Slowly Going Bald

In a lot of ways, I don't have anything new to add to the juggernaut that is "The Wire," David Simon's uncompromising, engrossing, and completely fantastic series that's nominally about the lives and misdeeds of a group of Baltimore detectives but is more accurately a Greek tragedy about the decline of the American empire and that decline's fallout in urban environments. Coming late to the party and seeing a show only on DVD and only after it's ended its on-air run is always a bittersweet experience: Even as you revel in the glory of a show that's new to you, you're hit with the knowledge that you could have been watching it week to week, or month to month, or holding out each year for that hallowed day when the show, your show, returned. But then, absorbing the show on DVD offers that rare pleasure of instant gratification, with each episode's viewing determined not by the whims of the network but only by how fast you're willing to burn through the series.

I began the series one summer night, and viewing it consumed the next several weeks of my life: Rented movies sat unwatched on my shelf, and I was glad that the other shows I cared about had yet to return for their fall seasons. (Although I have not yet begun to process the eventual disappointment that will set in when I return to watching [even admittedly good] pop TV shows after spending the summer with Baltimore's finest.) Watching a series like that always lets you fall in passionate love with it, like reading a genuinely engrossing novel, and Simon and his critics have all talked at length about how the show is in many ways a visual novel, presenting a definite arc and structure with each chapter, whether it's the drug trade, the port unions, politics, education, or the media. Every season is connected, but each one also has a definitive end, a moment where the story concludes. I quote my sister in regard to the show's unflinching introspection: "Simon’s epic is a tragic one, and he’s not content to end the best series in the history of television on a light note. He’s too let down by everything, especially the newspaper industry. But it’s real, and unflinching, and it tells the story of what really is going on in America’s cities."

Everything about "The Wire" is superb, and a lot of the love I (and others) feel for it can I think be traced to one of the tenets of how I view art and film and life and criticism and everything in the first place. When I was a kid, I had just a raging temper problem, lashing out at my family with a regularity that would've driven weaker parents to give up. One of the things my father drove home on the occasions I was lectured (and these were many): "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." His point was one about the way in which anger manifests itself in speech and personal interaction, and while he was right, that maxim has come to mean so much more. A lot of TV series that receive critical attention or success with viewers are lauded for their content, when what's actually being applauded is the idea of the content. In other words, people sometimes don't make a distinction between the story and the way in which it's presented. It doesn't matter how nuanced the performances are in, say, an arc about a father condemning himself to save his son; for some people, the fact that the story exists in the first place is enough to excuse anything from lack of polish to whole great swaths of broad characterizations that leave you with caricatures of people pretending to say things no one would ever remotely say. Look at Don Draper; look at Jimmy McNulty; you will know the difference.

Anyway, here are a few clips. They're spoiler-free and, as such, pretty random, but still enjoyable:

The tale of Snot Boogie:

Bunk teaches McNulty about trace evidence:

"It always starts with something true":

Avon reflects on the game:

McNulty and Bunk reconstruct a crime scene: