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The Wire Final Season

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 8: Why Marlo Is Safe

Posted Monday, Feb. 25, 2008, at 11:18 AM ET

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

Dear Jeff,

When The Wire ended, I switched right over to the Academy Awards. Now that's a culture shock and a comedown: Clay Davis to Colin Farrell. On the other hand, now they're playing that great song from Once, so I'm not going to complain too much.

Much as I would prefer to bicker with you, I totally agree about the episode's excellence and about Omar's murder. Even though Omar's shooting was the YouTube superspoiler sent to me by a reader a couple of weeks ago, it still came as a heart-rending shock. Didn't you like the way they set it up with that shot of Kenard preparing to set fire to an alley cat? Omar's death also gave us a wonderful newsroom moment: Prop Joe's murder at least rated a brief in the paper, but not Omar's. Even the Dalai Gus—who bought Google at $70, cooks chicken soup for his shut-in neighbor, and restores the blind to sight with a well-chosen word—doesn't know who Omar is and blows off his killing.

You've been right about an astonishing number of your predictions, but I can't get behind your Chris-killing-Marlo guess. I still don't think Marlo can die: The lesson of The Wire has to be that the game never stops and that it always gets worse. Avon could be deposed, because Marlo was there to replace him and make the streets bloodier and crueler. But Marlo, as the embodiment of the remorselessness of capitalism, can't be killed, because there's no one who could replace him. If Marlo died, there would a vacuum: None of his lieutenants or rivals possesses his homicidal entrepreneurship. Marlo's death would leave us the possibility of hope, but I don't think Simon would leave us with that. As he's shown us time and again, he believes only in individual redemption—Bubbles, or Bunny and Namond. The city itself, and all the institutions that belong to it, can only get worse. So, I think Marlo's safe. Then again, I've been wrong about everything else.

I've been watching the decay of Carcetti with a sickening fascination, and tonight's scene between him and his wife was particularly choice. When we see Carcetti scheming with Norman and his other cronies, his relentless ambition seems natural and acceptable. Transplanted into the home, into sweet domesticity, it's revealed for the cynical sickness that it is. His wife is repulsed and disturbed by his opportunism, reminding us that we have to be, too. As I wrote those sentences, I realized that the Carcetti/wife moment parallels the McNulty/Beadie face-off at the end of the episode: Jimmy expects forgiveness from Beadie for his professional crime (and personal sins), but she turns her back on him. It is the women, in the sanctity of home—the only safe space on The Wire—who can see the ugly truth about their men and their deeds.

Omar-less and rudderless,
David

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Week 8: Why Marlo Is Safe

Posted Monday, Feb. 25, 2008, at 11:18 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.

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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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