The King is Dead

Up through Episode 5.8

So I've finally worked my way through the stages of grief and have come to accept Omar's brain splattering on the bullet proof glass at the bodega. Looking back at his killer, Kenard's, trajectory, I can't help but thinking how astonishingly well-telegraphed Kenard's move was. In a world of sociopaths and cynics, Kenard's angel face always stood out. It belied his deep-seated fearlessnes and his inherent understanding of the Darwinian nature of the Game: a lesser kid would've been cowed by Namond--considering his bloodline--but Kenard saw weakness in Wee-Bay's heir; he scammed him and when it was time to get beat down, he took that (at Michael's hands, no less)--though his tears were the tears of a child.

When he saw that Dukie couldn't command respect on the corner, he punked him, he ridiculed him, and took another beating. I suppose it's vintange David Simon: He gave us four kids--Dukie, Michael, Randy, and Namond--and had us watch, obsess, over their every move. But the one kid we thought was just a supporting player, just a hopper like all the hoppers before him, turned out to be the one to make the ultimate power-play.

And what of the victim of that play? Omar was always The Wire's most fantastical character; his existence made no sense. He defied the Darwinian order. But we loved him, so we let Simon slide. He gave us a show committed to urban verisimilitude and we lauded him for it, but at the same time we accepted--we craved--the ridiculous notion that Omar might survive a five-story jump, that he could walk through stash-houses with just a sawed-off in his hand and "Farmer in the Dell" on his lips, that he could limp through B-more in the daylight calling out Marlo's name, that he could do all this and more and live to see another day. During Bird's trial, when asked how he managed to survive in so perilous a living, he said only, "Day at a time, I suppose." And that shrugging, almost disinterested view of his own mortality is what I'm left with now.

Just before his death, Omar walked by a scattering mess of boys, paying no mind to the one who remained. Cold-hearted and clear-eyed, Kenard confirmed in that moment what he had seen before--that Omar was not the legend that Chris, Snoop, Michael, Avon, Stringer and the rest of 'em--us viewers included--had made him out to be: He was just "gimpy as a motherfucker," and he needed to die. How could I have missed that the kid calmly torturing a cat would be the one to do him in? I suppose I just didn't want to see. For Omar to have survived, for the viewers who came to fetishize his bad-assed ways to have their inner, emotional pleas heard, would've been a criminal disservice to the show. That's not to say in that split second before Omar got capped, as the camera framed him through the bullet proof glass, when it became obvious what was about to happen, I didn't scream, "No, please, no!" at my TV. I did. I knew but I didn't want to accept. Omar walked above the Street and above the Law, and, I had hoped, above the Game. We saw him cloaked in darkness and bathed in Caribbean light. We heralded his legend to all who would listen.

I thought Omar was David Simon's greatest gift to us, but really he was just Simon's greatest ruse: he made us believe that magic exists even in West Baltimore and then he punched us in the stomach and he was right to do it because, after all, there is no such thing as magic.

Stepping Up

Up Through: Episode 5.7 "Took"
A great episode overall. I once sat in a courtroom with Billy Murphy - it was back in 2005 and he was wearing a bluetooth earpiece in court. It was strange enough at the time that the judge stopped him mid-sentence to ask what that thing was on his ear. A real pleasure to see a B-more lawyer make one of the best cameos in the whole show.
Clay Davis' trial, while getting low marks for legal realism, gets my highest praise for entertainment. "Promathus" and "Asilius" - classic.

I thought the ending scene with Kima and her son was beautiful, though it was a centimeter from falling into maudlin sentimalism. Also it was the first crane shot ever used in the show if I'm not mistaken. On that same note, I've noticed handheld cameras sprinkled throughout this season, where I believe they were absent in Seasons 1-4. In general, I like handhelds, but I always gave points to The Wire for steering clear of this look-at-the-edgy-look-of-my-edgy-story convention.

The gearing-up scene was shot with handheld cameras, with journos and cops assigned their posts in the quixotic homeless killer search. Fake killer aside, this scene highlighted the unique power of institutions to handle such moments of mass mobilization and coordinated effort. David Simon loves to hate on institutions, but it's hard to imagine that any group of individual agents could operate with the same level of speed, clear delegation and coordination. So maybe Simon is right about the corrosive and counterproductive role of institutions generally, but perhaps there's something to the notion that they're worth keeping around for moments of crisis. Without a chain of command, how would Simon (and libertarians and anarchosyndicalists for that matter) propose communal threats be handled?
I don't think this defeats The Wire's central institutional critique - it just paints a somewhat rosier picture of unique institutional efficacy.

One last thought:
When Marlo killed Prop Joe, he wore a black T-shirt with "Royal Addiction" printed on it.
In "Took," Michael wears a white T-shirt featuring a graphic number 1 wearing a crown and the word "Royal" written on it.
Hmmmmm......

Can't Knock It

Hello, Wirey blogger friends. Humbly, I ask you to let me join your fraternity of all things Game-related. While I can't promise as searing commentary as I have read from you these last couple of days, I will attempt in my own small way to contribute to the discussion.

As for how my invtiation to this group was procured, suffice it to say, I learned a thing or two from our boy Clay Davis: Sheeee-it, it's all about the hustle. More on "Took" (Episode 57) later (I hesitate to go into it now, mainly, because I imagine you guys aren't like me, waiting till the stroke of midnight, remote in hand, each Sunday evening, to watch the show On Demand...)

So Meta

Up through Episode 56, "The Dickensian Aspect".

Couldn't agree more, V, with your/everyone else's recent take on McNulty. Sometimes I still like to think this is some acrobatic feat of character development, where Jimmy's trapeze of likability will swing dangerously low, scraping the 3 rings, only to see him pop back up and quadruple-backflip his way back off of my shit list. Lord knows this show has pulled off greater feats than that.

Sadly, though, watching him rail at the machine, watching him make arguments against people when he, we, and everyone knows that it's the collective and faceless institution holding him down, watching that makes me scratch my head and think: could David Simon actually be consciously parodying himself? Could he be self-aware enough and ironic enough to recognize that Jimmy's misplaced anger at the police command is just like his own rantings and ravings at his editors past? Could he be aware that this season shows Simon to be equally unwilling to acknowledge that it's the system that forced people into compromise, not some politician or police commissioner or Marimow/Whiting newspaper editor?

That's what's so odd to me about this season, and many have written about it, right up to this weekend's Washington City Paper article on same: how did all the insight and wisdom about individuals and how they're compromised by the system fall out of the show's world this season? How did a person as astute and uncompromising as Simon fail to look at his own profession through the magical lens he used for every other one? I almost puked when Whiting comes over after the homeless story first hits, douchebag junior editor at his side, and in unbelievably predictable fashion, drops "Grrreat story, Scott". Post-industrial gods? Shakespeare? Dickens? Bullshit. That shit is elementary school good vs. evil, a place and a device this wonderful show has studiously and miraculously avoided for 4 seasons.

So why? I guess all I can come up with, trying not to settle for the "Simon's just too angry" plotline, is instead almost more incredulous - Simon's just too lazy. In each of the first four seasons, he used a reporter's best skills - go out, talk to people, learn about something you knew nothing about, turn it into something people want to digest - to tell a deeply woven story. The guy, by all accounts, did major field research at the ports, the schools, city hall and on the streets, and using up-to-the-minute details, recrafted it into a eerily (but not annoyingly) realistic piece of fiction. But to tell the story of reporters, it seems he relied less on reportage - finding out what a newsroom feels like in 2008, what role the internet is playing, learning about who's succeeding despite that, etc - and instead crafted a story based on his own history, his own experience, and most disappointingly, his own black-and-white Jimmy McNulty world view of the people supposedly destroying his beloved (former) profession, all the while neglecting to apply either the lessons or the world view of the first four seasons to that thing he holds closest. It feels stale because it's stuff that's been rattling in one guy's head for 20 years. Dare I say, he's pulling a Templeton job on us.

Still, lest I digress to far, let's all take a breath. It's the best show ever. Omar, Bubbles, Michael, Cutty, Freamon, Rawls, Landsman, Norman, Joe, Frank Sobotka, Dukie, the list goes on, etc etc. Pelecanos, Price, Lehane, Burns, etc etc. And David Simon sure as hell is always welcome at my house for dinner - or even better, my girlfriend's house where they make the most delicious of foods.

Swing low, sweet trapeze, and dare me to dream once again. T-minus 4 episodes to go.

What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?

The Freakonomics blog has been posting the thoughts of real thugs as they watch Season Five of The Wire. Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, has developed a relationship with Chicago drug gangs as part of his research into the economics of the game. He meets weekly with gang members to watch and discuss the show.
The exchanges are interesting.
Each part tracks that episode of Season Five.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

I Said "Good Day" Sir!

Up Through: Episode 5.6 "The Dickensian Angle"
That's it. Whatever shred of goodwill I had towards McNulty has been obliterated. He's too far gone to feel any protagonistic connection, and somehow he's become boring on top of it. That scene of him drunkenly expositing to the statute of George Washington was schmaltzy and unnecessary. And what's the deal with the slick shirts and ties he's been sporting this season? Bushytop got to fall.

Corner Boys

Up Through: Episode 55 "React Quotes"
Well, Vic - you've very adequately summed up a lot of what came out of 55 (Omar the Flying Squirrel, a double-helix of bullshit spun by McNulty and Templeton, the foreshadowed rise of Mr. Bond - an interesting character name, that one), so if I may, I'd love to return for a moment to what, in my opinion is a) the crowning achievement of this show and b) the one storyline most at risk of falling victim to an unsatisfying end: namely, Michael, Dukie, Randy and Namond, and the many-sided prism they give us to view the main character of the show: Baltimore as the post-industrial American City, warts and all.

Now, this may be more of a "keep these thoughts in mind as the show goes forward" post than a "the first 5 episodes have led me to the following conclusions" post, but with a thuggish-looking Randy peeking through in "scenes from the next"this week, maybe this is a good time to pause and check in on our 4 boys Edward Tilghman Middle.

One thing you each heard me say a lot as the season was getting going was my theory that, but for his career as a reporter, it seems likely to me that David Simon would maybe have reversed the focus of Seasons 4 and 5, choosing to explore the news media before turning a final "where did this all come from" eye to the education system. It would have emerged as a very different show, I think, and it's obviously besides the point, but it's to his credit and his detriment that he chose to cap things off with the media, because in my estimation, the 4 boys are the most extraordinary thing television has ever seen (wouldn't be a good Wire post without some superlatives right) - unparalleled character development, acting, physicality, risk-taking, etc.


Ellie already spoke some to Dukie and his (finally) connecting with Cutty to share a sense of imprisonment within the many walls of the hood. An amazing scene, one I'm really eager to watch again - in particular, the way the scene transitions from inside to outside, as if to underscore that it's not only physical walls holding these two in, but much more evasive, if more concrete walls - lack of family, poverty, crime, the growing absence of upward mobility in American culture, etc. I was reassured somewhat when Michael echoed Cutty's sentiments by saying "you've got other skills" (Run, Dukie, to Silicon Valley and throw yourself at their mercy!), but the scene in general brought in so much of what the show tries to communicate, and didn't (thank god) bash you over the head with it.

Michael, as before, remains the more complex and more difficult figure. You want to put him out of your mind - he's gone thug now, he's one of them, he's not the boy I knew, peeing in water balloons and whatnot - but they seem to have made a conscious decision not to let us off that easily. Instead, we're going to get a more realistic view - one that shows that just because he's picked up with Chris and Marlo doesn't mean he's an instant sociopath. He didn't shoot the kid, he's trying to manage a new life not just for himself but for Bug and Dukie, and part of that management has been drawing harsh boundaries around himself - witness his cold treatment of his mother and his chilling look at Cutty as he stops, quite tellingly, before crossing the threshold into the gym. Sad to say, I think we all know where Michael is headed - people pulling back from the game are a needle in a haystack. But it's to the credit of all the producers, writers, etc, that they understand the bond they've created, understand Michael as metaphor for the whole game, and (I hope) they are not going to let us dismiss him as easily as we might be inclined to do out of sheer self-protection. If that ship goes down, we might have to watch it fall apart board-by-board.

Will Randy somehow make up for this? Has group home living toughened him too, bled his soul too? Somehow they'll need to make his story different from Michael's (or Bodie's for that matter), but boy I sure can't figure out how. Ms Anna makes a miraculous recovery and they get the hell out of dodge? Sadly, I think not. And I have to think we get to see Namond again, if only because not doing so would mean no resolution for either him or Bunny. Where will his fifteenth year have taken him?

Not too much new here, but just to say, I'll be keeping my eye on the kids - you can't bring something like that into a narrative and let it fizzle out. As goes Randy, so goes the universe. Gulp.