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The Wire Final Season

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from: Jeffrey Goldberg
to: David Plotz

Week 9: Bunk, Kima, and Loyalty

Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 1:17 PM ET

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

Dear David,

Yak milk? How did you know about the yak milk? I thought we kept that a secret.

In re: your Bunk post—don't get like that with me. Or I'm going to have to ... I don't know. Post a highly negative review of The Genius Factory on Amazon? I was going to write that I would "bust a cap in your ass," but only white people talk that way anymore, and, as one of Washington's foremost gay black stickup artists, I can't be heard talking like a white guy from Potomac.

I haven't sufficiently grappled with your previous assertion that Bunk chose "loyalty over right" by keeping silent on McNulty's hijinks because I didn't want to enter a debate I knew I couldn't win, at least not inside the excessively rational, anti-tribal culture fostered at Slate. And I won't now, except to say that I don't see the binary you apparently see when you hold up "loyalty" as the opposite of "right." These men are friends and comrades. Like most police partners, they have been in mortal danger together, and they have saved each other's lives. Their connection is profound. You tend to overlook the flaws of people who have actually saved your life; this is true in police work and in any army. Given that McNulty isn't pillaging, robbing, or raping; given that his crime is well-intentioned; and given that Bunk's homicide squad benefits from McNulty's scam, I don't think Bunk made the wrong choice by keeping silent. He should have counseled his partner more strenuously against such stupidity, but I would think less of him if he ran to the bosses to rat out his friend. And, by the way, in real life, I'm not sure a detective in Kima's position would rat Jimmy out, either.

There, now you know my position on loyalty. Which actually should serve you well, as an officially sanctioned friend of Goldberg. I'm even thinking of bringing you along the next time I hit one of Marlo's stash houses.

Best,
Jeff

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from: Jeffrey Goldberg
to: David Plotz

Week 9: Bunk, Kima, and Loyalty

Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 1:17 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

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