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The Wire Final Season

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 5: Omar Goes Too Far

Updated Monday, Feb. 4, 2008, at 10:38 AM ET

Jeffrey Goldberg and David Plotz were online on March 6 to chat about The Wire. Read the transcript.

Jeff,

So Omar is Batman now? He can dodge a hail of bullets, then fly off a fifth-story balcony, and slip away? The Wire has always allowed itself a little magical realism when it comes to Omar. Alone of the show's characters, he's allowed to exist outside the normal laws of space and time. We've seen that in small ways (last season's impossible, catbird-seat observation post) and large (his hilarious gunslinger duel with Brother Mouzone in Season 3). It's as though David Simon has decided, perhaps as a present to Omar's many fans, to suspend the show's otherwise ruthless realism when he walks on camera. That said, I fear the balcony escape stretches the Omar Rules too far.

I can explain in one word why this episode disappointed me so much: McNulty. I've already mentioned my puzzlement over Jimmy's too-fast decline and my frustration over the serial-killer fabrication, but it's something else about him that's troubling me: The show drags whenever Dominic West is on the screen. He lacks the unexpected, living, three-dimensionality of practically everyone else on The Wire—from Bunk to Carcetti to Marlo to Dukie. West's McNulty is a dead weight, and I think this season is suffering in direct proportion to the amount of time he spends on the screen. (Also, my friend Jessica Lazar asks a great question: If McNulty is such a drunken wreck, why does always he look so natty? He dresses dandier and dandier every episode.)

Let me return to another point I made a few weeks ago, about this season's over-preachiness. There was a stark example of that this week, in the heartbreaking scene between Cutty and Dukie. Having failed as a boxer, Dukie is finally realizing that he's not made for the streets, that he'll never have it in him to fight. (Boy, did I identify with him at that moment!) Cutty gently encourages him, saying that he has the intelligence to make something of himself. Dukie pleads, "How do you get from here to the rest of the world?" And Cutty answers, "I wish I knew." It's a beautiful scene, a perfect scene. But for reasons inexplicable, it continues. Dukie and Cutty are shot from behind as they leave the warm safety of the gym and enter the dark city. As they walk, they conduct a cliched, obvious version of the conversation they have already had. ("All I got is hopes and wishes …") Not for the first time this season, I muttered, "They need an editor!"

Enough griping. Here are some favorite moments for this week. When Chris asks Marlo how Vondas took the news of Prop Joe's death, Marlo deadpans, "The man overcame his grief." Norman cautions the mayor not to celebrate the Clay Davis indictment: "You don't dance on Clay's grave unless you are sure the motherfucker's dead." And as for Davis himself—what a show! His talk-radio spiel was a hypnotizing monologue, and he also uttered the longest "sheeeeeee-it" in the history of The Wire.

Finally, big ups to you, for predicting both that Herc would betray Marlo and that McNulty and Templeton would merge their crazy fabrications. Also kudos to David Simon, who proved both of us wrong about newsroom cursing. Both of us doubted that any journalist had ever been chastised by a boss for excessive profanity, but we invited our colleagues to correct us. During the week, Romenesko's Letters column and my inbox crammed with stories from journalists who had been rebuked for their dirty mouths. I also liked all the letters celebrating the importance of vulgarity to the newsroom. I particularly recommend this story, whose punch line is, "Thanks, sheriff. Now I owe you TWO blow jobs."

David

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 5: Omar Goes Too Far

Updated Monday, Feb. 4, 2008, at 10:38 AM ET

DISCUSS

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor. Andy Bowers is the editor of Slate V. Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for the Atlantic and the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror. Melinda Henneberger is a Slate contributor and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians To Hear. David Plotz is Slate's editor. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. You can e-mail him at . John Swansburg is a Slate associate editor. June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. You can e-mail her at .

Entry 1: Photograph of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 8: Photograph of Clark Johnson, Brandon Young, Michelle Paress, and Tom McCarthy by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 21: Photograph of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, Jamie Hector, Method Man, and Robert F. Chew by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008. Entry 27: Photograph of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 42: Still of Wendell Pierce by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 52: Still of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 57: Photograph of Sonja Sohn, Wendell Pierce, and Dominic West by Nicole Rivelli © 2008 HBO. Entry 61: Still of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008.

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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

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