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A bit like Falcon I opted for the box set of Battlestar Galactica over this at first, but better late than never I suppose. It wasn’t really what I expected. From what I’d gleaned I thought it’d be a superior quality The Shield: backstabbing and betrayal between two groups of drug dealers and corrupt cops both on the wrong side of the law. Just a bit off the mark then. There are corrupt cops of course, Herc and Carver definitely, Daniels probably, plenty of the higher ups presumably, Polk if he’d had the guts. Prez, Kima and one of the detectives later on are all culpable of unnecessary brutality, and are covered by the others. I don’t know: does the first season ask if you can still be “good police” and take criminal actions? I think it’s fairly clear that you can bend the rules (McNulty) and still be on the side of the angels, but can you break them and keep breaking them and still do good police work at the same time? I don’t know, maybe that’s a bit binary for something as multi-layered as The Wire. As people have mentioned, a lot of the value in the show comes from showing the similarities between the two groups without erasing their underlying differences: the way Avon’s gang operates like a professional business, the bureaucracy and the quotas the homicide unit has, the way loyalty is rewarded and its absence punished. It’s not just that characters on both sides act outside of the law, it’s that there are resemblances in the way they act and also that they’re all operating individually within broken institutions and no one on either side seems to have a clear moral perception that isn't skewed by their environment.
Other things to add?
Flyboy’s comment on Kima’s character is just perfect:
But Kima is 100% cop, she loves being a cop, she wants nothing more than to be a cop, she is thoroughly immersed in cop culture. Of course she's going to beat on some corner boy who dared to hit a cop. Of course.
I think most shows would have shown the character agonising over her actions, facing some sort of professional review, or would have had someone else, someone less sympathetic be the one giving the beating, to give an idea of how shocking an action it is. And of course it’s not a shocking action, it’s something done in broad daylight with witnesses and the fact that it never comes up again, that it’s shown as incidental, just highlights how powerless, how unprotected the denizens of the Pit are from police brutality, as if they really were just two competing crews.
Just as a thought, if you did want to analyse the show from a more mythological angle, worthy of noting perhaps the reversal in that the good guys are operating from the underground, secretive and badly lit, in a not very clear location (doesn't someone get lost trying to find them?) while the actual criminal activity all takes place in daylight, more or less in plain sight, or is organised in the "upstairs room" of various semi-respectable but certainly visible businesses.
I was a bit unsure about the first few episodes as well, because if I hadn’t been bolstered by the prime Barbelith product stamp of approval, the slow-moving structure and just that hint of hesitancy in the direction and on the part of some of the actors might have been enough for me to go unhooked. To compare it with The Shield again, a bit unfairly because they are quite different, one is episodic an energetic with an overarching plot and abrasively violent and physical, the other novelistic, its strengths coming in the drawn out characterisation, the consequences of violence for both of the groups the viewer observes, it feels at times far more realistic than dramatic. In fact, the verisimilitude of realism in the show was such that I was surprised that the case got as far as it did. The sort of half-success (is that the right thing to call it?) that we have by the end of the season feels about right, but I think the show dangles the idea in front of us that the case could have been closed down before it had really started, with a few small-scale convictions, and it’s convincing because the show has built up the idea that the system in place really isn’t interested in changing things for the better, only keeping up the appearance of doing so. The confrontations with authority have heft because of the feeling that, most of the time, in most situations, you have to do what your boss or the rulebook tells you to, because there are personal and professional complications if you don’t (which most shows, in my opinion, probably don’t highlight so much, in favour of a more melodramatic reality).
Similarly, when Kima got shot I was fairly convinced that the character’s narrative was over, at the outside I thought that the likely complications would mean that if she wasn’t dead she wouldn’t be returning as an active officer, just because that seemed the most realistic resolution to a situation where someone unprotected getting shot multiple times. I’m glad to see her character isn’t dead because I think she’s an interesting character, but it does feel like more of the expected dramatic resolution and (so far) free of consequences than I’d expected myself from the show. And in some ways I don’t think I would have minded if there was that sort of double switch where you have four episodes of build up and then it’s all taken away, the unit broken up and you have to follow characters whose investment in a case has been . Which I guess is somewhat similar to the end of Season 1 suppose: it didn’t feel quite so much like a resolution as phase that the characters had moved through before moving on to the next.
It’s not impeccable. Freamon’s initial appearance is a bit too much self-consciously intriguing loner character, Prez’ transformation is a bit too convenient. When McNulty is needed to blow a gasket and push the Lieutenant (which I think happens two or three times at least?) to get behind the case there’s something forced and artificial about it. There’s a pause – or at least I think there’s a pause – between the character understanding the situation and acting in the manner necessary to push forward the plot. So either it’s an unconvincingly artificial moment of characterisation or acting, or its intended to be a moment where McNulty, even if he doesn’t actually care that much about the case itself, acts out of a mix of a troubled character and an understanding that someone needs to appear to give a fuck, and he’s in the best place to do it, and/or isn’t as concerned by the consequences of putting his career on the line. The thing is, with the quality of The Wire generally there’s a fair chance that I’ll be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Can’t wait for Season Two. |
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