Week 6: Predicting Who Lives and Who Dies
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
To: David PlotzPosted Monday, Feb. 11, 2008, at 4:14 PM ETJeffrey Goldberg and David Plotz were online on March 6 to chat about The Wire. Read the transcript.
Dear David,
What kind of Jew is Amy Winehouse? My guess is a heroin-addicted Jew. With a great voice.
She's actually the offspring of London blue-collar Jewry (her father's a taxi driver), which is a fast-disappearing subset of a fast-disappearing community; and she's apparently excited—when she's not cooked—by her Jewishness. In fact, she keeps threatening to make a Hanukkah album, which, by the way, I'm all for. Winehouse would stand a good chance of introducing danger back into a once-thrilling and complicated holiday (When Elephants Attack Jews!—go look it up) that's been pasteurized and homogenized to within an inch of its eight-day life.
Interesting, very smart, point from Emily Bazelon. Maybe she's identified the reason that we've been so discombobulated by this season. I'm particularly unhappy with Lester's transformation. He and Bunk were the moral centers of the cop-shop, and I need Lester to be Lester, not McNulty's partner in stupidity. It's strange to flip the script on us so late in the story, and it's not working. This is why I think there's still a chance Lester will trap Marlo, rather than Bunk; because if he doesn't, then he's just a shmuck, and that's a terrible way to end this show, with Lester a shmuck. What would be the argument for turning Lester into a shmuck? That the city, its oafishness, made its greatest detective crazy by denying him a shopping run to Best Buy?
Chris dies. That's my prediction. You're right about Marlo—Marlo has to live, because capitalism can't be put down, but Chris can be shed. Snoop, however, is too smart to die. And corruption most certainly won't die, which is why I predict that Clay Davis is left standing, and maybe Templeton, too. No, almost certainly Templeton: I can't imagine David Simon letting the good guys—and Gus is Simon's dashboard saint—win in the Baltimore Sun newsroom. For him, that would be a fairy tale.
As for Omar, I think it's quite possible Omar dies, for the same reason that Marlo lives. Omar still has a code; he's a throwback—he robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and he listens to Motown, just in case you didn't get that he's a throwback. Omar's way of life is over, and I think he could be over, as well.
Jeff
Week 6: Predicting Who Lives and Who Dies
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
To: David PlotzPosted Monday, Feb. 11, 2008, at 4:14 PM ETEmily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX. 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 Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. You can e-mail him at .
John Swansburg is Slate's culture editor. You can e-mail him at and follow him at www.twitter.com/swansburg.
June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. You can e-mail her at or follow her on Twitter. 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.
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.)
(1/7)
What did you think of this article?
Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum
SPONSORED CONTENT
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
After Fort Hood, There's No Excuse for the Ban on Women in Combat
What Does "Stable Condition" Mean? Absolutely Nothing.
Jim Carrey's Admirably Restrained Scrooge
The Great New Single That's a Little Bit Whitney Houston and a Little Bit Rusted Root
Joe Biden Explains His Gaffe-Evasion Strategy
The Box: A Creepy, Confusing Thriller From the Guy Who Brought You Donnie Darko
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.)
(1/7)