The Wire

Last Christmas, I gave H the HBO series The Wire as a gift.   I’m really pretty anti-TV, which can make life difficult with a television-loving husband.  I’m not so much against TV as I am against watching really stupid stuff and generally wasting time.  As a compromise, we had a Blockbuster subscription & would get lots of documentaries and other interesting types of movies.  We decided to try a series & The Wire had received so much critical acclaim that it was a great choice.  For under $100, we had over 60 hours of gripping, emotional & educational entertainment.  We fell in love with the show & the characters, had our hearts & minds changed by seeing the reality for so many people that live in an inner-city that runs rampant with drugs and crime.  It was nice not having to flip through the channels to find a show to watch or argue over who got to see the show they wanted- we both loved The Wire.

The premise of the whole show is about the impact of drugs on the inner-city Baltimore, and it was filmed on location with many people related to the storyline.  Each season has a theme & most of the main characters stay with the show in various roles as each season focuses on a different aspect of the community.  The depth of this show came from its amazing characters who developed over each episode.  Sometimes the good guys did bad things, sometimes the bad guys did good things.  Sometimes a bad thing was really good & a good thing went bad.   Bad things are legal & good things are illegal.  The people- from cops & teacher to drug dealers & politicians, all have such an integral role to play in how drugs impact a community and the people living there.

Season 1 was an introduction to the public housing & drug life on the corners in Baltimore.  You understand how the drug deals go down, learn why the cops have such a difficult time making any real headway, how the cops & runners play the same game day after day.  The show takes its name from the constant battle for the police to get a wire tap & to keep it long enough to track the really valuable information.   It’s interesting to watch as the law enforcement must work within the laws to get wire taps, which at the time were on pay phones & to see the evolution of cell phones on the drug circles through the series.

Season 2 was all about life on the port & the longshoremen. How do the drugs even get into the country & where are they coming from.  The drug dealers & cops begin to tussle with the powerful foreign mafias that are importing the drugs & women to sell into the sex trade.  You begin to get a sense of how everything is like a web tangled together, where everybody is happy to look the other way when the drug smuggling is profiting them.   The drug dealer drama for the men running a multi-million dollar business continues as one of the characters from season 1 continues to run his ring from inside the jail and deal with those threatening his empire, even his family.

Season 3 saw the main plot line return to drug dealing on the streets, but it added the twist of examining the role of politics and politicians to mix.  There are just as many crooks & liars wearing suits, all who have a vested interest in manipulating the system & statistics for their own interest.    Politics in the legal system, politics in the police department, politics on the street, politics in the gangs….everybody has their own angle.  Season 4 takes a closer look at the role the education system plays in the tangled web of the inner-city.  How the politicians and police fail the schools, how the schools fail the kids, how the kids so easily get lost in the system.   The final season is about the role of journalism and the media in the drug culture, all the while tying themes and characters from earlier seasons into an eloquent and saddening story about a whole community that is  unraveling and trying to decode the mysteries of The Wire.

The series was fantastic & we were sad to see it end, but it was enlightening to us to learn so much, in such a deep and meaningful way, about a culture we have had very little direct exposure to & see how the numerous institutional failures all come together in the perfect storm that is destroying thousands of lives every year.  It is deep & thought provoking, serious entertainment that I hope more people seek out.  I found this quote by Simon, the shows creator, especially compelling: We are not selling hope, or audience gratification, or cheap victories with this show. The Wire is making an argument about what institutions—bureaucracies, criminal enterprises, the cultures of addiction, raw capitalism even—do to individuals. It is not designed purely as an entertainment. It is, I’m afraid, a somewhat angry show

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We will officially be in Mexcio in 1 month for Pam & Mark’s wedding! So freaking excited!!!