tv club: Talking television.

The Wire Final Season

tv club
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 7: This Is The Wire That I Fell in Love With

Posted Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, at 7:01 AM ET

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

Dear Jeff,

Kima staring out on the moonlit streets of Baltimore and reciting this benediction to her sleepless semi-son: "Good night, moon. Good night, popos. Good night, fiends. Good night, hoppers. Good night, hustlers. Good night, scammers. Good night to everybody. Good night to one and all." What a spectacular ending to a sublime episode!

This is The Wire that I fell in love with. I didn't think there could be a television courtroom scene better than Omar's testimony in the Season 2 murder trial, but last night's Clay Davis soliloquy, culminating with that grand gesture of standing up and turning his empty pockets inside out, topped it. If Isaiah Whitlock Jr. doesn't get an Emmy (or at least his own sitcom) after his performance this season, there's no justice. (Which, as we learned in the Davis trial, there isn't.)

You and I haven't paid much attention to The Wire's directors or writers, but Episode 7 was so great that I want to give all praise to novelist Richard Price (Clockers), who wrote it, and Dominic West, who directed it. West, who plays Jimmy McNulty, even improved his own performance. The Jimmy of Episode 7 is enthrallingly confused: anxious over his escalating fraud, gleeful at helping his colleagues advance their cases, embarrassed at his new sugar-daddy role as "boss."

A few things that stood out for me in Episode 7. First, the obsession with money. From Clay Davis' fee negotiation with his lawyer, to Carcetti's short-lived joy after raising $92,000 for his gubernatorial campaign, to Davis' courtroom peroration, to the judge nudging Rhonda to pick up the check, to the police department and newspaper pouring resources into their homeless-killer investigations, to Omar spurning Marlo's cash, money is the deep theme of the episode. Or rather, the fallacy of money: The police chiefs, the editors, and the mayor think money is the answer. But the dollar isn't almighty: Money can't solve a murder that never really happened.

Second: the continued martyrdom of Bunk. Did you notice how many shots of Bunk showed him squashed, as though a weight was bearing down on him? Watch those scenes of him in the office: He appears crushed in the foreground, struggling with his real police work, while the charade of the serial killer investigation plays out behind him.

Third: the lovely visual joke of Marlo's watches. The cops don't know what time it is!

I suspect that Omar signed his own death warrant this week. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Omar has never killed for sport before, never murdered an innocent. Savino isn't a choirboy, but he never wronged Omar directly. By doing Savino, cold-blooded, on the street, Omar betrays his own code. He's no longer a sanguinary angel, just an outlaw gangster. He may still have his revenge on Marlo, but he may have lost his halo of protection.

Yours with delight,
David

tv club
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 7: This Is The Wire That I Fell in Love With

Posted Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, at 7:01 AM ET

DISCUSS

E-MAIL

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 deputy 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.

Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum

What did you think of this article?

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

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)

also in slate