Jeffrey Goldberg and David Plotz were online on March 6 to chat about The Wire. Read the transcript.
Dear Jeff,
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StumbleUponMaybe it was just that melodramatically tight closing shot of Omar—thank God! Omar—distraught over Butchie's death, but I thought there was a slight telenovela feel to Episode 3. Or maybe it is the too-fast way the show has altered its characters this season. We're not in Bold and the Beautiful territory—no one has suddenly remembered that she's actually a lesbian incest victim—but McNulty, Marlo, and Clay Davis have all become very different men, very fast. Sen. Davis, who has always projected omnicompetence in his sleazy dealings, is uncharacteristically panicky as the grand jury investigation tightens around him. Marlo, who's terrifying because of his total lack of affect, cracked this week, revealing an unexpected anxiety about his money.
And Jimmy McNulty—well, what to say about Jimmy's extreme makeover? In this episode, Jimmy embellishes his serial-killer fabrication, inventing—over Bunk's fierce objections and with the help of a flask of Jameson's—a murderer who targets homeless men and marks his victims with red ribbons.* Jimmy plants evidence, tampers with a corpse, and forges documents, drinking and screwing blondes in the few minutes he's not inventing crimes. I'm whiplashed by Jimmy's fall: We've always known that his sweet domesticity couldn't last, but don't you think this nose dive is too much, too quickly?
As for the serial-killer plot itself, I'm ambivalent. It seems a little far-fetched to imagine that Jimmy and ultimate good cop Lester could betray the job so easily. On the other hand, Simon proved in Season 3 that he could take an outlandish premise and make it enthralling. The drug-legalization zone of Hamsterdam, the great idea of Season 3, was as far-fetched as Jimmy's fake serial killer, and Simon made it utterly gripping and persuasive. Maybe he will do it again this year.
What I loved most in this episode was its variations on the theme of escape, or rather, the impossibility of it. The scene of Marlo, fish out of water, trying to get his money at the Antilles bank reminded me of Season 4's most powerful moment, when Bunny took the kids to a fancy downtown restaurant and they panicked. Then there was Omar's brief fling with beach life at the end of the episode, another reminder that the game will keep sucking you back in. And there was Michael and Dukie's glorious day out at the amusement park, which ends with Michael in trouble for leaving the corner. Some of the best scenes in The Sopranos were when the insular characters encountered the outside world—Vito hiding out in the New Hampshire B&B, Paulie and Chrisopher lost in the snowy pine barrens. The Wire too understands the power of claustrophobia, the terrible difficulty of leaving the familiar.
As for the newspaper subplot, the less said, the better. (I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said, "do more with less" this season—I could afford to take the Sun buyout.)
David
Correction, Jan. 22, 2008: The article originally stated that McNulty relied on the help of Jim Beam. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
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Remarks from the Fray:
I hope Goldberg and Plotz move on to discussing the idea that the press is complicit in allowing the inner-city (especially black inner-city) to decay by not paying attention to the problems that caused its sharp decline. Maybe newsroom characters feel cliched, but shouldn't we discuss how they enter into the "War on Drugs"?
--tsell89
(To reply, click here.)
So far as we've seen most of the newspapermen are indeed stock characters, but that's nothing to worry about. Except for a few leads each season, very few characters have conflicting motives. Think Clay Davis, Mayor Royce, Herc, Horse, Burrell, Rawles, Weebay, Chris Partlow, Snoop, the school administrators, even Marlo.
The strength of the show isn't in the complexity of the characters; it's in the multi-layered coherent vision, the way these somewhat two-dimensional characters all affect one another. Granted, that's a formula for pedagogy, but what saves the show (and not only saves it but really does make it the best show ever) is the one thing that fools everyone into thinking that Snoop, with her paucity of lines and sole motivation of kill-everyone-Marlo-tells-me-to, is a great character -- namely, style.
All the characters have great style, great lines. It's what makes the show fun as well as edifying. And from what I can tell, the newspapermen are going to have as much style as anyone. "Stay hungry. Good things come... when they come." C'mon.
--jamessal
(To reply, click here.)
I don't doubt that the busyness of the first episode had a lot to do with the retards at HBO deciding to cut the Wire from 13 episodes to 10 for its final season but I know Simon will make it work in spite of his bosses stupidity.
As far as Jeffrey's weak defense of the Sopranos, give it up man. The show lost its way after 3 seasons, so the claim that the Sopranos was on longer is not much of an excuse. Of course it is probably true that the Sopranos was a victim of its own massive popularity, while the Wire has been able to stay on course precisely because nobody was watching. Maybe if David Simon had gotten all the money and all the ball licking from critics that David Chase received he would have turned into a hack writer as well.
--sir biff
(To reply, click here.)
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