BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


The Wire Season 5: Read Between The Lines

 
  

Page: (1)2

 
 
Paralis
08:30 / 05.01.08
"I was told a new day was coming. Clearly, this isn't it."

Back in Baltimore a year later, and what's changed? Herc's making private security money, but everything else has fallen apart. Everybody is getting squeezed financially--police aren't getting paid overtime, and morale couldn't be lower; reporters at the Sun are worried about layoffs and hoping for buyouts, and Marlo Stanfield is making power plays at all levels of the drug trade.

"Motherfuckers come to me and say, 'It's a new day, Jimmy!' Talking shit about how it was gonna change. Shit never changes!"

And it doesn't. One of the things I've always been impressed with in the Wire is their use of time, both on and off camera to fit a story with such potential for sprawl into such tight spaces. It's also been to the narrative's benefit that the show's focus has shifted often enough that there's not a lot of time to worry about the city's overall timeline. Police work, the drug trade: these are not seasonal businesses, and one day's the same as the next. The writers haven't had to do what they've done in the season 5 premiere yet--come back to the same people in the same places and catch things up. Which is why the first episode doesn't really work for me, and it's all Tommy Carcetti's fault.

It's a year later, but what does that even mean? Chris and Snoop are still on the street. Major Crimes is still working the bodies in the vacants. Clay Davis is still under investigation. Dukie's still running a corner. Marlo's still trying to go around the co-op. And Tommy Carcetti is still cutting out the middleman and eating his own bowl of shit, trying to convince himself that he can do more good for the city of Baltimore as the Governor of Maryland than he can by damaging his own political career as Mayor.

[Disclaimer: I'm going to quibble with certain aspects of the show more than other people will because I live in Baltimore. I didn't move back here until Season 4, so I haven't had much of the "hay I know that bar!" experience yet, but oh my, I do now]

The mayor of Baltimore and the governor of the state of Maryland both serve 4 year terms. Gubernatorial elections are held in 4x + 2 years, and the mayoral race is a year after that (2003, 2007) Tommy Carcetti was partly modelled on Martin O'Malley, the unlikely young white democrat who used his mayoral election (and some very shaky characterizations of his not very good record) in 1999 as a springboard to run for governor in 2006. So it's not without pattern or precedent. But the Wire's always been pretty implicitly set in the present day--Carcetti's campaign, for instance, coincided with the 2006 election season. It's a year later, and Baltimore's still fucked. Why is he talking about running for governor? Ambition is a fine thing, but the idea that Carcetti, a mayor with no noticeable record of success in his first year on the job and an inability to correct the situation until least July (start of FY08) could position himself for a run for governor by 2009 is... difficult.

The newsroom was set up pretty effectively, and I'm a little surprised that they were able to use the Sun. The parallels between the Sun's staff and CID are pretty immediate (unlike the parallels between the co-op and the city government, which still feel artificial to me). It makes me happy to see Clark Johnson back on TV.

I got a little laugh out of seeing the photocopier-as-polygraph bit (last seen in Homicide: LOTS) again, in the same episode in which Michael apparently had CSI on in his living room.

And Jimmy's off the wagon again. I'm sure everybody saw it coming, but so soon, so completely? I don't want to think of where this is going because we're so close to the end--bringing him back in like this is going to absolutely destroy something, and even money says it won't just be McNulty. "What the fuck did I do?" indeed. Several other plotlines looked pretty well resolved at the end of season 4--Prez, Bunny/Namond, Omar... even, I guess, Randy. Will we see any of them again?

I'm glad they're following Bubs through recovery this time, especially because the situation with his sister, and having to be on the streets at night means he'll be subjected to many of the same trials he went through trying to clean up before. The Wire hasn't had room to tell a lot of stories of people who were able to walk away from their own demons (in the game or out).

The big open question for me from season 4 is Michael and Marlo. Specifically: what did Bug's daddy do to Michael to get himself killed? Was it actually abuse (which Chris and the Slate dialoguists both assumed), or was it a different level of self-preservation?

Does Michael have the (lack of) heart to work for somebody like Marlo? It's not just the streets. Marlo's almost cartoonishly evil in his disregard for human life (and, I think, the flattest and most opaque character on the show, particularly given his screen time). How will his operation change now that he can't just disappear bodies?


As far as discussion goes, I'm open for any suggestions on when new episodes should be subject to examination. Shows are released in the US on Monday mornings before the official Sunday air dates (which made talking about season 4 as it happened especially frustrating, too). Is anybody receiving it differently? My feeling is Friday's an acceptable compromise as far as giving time to talk through the developments of an episode before watching the next (I'm not very good at delaying gratification, sadly), but am receptive to any other ideas.
 
 
PatrickMM
21:23 / 05.01.08
Lot of interesting points there. The Carcetti as governor thing does feel a bit accelerated, but note, we're never actually told that Carcetti is a viable hope for governor. He's being led to believe this by his advisor, and after pulling off an impossible victory in the previous election, he's thinking that he can do anything. And, if the show tells us anything, it's that actual ability or results have very little to do with one's ascent to power.

As for all the characters being in the same place, Simon said on the season four finale commentary that four and five were a two season story, the story of the bodies. It was never meant to reposition the characters in the way the previous years did. On the one hand, it is a bit disappointing to pick up in the same place, but the Marlo/Co-Op/Greeks conflict looks to be so big, we probably wouldn't have time to get everyone back into position to take them. on. That said, it is weird that last season's finale made a such big deal of getting the detail back together, and this season quickly breaks them up.

About Michael, on the same commentary, Simon talked about how Chris and Michael were both abuse victims. Having him be the victim of sexual abuse makes the Cutty stuff from earlier in the season make sense, and also makes it easier to understand why he's so protective of Bug. I think it is a bit reductive to have the abuse as an explanation for both Chris and Michael's violence, but it does give them a deep connection. Michael's arc in season four was about searching for a family, he was raising Bug alone, and a number of people tried to help him out. But, it wasn't until he met Chris, someone who understood what he'd been through, that he could feel comfortable and safe. It really does give you an understanding of how someone could wind up on the street like he did, when everyone else in your life has abandoned or abused you, why wouldn't you accept what Marlo can offer? Notably, Michael doesn't take a handout earlier in the season, that's probably the same kind of gift his stepfather gave him, it's the real connection that he wants, and that's what he gets from Chris. One of my favorite moments in the whole show is Michael sitting in the back of the car after killing someone, when Chris tells him "You can look them in the eye." It's simultaneously incredibly sad, and sort of touching.

Marlo is something of an anomaly, seemingly completely evil in a world that's usually pictured in shades of grey. Much of the show has been about the way the game has been getting fiercer, and Marlo's the perfect incarnation of that. Avon's crew was disciplined until things splintered at the top. Avon bought into the gangster mythology, and let them take him down. Marlo is all business, the Wal Mart of the streets. If I had to guess, he'll wind up taking out Prop Joe and the various co-op folks and the show will end with him and the Greeks working together. Simon called the Greek an incarnation of captialism without limits, Marlo is the same thing, and it would fit with his social model to end the show with the more dynamic, personable characters defeated, replaced by these cold, profit-driven, violent killers.
 
 
Paralis
07:08 / 08.01.08
Lot of interesting points there. The Carcetti as governor thing does feel a bit accelerated, but note, we're never actually told that Carcetti is a viable hope for governor. He's being led to believe this by his advisor, and after pulling off an impossible victory in the previous election, he's thinking that he can do anything. And, if the show tells us anything, it's that actual ability or results have very little to do with one's ascent to power.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. We're shown so many instances of incompetence in action, basically everywhere but the streets, but it's almost never a mystery why these people succeed (and, in Rawls' case, why they don't). There was a lot of time spent setting Carcetti up as a viable mayoral candidate, and there's been almost nothing to show that he'd have any shot at Annapolis. Getting elected as a white mayor in Baltimore is great for Teresa's career, but for Carcetti's? Most of Maryland prefers to pretend that Baltimore doesn't exist. Martin O'Malley was able to make the jump because he served two terms, built a national profile, and had a compelling (if false) record of achievement on the one thing the rest of the state knows about Baltimore (O'Malley's administration was basically Royce's regarding the systematic downgrading of reported crimes). Carcetti's done none of this. It's a little confusing because the timeline's muddled, and there isn't any way of knowing when the next gubernatorial election will be (since Carcetti's campaign was a year before the mayoral race in Baltimore).

But it's also unsatisfying because I don't understand the need to set the season in 2008. I'm assuming this will become clear down the line, but it still feels like a lot of time in which to have virtually no movement. It makes some things possible (McNulty's lapses, Bubs' recovery), but from the outside, one episode in, it feels arbitrary and complicated. Call it April 07 (or three months after the season four finale), and a lot of that kludginess disappears. Again, I'm assuming there's a reason, but there's not a lot to go on right now.

About Michael, on the same commentary, Simon talked about how Chris and Michael were both abuse victims. Having him be the victim of sexual abuse makes the Cutty stuff from earlier in the season make sense, and also makes it easier to understand why he's so protective of Bug.

I gave away my copy of the season 4 DVDs for Christmas and haven't replaced them yet, so I haven't heard the commentaries (FWIW, I don't think I've listened to any of the commentaries on any of the prior seasons), but thanks for pointing that out. Michael being drawn to Marlo, being so protective of Bug, and being so terrified of the presence of non-sympathetic male still works without the abuse angle--consider that Michael and Dukie's home lives aren't really any different. It's just that Michael was bigger and stronger than the person who would sell his food for drugs, and Dukie wasn't. Since Michael was the most difficult of the kids to type in season 4, Michael's refusal to say what Bug's daddy had done to him seemed like a really crucial ambiguity. But I'll let that go. I'm relieved a bit, I guess, that he's not as evil as a non-abuse explanation could imply. And worried because as the endgame approaches, one can't but speculate on why some characters are still on the show and some aren't--McNulty's just the most obvious example.

The similarities between Marlo and the (non-)Greek are certainly apparent, and I'm glad you brought that up, because although I think I've basically only said negative things about season 5 so far, that's my big worry--that they'll go beyond their research into symbolic territory again. Season 4 was, I feel I can say somewhat objectively (hur), the greatest thing on television ever. It was intensely political and consistently on-message, but that was never allowed to trump the quality and the credibility of the writing. The Greeks were not done as faithfully, to put it mildly, and it seemed an ugly bit of shoehorning to get the dockworkers and Simon's take on the decline of the blue-collar middle class into the bigger arc. I'm hoping Sergei etc. are far enough out of the way this time not to be so intrusive.

This is mostly dashed off, and I'll try to step up my own game as I go through things--the shortened season feels oppressive already, but there's so much more to talk about than How It All Ends (which it's hard to look away from right now--Scott wants national news, McNulty wants somebody to give a damn about the murders, and... yeah), and I'll see my way to it in there somewhere.

Also, Slate's continuing its excellent dialogue on the series here, and there will likely be several things in there I'll respond to here over the next few days.
 
 
sleazenation
07:43 / 08.01.08
Paralis - I think I disagree with you on a number of levels, most notably i disagree with what appears to be your assertion that The Wire is a Roman a clef, with the writers forced to recount the minutiae of real life Baltimore politics and crime.

Also I think you are misguided if you think the 'Greeks' are forever linked to the dockworkers. The Greeks are just another large company in the ongoing play of unrestrained capitalism that is a recurring motif in the series. Marlo's crew are looking to cut out the middle man in the form of Prop Joe and do business direct with the Greeks, but I'm not entirely sure Marlow's crew is stable enough to be a good business partner. We shall see where it goes.
 
 
Paralis
22:54 / 08.01.08
I think I disagree with you on a number of levels, most notably i disagree with what appears to be your assertion that The Wire is a Roman a clef, with the writers forced to recount the minutiae of real life Baltimore politics and crime.

I'm not sure I'd consider roman รก clef a useful term here because I think it overstates the very real similarities between Baltimore and, for lack of a better word, Wireland. Is it as simple as saying Carcetti = O'Malley or Scott in the newsroom = Jim Haner*? Of course not. But the strength of the show has always been its journalistic underpinnings and the time and dedication taken to portray a city of Baltimore that is, if not quite real, at least highly credible.

And Carcetti in episode 1 just jumps the rails for me. It's not news that an ambitious person (in politics or otherwise) will have a tin ear, or will be surrounded by yes men, but he's sabotaging his base and giving a lot of ammunition to his political enemies (Neresse Campbell was in the room, after all, when he "doubled down" on the US Attorney, and she's certainly no ally of Carcetti's). There's some lip service about keeping the decision to suspend the vacants investigation under wraps, but it's the biggest open secret in Wireland now. The odds of anybody from Baltimore winning statewide office are narrow enough without this sort of baggage hanging off. It's a really monumental decision in terms of the long-term effects it will have on Carcetti's legacy, and I don't see there being enough room in the next 9 episodes to really address that. So I grumble.

Also I think you are misguided if you think the 'Greeks' are forever linked to the dockworkers. The Greeks are just another large company in the ongoing play of unrestrained capitalism that is a recurring motif in the series. Marlo's crew are looking to cut out the middle man in the form of Prop Joe and do business direct with the Greeks, but I'm not entirely sure Marlow's crew is stable enough to be a good business partner. We shall see where it goes.

The Greeks are also one of the few bare patches in the Wire when there's pretty obviously not the same level of research behind the characters and plotting--I simply doubt there were many high-volume drug smugglers willing to take Simon and Burns under their wing for a year to show how the shop is run. So you get incendiary and unexamined ideas like Agent Koutris.

I do wonder what's going on with the Marlo angle, at least because he already tried a run at Spiros the last time around. He's a high-profile player in a business where discretion is key, and can't compete with Prop Joe on credibility. Unless of course there is no Prop Joe, but I'm hoping this doesn't turn into, say, the last season of Oz, where the writers decided to just kill everybody.


* - Jim Haner was a Baltimore Sun reporter fired for, basically, "making shit up" (to quote CityPaper) in 2000. Here's a good starting point for the CityPaper coverage of the story if anybody wants background on where, specifically, a lot of David Simon's antipathy toward the Sun comes from.
 
 
Paralis
11:15 / 14.01.08
Hm. Again, the question of time. It's Opening Day now. This makes me really curious about when episode 1 takes place and over how much time, but there aren't any details. I'm left wondering how much of this is due to the truncated season--are episodes 1 & 2 massively condensed to pace the rest of the season more reasonably, or is this just the natural consequence of having so many threads to wrap up in such a small amount of time while still making room for the big, overarching message?

To go back to the problem of Marlo, I think it's twofold. One is that, structurally speaking, there just isn't time for him in the Wire. This is true of so many characters on the show, and how little time it has to spend on their personal lives (was it season 3 when Bunk's kids were finally used as something more than leverage?). One of the consequences of being in such a tight format and being so relentlessly on-message is that certain aspects of the narrative suffer--the Wire has neither room nor reason to tell the same story twice (even tweaked). So even though Marlo's not Avon, we're not going to see even analogs of the background scenes on Avon in season 1--there's no soup kitchen, no comatose brother, no heart-to-hearts with the lieutenants. Just business and insane amounts of charisma (one of the reasons the writing doesn't fall flat is that the casting is so consistently excellent).

But the other part is what PatrickMM referred to about Marlo being emblematic of the streets getting harder. Which is an odd thing to hear coming from David Simon because this is an idea that seems to show up in conservative circles every 10 years or so--and although I'm struggling to find the exact scene, Bodie makes fun of the idea in season 1. I accept that there's not time left to reexamine the Barksdale crew's questioning and approach to morality, but the fact that there's so little question of whether what Marlo does is acceptable--there's no hesitation by Chris or Snoop no matter how capricious the order--that makes the whole thing feel half-drawn. Particularly given their change in approach this season: after making so big a deal of their secrecy about the killings over the last two seasons, to jump to such a brutal scene is offputting. When Chris and Snoop ran off the NY dealers, Prop Joe had to specifically ask that they not dispose of the bodies, and now a home invasion in broad daylight?

And I don't have the faintest idea what to make of McNulty's serial killer angle, although the neatness and rapidity with which it was set up is something I hope won't mark the rest of the season. All questions of feasibility aside, I'm really dreading that it's a straight play, and that America's cultural indifference to urban poverty and crime is going to get reduced to a question only of race. I don't want to discount what's likely a broad (if at least tacit) willingness to receive the idea that there's a causative relationship between race and crime, drug use, and the rest, held by large portions of the country. But the comparison they seem to want to set up based on this episode, of June Bug and his family getting killed at home and the white junkie turning up dead in the vacant, is simplistic and inflammatory. I hope there's a lot more to it--there has been a pretty clear gap at times between McNulty's role in personifying a lot of the institutional prejudices at work and the character's individual shortsightedness (like, say, when he says he should have known that Kima was gay based on the quality of her work), and I feel that at the very least, that needs to stay true here.


Small things. Quirks in the casting still amuse me--the bearded reporter who points out the fire in episode 1, as it turns out, is played by Michael Olesker, a former Sun reporter fired for plagiarism a few years back. And I had no idea until just a few days ago that Lt. Mello (Western district commander) is played by Jay Landsman.

McNulty taking the bus to the crime scene is hilarious, but how long until sometbody gets killed as a result?
 
 
Spaniel
13:49 / 14.01.08
So you get incendiary and unexamined ideas like Agent Koutris.

The problem, I think, is that we have no real way of knowing just what the American security services are doing in the name of the War on Terror, but, given their history, the Agent Koutrises of Wireland seem plausible enough to me.

Sleaze, not wishing to speak for Paralis, but I think the problem ze identifies with Carcetti is one of verismilitude, and as such I have some sympathy. I too found myself wondering just how Carcetti thinks he's gonna win the governorship, my answer was to assume that his under-dog mayoral campaign win combined with his personal vanity and determination, and a liberal dose of advisor sweet-talking has led him to believe he can do it despite the odds. Pehaps most importantly, Tommy has to believe he can win, he has to make his play, because, as we've seen, he's becoming increasingly certain that he can do fuck all for the city from the "Big Chair". It's also quite possible that Tommy will be brought down to Earth with a bump later in the series, or that he'll make governor only to discover whole new bowls of shit.

Does anyone else get the feeling that everyone might get an appearance this season? Maybe I'm just a silly sentimentalist, but I'd actually quite like to see all the players get a chance to bow out.
 
 
Paralis
10:39 / 16.01.08
Well, what I think the problem is--the question from sleazenation I would have answered if I'd put in the time, is as follows:

The Wire is a fictional television show based heavily on the professional experience of its writers as well as the years of research culminating in two non-fictional books portraying the police and criminal worlds of Baltimore. Given its imprimatur, to what extent do we, as viewers, have a right to expect that the themes and characters the Wire depicts stay not only verisimilar to the show's premises, but the very real world which at times it depicts?

sleazenation and I appear to disagree on this, and I don't think that the fact that David Simon and I agree makes my position any more uniformly correct. Not least, because it's not a simple yes or no (or, as framed, "very much" or "not at all")--the Wire contains strong speculative (Hamsterdam) and essentially folkloric (Omar) elements that can't be slid into a journalistic framework.

And I think how one approaches the show in general determines how one will react to Agent Koutris specifically. Certainly the charge that US security services have been complicit in the inner-city drug trade isn't new, and as such isn't entirely unthinkable. In the show alone, it's the easiest possible way to dissolve the criminal investigation in the shortest possible amount of time--after all, if nothing else, Season 1 spent a fair amount of time showing so many of the ways that bureaucracy and politics can prevent real policework (even inevitable cases) from being made. To spend time on that again would mean taking time from any of the other elements of Season 2 that were far more important if just because they were newer.

But. If one approaches the show from a journalistic standpoint, it's the fact that the allegation is rooted in actual history that's the problem, because it lends the depiction much more weight. A lot of the press coverage of the Wire, particularly this season because it deals with Simon's time at the Sun, deals with what an exceptionally angry person David Simon can be. And really, after the reporting he's done, who can blame him? Baltimore as a city, for a variety of reasons, is unable to deal with its own problems--the schools, the crime, even the fact that so many working-class families are being priced out of a city with so many centrally-located abandoned buildings and blocks (it would take a separate thread to illustrate how ludicrously high the cost of living is here). For a variety of reasons, as well, Annapolis and Washington appear unwilling to help address them except as a criminal response. There's virtually no push on any level for even the smallest measures--improved mass transit, expanded drug treatment programs, an educational system that functions as more than vocational training. One of the points that The Corner hammers home over and over again is that the city is so ill-equipped to help even the people who don't want to live in the underground economy that it's little wonder that so many lives are (from the perspective of a society so little forgiving of criminal histories) essentially over before they really begin. This is an unbearable tragedy on an individual level, to say nothing of the entire scale of things whether in Baltimore or DC or cities across America. Which is just one reason why the default response by so many in this country is to disengage. Which is one of the reasons that critics love The Wire and viewers, by and large, don't.

But if The Wire is viewed as a response to that disengagement, then there's a very fine line to walk when depicting ugly and largely intractable truths. Things are bad enough without making the problems seem bigger or worse than they are, and to implicate the federal government so directly in letting it happen seems more likely to hurt The Wire's case than to help it.

Ahem.

The Carcetti thing's a little different, largely because there's just so little time left. The series will end before he even gets to a primary, so there's only speculation on why he's making the choices he's making and exactly how it'll blow up before it all wraps up. Which is cramping my viewing as much as anything else--in a show where so little is wasted, sitting on each episode for a week to figure out what everything means is more than a little maddening.

I, too, hope we see more of past characters as long as it's kept short (like Avon's appearance). There's enough individual storylines that are effectively completed from the show's perspective (Namond and Bunny, for instance), and not enough time to deal with what's left. Bring on the montage!

Also, it's too early to talk about it, but I watched episode 3 yesterday, and it's good in all the ways The Wire should be good--dense, painful, and funny without being scattered. I'm overdue to say some things about this show I love so much, and thank god they're going to make it easy.
 
 
PatrickMM
16:49 / 19.01.08
So, episode 3.

First things first, Omar! Watching the first four seasons on DVD, I didn't notice when major characters would be absent for a long time, about half way through this episode, I was like, c'mon, where's the Omar? Thankfully he shows up at the end with a spectacular entrance, but it comes at the cost of Butchie's life.

At this point, there's an interesting split in the show between the thematic points that Simon wants to make, which are hammered home again and again in the newspaper storyline, and the more pulpy aspects of the story. For me, it's the Marlo/Prop Joe/Omar/Greeks conflict that's owning the show. Marlo is a more exciting character than he's been in the past, in previous years he was portrayed as a force of nature, here we get to see him actually doing things, trying to expand the empire and running into trouble along the way.

Nobody stays in power forever, and we're starting to see how his arrogance could lead to his downfall. Bringing Omar back is obviously a mistake. The way I'm viewing Omar now is as a force of chaos, the Loki of this universe. It may be implausible that one man could stay alive through all he's been through, but the force of chaos will always survive. Omar comes in when people are monopolizing power and breaks down that order.

But, chaos comes in many forms. Michael is now going down Bodie's path of questioning, wondering why Marlo has to kill so many people, and leaving his corner unattended to go to Six Flags? I can't see Marlo going to Six Flags. Cutty's in the On Demand promo, and I'm thinking he'll play a role in what happens to either Michael or Dukie. Those two are one of my favorite plot strands this season.

There's so much intrigue on that side of the story, and the characters are amazing. I could watch Snoop do anything, as long as she's talking, and Prop Joe is another fantastic presence.

I think it's the fact that this story is in its final stages that makes the newspaper stuff a bit of a slog at times. I can see why he's making these points, but emotionally, I don't know these characters and it doesn't do much for me. Do I care if random guy gets fired? What's the worst that can happen to Haynes, he gets fired? He has to compromise his principles? It's not the same as the other stories because the stakes are kind of vague. Maybe with more time, Simon would be able to make us care about the characters more, but I don't know if that can happen in seven episodes.
 
 
Spaniel
17:19 / 19.01.08
Pat, I'm sure you've mulled over the possibility that the real stakes of the media angle lie outwith the characters at the paper - i.e. they'll have implications for characters that we know and love. Also, I fully expect to see how the truth is distorted by the media, and the social implications of that distortion.

Of course, Simon is going to have to ground all that in the arcs of the journos to make it work.
 
 
Paralis
18:26 / 19.01.08
Yeah. Unfortunately, The Wire's strong suit has never been introducing new characters. Specifically in season 1, with the hamfisted entrances of Freamon (with the poster of Avon) and Omar. I find myself wishing there were time to introduce the Sun characters a little bit over seasons 3 and 4--there was certainly enough potential hooks in the election plot. But then I look back and wonder what they could cut out, particularly of season 4, and there's basically one scene, when Prez finds the new books and computers in the storage room at school. And that's it. This isn't helped by the fact that they're using so many former Sun people on screen--casting's always been great about casting both credible and charismatic actors (my biggest question about The Wire will always be what they planned to do with Marlo's crew before they found Snoop, since she's essentially playing herself), and in this case they've pretty flatly failed at the latter.

What The Wire is best at, on the other hand, is building a context so complete and detailed that powerful scenes are possible without much screen time. The writers work for moments like Dukie and Michael at Six Flags, and it shows.

I'm glad to see some of my initial reaction to the McNulty-press interaction is overblown. When I went back to look for dates in the season premiere, I stopped to read all of the headlines shown at various points. What I didn't catch the first time I watched was that the opening credits have a brief shot of the Sun's cover with the headline "SERIAL KILLER PREYS ON CITY HOME[LESS]" (the subheading is maybe a bit spoily, so I'll leave that out for now).

It's definitely good to see Marlo get more screen time that highlights something other than how cautious or how utterly evil he is, and it's interesting to see how all of the pieces are setting up for what looks like, from here, Marlo's fall. Is it Omar? Is it Prop Joe? Who talks to the police? Michael? Dukie? Snoop? The survivor at Butchie's (I hope they address this at some point, since it seems like at some point a survival instinct trumps the anti-snitching culture)?

I'm not sure I understand where the Cheese-Marlo angle's going. Isn't Cheese supposed to be Prop Joe's nephew? Also a bit unclear on how Stringer and Cheese knew about the Omar-Butchie connection but Joe and Marlo didn't.

Also a bit strange on Freamon's conversion. I get the cynicism and moral equivalency arguments, but he's got this weird certitude that he can catch Marlo in a few weeks that seems to have come out of left field. Why he thinks he can get more time for Marlo by cooking up a press diversion rather than leak the fact that Major Crimes has been shut down is a bit of a mystery.

FWIW, though, I'm still laughing inwardly at Valchek's appearance. How a show so viscerally upsetting can still manage to be so funny without being false should be taught to every screenwriter everywhere and forever.
 
 
PatrickMM
20:55 / 19.01.08
Pat, I'm sure you've mulled over the possibility that the real stakes of the media angle lie outwith the characters at the paper - i.e. they'll have implications for characters that we know and love.

That's true, we've already seen it with the Daniels storyline in this episode. But, a storyline's got to do more than just affect the characters already on the show to justify its screentime.

Unlike Paralis, I think they usually do a pretty solid job of introducing new characters, though it does take a while to get to know them. The best introductions are like Snoop's, or Colvin's, where they appear in the background a few times and eventually you realize, hey that's a really interesting person. The Freamon season one entrance was a bit contrived, but I think it works better than the newspaper stuff here.

The closest equivalent is season two, where we got a whole new set of characters and a completely different world. While I think there were some major issues with the season, the commitment to introducing this world meant we really did get to know those characters. Would I like to upend the show's world again to introduce these newspaper people? No, but as it is, we're spending too much time with characters who aren't anything more than one line descriptions, "The ambitious reporter who'll bend the rules," etc. And, it definitely would have helped to have had some of these people in the background in previous seasons.

I'm not sure I understand where the Cheese-Marlo angle's going. Isn't Cheese supposed to be Prop Joe's nephew? Also a bit unclear on how Stringer and Cheese knew about the Omar-Butchie connection but Joe and Marlo didn't.

I thought Joe knew about Butchie, but chose not to tell Marlo, knowing that it would only cause trouble if Omar returned to Baltimore. Cheese, driven by his personal desire for vengeance, told Marlo anyway.

And you're totally on about the work that went into the Six Flags moment. What makes the show so satisfying is they've built such a compelling and fully developed world, there's no need for exposition at this point in the show. One of the most chilling and sad moments in the entire series is the single shot of Prez looking at Dukie on the corner at the end of season four. We don't need any dialogue, that one shot tells the whole story.
 
 
sleazenation
17:47 / 20.01.08
Re-Cheese more important than the simple revenge motive is the fact that Cheese isn't really very bright and has only survived this long in the game because Prop Joe has been protecting him. Cheese doesn't know what real trouble is, let alone what the stakes are. I'd be surprised if he makes it to the end of the season - especially if Prop Joe is heading for a fall.

back to the Carcetti - I don't think he has a long term plan of *how* to get the Governorship - at the moment he's just doing everything he can to remain viable. Crime (like the schools) is still a problem that needs to be addressed, but not at the cost of anything that would take him out of consideration for the Governorship race, nothing that will leave him owing favours of too great a magnitude and nothing get him into shit with his own party.

As for the Newspaper - I've worked in similar offices, so I can identify with those guys more readily, but really their concerns are much the same as the stevedors - where the next paychecks are going to be coming from and the long term future. OK, the guys at the paper have all been to college, but the pressures and goals are still the same.
 
 
Spaniel
18:45 / 20.01.08
Of course, let us not forget the brilliant introduction of the kids in season 4
 
 
PatrickMM
22:44 / 20.01.08
The closest analogue to the newspaper storyline is definitely the dock stuff, and I think the story suffers from a lot of the same negatives that the docks had. It feels somewhat cut off from the rest of the goings on, not meshing as organically as the politics of season three or the school of season four. Like the docks stuff, it's not that the story is bad, it's more that the characters don't come alive in the way that the others have, and as a result it looks bad next to the really great other stuff.

But, I think there is the potential to integrate it into the rest of the narrative world in a more compelling way than the docks. Hopefully the setup is done, and those characters will move closer to the rest of the narrative.
 
 
Paralis
09:26 / 23.01.08
Hm. In the interests of keeping things short, I overstated my case. I don't think The Wire's always been bad with introducing characters--the first episode of season 4, for instance, stands out in my mind as the best hour of television ever for the unforced way it so concisely lays out the entirety of the world they're going to examine. I think the parallels between the stevedores and the newsmen stand out more because they're trying some of the same things in some of the same ways, but need to get more out of the characters to make it work. I don't, that is to say, think that the dockworkers were drawn especially clearly, even though it was effective--it didn't matter that outside of the Sobotkas, it was a collection of incredibly personable nicknames. Johnny 50? New Charles? Horseface? They didn't need to be deep or subtle, because Frank and Nick were carrying the weight. There is no Frank or Nick at the Sun, so those index-card descriptions of the characters have to matter, and they don't. Everybody's either too competent or too venal, and it's coming out of all the pores. I didn't realize until watching episode 4 that Scott's last name is Templeton, and that's just too cute for me by half.

I'm still not sure why the Carcetti angle bothers me so much, because it's not an isolated idea this time around. If there's one thing people in The Wire seem eager to do this year, it's to risk their careers on negligible gains. Carcetti, McNulty, even Marlo are playing with these outsized ambitions. Carcetti at least wants to be Governor--I get that, even though the timing and the methods seem contrived. And Marlo's always been a plastic figurine of violence and ambition, so the fact that he's exposing himself incredibly on all these different fronts to become the King fo Baltimore, well, it probably seems like one of them good problems. But McNulty? Freamon? There are better ways, within the context of the show, to go after Marlo.

But that's that. This isn't going to be season 4 again--it's going to be season 3, whose arc with the downfall of Stringer and Avon was the weakest part of the series for me. It's a necessary concession to the dramatic format; there's probably no way to effectively wrap up so many sprawling ideas without the whole thing feeling compressed and artificial. And I'll just have to let myself live with that.
 
 
sleazenation
21:47 / 28.01.08
Episode 4

Transitions is right - lots up in the air after this episode and it makes me think about Marlo again - we are finding out more about him, and the progression of business on the streets. No one stays ahead forever and when the new player takes over they often find that getting on top and staying on top are very very different skills. I can't see the Co-op lasting much longer and I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibilities that we will see a new player on the scene taking up Marlo's place, maybe just as the season winds up...
 
 
Mug Chum
02:54 / 09.02.08
I just watched the second episode now, and sorry if somebody already said anything similar (but I really don't want to catch spoilers). That brief scene of McNulty strangling the homeless man was something that gave me an impact -- in only ten seconds -- of proportions that (parts of) 'The Zodiac' did in me in three hours (I'm exaggerating a bit, yeah, but you know...), in how that mythical allure/glamour behind the idea of a serial killer is something attractive at the expense of "smaller", more important issues (that are more relevant to the interests people have when concerned with things like serial killers and tabloids-like issues). While 'The Zodiac' had that 'From Hell' type of portrayal of a transition in a city's zeitgeist (SanFran, 60's-70's, socialhippies-strangerdanger), in its priorities and overall minutiae, this one scene had that idea so trivially entreched and treated it as if it was such a common place notion. Just... so swell...

It's an amazingly filmed scene, in the sense of how it manages to somewhat share McNulty's epiphany with us without saying anything (reminded me of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Magnolia buying all those pornographic magazines, while the film with no word or image at all suggests for us that he's buying them to contact Tom Cruise through the ads, since they share the same consumers).

I really went on too much about just one scene, while there were better ones already (it's just that that particular one was just so... damn...)
 
 
Paralis
20:57 / 24.02.08
To get it right out of the way, I'm glad he's dead.

Omar's arc ended the only way it could--to borrow a line of Avon's from season 1, "a little slow, a little late." I really wasn't pleased with the way Omar was being handled this season. He's always been a mythic exception to the general bleakness of The Wire, and it just went right off the charts these last weeks. Not that seeing him pull the one-legged stickup wasn't funny, but, yeah.

The danger in the writing this late in the season is that it telegraphs its own moves. Because every scene has a purpose--because every scene *has to*--it was fairly obvious how it was going to play as soon as they showed Omar walking through the alley. And yet I think it was a tremendous job by the director and by Michael K Williams in selling the inevitable with so much weight and so little melodrama. The thing that will stick with me about it the most, I think, is the grief on Omar's face through the last three weeks. Getting got, that is to say, may be the only peace a stickup boy ever earns.


So I wonder how the rest of it's going to shake out, particularly the politics and the news plotlines, which point to different natural ends (Carcetti, presumably, is pointed at winning the Democratic nomination, whereas the Sun--and much of David Simon's criticism thereof--is pointed at the Pulitzers, which don't come until after the end of the year). I was pretty shocked at the amount of detail (some of which is doubtless misleading, much of which is unambiguous) revealed in the post-episode preview of the events to come, but I'm not sure if that's fair game or no, so we'll leave it aside.

There seems to be a pretty strong hand that's eventually going to guide Dukie back to Prez, the only man they're going to let answer the question "how do you get from here to the rest of the world?" Which bothers me immensely because to do so, they cut the meat out of Dennis with his hope and wishes speech. He's the only character they've taken the time to follow, trying to find a place in the real economy, and the necessity that he learned nothing from it (even that the deacon knows more about it than he does) is galling. Otherwise, I think they've done a solid job giving old characters cameos this time around, and Poot's was just priceless.

But with two episodes left, they're setting up a few winners and a whole lot of losers. Is it time to get a scorecard out? Will Dukie be out on the streets before he can get back to school? Will Perlman be unwilling to try Chris because of the tie to McNulty's dirt (his signature on the form for the ME seems too inconsequential to be inconsequential)? Will Gus survive his feud with Templeton, and will the other reporter's work with Bubbles get the recognition they're so strongly implying it should? Will Carcetti be able to get to the general election without eating so many bowls of shit that even he can't pretend he'll be able to do anything for Baltimore?

And where on earth is Slim Charles? Avon's gone, Joe's gone, and now the only soldier who worked for both east and west sides (itself somewhat unexamined) has nobody left to answer to. Seems he'd have a few opinions on the way things have developed.

(obviously there's a lot to say, too, about McNulty's attempts to justify himself to Kima and Beadie, but, for right now, I don't have any thoughts on it).
 
 
sleazenation
19:52 / 25.02.08
Slim Charles has distanced himself from Marlo and his operation - he did so at the last meet after Prop Joe was murdered when he said he wasn't cut out to be no CEO. Maybe Slim Charles will be the one left to pick up the pieces after the Marlo take down...
 
 
sleazenation
09:52 / 01.03.08
I am liking how The Wire is giving a sense of closure to many of its lesser-spotlighted characters this season without being heavy-handed.

So we see some of the dockers from season two again, We see Poot and and Cutty and Colvin and tons of others... will we see Brother Mouzone?
 
 
Paralis
02:37 / 05.03.08
To get it right out of the way, I'm glad she's dead.

I've never really been a fan of Snoop the character, all engine and no subtlety. Hilarious, sure, and utterly captivating, but entirely unconflicted except for that odd moment in the beginning of the season when she's upset because she hasn't gotten to kill anybody recently. Which maybe wouldn't bother so much if Snoop weren't played by herself, if Snoop didn't have that history; if Snoop the actress' personal rehabilitation weren't at least largely fuelled by a pretty unambiguous glorification of gang violence, a deeper examination of which is beyond the scope of this thread (I hope).

But otherwise, this episode was very hit-or-miss with me. One of the things I loved most about the direction (cinematographic rather than narrative) of The Wire after season 1 was that it dealt with its most tragic moments if not quite at arm's length, then at least a step removed. The camera stays outside of the visitor's room with Kima when Waylon goes in to see Bubbles after the suicide attempt; it stays outside of the car when Carter leaves Randy at the group home. In season 1, they handled it differently, of course; we've been talking a lot locally about Clay Davis's accusation about a rat in the courthouse, and who it can be, and why I love Bill Rawls so goddamn much. Chief reason being the episode after Kima gets shot, when he rolls up, takes absolute command of the scene, and drags McNulty to the hospital and sets him straight, thereby making the case that although he's inarguably a huge, swollen asshole, he's *our* huge, swollen asshole. Or, as I prefer to think of it, he's far too much of a tool to be dirty.

But as much as I loved the whole line of response on McNulty's part: the bloody hands at the crime scene, the crying in the hospital, the whiskey and regret in the unit office, as fatuous as a complaint as this may be (particularly when watching a fictional TV show), it was acting, and the direction called attention to the fact that it was acting.

And boy was there ever a lot of ACTING! in this episode. Great speeches, to be sure, but even so. Marlo with "MY NAME IS MY NAME!" and Freamon's "I dooooo belieeeeeeve!" and all (and the newspaper bit which I'm just going to pretend never happened). And Michael saying goodbye to Bug, and then to Dukie, which veers so close to being soap opera except that Tristan Wilds is just masterful. That one moment when he's outside the car saying goodbye to Bug when his voice breaks is worth more than everything else thrown into the scene.

The best moments and the best lines have pretty much all gone to the players, and Marlo and Chris walk away with this episode, at the end of the scene of them in the holding cell, reading their warrants, trying to figure out who's going to have to take what, and who put them all in. And Chris doesn't see Michael snitching because he likes Michael, he trusts him and identifies with him, because on some understated level he's as human as everybody else on the show. But then Marlo actually agrees with him, and for the first time in three seasons, Marlo Stanfield shows some emotion, some compunction, some sense of perspective on who he is and where he is and what kind of a world he lives in. That as much as Snoop can step back and be fatalistic about the process, he can't--he's the engine of fate. You can't be abstract when you're giving the word.

I just wish this Marlo had shown up sooner.

I also absolutely love Clay Davis's face turn as the most likeable character on the show. The heavy breathing and the false indignation and perfect timing almost make Freamon's total corruption worthwhile. I don't think the fingering of Levy will have much of a resolution because this, whether Marlo stands or falls, represents the sort of systemic corruption whose removal would require an unambiguously happy ending for the series. But then it's still a very open question how this will all tie together. Carcetti's and Daniels' careers pretty clearly rely on keeping the dirt under wraps, but Rhonda's not only an officer of the court, she's in charge of the CID end of investigations--she's the only one with a professional code of ethics requiring her to act nobly, and I wonder if there's time to show that pulling her and Daniels in different directions. The parallel between Haynes' investigation of Templeton and Daniels' of McNulty are pretty blindingly apparent, and I wonder how far that symmetry is going to carry, since I think it's a pretty foregone conclusion given Simon's biases that Gus will take his information to Klebanow, get ignored and either be fired or resign. But what does that mean for the police investigation, which has so much more at stake? Is it as simple as Kima goes back to law school?

Bubbles with a shape-up makes me happy. Namond at the debate makes my eyes roll, but "yo, Mr. C! You know the mayor?" in the background as Colvin refuses to shake Carcetti's hand is perfect. Seeing Dukie go out this way is probably easier than what I would have predicted (in which he returned to school just before Michael was arrested/killed/put on the run).

So who else is there left to show? Prez is in the preview for the finale, like Colvin, sporting a beard in summer. Speaking of, this makes Colvin, Prez, Haynes, Carver--oh, nevermind. Freamon has a beard, and he's no angel no more. I was all set to make an argument that facial hair == innate goodness in Wireland, and obviously that won't hold (Chris, Michael, Sidnor also counterexamples).

I don't expect to see Brother Mouzone again, but do the cops have any outstanding warrants on the Greeks from season 2? Do we have any idea if Vondos and the Greek were ever indicted (based on Sergei and Nick's testimony) and whether that's a possible moral payoff for Marlo walking? After all, The Wire likes to hammer home the idea that when you get sloppy, you get burnt, and the Greeks in backing Marlo have been very, very sloppy.
 
 
PatrickMM
16:26 / 05.03.08
Clay Davis has been owning this season. That court appearance a few episodes ago was an instant classic scene, and post verdict Clay Davis has been a joy to watch. But, I don't think his tipping off Lester will really lead to anything. I feel like it's there more to just tie everything together and give us one more throwback reference to Stringer.

For the last episode, the scene I'm looking forward to most is the Prez and Dukie reunion. I'm also curious to see where Michael ends up. Those kids have dominated since they appeared. But, the Marlo stuff should be pretty strong too, have we ever actually seen him fight anyone? How well is he going to do defending his name without his muscle? I'm guessing not too well, you make that many enemies, it's only a matter of time before the fall.
 
 
tickspeak
19:36 / 06.03.08
So, umm, I hesitate to ask, but...well, fuck it.

Did anyone else get a donkey porn vibe from that very last scene? What exactly is going on "in there" that Michael knows about? Was that the junk guy's little white horse being led into the alley? Did you hear some faint dialogue in the background indicating...something sexual? Am I the only person who saw this?
 
 
PatrickMM
01:55 / 07.03.08
I think they were shooting up, not having sex with the donkey. The donkey hangs out to pull the cart for the junkman. But considering all they've thrown onto Dukie, fucking a donkey is probably next.
 
 
Paralis
02:17 / 07.03.08
All due respect, tick, but I think you're reading an awful lot into that last shot that may not be there. Dukie got dropped off at the Arabbers' stable, and I'm not sure what other symbolism can be taken from the shot of the donkey (or was it a pony?). Now this itself something of a red herring, verisimilitude-wise; by and large, Arabbers don't deal in junk because there's not any money in it. Animals are expensive to feed and house, carts are expensive to maintain, and there's just more money in selling produce all over town than in stealing scrap metal from junkyards (with its attended risks of beatings). But I think the short version (based heavily, but not exclusively, on the trailer for the finale) is that things don't end well for Duquan. He's too far gone for Prez to help him, so I don't know why he goes to see him except to give Prezbo the cameo. Unless Dukie kills himself, which seems less likely than the strongly hinted Dukie-becomes-junkie thing they're working.

But, all the same, here's what I predict from the finale.

Marlo dies. The more I think about it, the more this is the natural consequence of his "my name is my name!" rant in prison. He's all set to find out just what Avon learned when he got out of prison (and what Little Kev and Bodie and Old-Faced Andre and them all learned when they came away from the police and Marlo had them killed): when anybody can think you've talked to police, your name ain't shit. He gets out of jail (because there's not time to convict him), and nobody will touch him, because nobody will believe he didn't talk. He's all set to be a drug kingpin without a connect, and with a town full of enemies. It's not a happy ending; it's just the way the game goes. He doesn't have anybody to sell to the Greeks the way Avon could sell Stringer to New York, and that's that.

In keeping with a "just because you escape doesn't mean you've won" theme, McNulty and Freamon don't get indicted, but their careers are over. One thing they've never said explicitly this season is whether Freamon is senior enough to take a pension--it's always been in the back of the mind as a motivation for his corruption (or at least an excuse). So maybe he retires. Maybe they transfer out of Baltimore. Maybe they start an alpaca ranch in Wyoming. But they walk away clean and useless.

Slim Charles does something and sounds awesome doing it. Carver gets promoted. Daniels resigns over the coverup (and doesn't tell all because of Marla), and if this happens close enough to the summary montage (which we all know is coming) I vote they take the cheap laugh and make Valchek the man. Just because it's funny without fucking with anything.

I still can't figure why, from the preview, Cheese ends up on the street again. Maybe he's the new Marlo because he wants it so much, and maybe he gets killed because everybody hates him and he likes waving guns around. The courthouse leak isn't Phelan, but if we haven't seen him the season (I can't remember), he gets some face time anyway.

And that's mostly it. The finale's been leaked already, but I don't think I'll have time to watch it until Saturday afternoon (and obv won't say anything until Monday morning to be sporting).
 
 
Spaniel
07:31 / 07.03.08
[+] [-] Click on me after you've seen the finale
 
 
PatrickMM
00:39 / 27.03.08
You All Failed - Simon on the last season

I see his point, and I think that point was made, but the thing he doesn't acknowledge is his failure to make people care about what's happening in the newsroom. Is journalistic failure intrinsically any less interesting than the close of the ports or the rise of a testing culture in schools? No, nor is it any more interesting. The reason previous storylines worked was because we cared about the characters, we saw how the No Child Left Behind stuff was hurting kids, we got the point on an emotional level. Once you make someone care about the characters, it's a lot easier to make them care about the issue.

And, when people are wrapped up in a story, they'll nitpick a lot less. I'm sure some of the reaction to the media storyline was part of an inevitable media backlash, and some was defensiveness from "not part of the problem" media people, but a lot of the criticism comes down to the fact that the characters just aren't engaging. The way I see it, saying you're addressing the issue of the lack of coverage by newspapers by spending all our time on the saga of Scott Templeton is like calling Dirty Harry an insightful critique of community policing. Yes, the point may be made, but we take away what's shown more than what's not shown, so even if Simon's point is true on an intellectual level, I don't think it's what people were feeling.
 
 
sleazenation
01:16 / 27.03.08
The thing is I mentioned this elsewhere on the net - I noticed it with how the murders of prop joe and omar were referenced in the newsroom and never made it into print - other things were crowding them out - the newspaper was overtly missing our story all the way through...
 
 
sleazenation
01:22 / 27.03.08
And yes - whether you found the journalist characters engaging or not is kind of irrelevant - these are the guys who are supposed to be reporting the news and our story, the one we have watched unfold over the 5 seasons of the wire IS the news - but the newspaper people couldn't see it- some were willfully blind, others had their vision taken away by budget cuts and office politics...

The reporters were self-absorbed because the media world is often it's own little bubble insulated from the daily realities of, well just about everything else...
 
 
Paralis
02:15 / 27.03.08
"I believe you, Mr. Hanning. I believe that you believe: that you believe you told me one thing. But sir, with all due respect--and gratitude--for you and the service you gave to this country, you didn't tell me that thing. You told me something else."

I think I liked The Wire better when David Simon didn't talk about it quite so much, since I had a much higher estimation of his insight as a storyteller before this all started. I think you make a fair point, Patrick, that the big difference between the way the schoolroom and the newsroom are potrayed in The Wire is the level of sympathy invested. But I think it goes further. Which is to say that I don't think it's a fair summary (whatever David Simon says) to say that Season 4 was "about" NCLB. I don't even think it tried to be about it, because, narratively speaking, I don't think you can even begin to make that sort of case in a one-year snapshot. You can't say NCLB is worse than what came before without at least giving a nod to what came before, and there wasn't the space in season 4 to do that. So, sure, the testing was there in all its inanity, standing aside the curriculum. But before we got anywhere near that, the meat of the problem was laid bare--the collapse of family (immediate and extended) and private and public social support networks, the destruction of the urban economy, basically everything we've seen (on the show and in the news) that stems from and feeds into the drug war. I think season 4 stands as a high watermark for what television can achieve, and I think if you snipped out every little shot at NCLB and replaced it with any of the other thousand problems facing urban schools, it would be as strong.

Of course, season 4 is not season 5. The classroom is not the newsroom, etc. etc. etc. And Simon does make a legitimate point (and then he would) about the stories that we don't see the Sun cover. Is that enough, though? Is the absence of evidence evidence of absence? The stuff Simon talks about in his Post essay (and in the interviews he gave to Salon and Baltimore's CityPaper) about the difficulty of cultivating sources, of soliciting stories--they may be vital, they may be urgent, but they're not in The Wire, because it's all stripped down to caricature. There's no depiction of Templeton failing to get a quote on Daniels being groomed as the next police commissioner. His integrity's already been eviscerated, so he cooks the Neresse quote, and it's not touched on again until Alma tries to talk to Daniels after the press conference on the Stanfield bust. This is not a consequence of sending a cub to do a veteran's job--this is a direct effect of the Templeton plot, which is what's so flimsy about the political slant of the final season. Because it really sometimes comes across that David Simon thinks that the big problem with credibility in journalism over the past 15 years is Jayson Blair more than Judy Miller, and that just makes me shake my head.

I know the season's heading was called "Read Between the Lnes", but I just don't think that's good enough. I don't think the depiction of institutional oversight at the Sun makes sense on its own merits--with the focus on the police, there was attention paid to the managerial processes that made it so difficult to do good work, and that's just not shown in the newsroom. It's not enough to show basically four reporters (if you count Zorzi; I'm on the fence about that) and the work they do over four or six months at a metropolitan daily and ask the viewer to jump to the conclusion that everything these reporters aren't covering just isn't being covered. There's often a fine line between subtlety and simply undertelling the story, but I feel like The Wire's depiction of the Sun often doesn't come close, and no amount of David Simon shouting DO YOU SEE? after the fact is going to change my mind.
 
 
PatrickMM
16:02 / 27.03.08
I'd definitely agree with that, and the more I read what Simon says, the more I feel like he totally missed the point of his own show. The show's been praised so much, he comes off as petty going on rants like this. He seems to have a huge martyr complex, the need to be oppressed in some way. On the commentaries, he'll go on about how the show didn't get any Emmys, "not that he cares," but it's clearly a huge deal for him. He's already been praised so much, he's got a chance to tell the story he wanted to tell, he seems to feel we should be punished for not liking the show in the way he did. The last season did so many things so well, I hate that Simon has turned it into this him vs. the media battle.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:14 / 27.03.08
Indeed. Having not watched any of it yet, the impression I get from Simon's blog is that series five was in some way not up to scratch. Which I'm assuming isn't the case.
 
 
Paralis
18:39 / 27.03.08
Depends on your point of reference, really. Is it better than, say, Ashes to Ashes? Yes. It's senseless to call a season of television with so many beautiful moments a failure, but it's distinctly not the show David Simon thought he was going to deliver when he first started talking about the themes of season 5. It's worthwhile because, for better or worse, it's how the story ends--but I really think it is for the worse, and that season 5 is pretty handily the worst of the bunch (one of the things that surprised me so much about the Slate dialog was the keen hate they all seemed to have for season 2; in declining order of preference I'd probably rank them: 4, 2, 3/1, 5).
 
 
Spaniel
19:04 / 27.03.08
You and I both. Be interested to see you weigh into Barbelith's very own season 2 debate
 
  

Page: (1)2

 
  
Add Your Reply