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”They be out the game early." - D’Angelo
So a little while ago it was suggested that season-specific threads were started for The Wire, so that people who want to talk about the show can do so without running into spoilers. This is particularly an issue with a programme that most people in the UK will only have been able to see on DVD. I also think that The Wire is a show that really stands up to close, close watching.
So, quick guidelines: no spoilers beyond the last episode of season 1 for this thread. But everything within that season is fair game, so watch out if you’re still making your way through it. And yes, I do have snappy titles for each season. Three is War and Peace, for example.
Season 1, then. Where to start? It fascinates me that there are things about the early episodes of The Wire that do show it finding its feet. Some of this only happens in the very first episode, and seems obviously uncharacteristic in the way that pilot shows often are: that first pre-credits scene with McNulty and the guy talking about Snot Boogie is just a little more mawkish and obvious than The Wire usually is, a little more like yr regular cop show – and then at the end when D’Angelo sees Gant’s body, there’s the flashback reminding us who Gant is and that we saw him earlier in the episode, which is the kind of borderline-intelligence-insulting “tell, don’t show” trick this show usually does the very opposite of.
But also in general there’s a little more exposition and “viewer friendly” introductions to things: in David Simon’s own way, this is him being quite patient in explaining “this is how police work happens, or doesn’t” and the same for a drug operation like Barksdale’s. Without spoiling, later seasons tend to be more quick to drop the viewer in the middle of a new world and leave you to sink or swim when it comes to figuring out that world’s language, codes, structures and patterns of behaviour. In one way, and one way only, some of season 1 reminds me of Murder One: taking you through just one case, right from the beginning, stage by stage.
Except of course, we see it from both sides. I’m not sure it can be underestimated how important it is that The Wire spends as much time in season 1 introducing you to D’Angelo, Bodie, Poot and Wallace as it does introducing the Detail – and then stays with those characters for as long as it can. It kind of makes you realise how conservative pretty much all other cop shows are. Even the ones that show the police in a morally ambiguous light still assume that the viewing public will not want to follow the lives of small-time drug dealers as major characters – and most cop shows are pretty blatant in taking the line that any ‘good’ cop is essentially a hero, and most criminals are essentially one-note scum.
Man, look how much I’ve written and I’m not even skimming the surface! We could spend this whole thread just talking about how the show treats the police force as an institution in season 1 (in a way that feels real to anyone who’s worked in an institution, that totally skewers what’s fucked up about the police without ever falling into writing off the people who are doing their best with the job they have), or we could talk about the way it handles character, or just the whole bloody tragedy of it, and how it’s shown to be equal parts the result of individual venality and political inhumanity, with a dash of arbitrary chance… How you never know what the consequences of your actions might be when they get fed through other people’s agendas and the system… “What the fuck did I do?”, indeed. It always amazes me how this show can be so bold in its politics and yet so subtle, so unflinching in the way it places responsibility for the fucked-up situation in the ‘jects on America’s structures of inequality, without ever avoiding individual responsibility, either (what Bodie and Poot do at the end of the season is still their choice).
I’m going to stop there because this is supposed to be about season 1, and I’m about to go off on one of those “watching The Wire can help make you a better person” rants. Okay, let’s zoom in again. Favourite moment from episode 1? I love the ones that really ring true to certain kinds of work. McNulty and Bunk telling each other off for “giving a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck”. The whole thing with D’Angelo showing up bright and early for work, clothes picked out, enthusiastic, only to be told he’s been demoted – and his subsequent dynamic with Bodie – “I mean, I don’t know how y’all do up in the Towers, but down here? You wanna count it.” – and Wallace – the whole presidents debate – aww, Wallace. Shit. |
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