The last season of “The Wire” is now over, and while there were a lot of doubts about how well the final season would cap off the series, I think that the final episodes proved that even with a truncated number of episodes, David Simon was still able to finish off what is probably the best TV show ever with aplomb. Throughout the series, the show has wrestled with two large issues, the failure of institutions and the promise of individual excellence, and this final season clarified the themes, drawing a complex conclusion that might very well have taken 60 hours of TV to draw out. The show has been known for its blistering critique of institutions, showing time and time again how common sense and bright individuals both get eaten up by The System, and at times it veered close to coming off almost as an Ayn Randian simplistic denouncement of institutional power altogether. This season offered a corrective, slicing up Simon’s point about institutions into a finer one.
The newspaper storyline was widely considered, from the get-go by many writers and critics, to be the weakest yet, because you could smell David Simon’s vendetta against the industry behind it. I’m not sure I feel a need to get on board with this criticism—you can smell David Simon’s vendetta against the complacent Democratic party, the War On Drugs, and the suburbanites with their heads up their asses who elect Republicans that ring the cities are considered so much beneath contempt that you barely see them. (Though you get the impression that the management at the Baltimore Sun might be of that particular tribe.) The vendetta against the newspaper seemed more personal, but that’s because absolutely everyone knows that Simon used to work there; it’s hard to say how much that colored impressions of his vendetta. The newspaper storyline was miserably brief, but for that I blame the fact that this was the shortest season by far, but had to wrap up the most storylines.
What I liked about the newspaper storyline, though, was it highlighted how Simon isn’t trying to just slam the idea of institutions exactly, but make the more nuanced point about how the priorities of an institution will always out. It’s clear that he loves the idea of the institution of the newspaper as it was originally conceived, and that the failures of the institution have more to do with money drying up and the careerist motivations that start to dominate in any institution where support for the original mission has evaporated. You get the same story with the police department and the storyline about the fake serial killer, the final refusal to duke the stats that ends up destroying Cedric Daniels’ career in the department—the police department has become less about maintaining the peace and more a political institution where appearances dominate reality. And, as the entire series run has demonstrated, this kind of corruption was woven into the police department from the day that the War On Drugs took priority over real police work. The corruption goes right back to the corrupt priorities.
As for the homeless serial killer story, well, it was unnerving at first, but I warmed to it pretty rapidly. Yes, it’s a big, outrageous lie, but by the end of the series, it had blown into one of those Big Lies that dominate our society. What’s clear is that McNulty didn’t realize that Big Lies have a tendency to become the truth, and the very outrageousness of his story is what made it so valuable to the power people, and why it had to live. By the last episode, it was almost too obvious how the story neatly paralleled the way that the Big Lie that was 9/11 functioned for the U.S. government. In both cases, you have a basis in truth (we really were attacked; homeless people really do die every day because they are abandoned by our society) that was dressed up with the Big Lie (the entire Middle East is in a big jihad conspiracy to get us, the homeless are dying not of exposure and overdose but because of a serial killer) to get some political will for an entirely different cause (controlling Iraq and its oil reserves, putting away Marlo Stanfield). The meeting where Carcetti stares down the Big Lie, knows it’s wrong, and goes with it anyway for political reasons was a meeting echoed across the offices of nearly every D.C. Democrat when faced with voting for the war resolution. Which is why, incidentally, I can’t help but roll my eyes when someone earnestly defends the Democrats who voted for it by saying that they were lied to as well. I doubt that’s how it went—Carcetti agreeing to cover up the homeless killer is a lot closer to the truth.
The Pulitzer-grubbing newspaper reaction to the homeless slayings really parallels the media’s reaction to our shiny, exciting War on Terra. The management staff gets all excited about highlighting the “Dickensian” aspects of homelessness, but when the honest editorial staff gently pushes for real, in-depth coverage about the bigger picture, about the root causes and the growing working class poverty in the U.S., they get shot down. No one wants that boring analysis stuff that makes people feel complicit and guilty. Just present the problem as a stack of eye-catching details, and leave it at that. Parallel this with the sudden media interest in portraying the growing Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East through concentrating on the eye-catching details (they stone people! women in burquas! bans on music!) without getting their hands dirty by explaining the political reasons this sort of fundamentalism has taken root, and how much Western imperialism and the U.S. desire to control the region has created this atmosphere.
It’s worth noting that this season had a thread of hope in it, which was that some people manage by plugging away doing their jobs the right way. The reporter who covered the Bubbles story and Bunk stand out here. How much of the case against the Stanfield crew was able to stand really goes back to Bunk’s real police work that was nearly thwarted by the homeless serial killer nonsense; Chris was put away from life because of a lot of backdoor dealings with the lawyers and the illegal wiretap, sure, but the glue that held it together was that DNA evidence. Real change has to be social change, but the show still worked in one of its famous storylines about the quiet dignity of people who do a good job and do it right, despite the ridiculous world around them.
It wouldn’t be a series wrap-up post if it didn’t indulge in some character love. As much at it pained me, I’m glad the Omar was dispatched the way he was. Like I said in the first paragraph, this final season was clearly supposed to slap the audience in the face with the fact that there is no such thing as an exit from The System, of which The Game is just a part. Watching the most legendary character of the show get shot from behind by a little kid stood in for the larger themes of the show. Once that happened, I knew Marlo Stanfield was going to walk, that McNulty and Freamon would fail in their crazy plan. If Omar can’t take you out, no one can. I loved the last scene with Marlo standing on the corner—meet the new boss, same as the old boss, but even meaner. Echoes of the debacle in Iraq seemed deliberate. I was glad to see Greggs make it up to Freamon and McNulty, and it seemed believable that they wouldn’t be mad at her for snitching. I smacked myself on the forehead when I realized that Michael was going to step up into Omar’s shoes. Should have seen that one coming from a mile away, but I didn’t. I especially loved how Daniels and Pearlman resolved their need to play into the Big Lie—it’s those moments, when you see that the most moral decision is to do something wrong, that “The Wire” excels at. Watching Duquan look Prez in the eyes and lie to him broke my heart, but I admire the parallels in storytelling. Omar and Bubbles have always been these paralleled characters, the two people who had some sort of moral code and lived on the margins of the gang-controlled streets of Baltimore. It was really masterful how the show carefully built up two young characters to basically fill these men’s shoes, showing how the gears of The Game just keep turning and chewing up everyone in them.
18 Responses to ““The Wire” closes with the Big Lie living on”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
I haven’t watched the final episode yet–other issues last night got in the way, but I’ll watch it at some point today–but even without that knowledge, I think your analysis is spot on. There’s a good interview with David Simon over at Salon which goes into the newspaper angle a bit more deeply, and which you might find interesting.
The Wire? That’s so white.
Excellent analysis of this season of shows. This season was an interesting one for me. I loved the Marlo/Omar feud story and Mike becoming born again hard after working w/Chris & Snoop. The made up serial killer story was unerving to me as well. I knew there were going to be problems, though, when McNulty started drinking again. You could see the wheels turning in his head. I also enjoyed seeing Bubbles do well. He has always been one of my favorite characters.
I’m really going to miss all of them.
I read this just after reading a Salon review of Richard Price’s new novel, and I can’t help noticing how few women have a voice in their world(s). Both worlds: the scriptwriters are overwhelmingly male; the cast is overwhelmingly male.
This is one reason I get slightly uncomfortable at the people who call “The Wire” the best American TV show ever: because part of what makes something Good and Serious is that women are unimportant.
Unrelated article that may be of interest: Shankar Vedantam in the Post covers a report arguing that Petroleum Fuels the Patriarchy.
Short version is that the petroleum industry tends to hurt low wage manufacturing jobs which closes a window to increased female labor participation. Thus economic conditions may have more explanatory power than cultural/religious conditions in explaining continuing restrictions on women’s right in the Middle East.
Not sure how sound the methodology is, haven’t read the paper. But the logic seems sensible.
Hey Amanda M, I kinda appreciate your reviews because you seem to take your biggest impression of what you saw and go in depth mostly in one spot. It’s not the same as Matt Zoller’s or Alan Sepinwall’s reviews, but you’re not really trying to plow the same ground. I certainly didn’t see the angle that you went with just now–with The Big Lie, and how it generates truth and hypocrisy in equal measures, but that’s something *really* obvious, and stated from the very first episode of the season. However, I’ve let that theme get away from me in the details of watching the show. Thanks for reminding me!
On the other hand…Orange, that blogpost is so damn true with some people. I’ve been pretty shocked and dissappointed with how utterly shallow many people’s reviews have been with the show. That The Wire round table with Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein et al was abominable. Slate and Salon weren’t all that much better. It was truely a case of smart white yuppies being stupid! I mean, there wasn’t even a great deal of literary analysis present beyond shallow appraisals of the tragedy art form. Not only that, there was spectacularly little appreciation in those quarters of the whole…Dickensian aspect of this season of the Wire (which is a very rich vein!).
Stuff White People Like is going to take the place of Fafblog, isn’t it?
This is neither insightful nor deep, but Dookie’s last scene made me so sad. The hopelessness of the kids’ situation was what made Season 4 so hard for me to watch, and I was hoping that somehow Dookie would make it out. Made me sad that it looks like he won’t.
Doctor Science, I’m not really interested in a show that’s about gritty reality, except with a fantasy where women have a lot more power than they do. It’s a show about cops and gangsters. The idea that 50% of the cast should be female is just unrealistic. “Battlestar Galactica” pulls it off, because it’s sci-fi and they can imagine a world where gender relations are what they should be, instead of what they are. But “The Wire” happens in our world, and our world is one where women are not at equity in many, in fact most, arenas.
That said, it’s B.S. to say the show just carpets over women. While there is no fantasy world where women share power equally with men, the show also reflects reality in that some women have wedged into the masculine arenas.
The major issue in the male-dominated entertainment industry is that women are portrayed through their relationships to men solely—they’re all mothers, wives, or girlfriends instead of characters in their own right. If you want to make the case that “The Wire” only allows women to be wives or girlfriends, you’ll have to ignore:
Kima Greggs, who is not only a stellar homicide cop but is one of the most straightforward queer characters I’ve ever seen on TV. Even her wife is not The Wife, but an interesting character in her own right. The entire season finale pivots on a professional decision made by Greggs.
Rhonda Pearlman, prosecuter and eventually judge. Her interests also dictate what happens in the final episode.
Snoop, hitman and a bona fide butch right there on TV.
Alma in the newsroom, who plays the “good” reporter.
Marla Daniels, initially The Wife to Cedric Daniels, but then shown to be a Hillary Clinton-esque politician who sees her marriage as being as much a business unit as a romantic thing.
Nerese Campbell, the city council president who is shown to be the most savvy politician on the show and inevitable as mayor.
And that’s just a few. Unlike most TV series, the majority of female characters on “The Wire” are characterized in the same way with the same hand as the male characters. We see them primarily through a professional lens, and their personal lives are no more or no less a factor than with the men. That is, we get a lot of the personal lives of some (Greggs, Pearlman) but no more than we get of parallel male characters (McNulty, Daniels). Most importantly, women are are never, ever shown as less capable, intelligent, savvy, or diverse as men. I especially liked how the show managed to have a number of black female characters and not a one of them is “sassy”.
But I defy the idea that women are unimportant. Women’s actions moved the plot as much as men’s and in similar ways. They were human beings first and foremost, which is a rare thing still on TV.
I apologize, I meant to put in my disclaimer about how my knowledge of “The Wire” is purely second-hand (no cable, among other things). What I *have* noticed is how rarely female characters get mentioned in reviews or shown in the pictures alongside them — less so than “The Sopranos”, for instance.
I’m just pointing out (Monday: Blame the Patriarchy Day!) that for all that “The Wire” is breathtakingly honest about some things Americans don’t want to see, there’s another layer of honesty below that. David Simon can see some of the effects of The War on Some People’s Drugs, but not others: like the way cities like Baltimore are 55% female or more, because so many men are dead or imprisoned.
Since I’m bitter & cynical this morning (um, afternoon), I’ll say that I think David Simon has never actually noticed that the majority of people in the city he loves are black women, or thought about what it means that he does not know their lives.
Is that a spoiler in the post title? I’ve seen episode 1, season 1 and that’s it, looking forward to watching the entirety soon. Don’t spoil me!
I wouldn’t issue the critique having never watched the show. If you think reviews of it never mention the female characters, it might be because the female characters behave so much like human beings instead of female stereotypes that their names and behaviors fly under the radar.
But I don’t really see the point of discussing the lack of women on a show that I’ve watched and you haven’t. It seems like a tangent that’s uncalled for and probably comes from an a priori assumption that a man simply couldn’t be capable of acknowledging women’s role in the world. I disagree, and if you watched the show, you’d see that it’s not like that. That women get stomped all the time in the drug war is not invisible by any stretch on the show—in fact, the pivotal character in the first season for cracking the case was a stripper who turned because she saw how the club owners treated women like her like they were utterly disposable. (Her friend ODs at a party, and the drug dealers/club owners roll her up in a rug and throw her in the trash.) It’s easy to say that men write it so it must ignore women. But the evidence doesn’t bear out the thesis.
Once that character’s story is done, they keep her around in an interesting way. Another stereotype undermined—strippers are not portrayed as one-dimensional people.
I think the closest they came was the minor character who’s working with the Major Crimes unit in season 4(?) who also acts as translator for the cops for the calls coming in over the wiretap. I remember she yelled at someone for messing up her coupons or something. Glad they didn’t keep her around.
And as for strong female characters, there’s also Brianna Barksdale, Avon’s sister and D’Angelo’s mother, who’s a large part of the business end of the Barksdale empire. She carries a lot of weight with Avon, almost as much as Stringer Bell, and he views her as an adversary in many ways.
I did love the way the show subtly teased out how Brianna underestimates her own mother love, though. It wasn’t stupid or stereotypical—she still sold her son up the river for the business—but that it came back around on her and her grief was something she would never tamp down was well played.
Dr. Science, thanks for wasting our time with your ‘observations’ of a show you’ve never seen.
Perhaps, given your moniker, you’d like to weigh in on experiments you haven’t performed or data you haven’t examined? ::eyeroll::
Also, Dr Sci, as far as Simon’s other creations are concerned, you should take a look at Homicide: Life in the Street and The Corner, both of which feature well-written, 3-dimensional female characters who are at the centers of the shows and get lots of screen time.
I’ve often enjoyed the way the show takes little digs at the over-representation of men in certain professions without getting bogged down with it. The one thing that women do a little differently than men on the show is grapple with the fact that they’re sexualized by virtue of gender alone. Again, it’s just woven into the fabric of the show, and not a big deal is made of it. But Kima has to put up with going undercover dressed, well, like a girl. Rhonda has her moments of exploiting the judge’s crush on her to get shit done. But the one moment that really sticks out for me is when that woman in Omar’s crew gets shot during a robbery they lose control over, and the homicide detectives automatically assume she’s a citizen, because, well, she’s a she. I don’t think that ever gets resolved, and Omar’s compatriots are such a Robin Hood type gang that it’s sort of a quibble on whether or not they should be treated like citizens, but the fact remains—she was a criminal, shot in drug shoot-out, but it’s so uncommon for women to be doing that in this world that it blows right by usually astute cops.
Amanda:
Simon has said that wasn’t Marlo.
After he beats the kids up and the camera pans away, and he’s standing on the corner? Yeah, that’s Marlo. The camera follows him from a party, down the street, where some kids are talking about Omar….
Eh. You’re probably thinking of something different than what I meant. I meant the last shot of Marlo.