OPEN UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 14, 2006
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by Eric Rauchway
John's already shown that the only way you can be a "Wire"-hater is to talk about something other than what you actually see on "The Wire": On the screen even the minor characters are, as Dan Jardine says at The House Next Door, "graced with the sort of detail and shading that you normally only find in leading roles."
For my money, the only less-than-delicate touch in the opening episode came in the rumble between the protagonist boys and the kids from the terrace: Our guys were wearing white shirts and the terrace guys were wearing black shirts.
I suppose we know, too, that the white-shirt boys will end up in Pryzbylewski's classroom (and maybe McNulty's kids too?) and that Freamon's wire subpoenas will affect Carcetti's mayoral chances.
The dueling PowerPoint presentations in episode 1 summarize the problems that "The Wire" has always been concerned with. In an excellent short sequence, the show cuts back and forth between disgusted teachers being told to remind themselves "I Am Loveable [sic] and Capable" and disgusted cops receiving binders full of useful information on how to watch out for terrorists. In each case, a highly bureaucratized institution in love with acronyms and codification is filtering the complexity of experience into the sterile order of procedure. If "The Wire" has any noticeable politics at all, here's where they come in: institutions--be they unions, political parties, gangs, police departments or schools--always fail us because they are inherently inhuman. What's worth while comes from outside these institutional structures, or thrives in their interstices.
4 comments
Actually, you can be a Wire-hater by finding the whole thing incredibly boring. After hearing such great things about the series, my wife and I rented the DVDs. It was so slow-moving we just couldn't stand it. (And I'm a baseball and soccer fan, so I can handle slow-moving "action.") We heard more good things, so we tried again, with the same result. With all the hoopla going around again, I'm tempted to try a third time, though.
- shorvat
September 14, 2006 at 3:34pm
Wire fan since the first season, largely on the strength of also liking Homicide: LOTS, also by David Simon. It is slow moving in that no resolution is reached at the end of each episode. The Barksdale drug ring arc takes three seasons (!) to fully play out. It brings to mind the Mahoney story arc from Homicide, which in comparison was far less satisfying. The themes reflect a certain despair, and the characters are clearly pawns in a much larger game of which they are dimly aware. It's Shakespearean tragedy in that you know everything will end badly, but at least there are some bit players who leaven it with humor. Try again, and see if it catches.
- wbc5
September 14, 2006 at 5:14pm
I found that the second season - with dockworkers, the russian mob - Ziggy and his duck - was a better introduction than Season 1. The richness of the characters didn't really come through for me until I re-watched Seaon 1 after having seen Season 2. Now I'm convinced the Wire is the best show on TV.
- noyatin
September 15, 2006 at 4:52pm
We are funding Al Quaida anywhere from 200 million to 6 billion dollars per year with our insane Heroin policy. Let the doctors prescribe Heroin, take the $ of the junkies back, thus setting up the cure of %99 of the junkies; and take the $ off of any new junkies, thus there will be few or none. Cut the crime rate and prison population more thatn in half; defund Al Quaida; and strengthen the Afgan government from whom we will buy the Heroin. See http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/aq/aq.htm (not my site; but shared ideas)
- nhmarkco
September 18, 2006 at 5:37am