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire looks at the shantytowns as India’s Bombay transforms into Mumbai in similar fashion as The Wire, albeit with melodramatic romance.
The Class (Entre les murs) is a French take on the fourth season of The Wire’s focus on minority middle schoolers and their challenged teachers and educational system.
Ezra vividly shows how similar the scourge of African child warriors is to the youth deprivation of Baltimore’s hoppers.
Chop Shop comes close to The Wire in showing a boy and his sister in Queens.
Red Riding Trilogy – 1974; 1980; 1983 shoots an emotional wallop by linking endemic police indifference towards the underclass, and a lot worse, in the North of England to the rise of conservative free-wheeling market policies. (2/5/2010)
A startlingly creative documentary vividly shows (and borrows from) the universality of The Wire for how much North Yorkshire was like Baltimore -- The Arbor. (I also briefly reviewed it at Recommended Documentaries at 2010 Tribeca Film Festival) (My additional note.) (5/5/2011)
The Winter's Bone puts front and center the emotional and physical impact on children trying to survive the drug scourge in Appalachia. (5/14/2010)
The Pruitt Igoe Myth: An Urban History (Notes: This documentary flashed me back to my college and Harvard graduate studies –ironically, the same time as Mitt Romney--and decade of work in city planning. The residents anecdotes add considerably to the facts – such as one of the reasons the buildings were so hard to maintain was the odd built-in appurtenances, designed to load as much as possible on the Feds’ initial capital investment. Among the striking black-and-white 16 mm footage Freidrichs found unique to St. Louis is from a film called More Than One Thing, that’s not otherwise identified, but moodily shows a young black man walking around the desolate project. But the repetitive fingering of downtown business and construction interests doesn’t make for a convincing conspiracy pushing failed government actions.
Will a U.S. cable channel like Sundance bring us this French series?: Excerpted from “In France, It’s Vive Le Cinéma of Denial” by Michael Kimmelman, in The New York Times, 11/4/2008:
(updated 5/15/2012)
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