"I don't."
The quote above captures the essence of what The Wire is all about. It's a show about cops, a show about drugs, a show about politics and all the areas in between. It doesn't portray all the drug dealers in a negative light, though it certainly doesn't ask you to sympathize for them, just to understand their situation. The quote above happens near the end of Season Five, as two kids we've followed since Season Four, Michael (Tristan Wilds) and Dukie (Jermaine Crawford) are about to separate due to unforeseen events. The show is filled with moments like these, and this one stands above as a defining moment of these characters.
The show's main character, if any, is Det. Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), a renegade cop who goes outside the system and pisses people off to get the results he needs. And though this character is a cliché from most every other renegade cop movie, the difference is McNulty pays for his deeds, and though he produces results more often then not the bosses are so angry at him for what he's done that they kick him out of the unit.
The show is about, of course, wire taps, and they are the centerpiece in all the seasons. The show gets a bit redundant as we watch the Major Crimes unit attempt to set-up a wire tap, get it up, have it pulled, and then fight to get it up again. Just a few of the characters that come through this unit include Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters), Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), and Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson). Freamon is the driving force of the unit, and is present for all wiretaps, the rest come and go.
Aside from the cops, there are also the street characters: the first season focuses on the wiretaps of the Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) crew, as they run the West side of Baltimore, controlling the corners. In the Barksdale crew you get Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), D'Angelo (Larry Gillard, Jr.), Bodie (J.D. Williams), and Wallace (Michael B. Jordan). Together they paint the crowd of drug dealers who are more or less forced into this life because it is the only reality they know, and all their role models ended up in the exact same place.
And each season brought a different focus, either via wiretap or influence: Season One dealt with drugs, Season Two dealt with smuggling at the ports, Season Three focused on the political aspect of Baltimore, Season Four focused on the schools, and Season Five focused on the newspaper's role in Baltimore. Each time we are introduced to beautifully drawn new characters, whether it is Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), Thomas Carcetti (Aidan Gillen), the four boys Namond (Julito McCullum), Randy (Maestro Harrell), Michael and Dukie, or Gus (Clark Johnson, also the director for the show's pilot and final episodes, among others), each one is more interesting then the last.
The show is described as being realistic and some may proclaim it is too full of itself in the beginning. I would agree with that sentiment, but it is real and deals with real life. The happy endings rarely exist here, and by the time you get to Season Five virtually every gangster from Season One is gone, either dead or in prison. Things don't always go so well for the cops or politicians either, but they don't get screwed. But each season ends with an air of open endedness, as the characters are either sentenced, or the bad guys evade capturing. There are a few triumphs in the show, and they are indeed happy, but the show lets most of the other characters fail to get what they want. It is very true to life.
The show is filled with dozens of characters, and I want to briefly mention two characters who don't fit in with the cops, delears, politicians, or whatever: Bubbles (Andre Royo) and Omar (Michael K. Williams). Bubbles is a drug junkie, but also a CI to the Major Crimes unit, and he is perhaps the most interesting character in show. We watch him live through impossible moral situations, but I think what makes him the most empathetic character is he is a genuinely nice guy. Sure he steals things, he shoots up heroin, and does other dishonorable things, but Bubbles has a big heart and Andre Royo puts on one hell of a fantastic performance.
Omar, on the other hand, is the show's one plain awesome character. He lives outside the drug world, instead robbing Barksdale's stashes regularly and doing as he pleases. Omar is bonafide badassery, as his presence exudes fear over the entire populace. Everyone knows who he is, fears him, and wants to take him out. But the character couldn't get away with being a badass and still be good: Omar is sympathetic, if only because the Barksdale crew comes down on him harder then he could imagine in Season One, and you start liking him from that point on. True, he knows what the consequences are in his nature of business, but it doesn't make it any easier.
I could ramble on and on, and describe dozens of other characters I haven't mentioned or subplots that happen. But I will simply praise the show overall, and crown it's fourth season as the best season of the show. The four kids focused on in that season are all terrific actors, and give the viewer a good idea of how these teenagers are forced, from an early age, into the life of drugs and why they think they have no choice. They don't expect to live past 25 if they're lucky, and such a dictated short life is a sad one.
The writers do a terrific job of balancing all these characters in all these seasons, and giving you just enough of every storyline to keep you satisfied. If you go back to any of the latter seasons and just dissect the events of an episode, your head will spin with the amount of storytelling the writers accomplished so effortlessly (or so it seems). Knowing each character, their drive, what makes them them, is such a difficult task to accomplish and the writers have done it admirably. They also are not afraid to cast characters aside if they don't need them; indeed, McNulty appears rarely in the Fourth Season because the show has no reason to focus on him, and they are ok with that (Dominic West still gets first billing, though).
And the acting is so good that I forget these are not real people, that they don't exist. I would say that more for this show then any other I've seen, though The Sopranos and Six Feet Under both feature terrific ensemble casts and convinced me these were real people. But all these actors are terrific, and to find so many great actors for a such a wide reaching show is quite an accomplishment. I never research a show while I'm watching it because once I see the actor interviews or the director interviews, I'm reminded that this is a show, it doesn't exist, and that kills a bit of the magic for me. Maintaining that illusion through these five incredible HBO shows is something I feel I've done rather well.
So is this the greatest television show ever made? Indeed I may have to say its close. While the HBO kin The Sorpanos and Six Feet Under are both equally great, both suffered from less-then-stellar final seasons (though the endings to both shows, particularly Six Feet Under's, are incredible). The Wire's weakest season is its first, I believe, and it gets better and better until it reaches a pinnacle with its penultimate season. The fifth season, though terrific, is more exaggerated then we're used to, but, in the end, David Chase, the creator of this show, has made some of the finest television I've ever seen. I don't know if I can hope to find a show better then this.
No comments:
Post a Comment