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The Wire Final Season

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from: Jeffrey Goldberg
to: David Plotz

Week 6: Death of the Co-Op, Death of The Wire

Posted Monday, Feb. 11, 2008, at 11:21 AM ET

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

Dear David,

It struck me while watching the sixth, and so far most implausible, episode of the final season that the death of the co-op signals the death of The Wire. How's that for a topic sentence? But think about it: The co-op was one of David Simon's cleverest inventions (the funeral home gatherings were my favorite, as they were yours, I believe). Now, he's giving us the inane, banal, and systematically unrealistic Baltimore Sun newsroom. Four episodes left, and hope grows dim.

Have you, by any chance, noticed that each episode now delivers some sodden journalistic cliché? Last week, Gus informed us, with knowing weariness, that "if it bleeds, it leads." Fascinating thought. This week, the judge helpfully instructs Pearlman and McNulty never to "pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel." Next week, I imagine, we'll receive a lesson on the "Five Ws and How." I don't understand what's happening here. I still find it hard to believe that David Simon has nothing interesting to say about newspapering.

To answer your question, no, of course the alleged Marine's story would never pass muster in a day. Imagine this conversation between Plotz and Goldberg:

Goldberg: David, I just met a mentally ill homeless man under an overpass, and he told me the true story of the battle of Falluja in beautifully rendered detail.

Plotz: Hold the front page!

I'm not sure it would take three weeks to confirm the basics of the story, but it certainly would take a week or so just to confirm his true identity. Besides, no capable city editor would allow this story even to come to the attention of his managing editor without doing some basic verification first, especially if the reporter who reeled in the story was so obviously mistrusted by his own desk. Thank you for pointing this out—I can't believe I missed the absurdity of this scene the first time around. I think I was too busy railing against Templeton's Kansas City Star T-shirt, which, you have to admit, was idiotic. More than idiotic, actually—it was insulting. We're not dumb; we get that Templeton is, among other things, a yokel and an outsider, unworthy of Simon's newsroom.

Aaargh.

At least we have the Bunk, as you note. Don't you get the sense that it will be the Bunk's careful police work, rather than McNulty's haywire scheming, that unravels Marlo? And that Michael is the thread he'll pull?

Jeff

P.S. I've got nothing for you on the Pogues. I'm comprehensively uninterested now in McNulty.

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from: Jeffrey Goldberg
to: David Plotz

Week 6: Death of the Co-Op, Death of The Wire

Posted Monday, Feb. 11, 2008, at 11:21 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

(To reply, click here.)

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