I just started watching, and am likewise wondering about just how realistic it is. Sure, it’s sold on realism, and I liked the touches showing how limited the gang member’s worldview is (one lackey said Hamilton wasn’t a president, while the head guy insisted that anyone on money must have been a president. One survey I saw showed that a significant number of blacks thought that blacks were the majority in the US.) But I wonder whether the show, in order to attain some semblance of balance, brushes up gang life while overly denigrating the police. It seems like the gang they’re talking about is highly efficient and organized, and I doubt that that is the case for most crime, even organized crime.
Cops
Bunk
Kima
Carver
Bunny Colvin
Prez (after season 1)
Civilians
Bubbles
Cutty
Walon
All four lead students in season 4
Crooks
D’Angelo
Wallace
Bodie
You had no sympathy for any of these characters?
I have no idea what you’re talking about. What “hardcore liberal” views do you think are being put forward in The Wire?
Really? Bunk, Lester, Carver, Kima, etc. etc. etc. were assholes all the time? Gotta call bullshit on that. Hell, even Herc was decent once or twice (the end of the IID investigation; talking to Bodie’s grandmother), and he’s the least likable one on the show, IMO. And Stringer was a self-centered, lying, murderous asshole as often as he was charming. Maybe we were watching different shows.
Seems to me to come across as a fictional representation of the police world as viewed through the lens of an ex-cop (Ed Burns, Simon’s writing partner and co-creator, was an ex-homicide detective as well as an ex-schoolteacher, so I trust the two of them more than I do you on the issue, no offense) - I never saw any political ideology put forward in the way the police force was portrayed. There was no shortage of basically decent cops who wanted to do good on the show.
I also read Homicide and watched the TV show, and while both were great, they didn’t approach The Wire in scope, for my money. And it’s not like cops were exactly whitewashed in either of those, either.
Then again, I find John LeCarre pretty much a hack, so maybe it’s down to differing tastes.
ETA: Damn! Beaten to the punch again!
That cops are all jerks. That management is all self-serving, uncaring, and nepotistic. That criminals are misunderstood and noble. In the end the system will always work against the common man. Not to mention setting aside an entire season for pro-legalized drugs–which would have been interesting if they’d reviewed drug laws and statistics in other nations, but instead gave a fantasy depiction that may or may not have anything to do with the real world.
I’d say that the scope of The Wire was significantly smaller. You have a smaller crew of police, a smaller crew of criminals, almost no interaction between the two, far fewer crimes, and far fewer methods of police methodology. The budget for The Wire was certainly bigger and it has better cinematography, but otherwise it’s really taking a fairly limited view of things.
And as said, Homicide presented a realistic view, not a whitewashed one. My point was that The Wire presents a blackwashed view of the cops.
Lester!
I don’t think this is a conclusion you can draw. What in the world is misunderstood and noble about Marlo, say? I think it shows both groups in an equal unflattering light, how they are both trapped by their institutions.
The legalisation experiment had huge problems, and the authors have stated that they do not support this method.
Sage Rat, one of the main points of the show is that the “War on Drugs” is a complete and utter failure, and in fact cannot possibly succeed. This is not a liberal point of view. No less a figure than William F. Buckley supported it, to say nothing of many police chiefs. However, if you wish to characterize it as “liberal,” then I agree with you: The Wire was “liberal.”
I think this is your bias, not the show’s. We named quite a few fairly decent cops who are doing their best in a tough situation. (I can’t believe I forgot to include Lester on my list! :smack:) And “self-serving, uncaring, and nepotistic” characterizes the crooks (and politicians) exactly as well as the cops.
In fact, The Wire is *constantly *drawing parallels between the worlds of the cops and the crooks (and the unions and the politicians and the schools and the media). This is not to say that the creators see them as morally equivalent, i.e., that the cops are as crooked as the crooks. In his original pitch to HBO, Simon explicitly said he wasn’t interested in the simple morality plays that define most primetime [del]drivel[/del] drama.
The Wire shows how **all **organizations have imperatives that shape the individuals that work within them, often in ways that actually subvert the ostensible goals of the organization. The cops can’t do real police work that would catch crooks because top management has to answer the political pressure to “jack the stats.” Barksdale’s gang can’t cooperate with other gangs and become more profitable because Avon is too obsessed with power and controlling corners. The politicians can’t do the things they really believe in because they have to make compromises to get re-elected. The schools can’t do the things that would really educate the kids, because they have to teach to the standardized tests. The journalists can’t do their jobs because management is more focused on winning awards than checking facts.
As for “misunderstood and noble” crooks, apart from D’Angelo, the only one I can think of who fits that description is Stringer, the one you said you liked best. Most of the rest are pathological, amoral, and unsympathetic scum. I don’t think Avon, Marlo, Chris Partlow, Snoop, Vondas, or The Greek have any nobility about them.
And there is nothing whitewashed about the Hampsterdam experiment. It shows an attempt to deal with drug enforcement through harm reduction, which has mild success in cleaning up a few neighborhoods, but creates a living hell inside its borders because there aren’t enough resources to really treat the addicts. But the point is that politicians can’t afford to look at the big picture and try to make unconventional ideas work: they inevitably buckle under pressure to maintain the status quo, even though everyone agrees the status quo is terrible.
In short, I don’t buy your charge of liberal bias in The Wire. What you’re forgetting is that *reality *has a well-known liberal bias.
I just finished watching the first season on netflix and i did not see this at all. I saw a bunch of real humans acting like real humans. Theres a lot of grey in this show, but at the end of the day the cops are just trying to do the best job they can, even the assholes, and the criminals are out there killing people, even the noble ones.
Was Sage Rat watching the same show as the rest of us? The Wire is an equal opportunities series: all groups get the same treatment, showing the bad, the good and the ugly in them.
It’s the wonderfully rich characters that make the show. Wait till you get to know the likes of Omar Little, the guy who makes his living robbing drug dealers, and Snoop Pearson, one of the killers working for Marlo. I guarantee you will never forget them. Stephen King called the latter the most fearsome female villain in fiction. And he’s right.
Enjoy.
Hell, even Shardene elicits some sympathy.
@ Sage Rat: In the end the system will always work against the common man." Sometimes the common man is against the common man. The writers say things in the world are against you, but they also say the things you do, say and decide work against you too.
Everything else has been said, but I’ll add this.
I’ve never in my life bought a DVD of any film or TV show: I bought all five seasons of The Wire – while unemployed.
What do you mean, even Shardene? Except for being a dancer and needing glasses, she’s one of the most decent and honorable characters in the show.
And she elicited a lot more than sympathy from me, if you get my drift!
I just meant by doing what she was doing in the place she was in, she was kind of forced into something else she was scared about doing (and then compelled to do out of anger), in addition to being a basically decent and honorable person otherwise. I’d hate to have been forced to make the choice she did, even though it was the decent one ultimately.
Is there a character on the show who doesn’t have any flaws whatsoever? The only one who even comes close is Beadie Russell. Lousy taste in men, maybe?
Sydnor maybe?
Actually, it’s got my all-time favorite exposition scene. I’ll spoilertag it, but it’s really a very minor spoiler with no effect on the ongoing story:
[spoiler]Early in Season 1, one drug dealer decides, for very plausible reasons, to explain to two other dealers how to play chess. He hunts around for a good metaphor, and finally settles on their own drug syndicate, analogizing each piece on the board to a member of the organization. The street dealers are pawns, the hit men are knights, and so forth. For each piece, he gives some specific details for the analogy.
The scene works as a mild character-building exercise, sure: it establishes that the first dealer is a good deal smarter than his compatriots. It’s kind of a funny scene. But it also uses an idea I’ve never seen before or since, what I think of as ironic exposition.
Superficially, the dealer is explaining to the other dealers how to play chess using the metaphor of how the crime syndicate works. But the real point of the scene is that the writer is using the metaphor of chess to explain to the viewer how the crime syndicate works. It’s done so smoothly that I, who normally dislike expository dialog, didn’t even recognize what the writer had accomplished until the episode was over.[/spoiler]
That scene in my mind cemented the brilliance of the writers.
Daniel
I’m afraid that chess scene seemed clichéd to me. Chess as a metaphor for life is not an original idea. I loved most of the stuff with D’Angelo in the pit, but that scene, not so much.
Watch The Wire or i shoot the bunny.
Colvin?
Agreed. To me, a much more nuanced scene (probably because it is the very first scene of the entire show) is Bunk and McNulty’s investigation and interview at Snot Boogie’s murder.