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I loved the first series of The Wire, and I don't normally like much TV. Others rave about stuff that leaves me wondering if I've missed something. But the ever-advancing complexity of the story, the depth of the characters, the sense of speed on both sides as Daniels's team built their case and Barksdale's operation got wise to it was superb. It's an achievement unmatched on TV and something only a serial medium can do.
Series two? Not so good. An impression that was shared with all the people I know IRL who watched it, but apparently isn't the case here on Barbelith. It takes me back to my spoilsport assault on Seven Soldiers, but I'd like to understand how it can be someone's favourite series when I found it so obviously flawed. So I'll enumerate my reasons for disliking it and I hope I can be persuaded that I'm wrong.
* The Stained Glass McGuffin
It all began with a window in a church, the Major pissed off that the stevedores' window had taken the spot he wanted for the police. So he abuses his position and turns a personal argument into police business. That could happen, sure, but this was such an obvious kick-off for the plot that the writers seemed almost embarrassed about it. The church and the window were barely mentioned again. A case unit is put together at Valchek's request but, given that we already know how much trouble this causes already overstretched police departments wouldn't that be more difficult than it appears? After all the politics it took in the first series it's hard to believe it's so easy in this one. And that same case unit, so careful to feed their superiors what they wanted while getting on with their own work last time, apparently forget that it's Frank that Valchek has a vendetta against and don't get anything to pin on him. It's an obvious McGuffin, it's badly used and it's unworthy of this show's high writing standards.
* The Bad Guys
Something else that suffers in contrast to the first season. Avon and Stringer are well-rounded, complex, intelligent and sympathetic characters. The villains of this series could be moonlighting from any Steven Seagal movie. Standard Euro-baddies, the sinister old man stepping in at the end of the first episode to personally torture a man being a very familiar cliche. They never become more than two-dimensional, the Greek and his fixer, and never step out of a well-worn villainous groove. They exist to provide a threat. They tell us nothing about the drugs trade, the people-smuggling trade, the problems of Baltimore. They're shadowy bad people who slip off into international airspace leaving not a trace of their presence, and as such they should be in a weak action movie rather than a stellar police procedural.
* Getting The Team Back Together
The case unit had to be recreated for narrative reasons, I understand that. But it was clumsy. Valchek wanting Daniels made narrative sense after his previous achievements. But Daniels picking the whole of the previous unit? What, he never knew any cops from before series one that he'd want to work with? Freamon, who's just been transferred to Homicide after 18 years in the wilderness, is going to be happy to work a bullshit case? It's clumsy and you can see the bones of narrative necessity sticking through.
* Ziggy
This is the big one. Man, did I hate Ziggy. Why was he there? What did he illustrate? A fuck-up fucks up and continues to fuck up until he fucks up royally. Who gives a fuck? He had no narrative arc. He wasn't sympathetic. His relationship with his father, which the last scene they shared tried to imply was the whole point of him, wasn't touched upon. (Presumably he had a mother, Frank's wife. I don't remember her appearing or mattering to anyone.) He took the D'Angelo role, the focus guy on the opposite side from the cops, and got the equivalent screen time but did nothing with it. From D we learned about the game, the toll it takes on a person, and the unavoidable realities of being black in West Baltimore. From Ziggy we learned nothing about the plight of the stevedores or of the white working classes or of his side of the game. That was all Nick, who should have been the focal character but spent much of his screen time as a foil for Ziggy. Nich was the guy who wanted to be like Frank, who couldn't survive waiting for the grain pier to reopen, who got involved in the criminal side and mixed up with some heavy people and ended up a drug dealer, the kind of person he hated. It was Nick who suffered and his suffering that illustrated the stevedore's decline. But instead we spent our time with Ziggy, who had a duck on a leash.
One of the writers of Father Ted explains a subplot that was cut in the scriptbook by saying that if you can remove an entire subplot or character from a script without it affecting anything else, then it shouldn't have been in in the first place. You could cut Ziggy. He could be excised entire and all you'd need to come up with is a new motivation for Frank to meet with the Greek at the end. Ziggy was a waste of screen time.
* McNulty Comes In From The Cold
The narrative arc of McNulty in this series was great until the writers choked. What does a police, a serious police who lives for the job, do when he's not a police any more? How does he cope? He tries to be a police, he uses his skills to take revenge on his old boss, he tries out being that old cliche of the detective that won't quit detecting, and then he gives up. He's getting nowhere chasing stolen women around the state on his own time. He's not missing the politics and bullshit of the job he left behind. He's seeing his kids more than he ever used to and beginning the fragile reconstruction of a relationship with his ex-wife. He seems genuinely to be happier, even if he's uncomfortable with that.
So the next episode McNulty's drunk and self-destructive, in a serious mess, and his friends decide that he needs to be a serious police again. They easily persuade his old boss, who hated him even before the guy fucked him over in a massive way, to let him back on the force. He rejoins the case unit... and does nothing. His skills aren't necessary. The little he does for the case could have been done from the Harbour Police. He's brought back, ending an interesting and novel character arc, to Get The Team Back Together and, as far as I can tell, for nothing more. It stretches credibility, it accomplishes nothing, and it makes McNulty less interesting. Not a great move.
* The Ghost In The Machine
Daniels vs Barksdale, an expertly-run drug operation vs the wire, was a thrilling race. Just as the police put together enough information to make some arrests the dealers would be working out how they were getting caught. The eventual convictions were barely secured, the police not one step ahead but half a step, a tiptoe, their results sensational in contrast to what went before but the drug business's losses are well within acceptable parameters. Avon always knew he'd get caught someday. He was prepared. The game goes on.
Our police are way more up on shit the second time around. They know what they can do with the wire, by cloning computers, with good surveillance. So the bad guys get a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card with their contact in the FBI, who apparently sits at an empty desk eating and waiting to tell the Greek what's going on. The case unit doesn't fail because of their own limitations or because they fuck up. They fail because there's a leak on their side, one that's not set up or followed up, who at crucial moments keeps the bad guys one step ahead. It's a cheat and a poor one designed with a chosen ending in mind. It takes away from the resonance that the first series had.
There's lots of stuff I loved in series two. Flyboy's description of Frank's arc as genuinely Shakespearean with a large helping of Arthur Miller is apt. But the holes in the plotting which good writing couldn't cover made it an unsatisfying experience. All argument to the contrary welcomed. |
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