It's not just Prop Joe who got did this week. All the chunky old veterans were kicked to the curb. Joe got a bullet in the brain. Plus-size police commissioner Ervin Burrell got a plaque. And spare-tired police reporter Roger Twigg got a final scoop and one last byline. (Oh, and Hungry Man, who's not fat but is, apparently, hungry, got it worst of all.) Each was a victim of the octopuslike system that Simon believes is destroying America. The younger, colder Marlo—the living embodiment of conscienceless capitalism—sucks every bit of useful information from Joe before corpsing him. The mayor who cares for nothing but his own political ambition chops down Burrell, but not for any principled, improve-the-city purpose. Toolish editors Whiting and Klebanow force Twigg to quit, simply to serve their rapacious corporate masters.
(I also think it's sly that the fat old-timers are replaced by the lean-and-hungry: Marlo has never consumed anything but a lollipop on the screen. And as I wrote last week, Burrell's heir-apparent Daniels suffers from an acute case of manorexia.)
I totally agree about the power of the Prop Joe-Marlo drama. And I love watching Carver's frustration over the disintegration of his department, at the very moment his career is taking off. But I continue to puzzle over practically everything else. The fake serial killer story line is increasingly operatic and mannered: What did you make of that Hieronymous Bosch spectacle in the homeless encampment? A bit too much, if you ask me. And as you say, the no-cursing-in-the-newsroom speech defied belief (though, even as I write that, I am betting we get e-mail from at least one reporter who's been on the receiving end of such a lecture from some newspaper-chain middle manager).
My favorite moment of the episode: when Prop Joe and Herc are waiting around in lawyer Levy's office and Joe tells Herc that he and Burrell attended high school together, back in the day (a connection, incidentally, that is meant to foreshadow their simultaneous downfalls). Prop Joe says of Burrell, in that inimitable Jovian drawl: "Ervin was a year before me at Dunbar. He was in the glee club."
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"?
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.
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.
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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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