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The Wire Final Season

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 7: Bitey the Bloodthirsty

Posted Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, at 12:16 PM ET

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

Dear Jeff,

Why be such a hater? (Or should that be hata?)

On the Obonda joke, cut David Simon and Richard Price some slack. Six months ago, they made a guess that 1) Barack Obama would be an important enough cultural figure in late February that they could risk a joke about him; and 2) Obama's support among black voters might be tenuous or touchy enough that the joke would make sense. They were dead right about No. 1 and a little bit off about No. 2. You really want to fault them for failing to predict the ebb and flow of the Democratic primary campaign? Do you actually think their six-month-out guess was worse than the (much more recent) forecasts by political reporters and pundits whose job it is to follow the race? I don't, and I give them ballsy points for risking the joke at all.

Yes, I share your general dismay about the linked faux serial killer/newspaper fabulist plots. (Klebanow, in particular, was ridiculous this week, more Dr. Evil than Marimow.) But given that we're yoked to these stories—this is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where you can start over with a different plot point—I think Simon and Co. did a dazzling job turning manure into fuel this week. As with Hamsterdam—the Season 3 premise that was almost as preposterous as this year's Bitey the Bloodthirsty—the unraveling can vindicate the awkward setup. The collapse of Hamsterdam, which gave us Bunny Colvin's disgrace, the return of crazed drug violence, and the seeds of Marlo's rise, was dazzling to watch. And while I'm not claiming that the Bitey plot holds a candle to Hamsterdam, I found this week's escalation at the mayor's office, police department, and yes, even the newspaper, fascinating and persuasive. It's going to be fun watching it all fall apart in the next couple of weeks.

Also, I think you're wrong that the killing of Savino is vintage Omar. He has killed while stealing from drug dealers, and he killed Stringer Bell for revenge, but I can't remember him taking out a random bad guy like that. Readers, who's right about this, me or Jeff? Is this the same old Robin Hood Omar or a new Omar?

A couple of weeks ago, I whined that The Wire doesn't show young black men in the working world, but this week it had a heartbreaking nod in that direction—Dukie flipping through the want ads. The jobs are hopelessly out of his reach. He doesn't even know what most of them are.

David

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 7: Bitey the Bloodthirsty

Posted Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, at 12:16 PM 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.

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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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