Why You Might Not Like The Wire

[mrissa]

One of Timprov's birthday presents this year was the complete series DVDs for The Wire. We've now watched all but the last episode of the first season, and I'm looking forward to the other four seasons. I really like it. I think it's done extremely well, and I think what it's doing well is worth doing. It also understands some things about writing for TV that I have seen done much worse elsewhere--for example, there are visual touchstones that carry ideas through the season (possibly through the show--couldn't tell you yet) without hammering points home in dialog. There have been moments of absolutely perfect character revelation, and moments of growth when a character becomes more than he or she was before. It's a show with ongoing rather than episodic plot, and it looks to me like at least some of that will continue into later seasons, but there's also enough resolution to it to be satisfying. I love Kima. I love Freamon. I love Wallace. I love Prez, and I thought I was going to hate him. I'm pretty fond of Bubs and Jay and Bunk. Love Omar, and I thought I was going to hate him, too.

And this show: sometimes I have to flinch and look away, because it won't. And that's the problem. I really like this, but I'm not at all sure who else would like it with me. It's got very explicit violence, sex, and drug use. It has people treating each other badly all over the place. Institutional corruption is not universal but pretty bad. It's absolutely full of profanity, vulgarity, and racially charged language. The writers of this show understand that dialog is characterization (among other things), and so when you have a character like Omar who doesn't say a word that would turn a hair on my grandmother's head, you know something about Omar other than that the network wouldn't let him talk differently, because it's HBO, so of course the network would. But I can see why a person wouldn't necessarily want to have their 2-year-old wander out of bed for a glass of water and hear the dialog on this show to repeat later. I can see why a person wouldn't want to immerse themselves in it. The hope that is in this show so far is measured and weighed very carefully. You get to like the teenage drug dealer characters living in the projects. You get to like the heroin addicts. The show gives you hope for them: two of the cops have been revealed to have come from similar circumstances, and there is a former heroin addict character who is mentoring others through NA. But the hope there is not that one of the teenagers--one of the high school dropouts with little opportunity for self-education, children of indifferent or alcoholic or dead parents, steeped in drug culture from their earliest days--will become a legal multimillionaire with a stable family and a long, happy, untroubled life. When you have hope for Bubbles, it's that he will not OD, that he will find a roof over his head, that he will not lose too many of the people that he loves, that he will find little quiet bits of a decent life. That he will manage to get some crab cakes from the place D'Angelo's mom gets them, because those are apparently quite good. When you have hope for McNulty, it's that he'll get his weekends with his kids without interruption from his job or his ex-wife, that he'll manage to put away one or two of the really nasty criminals, that he will get to continue being a cop, that he won't lose too many of the people he loves.

And I can see why a person would want more hope than that in their casual entertainment.

But on the other hand, there is that hope. And there is that idea that the good things in your life that last take a lot of work, and that doing good work and being good to people is worthwhile, and that nobody ever promised that worthwhile and easy would be the same. There is the idea that people can surprise you for the better, whether it's a supposedly hardened criminal or a supposedly idiotic screwup kid. The characters in The Wire don't have a lot of positive expectations for their lives. But they do have moments of grace.

If you have the chance to try The Wire and decide that you'd like to try it, you should know: the second episode is better than the first. The third episode is better than the second. It builds on stuff it's doing from there, but if you don't want to watch it after three episodes, you probably don't want to watch it. It's harsh, and the fact that most of it is not gratuitous is exactly what makes it harder to deal with. But the people who make this show: they know what they're doing. Really they do.

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I really like this, but I'm not at all sure who else would like it with me.

The Wire now has a devoted following measured in the millions, but it seems to have acquired its audience only slowly, and on DVD. Over the last year or two I've seen a growing number of references to it as either the greatest or second greatest (after The Sopranos) show in the history of television, and virtually all of my friends agree (as do I), but it was not a show that made friends fast.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how useful a description like this is. It tells me--I think it tells me pretty much everything I need to know to decide if and when and how to consider watching the show.

At the moment, I'm afraid, my main reaction is that sounds too much like the rest of my life, and that I want my TV for escapism, not to rehash what I'm spending my days working on, or have in the recent past.

This line?

The characters in The Wire don't have a lot of positive expectations for their lives. But they do have moments of grace.

is perfect.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Best show ever.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

David got me to watch this long ago when it was on HBO and it took a couple episodes for me not to hate it for being brash and offensive, and appreciate it for the blunt honesty and fantastic characters. But I came around and love it for it's realism and character development.

We are rewatching them from the beginning and are now on to season 5 I believe. I have no fear of my two year old wandering out to ask for water which makes me lucky in that respect.:)

[katallen.livejournal.com]

I liked the first series -- I'm not sure I wanted more because it seemed like a satisfying slice -- but I think my favourite bit was where D'Angelo is teaching chess with/and drugs gang heirarchy. (Also Bubbles lead me to a character for an SF short story :) )

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I'm really glad it has a large devoted following, because among other things that means that the people who did it are more likely to be permitted to do something else good.

But being able to find specific people to share it with is more my concern.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The mentoring in this show just blows me away. It's not always labeled as such, and it's not always positive skills/behaviors. But I don't know that I've ever seen a show that depicts so many people learning and teaching outside a formal environment.

Which is not going to make it easier for you or less relevant to your work, I'm afraid.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

T and I watched the first episode together, and then I told him he could go on ahead and watch it without me and tell me if I needed to watch it. Then I went off to Omaha for a week, and when he came down for the memorial, he had watched most of S1 and was pretty sure I would want to watch it. So we are.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, the chess scene was brilliant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I should've known you'd already know this one.

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

I like your thoughts on the first season. The Wire is brutal, and wonderful. All of the first four seasons are top-notch. The fifth and last season has some flaws, but it's still The Wire.

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

It really is an amazingly good show.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

You nail pretty closely the reasons why I think it's a fabulous show and I don't want to watch any more of it. I've seen about half of S1, and it has a kind of grinding quality to it -- not in the sense of slow pacing or anything of the sort, just that it shows life grinding away at the characters, and it's just a bit too grim for me to enjoy it as entertainment. I think I could very much love a movie's worth of it; as an ongoing TV show, it's too much.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not an expert, but I think the meeting and recovery stuff is really well handled. One of the characters is making a sincere attempt to get clean, and the show plays fair with it. All sorts of things keep happening that would make it easy for him to go back to heroin, and they are not extraordinary perverse things. They are life for someone who was using a lot of heroin up until three days ago and is discovering that a life set up around his addiction is not very easy to remake into a life set up around avoiding it. I don't yet know whether this character will go back to using. I do know that the show is not portraying it as inevitable or as simple, and the show is written so that we are holding our breaths hoping and cheering for this character's recovery. Timprov and I were even calling out suggestions for what he should do with the $20 he'd earned instead of buying a fix: "Go out for dinner! Get some of those crab cakes! Go to the movies! Take [other character] to the movies with you!" etc.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can't say that it gets on the average more hopeful in the second half of S1. Some things do get more hopeful. Some get less hopeful. It's like that.

[arkuat]

I've been wanting to watch this show for years now (and never have yet). Thank you for the lovely review. I'm sure I'd like it right along with you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We have DVDs and were thinking of lending them to Parties Of Your Acquaintance if they wanted to give them a try. We can certainly lend them to you as well if you like.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I've heard a lot about this show and am interested in seeing it, but haven't watched it because of the 'flinch factor' (as you so aptly put it.) I just can't deal with this kind of thing right now...

[laurel]

FWIW I have the standalone season one set (as well as seasons four and five) and also have the complete series set. Happy to lend out the single seasons to local friends; Kevin and I are thinking of revisiting the whole thing, but can do that with our complete set.

[laurel]

You describe the show really well and I'm glad you guys are enjoying it (never quite seems the right way to talk about The Wire, but you know what I mean).

It is a difficult show to recommend to people because of its nature. During the final season of the show this past year, it got a lot more attention than it had during previous seasons-- it all reached critical mass. Critics had been raving about the show all along, but the final season was cause for a lot more discussion and it finally pushed a lot more people over the edge into giving it a shot on DVD.

I know lots of people who shied away because they heard one too many people say "best show evar" and refuse to believe the hype. I also know folks who tried the show but bounced off of it after one or two or three or four episodes. There are some people I know who wouldn't be able to handle the show or just wouldn't like it.

I always feel obligated to explain that it is harsh and not fun in a lot of ways. And also that each season is like a novel so the first episodes really are about setting up characters and putting them in place and to some people who are used to a different sort of TV show (or any other show), it can seem like not a whole lot is happening. Some find it hard to keep track of so many characters, too. (As with Homicide, I always have to point out that there is humor in the series-- it's dark humor, but there is funny stuff there too.)

If you and/or Timprov ever want to talk about the show more (in person or via email or whatever), Kevin and I are both big fans who love talking about it.

The Wire is the first show created by David Simon. He's a former journalist who wrote the award-winning nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets which recounts the year he spent with a Homicide division in Baltimore. He later co-authored The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood with Edward Burns which is about a year he spent on a single drug corner in Baltimore; Edward Burns went on to work on The Wire as a producer and writer.

The TV series Homicide: Life on the Street was based on Simon's first book; Simon later ended up working on the show as a writer and producer and that's where he learned about TV. The Corner was made into an award-winning miniseries for HBO. And then Simon created The Wire.

His next project was Generation Kill which was a series for HBO based on a nonfiction book about US soldiers in the middle east. Just went the one season, I guess it's more of a miniseries. Simon's written a pilot with Eric Overmyer (one of my fave writers for TV and theater) and has cast Wendell Pierce (who plays "Bunk" on The Wire) and Clarke Peters (who plays "Lester" on The Wire) in it along with Melissa Leo (who was in Homicide). It's set in New Orleans and I hope HBO picks it up and that it's awesome.

There are many great articles and interviews about the show and some of the commentary tracks and extras on the DVD sets are cool-- though I recommend waiting on that stuff 'til you finish the series as I think spoilers for this show can wreck some things. 'Course milage varies.

[laurel]

I'm so glad HBO stuck with the show despite it not getting the ratings or awards that other shows like The Sopranos did. Like Homicide, The Wire was pretty much ignored by the Emmy Awards and Golden Globes and other such things, but did win Peabody Awards and awards from TV critics. Humanitas prizes, too.

I'm a big fan of David Simon's and there are all sorts of tie-ins between the nonfiction books he wrote and the series (and Homicide the series too). The character of Jay Landsman is based on a guy named Jay Landsman who was in the Homicide department when Simon was there writing about it. The character of Det. John Munch, as played by Richard Belzer on Homicide and many other shows, was based on Landsman. And Jay Landsman his own self acts in The Wire as Lt. Mello, though I can't recall if/how much he was in season one. (This blog piece I just found talks about Landsman a bit.)

Lots of real folks that Simon and Burns know from their time in Baltimore appear in the show over the course of its run. And as with Homicide, many of the seemingly most out-there characters or events are based on real people/events. (I love the book Homicide almost as much as the show Homicide, which is my favorite TV show of all-time. So when I see real people on Simon's shows or mentions of real stuff from The Book, I get all excited. I'm a geek when it comes to that book.)

There are so many good characters on the show, it's hard to pick favorites, but I suppose Omar and Lester and Cedric Daniels might be mine. It really varies, of course. Love Kima, love Bunk, love Bubbles too. Prez has his moments. And there are lots more good characters you'll meet in later seasons.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Icon <3 <3 <3.

We just watched the end of S1, so I will want to talk about at least that much when I see you at Minicon, if we get the chance. Maybe some of S2 as well. Maybe all of S2. Hard to say, nor, as my grandpa would have asked, can I spell it.

I can't bear commentary tracks, usually, but DVD extras after watching the main thing are fine with me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am liking Daniels more and more as the show goes on.

I don't precisely like Brianna Barksdale, but I think she was an absolutely brilliant piece of casting.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this show so much. Measured hope and moments of grace, indeed. It is harsh, but it's as real in its charm as anything else.

[laurel]

If I'm honest, Omar is my favorite character and that icon is one of my faves I've found which features him. (Omar's the favorite of many many people. The actor gets mobbed sometimes when out in urban areas.)

There are so many fabulous characters, both major and minor, during the run of the show.

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

Very nice analysis. I've seen four or five randomish episodes of The Wire (which I understand is not the way to go with this show) and I totally see how it's a masterwork. But I can't enjoy it because to me it seemed like there was just no happiness in it. It wasn't exactly depressing, but the apparent lack of anyone even remotely having a good time made it feel hollow, I guess.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think some of that is due to watching it out of order. The happiness and the satisfaction are not constant or consistent. But they are there, and I think the creators of the show were fairly precise in figuring out where there had to be something like that or even the grimmest audience would walk away. Watching them out of order increases the risk that you're seeing the least redemptive bits all at once.