Tag Archives: The Wire

Deja Viewed: The Wire


It took two decades, but The Wire has finally reached its proper literary altitude. Feel free to unfasten your seat belt, recline your tray table and roam about about the cabin.

You see, this cabin is one of the few to showcase a television show that has entered the realm of high art. Elite club membership includes Hill Street Blues, The Sopranos and The Simpsons — stratospheric television achievements that elevated the medium that hoisted and foisted them as a newborns.

Maybe the epochal delay (the show is celebrating it’s 20-year anniversary this year) came from its unique DNA. The Wire may be America’s the first and only (intentional) five-sided television show. The police drama about life in the streets of Baltimore was divvied into five chapters of working America: crime; labor; politics; education; and journalism.That HBO even greenlit such a corporately-suspicious show is worth noting — along with the cold reality that no network, including HBO, would greenlight it today.

Which makes The Wire less a history lesson than an archeological find, a glimmer in a gold pan.

And one need look no further than Episode Two to find the treasure. Michael K. Williams played Omar Little, a scarred, poor gay gangbanger who served as a modern-day Robin Hood. Or Robbin’ ’Hood. Omar steals from gangs to feed his own, which is still victimized, but far less vicious. When Omar’s lover is ensnared, tortured and killed within “the game,” we become something more than spectators.

Consider the road The Wire could have taken, but did not. Any TV show could take that spark and stare at the candescent glow of a clever police procedural until disinterest reduced it to ember.

But creator David Simon, a former police reporter with the Baltimore Sun and author of Homicide, had no interest in flame — or navel — gazing. His octagonal intention was to examine the crumbling foundations beneath the feet of the city dwellers in Baltimore.

And thus America.

Colleges now teach The Wire and its themes as a course. President Obama called it the greatest television show of all-time. That it was nominated for only two Emmys — and won neither — effectively eliminating the venerated award as legitimate metric of quality.

Seasons One and Four are the show at its apex. Ironically, Simon’s look at journalism is the weakest chapter, largely because he views through the lens of a newspaper. Papers were already on life support by 2007, and the final season feels more like eulogy than observation.

And there’s no getting around the heavy lifting required to fully digest the show. I’ve watched the series four times now just to unpack its dense, tracer bullet dialogue. Simon filmed in Baltimore and used locals (some with felony records) to infuse scripts with current street and police slang. The language is so casually raw and the violence so blithely graphic, The Wire may have earned an NC-17 rating were it a film.

Fortunately, it’s not. Instead, it is a game-changer. The Wire may boast the longest list of anti-heroes ever committed to teleplay. From Omar to the alcoholic Detective McNulty to the psychopathic drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield, it’s often hard to tell who is antagonist and who is protagonist, which is Simon’s larger point.

And this may be The Wire’s: “The game” is an octagon, at least. And no one leaves uncut.

‘You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss’

Hi, my name is Scott Bowles, and I am a Dallas Cowboys fan.

If you’re even a casual observer of the NFL, you know this is no easy admission. I’m from Detroit. An out-of-towner pulling for the Cowboys is like a non-resident pulling for the Boston Celtics (which I do) or the New York Yankees (which I do not).

The Celtics are easy to explain; that’s an inheritance from Dad. The Cowboys, though, are harder to explain. Dad hated the Cowboys. Maybe it was teen rebellion, maybe it was canny teen marketing, maybe it was the Roger Staubach-signed pennant Dad got me when I was in the hospital contracting diabetes. Whatever the reason, the bond was sealed.

I know this union is morally wrong. Sometimes, I feel like Melania Trump. No matter how much cult fans chant I’m doing the right thing in the marriage, sometimes I’ve got to admit I’m with a loathsome creep.

Or was. I’m officially switching allegiances this season. This year I’m rooting for the Baltimore Ravens to win the Super Bowl. And you should, too.

I know I know. It’s heresy to switch bandwagons, especially mid-season. But hear me out. Dallas has always been known as “America’s Team,” thanks to the organization’s slick and ubiquitous self-promotion. But I suggest the Ravens best represent this country, both in toughness and underdog-ness.

Consider:

  • Miracle turnaround. No one thought the Ravens  a serious contender in 2019 — particularly when the hapless Cleveland Browns shelled them early in the year. But a turnaround came primarily thanks to Lamar Jackson, a 22-year-old quarterback who has set the team on fire. Half quarterback, half running back, Jackson was considered a bust of a draft pick last year. This year, he’s led the Ravens to a record of 10-2, the best in the NFL. He’s also the first quarterback in history to pass for more than 250 yards and run for 120 in one game. Image result for lamar jackson
  • Dethroned a king. Last month, the Ravens played the vaunted New England Patriots, home to Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick. The Patriots, who many consider Super Bowl favorites, were undefeated at the time and expected to roll over the young Ravens. The Ravens shellacked them 37-20. Image result for belichick brady
  • The political intrigue. This is reason enough to pull for the Ravens. Traditionally, the victorious Super Bowl team gets a trip to the White House and a visit with the president. Last year, the Patriots and owner Robert Kraft happily took up the invitation. (Side note: Kraft, 78, was later arrested for asking a young masseuse to give him a happy ending. Trump is a true ally of pederasts; he doesn’t drain the swamp so much as dunk people in it.) Image result for robert kraft massage

You remember Trump and “Charm City,” as the state has nicknamed it. Baltimore was targeted by Trump in July, when the president lashed out at Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat whose district included parts of Baltimore city and Baltimore County.

Cummings’ “district is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump said of the city and the Representative. “If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”Image result for trump cummings

Cummings later died, but not the city’s memory of him. When Melania Trump — whose single platform as First Lady is an anti-bullying campaign — showed up in Baltimore for a photo op, the irony was not lost on residents. They swamped the appearance, delayed it for minutes with protest chants and loudly chatted among themselves during Melania’s speech. Charming? Not at all. Of course, neither is taking shots at the dead and dying (insert McCain citation here). Be best!

Image result for trump insults mccain

What theater that would make! Will he invite the team? Will the team accept? How long before Trump mistakes the team for the help?

Whether it was Trump’s diss, Cummings’ death or simply fatigue from marginalization, the Ravens have been a team possessed. Two weeks ago, when the Ravens were making a rare appearance on national television (Monday Night Football), a commentator made a brilliant observation as Baltimore dismantled the glitzy Los Angeles Rams, who hosted the game with stars in the stands and sporting flashy yellow uniforms. As the Ravens mashed the Los Angeles’ uniforms from lemon to dirt-stained coffee brown, the analyst noted “This is The Wire going up against Dancing with the Stars,” a reference to the gritty Baltimore-set crime drama considered one of the greatest shows of all-time. “And the Ravens don’t feel like dancing.”

No, the Ravens aren’t here to dance. They’re here to follow the wisdom of Omar Little, the anti-hero of The Wire: to walk with some swagger; whistle The Farmer in the Dell; and send dope boys scrambling.

You hear that, Donnie? Omar’s crew coming!

 

 

 

A Farewell to Don, Walter, Omar, and All Those Against the Grain

 

Ask me my favorite television show, and I’ll blurt out “Breaking Bad!” before you can get to “…of all-time.”

But I have to concede. Mad Men, which begins its final arc Sunday, may be TV’s greatest drama.

The difficulty is in separating the two, favorite from greatest. Our inclination is to defend our passions as quantifiable, as if to validate an opinion. My father’s favorite basketball player was Larry Bird, as is mine. I remember dad spending, literally, hours explaining why Bird was the greatest of all-time: the best passer, the most versatile, toughest and hardest working employee of the NBA.

But I’ve come to acknowledge that Bird’s (and my) former arch nemesis, Magic Johnson, as the better player. More head-to-head victories, more championships, more influential in the game we know today. Even taking a learned path in life.birdnmagic But that’s okay. I’ve quit trying to argue my love as something empirical. What’s wrong with conceding a fanaticism — for a show, a drawing, a person, a poached egg — followed just as openly by a confession that what we love most may be flawed, human, non-sensical, perhaps even broken. Does that diminish a devotion? Surrender a defense?

So in deference to Walter White: You are my antiheroes of antiheroes. I am your Jesse. I sizzle the glass with you.

Yet, Don Draper and Mad Men could be the greatest feat in television history.

Consider other dramas regarded legendary: Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, ER, Law & Order, The West Wing, 24. All, as do 90% of today’s television dramas, subsist on crime, law (including making) or medicine. It makes sense. Those are exciting worlds, full of irresistibly low-hanging dramatic fruit.

Now imagine the pitch that Matt Weiner must have made to AMC for Mad Men. “It’s a show set a half century ago, in a New York ad agency. We’ll get into specific ad strategy — for Kodak, Lucky Strike, Playtex, Utz potato chips, Sno Ball and Ocean Spray, along with (literally) 76 other real-name clients.” Oh, and it’s a no-name cast, with no crime, law or medicine for subject matter.

That it would earn network approval and an eight-year following is about as miraculous as landing Conrad Hilton’s trust (which Don did, briefly). And much ink and megabyte will be spent praising the show for its look and fashion (all deserved) as well its now-known stars (deserving as well).

But let’s recognize its sheer artistry for a moment, if not first. Consider the ad pitch for the folks at Kodak, in season 1, episode 13, for an episode called The Wheel, a what-if with Draper as pitchman for the carousel projector.

 

Lady Lazarus, from season 5, episode 8, is as dark and artistic as the Sylvia Plath poem that inspired it, just with a kick ass Beatles finale. (Sorry about the Spanish subtitles; it appears to be the only video of it on the World Wide Intertubes.)

And that’s what makes the show understatedly deft, that straddle between detail and tedium. Sure, it’s stylish and a bit too beautiful. But throughout you’ll see artistic touches — and outright show-long homages — that no show but The Simpsons would dare broach, from Dante’s Inferno to Stanley Kubrik to author Philip Roth. In fact, Don Draper is simply a rendition of the protagonist in Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, about an impossibly handsome Lothario who can’t fill his cavernous soul with his conquests. (And wouldn’t that be a kick finale, if the entire show were a flashback as Don spills his guts to a shrink?)

The show also differed in its treatment of time. Normally, shows dread time like Dracula at sunrise. Look at 24, a season created out of one day. M*A*S*H lasted longer than the Korean War. Breaking Bad pretended six years was two; The Simpsons has been on a quarter century, and Maggie is still an infant not yet talking.

Mad Men, on the other hand, bounded through the 60’s as if were tripping acid. Smack into MLK’s and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations, Nixon, the Vietnam War, the counterculture movement. If most dramas focus on a singular, familiar place — a bar, a coffee shop sofa, a triage unit— Mad Men concerned itself with an era, often brutal. That’s unheard of for an industry whose limited view on time usually includes a future with a zombie apocalypse.

The show had its failings. Like the 60’s literature that littered i story lines, Mad Men can’t help but paint most women as mothering, smothering or emasculating. And no entertainment has glamorized smoking this much since Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns.

But in bidding farewell to the womanizing, alcoholic Don Draper, we also wave to a vanishing TV breed: the antihero. Perhaps reflecting the mood of a nation already somber by real-life events, execs seem to favor the lantern-jawed heroes of late, particularly when they don spandex. Tony Soprano, Dexter, Mr. White, Omar Little Omar_little(you’ve really got to see him in The Wire) all salute you from television’s cloud circuit, where antiheroes appear headed.

I know you’re a doomed drunk, Don. And Mad Men’s outer-shell shiny emphasis on advertising was really an inner reflection of how we see ourselves. Or, more importantly, want to see ourselves.

Still, through your Old Fashion-addled, oversexed, orphaned logic, you have come upon something profound. That, at our best, we are all antiheroes: flawed, flailing, but fighting nonetheless. And that’s worth another round. Cheers.