TV Club

Week 3: Who Doesn’t Like a Blind Bartender?

Dear David,

The people of America—including the .00003 percent who watch The Wire—can rest easy now that Jack Shafer is going to weigh in on Simon. Prediction: Jack pisses him off.

This means, I suppose, that we can go back to talking about the show next week. Which is a relief, of course. A thought struck me not long ago, a dangerous one: Perhaps the weakness of the Baltimore Sun subplot is not Simon’s fault, but ours. And by “ours,” I mean all of us in journalism. Maybe we’re just not that interesting; David Simon can’t make us interesting; David Milch couldn’t make us interesting; maybe even David Chase himself couldn’t make us interesting. Well, maybe he couldn’t make me interesting. You, he could build a show around. 

An amendment to an earlier post: Alert reader (and Jack Shafer acolyte) Ryan Grim points out that, though Butchie was not water-boarded by Chris and Snoop, he was in fact “liquor-boarded,” before he was shot in the legs and then murdered. Butchie’s demise was unfortunate—who doesn’t like a blind bartender?— but at least it brings Omar back into our lives, and, with any luck, Omar’s return will set off all sorts of conflicts between Marlo and Chris and Prop Joe and Slim Charles and Cheese, all of whom are much more interesting than the sad-sack denizens of the Sun newsroom. As Mitt Romney recently said, “Woof woof.”

Jeff