The Wire Season 1
In the alternate universe where I’m writing this blog September 2004, the season 3 premiere of the Wire and all the talk about it being snubbed at last year’s Emmy Awards has inspired me to catch up on DVD. In our 2024 reality, this ridiculous project has pushed me to finally tick this item off my tv bucket list. And boy am I ever glad I did.
So much of television tries to do the “10 hour movie” “great American novel” thing. It’s exhausting. I hate it. The Wire pioneered this approach, but it puts all other imitators to shame. It is still so fresh, so exciting. People always talk about how complex and literary it is, and about it’s realism and roots in journalism. But to me, The Wire always has one toe firmly in the world of genre fiction. It’s not surprising. David Simon is married to the great crime fiction writer Laura Lippman (I was delighted to find Bunk reading one her books while on the job). And the writers room of The Wire employed many crime novelists. The minor characters that surprise you, the b-plots that suddenly become important to the larger picture, the sense of humor, all pure genre fiction. So The Wire never feels like a chore.
The Wire also falls into a genre of tv I call “brain candy.” It rewards your attention. It makes you feel smart. It teaches the standard HBO audience a new way of speaking, it lets you inside multiple sub-cultures and industries and lets you understand how they operate. The more you learn, the more exciting the show becomes. It’s all so delicious.
An it’s good that it’s delicious, because The Wire and its ideas and message were vital when it premiered in 2002 and they are vital today. My favorite episode explores the aftermath of the shooting of an undercover police officer. The plot of the show suddenly becomes so much bigger as every important person in Maryland feels the need to weigh in on the disaster. Meanwhile, the drug organization that shot the officer was only trying to dispose of a witness, and they’re freaking out.
It’s a circus, and it’s a circus that fails everyone. The effects ripple out, and the carnage is endless. A child murder, a relapse, moral compromises, empty gestures, so many small tragedies. The victim is not served, and the victim’s girlfriend is disrespected and neglected despite the best efforts of her friends and colleagues. The Wire shows you, at every turn, people who deserve better and the system that can never give them better. But what The Wire is best at is making you care about those people, down to the smallest bit parts and the schmuckiest schmucks. You can’t help but dream of a better reality, despite all the evidence, at every turn. The people you come to love, and the real people like them, deserve nothing less.
Bring on season two.
