Watching the 2nd season of "The Wire" (again) I'm trying to understand how it fails.
Of the 5 seasons, this is clearly the one disappointing one.
But that is not to say it is not essential or even without its pleasures.
It has some stunning set pieces, as when the slimy lawyer, Marvin Levy, piously attacks Omar on the witness stand, saying Omar makes his living robbing people, makes his living prowling the streets of Baltimore with a shotgun, so why should the good people of the jury believe a word he says?
Omar, who has been very open about his life, his livelihood, of course appears dangerous, but essentially looks more honest than anyone in the court and he replies he makes his living with a shot gun while Levy, who is just as deeply "in the game" makes his living with his weapon, the briefcase, and there is not a shred of difference, morally between the two.
Levy looks to Judge Phalen in mute objection, but Phalen simply raises his eyebrows: You asked the question. You got your answer. That's his opinion and there is no basis for a legal objection.
One wishes they had played that scene out a little more, but such is the discipline of "The Wire" they do not over write or say more than what is absolutely necessary. You have to wonder whether the listeners understood all that was not said but what was implied and the jury's verdict, which is only known as Bird is seen being led away, comes in a later episode.
And there is the story line in which the lethal Wee Bay, who loves aquarium fish, has his mechanical fish destroyed by a jailor, but Wee Bay is avenged by Avon's Machiavellian machinations.
And there is the revelation of character of Diangelo, who wants to be free of his "family" and is destroyed by that wish, but first he finds his own story reflected in "The Great Gatsby" and he reveals he has got Gatsby far more deeply than any of a thousand suburban kids who went to Harvard, who had to read it as a class assignment, because Diangelo actually understands what it is to be trapped by your past, to be a boat beating ceaselessly against the current.
But Season Two has too many white characters who are simply poorly done. When the Wire's writers are doing Black characters, to this white ear at least, they sound completely real, but knowing what white people sound like, the writing of these white characters sounds strained and false as a pole dancer's eyelashes.
There are some funny bits as the Black cops listen to white street kids who have aped the cadences and language of the Black street kids and the Black cops look at each other and say, "They steal everything!" Even the language is stolen.
But the dock workers sitting around their bars with their stories about the old days and the "youse" instead of "you" all sound phony. Frank Sobatka, constantly brooding over the good old days when Baltimore harbor was busy and employing hundreds of stevedores, and he is being told by his younger workers those days are gone but he refuses to believe it. He does not ring true. Anyone heading a union down at the docks could see the trends just as coal workers' union heads must see that trend.
I cannot attest to the language of those doc workers, but I've spent enough time hanging around Dundalk and other down at the heels Baltimore areas to know the folks I heard sitting in gyms for weekends on end during wrestling tournaments sounded nothing like the guys on The Wire.
The white dock workers on The Wire sound more like the David Simon of Twitter, with all his affectation of a suburban white kid from toney Bethesda, Maryland trying to sound like a Baltimore tough guy.
And this is really too bad, because what Season 2 really does is to place the street side desperation in a larger context--it shows how the Baltimore street is just a small part of a much larger world of international crime which connects to South American drug cartels, which is sacrificed to decisions in Washington to simply abandon the American inter city in an effort to pursue the much higher profile effort against "terrorism." At one point an FBI agent tells a Baltimore City cop, he could help chase down the drug organization running the West Side markets and strewing bodies around the streets if only the drug kingpins had names like "Achmed or Abdul."
In the first season you learned, in detail, how arresting street hoppers and low ranking drug hoods has no impact at all on the drug trade. The loss of these pawns is simply factored into the business plan of the top dogs like Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale. Huge packages of "drugs on the table" with top brass policemen grinning over the message they've sent to the drug lords are a travesty; the drug lords could not care less. Interdiction of any load of product is always just a price of doing business, like spoilage in a supermarket's green grocery.
There is much talk about how we no longer teach Civics in public schools.
I think we should simply show "The Wire" as a year long course to every suburban school child. The inner city kids don't need to see it. They live it every day.
Of the 5 seasons, this is clearly the one disappointing one.
But that is not to say it is not essential or even without its pleasures.
It has some stunning set pieces, as when the slimy lawyer, Marvin Levy, piously attacks Omar on the witness stand, saying Omar makes his living robbing people, makes his living prowling the streets of Baltimore with a shotgun, so why should the good people of the jury believe a word he says?
Omar, who has been very open about his life, his livelihood, of course appears dangerous, but essentially looks more honest than anyone in the court and he replies he makes his living with a shot gun while Levy, who is just as deeply "in the game" makes his living with his weapon, the briefcase, and there is not a shred of difference, morally between the two.
Levy looks to Judge Phalen in mute objection, but Phalen simply raises his eyebrows: You asked the question. You got your answer. That's his opinion and there is no basis for a legal objection.
One wishes they had played that scene out a little more, but such is the discipline of "The Wire" they do not over write or say more than what is absolutely necessary. You have to wonder whether the listeners understood all that was not said but what was implied and the jury's verdict, which is only known as Bird is seen being led away, comes in a later episode.
And there is the story line in which the lethal Wee Bay, who loves aquarium fish, has his mechanical fish destroyed by a jailor, but Wee Bay is avenged by Avon's Machiavellian machinations.
And there is the revelation of character of Diangelo, who wants to be free of his "family" and is destroyed by that wish, but first he finds his own story reflected in "The Great Gatsby" and he reveals he has got Gatsby far more deeply than any of a thousand suburban kids who went to Harvard, who had to read it as a class assignment, because Diangelo actually understands what it is to be trapped by your past, to be a boat beating ceaselessly against the current.
But Season Two has too many white characters who are simply poorly done. When the Wire's writers are doing Black characters, to this white ear at least, they sound completely real, but knowing what white people sound like, the writing of these white characters sounds strained and false as a pole dancer's eyelashes.
There are some funny bits as the Black cops listen to white street kids who have aped the cadences and language of the Black street kids and the Black cops look at each other and say, "They steal everything!" Even the language is stolen.
But the dock workers sitting around their bars with their stories about the old days and the "youse" instead of "you" all sound phony. Frank Sobatka, constantly brooding over the good old days when Baltimore harbor was busy and employing hundreds of stevedores, and he is being told by his younger workers those days are gone but he refuses to believe it. He does not ring true. Anyone heading a union down at the docks could see the trends just as coal workers' union heads must see that trend.
I cannot attest to the language of those doc workers, but I've spent enough time hanging around Dundalk and other down at the heels Baltimore areas to know the folks I heard sitting in gyms for weekends on end during wrestling tournaments sounded nothing like the guys on The Wire.
The white dock workers on The Wire sound more like the David Simon of Twitter, with all his affectation of a suburban white kid from toney Bethesda, Maryland trying to sound like a Baltimore tough guy.
And this is really too bad, because what Season 2 really does is to place the street side desperation in a larger context--it shows how the Baltimore street is just a small part of a much larger world of international crime which connects to South American drug cartels, which is sacrificed to decisions in Washington to simply abandon the American inter city in an effort to pursue the much higher profile effort against "terrorism." At one point an FBI agent tells a Baltimore City cop, he could help chase down the drug organization running the West Side markets and strewing bodies around the streets if only the drug kingpins had names like "Achmed or Abdul."
In the first season you learned, in detail, how arresting street hoppers and low ranking drug hoods has no impact at all on the drug trade. The loss of these pawns is simply factored into the business plan of the top dogs like Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale. Huge packages of "drugs on the table" with top brass policemen grinning over the message they've sent to the drug lords are a travesty; the drug lords could not care less. Interdiction of any load of product is always just a price of doing business, like spoilage in a supermarket's green grocery.
There is much talk about how we no longer teach Civics in public schools.
I think we should simply show "The Wire" as a year long course to every suburban school child. The inner city kids don't need to see it. They live it every day.
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