One of the by-products of viewing a series on box set is the chance to review a recent decade in retrospect (sometimes with the eye-widening shock of how old technologies and fashions appear from what you thought were no more than a few years of your life). Another is the chance to see each episode in the series before the titles finish rolling on its predecessor; without a week of fading memory blurring the flaws, the new pace ushers in a greater scrutiny and forensic analysis. For the fan who has seen and loved the series in real-time, the past, in many cases, is not only another country but one best left as an affectionate, nostalgic reminiscence. Viewing it all again years later on a box set, you are really looking at a period of your life which can never be retrieved and trip back can be a sobering experience; it might have its rewards, but it will never be so innocent again.
The most enthusiastic advocates for The Wire (2002 to 2008) seem to be wisely saving that trip for a rainy day. The blurb on the simulated grunge packaging of my box tells me The Wire is ‘the best show in television history.’ Although no date accompanies the statement, my guess is it was written soon after 2002. It would be a bold claim today when history, on the back of its own ‘ground-breaking’ success, has accumulated such formidable competition (Breaking Bad? Even The Bridge or Line of Duty would be decent contenders in the world of crime). Yet, looking at it as I am for the first time, in the cold, severe light of 2017, these Wire fans begin to sound like apologists for Marxism or Maoism, evangelists caught up in some emotional encounter with what they saw as an enlightening truth and, despite passing time and fading ideals, clinging on in denial to that early vision.
Look at the ‘Dickensian’ sweep, they tell you, look how the writers have exposed the entrenched corruption of Baltimore. Yes, well I looked, expecting the social spectrum of Dickens or Zola with a harder edge, perhaps the entertaining analysis of a Tom Wolfe; unfortunately, despite my powers of endurance, I was ready to check out midway through the third series, feeling a documentary might have been more informative (and more engaging).
The writers may have laudable intentions, I thought, but where’s the talent? After 30 episodes, I’d surely given it a chance. The series seemed disappointing, pretentious, self-satisfied and highly overrated. If it was a break with previous detective procedurals, this was in style alone; the acclaimed ‘homie reality’ of the sets and script, a layer of gauze covering the same old characters going about the same old business; and although admirably no murder was solved within the 60 minutes running time of each episode, where was the narrative arc to engage and carry the audience who, even with subtitles, would require the level of concentration some only discover in eve-of-exam (Stringer Bell style) studies? Was it worth the effort? It was no surprise to hear how, in real-time, lagging viewing figures almost had it pulled.
So. what could be so bad about ‘the best show in television history’?
Let’s try Character.
Enthusiastic advocates are keen to argue how much the series is such a break from the usual dull police procedural, it’s not about plot but ‘character development’ (‘Literary’ is the shorthand I kept hearing). Yes, the characters do own more than their share of air-time but once ‘presented’ to us, there is little sign of much development, they just sit there drinking and talking in the same way at the end of the 5th series as they did in the first, sometimes holding up the narrative as pointlessly as they do a bar. Here we might see a valid comparison with Dickens, however, as these men and women come to us all of a piece in the first presentation and return hardwired to cliche, series after series. Although apparently based on real criminals, police and newsmen, it’s hard not to see them as all the usual suspects, over-familiar stereotypes from years of prime time crime. The twist, if one can be detected, is in the attitude of the writers, who have created new liberal ciphers to carry their PC credentials.
Only a stalled, drunken drive from the mainstream, McNulty is perhaps the most familiar: a maverick cop with a failed marriage and a drinking problem. Where have we seen him before? His gimmick (autism, wheelchair, etc) is he’s simultaneously a ‘Mensa intellectual’ and ‘a prick’ (it’s a big thing for him, justifying his ‘rebel’ existence); however, we only hear of this reputation from other characters and although his catchphrase ‘What did I do?’ is meant to indicate some loose cannon brilliance, he does little to justify the tag (the Mensa part, at least), in fact from one episode to next, he seems to get through far less actual work than his colleagues, spending much of the time carrying around a smirk in his self-conscious, self-destructive, maverick way, indistinguishable from most other maverick cops with a failed marriage and a drinking problem. Only he’s not a cop, he’s ‘Police’ (the word policeMAN is verboten, although there is only one policewoman and she’s a lesbian). ‘Police’ is Wire shorthand for someone who wants to earnestly do their job and, in the face of career-stalling corruption, genuinely eliminate crime in Baltimore. It is a visa to corporate Alaska. Furthermore, in the tradition of crime drama, although a bland, undistinguished barfly, women seem to throw themselves into his lap at the earliest opportunity. Of course, what with his drink, his insubordination and a Pogues soundtrack, he is distinctively ‘Irish,’ aphrodisiac to Americans. Although possibly conceived as the central character, the narrative seems to merely tread water whenever he’s around and its no surprise to see the show ascend to its high point of purpose and power when he’s horizoned in series four.
Bunk is McNulty’s obligatory confidant (no good cop’s ever without one), his drinking pal and BLACK best friend (thus, his PC passport). Like black and white piano keys they communicate their mutual harmony through the usual macho insults, just to show they’re not actually homosexual, although any colleague expressing himself as consistently through homosexual imagery as Bunk has to be viewed with some suspicion (‘genuine’ homosexuals are a strangely underrepresented minority in this Lib-fest, seen only as benign outsiders in the criminal community, such as Omar and Brandon);
McNulty’s work sidekick is also Black and the only woman not provided for love interest; she is, however, a WOMAN, who is both BLACK and LESBIAN. I capitalise these key epithets as this is exactly how she is presented. Being a respected black lesbian seems her only function in the wire team (besides taking a hit in series one so McNulty can artfully agonise over her possible fatality, dismissing any lingering accusations of misogyny and prejudice and allowing him to drink even more than usual; look, he’s POLICE and upset about the shooting of a BLACK LESBIAN). In the first episode we hear how ‘Greggs’ can kick ass harder than any man on the team, yet for the rest of the series we see no more evidence of this than McNulty’s famed intelligence. She just hangs about trying to look helpful and lesbian and black. Although we could feel sorry for any woman in such an underwritten part, the actress herself seems to cultivate little more within the character beyond the bland smile never far from her lips (a house style in this team).
Next is the underused long haul cop of rare and wasted intelligence. Freamon (a Dickensian brand-name in a Scots accent) has been relegated to the backwaters of criminal admin (exiled to Alaska for being POLICE) until rediscovered by the new initiative of the wire team who are recycling more rebels than The Dirty Dozen. To Clarke Peters credit, he does bring some authenticity to the thankless task of having to simply watch screens and explain to us the tedious detail of what is happening technologically (although to be honest, most of us are probably not really listening. Pagers? What were pagers?).
Freamon’s almost anonymous sidekick, Prez, the less able White subordinate to the wise Black master, shares the job of exposition (they actually share lines in reporting to the rest of the group, in the tradition and suppressed excitement of mainstream minions reporting to, say, Ironside); so underwritten is this White part, however, Prez remains an undefined character who, introduced for a single episode as a dim, racist psychopath, pistol whipping a schoolboy sitting on the bonnet of his car, inexplicably transforms by the following episode into mild-mannered geek; in which role he remains, hugging the background until series four when he shapeshifts again into the ‘concerned teacher’, another cliche from another genre.
Below these, lies a further overfamiliar monochrome pairing, the underlings providing light relief, who spend much of their air-time buddying up and ‘wise-cracking’ in pallid, sub-Tarantino exchanges (White Herc, of course, is the dim joker and fall guy to Black Carver’s wit); contrasting with the salvaged ‘Police’, these two moan and bitch their way through the grunt-work until they separate and morph into roles of greater significance way down the line (again, in series four) when the Black Carver ascends nobly in the storyline and officially in the ranks, while White Herc betrays his friends and colleagues, is sacked for incompetence (he was never really ‘Police’) and joins the corrupt lawyer stalling the team’s heroic aim; thus fulfilling the natural arc of their PC potential.
The line-manager of such a team of ‘unconventionals’ is more usually a kick-ass, hard-talking but indulgent father-figure to his ‘free-spirit’ charges (and, as an authority figure shepherding this PC world, obviously Black). Here, however, breaking with tradition, we are offered Lieutenant Daniels, Black, admittedly, but a distant, uncommunicative character balancing ‘career’ with ‘Police’; we think, as he is played by an actor with only one expression, one tone of sulky delivery and a determination to hold his head as still as possible for as long as possible in every scene.
The life of the programme is provided by the black drug dealers who have almost all the action and many of the best lines (if you access subtitles). However, they are so many and often so bland and interchangeable, dressed like medieval monks in their knee-length white T shirts and Do-rag skull caps, it would be hard to pick many of them from an ID parade (especially given the house style of the series: fleeting name-checks in brief and abrupt, low-key scenes). ‘Which is the point’ the writers might argue (probably expecting viewers to studiously replay each episode for clarification); the cloned, cool, stiff-legged shuffle of these corner boys, their macho handshakes and addictive Bill and Ben playpen grammar (‘Feel me, soldier?’ ‘For real, homes.’) is already a highly conformist ‘gangsta’ act; exaggerated in the ‘young ‘uns’ impersonating the impersonators, it merely calcifies through age. Obviously, Black is the natural uniform in this macho, patriarchal culture and despite the relentless hugging and regular appeals to ‘feel me’, homosexuality is confined to the parasitic outsider Omar, who at least has a facial scar for recognition. Omar is the Liberal Robin Hood of West Baltimore, who steals only from other drug dealers, kills only those in his profession (‘the game, motherfucker’) and is even enlightened enough to employ women. Romantically attached to our Wire team (whom he parallels), the most embarrassing moment in the whole five series is a Black handshake (an elaborate fist-bumping) he has with McNulty, Omar is the rebel opposing ‘B and B’, the Barksdale ‘corporation’, and vision of empire building, Stringer Bell. Idris Elba’s ‘String’ draws attention to himself by underplaying his role; offering a still centre to the animation around him, he wanders ‘the pit’, hands behind his back, avoiding eye-contact but seeing everything like a headteacher patrolling a playground of ‘shorties’. An aspiring businessman, he also gets to wear normal clothes.
And Realism?
Fans of the show are big on ‘realism’, which they see in the rambling narrative of the low-key action, the hours spent watching empty screens, listening to coded conversations on wired phones, the tedium of car-bound stake-outs, the tracking and tracing of police work. Yet beneath the grunge of its genuine streets and sets, its cinematic production values, just how real is this Police department of West Baltimore?
Just two words, Brother Mouzone, would surely be enough to burn any credentials touting ‘realism’; however, we don’t have to reach for the more bizarre false notes in a show running 12 hours a series. Let’s take a random example (in the spirit of the programme) of the more routine action, At least 20% (it feels) of any episode finds the main characters of our team propping up a bar or car backed up to a railroad track, steadily becoming as wasted as the area in which they’ve parked. These guys (the gal, pointedly, doesn’t drink) don’t stop at a ‘taste’, they are by the end of a night (literally) falling down drunk, seriously drunk, so drunk we might expect to see them spending the next 24 hours in A&E or a kerbside coma. Yet there they are the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, neatly booted and suited with faces as perk-fresh as Mormons, smartly reeling off their studiously scripted one-liners. What’s in this Baltimore alcohol and why would the city need any other drug? Watching the central character throw back shot after shot, the viewer is lost in wonder: where does a failed detective paying alimony to a wife and two children find the money to do this? on a week night? And how does this bland inconspicuous character, a willful no hoper and an addictive drunk, reeking of failure (or simply reeking) somehow become catnip to ambitious, middle class women (especially, it seems, when he’s falling down drunk). I know we’re in TV land but surely this level of propaganda is merely offering false hope to the rest of Baltimore.
And what about that sex? Although the camera lingers a little longer over the lesbians stripping in a ‘Look, we’ve got lesbians fucking on mainstream TV’ sort of way (Omar too, to sweep the homo board), the gratuitous hetro scenes, requiring the poor actors, having already faked drunk, now having to expose themselves (almost completely) for no obvious plot or character development (unless perhaps for the purpose of ‘reality’), is usually insanely hurried and intense, as if both parties are painfully aware of premature ejaculation (possibly a downside to that Baltimore liqour).
How about Structure?
While we stall at some pleasing scenarios: two detectives analysing a crime scene through the sole communication of obscenity, testing the expressive limits of the word ‘Fuck’; the explanation of chess by a budding gangsta to his younger colleagues (the expendable pawns); the amusing clash of worlds in the exchange between Snoop and the hardware salesman selling her a nail-gun; these are self conscious, set piece sketches thrown into awkward relief by the meandering narrative. The wide range of characters, the suddenly shifting narrative threads, the short scenes (many no more than a few seconds) often demanding a second viewing (What? What just happened? What was he talking about? And who the fuck was that?) culminate in a rather static and stuttering storytelling, not only lacking both tension and dynamic drive (usually the least you’d expect from drama) but failing to clarify and weight the action. Each ‘episode’ cuts back and forth so arbitrarily between the many strands and characters, with so little emphasis, the ending is always a surprise. Why stop here? Why stop anywhere? Ironically, a potentially dramatic subject drifts on its mundane way, ‘imitating life’ rather than ordering it to create art. We continue to watch, if we do (credit HBO for not dropping the show after the first series), not to see what will happen next but whether the whole project will somehow all suddenly click into a sensible rhythm so we can start to identify and care about these characters. Freshmen to the box set will be encouraged to know this does happen but you’ll have to wait for series four.
However,,,
However,...there’s always a however. We love a ‘however’; without however, where is discussion, where is life? And for all it’s failings there’s a big however in any discussion of The Wire. There is a reason it carries a 100% Five Star critical approval rating while lounging in the ‘cult status’ division of viewing figures. Yes, it takes a certain type of viewer with relentless endurance (watching this weekly, I’m sure I would have checked out after episode 2, as frustrated as the team itself) but for those who can forgive the awkward Liberal embarrassments, acclimatise to the slow pace, accept the lack of individual POV and consequent loss of emotional emphasis, those willing to concentrate on who is who and what is where, to put in the overtime on the grunt work required to observe the slippery, undefined minor characters propelling the action, the rewards are immense.
Admittedly, these rewards are mostly intellectual. Step back from the action for the 19th century social scientific POV and you can see the scale of the ambition (the strands of an entire city as entangled as a tank of snakes gripped in mutual strangulation) and a revelation of the possibilities of our small screen medium.
Yes, as with all ground-breakers it can make for embarrassing return viewing. Grossly PC, the mixed race wire team carry no friction (although the ‘Nigga’ count must be the highest on mainstream TV, the word is only ever used Black on Black and never by the wire team), they are all ‘good police’, moral to the core (except perhaps in sexual relations and slapping up the odd suspect) suppressed and thrown on the scrapheap by the corrupt system in which they find themselves (it will take until series four before a white evangelical Christ will run for mayor to clean up the black mess...and, of course, fail).
However, these honest soldiers sacrifice themselves to work painstakingly within the constrictions of the subtle, corrupt system of City Hall to chip away at the openly corrupt system on the streets; fully aware of how their efforts will end in inevitable frustration. ‘All ye who strive shall inevitably fail’ is the West Baltimore maxim paraded in each series as a self-evident truth, whether in the failure of a ‘Police’, a union rep, a teacher, a gangster or a Mayor trying to buck the system for the forces of right. All shall fail. The system will ‘bite you in the ass’ every time.
And this is a truth worth telling. West Baltimore is not only a microcosm for 21st century America, its frustrations illustrate the oligarchical workings of all representative democracies where individual careers inevitably assume greater importance than the purpose for which they have been created. Anyone daring to attempt genuine change, whether its String bringing microeconomics and peace to the corner wars or Bunny Colvin inventing the ghetto of Hamsterdam to clean up the rest of the borough, will find themselves cuffed in ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ and swallowed by a system greater then any individual.
The rewards, however, are also emotional. Only when you have struggled through the first three series (you will have to do this but it’s so much easier on a box set) will the tsunami of gradual familiarity meeting a rising quality in the writing smack you full force in series 4 when the show at last hits its mature stride. Now there is real emotion. There is pain in empathy for the hoppers ignored by education, used by the dealers and Police in equal measure and already destined for an early death on the corners, The injustice suffered by Randy is the essential focus here, Carver’s inability to save him, illustrating in its inevitability how the system will fail them all.
However, the real power of the piece is reserved for Bubs, Bubbles, a minor (and highly disposable) character in series one, who has somehow clung on, series after series, just as he somehow clings on to life. Periodically the team’s snitch, relentlessly a user, in an ordinary drama he would have come and gone in a single, brief scene; yet here, we follow his own grappling addiction with the product, the consequent poverty and sheer loneliness he endures, until slowly he evolves into the real victim of the entire farce of frustration. Stumbling through the streets behind his supermarket trolley, wheeling and dealing at the lowest level (scrap metal, T-shirts) he never loses the instinct for survival, like the resilient cockroaches left after a nuclear war; despite every humiliation, however, he retains his humanity through a relentless struggle for dignity. Bullied and beaten, cut adrift from his one source of hope in the wire team, he descends to depths even he couldn’t have foreseen and when, inadvertently, he finally kills the ‘apprentice’ he adopts and cares for like a son, it could be a moment more melodramatic than any Dickens ever devised. Yet that long, slow burn of familiarity coupled with a moving performance from Andre Royo, ensures the encounter with his pain is both real and overwhelming for the viewer and something which could only be produced from this style of extended drama.
DG 2017
