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When you walk through the garden… better watch your back.
It’s done. I’m done. It’s over. I’m sad.
Let’s be clear about one thing: I waited far too long to watch The Wire. I had a number of people — trusted sources, even! — tell me, “This show is incredible.” And I just nodded and mumbled something about not having time for a whole five seasons of television. It’s possible that, in a sense, I was right: I don’t know that I had the time for this.
But trust me, it didn’t matter.
We started watching the show here in Der Wendighaus one snowy day — during one of the many El Blizzardo Loco storms — and you could practically hear them buckling me into the roller coaster ride. It took a couple-few episodes for my wife to get hooked, but me, I was champing at the bit from day one.
And now, five seasons later — and five months of life — it’s over. In the can. Back in the hands of Netflix, hopefully going to some other poor asshole who thought he could get away with not watching The Wire.
Bold statement: The Wire is the best television show I’ve ever seen, start-to-finish. That last phrase is key. Start-to-finish. Some shows may have had better seasons here and there, and certainly a few really whopper holy-shit bomb-go-off episodes, but as a package? As a show that begins properly and gets a proper end? It’s The Wire. It’s The Wire by a country fucking mile. You feel me?
Why do I love The Wire? Let me count the ways.
It’s A Goddamn Greek Tragedy Is What It Is
Check out this quote from David Simon:
But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak. Because so much of television is about providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character, a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice seems different in some ways, I think.
This quote hints at it, but let me say it more boldly: tragedy on the stage is wholly different from what the news will call “tragedy.” There they mean, tragedy is when bad shit happens. In the narrative form, though, it’s a different animal: tragedy is when you create your own downfall. The characters in The Wire all do their damnedest to do the right thing, and so often, “the right thing” is what gets them fucked.
You Want To Learn About Character, You Watch This Show
Another bold-ass statement: The Wire features some of the finest characters in television. Hell, it features some of the finest characters in any form, ever. The characters are nuanced, complex, and even the worst of them are endearing, compelling, and real-feeling. Week-to-week, season-to-season, this show challenges one of the fundamental assertions of television: characters shouldn’t change. Oh, not here. These characters are all subject to seasonal arcs and a series arc — and it’s one of the most complete sets of “character journeys” that registers on the screen. A really incredible feat.
I mean, c’mon. Bubbles? McNulty? Freamon? Daniels? Omar?
My jaw drops just thinking about how well-orchestrated these character arcs end up.
It’s not all perfect: some characters feel a little flat. Marlo’s got a whiff of the complex, but he and his crew don’t really get the same level of nuance that the Barksdale crew gets. It’s necessary in some ways (they are a more malevolent force, to be sure), but I really cared about the Barksdale crew, as bad as they often were. Further, a character like The Greek is just a cipher; a figurehead, a paper tiger.
And If You Want To Learn About Plot, You Watch This Show
I know that this is television, and I know that television is subject to lots of chaos and suffers under the yoke of forced improvisation: even still, this feels like one of the most finely-plotted shows I’ve ever seen. Not as single-serving bite-sized episodes, but as entire stories, each season as rich as an elegantly-penned novel. You want this level of intricacy and detail, you have to be a plotter. You can’t one-off a show like The Wire. You can’t just invent this kind of plot as you go — or, at least, I can’t. It’s got so many moving parts that fit so nicely together, we’re talking about a surefire case of Intelligent Design.
Then again, maybe I’m just seeing patterns like in the center of a sunflower or some shit.
A good quote on the writing of this show:
I think what you sense in The Wire is that it is violating a good many of the conventions and tropes of episodic television. It isn’t really structured as episodic television and it instead pursues the form of the modern, multi-POV novel. Why? Primarily because the creators and contributors are not by training or inclination television writers. In fact, it is a little bit remarkable that we ended up with a television drama on HBO or anywhere else. I am a newspaper reporter by training who wrote a couple long, multi-POV nonfiction narratives, Homicide and The Corner. The first became the basis for the NBC drama of the same name; the second I was able to produce as a miniseries for HBO, airing in 2000. Both works are the result of a journalistic impulse, the first recounting a year I spent with the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit, and the second book detailing a year spent in a drug-saturated West Baltimore neighborhood, following an extended, drug-involved family. Ed Burns, my coauthor on The Corner and co-creator on The Wire, was a homicide detective who served in the BPD for twenty years and, following that for seven years, a seventh-grade teacher at a Baltimore public school. The remaining writers—Richard Price [Clockers], Dennis Lehane [Mystic River], and George Pelecanos [The Night Gardener]—are novelists working at the highest level of the crime genre. Bill Zorzi covered state and municipal politics for the Baltimore Sun for twenty years; Rafael Alvarez, another Sun veteran, worked as a merchant seaman and comes from two generations of port workers. So we are all rooted in a different place than Hollywood.
Hear that?
If you write crime, please, please watch this show.
Rectify your errors. Come to the light, as I did. Don’t make me stop this car.
Aaaaand If You Want To Learn About Dialogue, Well, You Get The Idea
Dang, I don’t even know what to say. Just watch this. Some light spoilers, though I suspect they’re largely context-free if you haven’t seen the show –
It Rewards Careful Viewing
…and, I suspect, rewatching.
This show gets what many writers don’t — you don’t need to coddle your audience. If what you’re doing is good, you can hit the accelerator and speed along at a nice clip; they’ll catch up, I promise. The Wire doesn’t fuck around with over-explanations, or, sometimes, any explanations. A lot of scenes are left on the table with the attitude of, “Just watch, you’ll figure it out.” Some scenes don’t have pay-off until later in an episode, or even later in an entire season. Hell, some little bits remain outstanding for entire seasons.
The show assumes that you’re not an idiot.
I’m an idiot, but even still, I made it through, and I’m glad the show didn’t treat me like the frothing baboon that I just so happen to be.
That Theme Song
Every season added another version of the Waits classic (including the Waits original, in Season Two). Remember: you gotta keep the Devil way down in the hole.
My favorite: Season three, baby. Neville Brothers.
…so good, so tasty.Omar
Motherfucking Omar. I dunno. Might just be one of my favorite characters of all time. Righteous. Complex. Honorable. Mean as a snake-bit dog. Gay. So proper.
Though, I can’t lie: so many of these characters are characters I could live with season after season.Hell, I’d watch a show just about Freamon.
But that’s another interesting thing about this show: each season puts the spotlight on different characters, but never forgets a character. They all get play. They all get in the rotation.
Even Rawls.
Like, for instance, when we see him…
In a gay bar.
Anybody see that? That blink-and-you-miss it scene?
Never again addressed. Fascinating shit.
Howzabout You?
All right. I gotta tie this one off and get to business for the day. If you haven’t seen The Wire, then you and me aren’t friends until you change that. You can stay over there. In the corner. Standing in the dog poop. When you’ve started to watch it, you may step free from your shitty little corner and we can once more resume communication like two human beings.
If you have seen the show, hey, let’s talk this shit up. What do you like best about The Wire? Let’s wank-fest this. Wankity-wank-wank-wank. Fave character? Fave season (If I had to rank them, well, it’d change depending on my mood. Season Two is probably forever at the bottom, but the rest jockey for position above.) Favorite iteration of the theme song? Favorite quote? Any damn thing you got, throw it at me.
He’s got the fire and the fury… at his command…
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
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28 Responses and Counting...
Alright! Fine!
Fine!
I have a backlog of shows to watch right now, starting with The Shield. As soon as I get it in the eyeholes, I’ll move over the The Wire. Are you happy now? Pushy? Pushy???
The Shield is awesome.
The Wire trumps it. That’s not to denigrate The Shield. It’s just like saying, “This bag of 1000 gold coins is better than that bag of 500 gold coins.”
– c.
I’m currently feeling the same way about Chuck. Not exactly that it drives the Uberbus to Ubertown, but “Why did I wait so long?” We’re chugging through the 2nd season, and it’s simply splendid geek. As for you putting the Wire back into Netflix’s hands for the next jerk who thought he could live without the Wire, that’ll prolly be me.
And, when I’ve finished it, we shall compare, The Wire vs. The Shield, for I fear the Shield lost it’s way a bit and only caught itself at the end. More proof for term limits in TV shows.
K
@K:
CHUCK is a hoot. Love that show with all my heart, flawed as it sometimes is.
I mean, it’s no THE WIRE. But a show like CHUCK doesn’t have to be.
It’s its own little wonderful creature.
– c.
Dang, that series has some nice Polish representing going on. I mean, Agnieszka Holland? Fuck yearh.
Still, I do not know if I will be able to watch. I don’t get the channel it’s on back in Poland. Renting the DVDs is unviable, as my rental allows me only two days per box and I like to pace myself. And Hulu? Yeah, they don’t stream for the Schiavonis down here Union-way. Heck, not even for the Limey man.
Where the justice in that, I ask you?
Plus, I still have A Touch of Frost to catch up on. Where the justice, man? Where?
By the way, another great Simon quote, and one that goes against much traditional wisdom –
“My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.”
Followed by:
“Which brings us back to Average Reader. Because the truth is you can’t write just for people living the event, if the market will not also follow. TV still being something of a mass medium, even with all the fractured cable universe now reducing audience size per channel. Well, here’s a secret that I learned with Homicide and have held to: if you write something that is so credible that the insider will stay with you, then the outsider will follow as well. Homicide, The Corner, The Wire, Generation Kill—these are travelogues of a kind, allowing Average Reader/Viewer to go where he otherwise would not. He loves being immersed in a new, confusing, and possibly dangerous world that he will never see. He likes not knowing every bit of vernacular or idiom. He likes being trusted to acquire information on his terms, to make connections, to take the journey with only his intelligence to guide him. Most smart people cannot watch most TV, because it has generally been a condescending medium, explaining everything immediately, offering no ambiguities, and using dialogue that simplifies and mitigates against the idiosyncratic ways in which people in different worlds actually communicate. It eventually requires that characters from different places talk the same way as the viewer. This, of course, sucks.”
Please to let us finish Supernatural first? Thank yew.
Rich would probably love this. We’ll put it on the list.
Not the liost, which is what my fingers wanted to say.
There isn’t a hint of hyperbole in Chuck’s raving about The Wire’s greatness. It joins Deadwood as the only show I’ve ever watched start to finish, and definitely surpasses that series . . . which I also love.
Here are some of my favorite moments: the chess scene; McNulty’s drunken attempt to see how fast he can make a corner in his car; the “fuck” investigation scene in the murdered woman’s kitchen; Bubbles’ redemption; etc. I could go on all day, and I’m trying to avoid spoilers for people who haven’t watched.
As for favorites seasons, that is another great thing. Chuck says season 2 would consistently at the bottom; for me, that one would consistently be at the top for me.
Last fall Simon and Pelecanos were in Missoula for our Montana Festival of the Book participating in a tribute to James Crumley. They did a panel on The Wire which was fascinating. We had just wrapped up watching the whole run, so it was perfect timing. I felt very fortunate to have been able to attend — all around great stuff!
I’ve always loved that Simon quote about Fuck the average reader. Writing for the average reader is like talking to a five year old. If I wanted to write for a five year old I’d write Goodnight Fucking Moon.
The Wire never condescends, and it never pulls its punches. I can only hope we see something like it some time soon.
@Stephen: Ayup, I love that quote. I agree with it in theory, but like many theories, I dunno that it holds as much water, but it depends on how precisely one defines the average reader.
– c.
@Chris:
Dang, man, woulda killed to have been at that book festival. I think Pellecanos is going to be at Noircon in Philly, yeah?
– c.
Indeed he is.
I know — I saw that gay bar scene with Rawls. It changed all his dialogue for me.
My favorite scene of all time was Season #1, where the dialog for a good 3-5 minutes was variations on the word “fuck.” The one where they’re checking out the murder scene in the apartment, figuring out the bullet came from the window, with the landlord standing there watching. My jaw just kept dropping lower and lower at how much was communicated with inflection and body language. Fuckityfuckfuck.
Time to add The Wire to the ever-growing list of TV Shows I have to watch then. It’s funny, I feel like I’ve actually started watching more TV shows since I cancelled cable and became more selective as to what I watch.
I’ll watch it after I finish catching up on 30 Rock, Peep Show and Deadwood.
Regarding the brilliance of the plot, I generally call out as an exemplar that payphone call made in the first season that simultaneously, in a *single frickin’ scene* is not only a major plot event in two previously totally separate storylines (the investigation and the internal operations of the Barksdale gang), but actually unifies them in a gripping fashion. I remember as I was watching that being both enthralled by the story itself, and also jaw-on-the-floor impressed with the craft of the thing.
We’re still working our way through the series, as we got distracted by life during Season 3, but we’re getting back into it now.
However, anyone who prefers any opening music over that of Season 2 – Tom Waits’ original, of which the others are all covers – should report for re-education. And leeching.
–
Patrick
Probably my all-time favorite TV series.
The plot lines are superb, but for me it’s the dialogue and the characters and the relationships between the characters that truly put THE WIRE over the top and leave it unmatched by other shows.
Being a big fan of Simon’s book HOMICIDE, my favorite scene, i think, would have to be the lie detector scene.
And I have to go with Tom Waits’ original take on the theme as the best.
With you 100%, Wendig.
I always loved the Deacon. “A good churchman is always up in everyone’s shit.”
And the decent ex-con who ends up teaching kids how to box. And screws their mums.
And the whole arc of series 4 with the kids and what happens to them. So much great stuff.
Oh, and I really like Series 2. I think Series 5 is my least favourite, if only because the newspaper room doesn’t have the same nuance. But the downfall of the Sobotka boys breaks my heart.
That’s right, Wood: “It’s how we do.”
I think my favourite season is the fourth, just because I have literally never seen child actors better than those four kids, ever. I mean, given what they have to do, to say, to play? There’s nothing I can think of that they put on the screen that I don’t believe.
My favourite moment is Chris beating Michael’s stepfather to death with his bare hands, and spitting on the corpse – because even as the meaning of his actions sunk in, shedding new light on the character, I *knew* abandoning their careful method of murder out of rage would come back – and it did, the next season.
My favourite episode, though, is “The Hunt” from the first season; the episode after Kima gets shot. It’s a perfect demonstration, I think, of the good and the awful things about an institution like the police department; the way they all come together – even Rawls reassuring McNulty! – followed by the pointless theatre of “dope on the table”.
@Wood: Season Two is heartbreaking (though the same could be said for just about every season, with maybe the exception of one and three) — thing is, it’s also the slowest to get into, and the one most “separate” from the other seasons. It ends so well, but starts so slow and so incongruously that it falls to the bottom of a most excellent list.
I really liked Season Five — was surprised, since I heard some not-so-good stuff. The newspaper stuff was compelling; liked that it had that “writer” angle.
– c.
@Christopher:
Yeah, Seasons Three and Four arm wrestle for the top spot to me. Season Three is just so classic, so Greek, so Shakespearean. But Season Four is more real, more authentic, more heartbreaking.
All so good.
– c.
@Kent, Patrick –
I love the Waits original, but believe it or not, it’s not my favorite in terms of what best fits the show. Strange, I know, but there it is.
– c.
@ Chuckles: I suppose that I didn’t like Gus — he was too much of an incongruous white-hat, even if he did go nowhere at the end, while the fake serial killer plot seemed a step too far in a series otherwise utterly believable.
Series two has the episode “No Prologue” in it, of course, wherein Omar performs in court (“I got the shotgun… you gots the briefcase. It’s all in the game, yo”) and poor, tragic, noble D’Angelo Barksdale delivers his swansong. I think that’s one of my favourite single episodes.
@Christopher: actually, Chris’ killing of Michael’s dad really struck me because it was, like, suddenly, with that act of violence, you understand who Chris was and why he was the way he was. It was harrowing and brilliant.
All Prologue. Brainfart.
I also really like dthe handling of Omar at the end. Not usually a fan of irony because it’s most often a poor writer’s version of afart joke in a bad comedy, but in that case they nailed it and it was brilliant.
after watching season four of the wire, i was ready to unplug the TV and throw it out. Done. No need for it anymore.
Amazing show. Happy it finished, because it was time. Do the story then leave the story.
But DAMN, what a story.
I even forgive them for having a fake Stringer.
One nitpick, in the whole run. And it was pointed out to me by McFet, damn him.
The thing with Weebay and the tropical fish. Nice comedy moment, sure. But them fish? they take some money and some time. They take care. The show’s expecting us to beleive that a high profile soldier can keep sneaking off for twenty minutes a day, and spend money, without the other crew members thinking he’s cheating them or snitching?