The Wire

I've been a bit lax on my film blogging as of late but that's probably because I spent about two months watching nothing but "The Wire". Much has been written about this show, by people more intelligent than myself, so this won't be as in-depth as I would like it to be. If I can convince just one person to give this show a try it will have been worth the time spent writing about it.

If an alien culture came to Earth to learn about us but limited their observation to prime time network television, it would be safe to assume that at least half of our population is employed in law enforcement. On the four major networks alone I was able to count 23 different police/investigation shows. Does this imply that the networks are creatively bankrupt or that they have just perfected the art of giving people what they want? The worst of these shows have devolved into what I consider to be the most tired forms of American entertainment: the police procedural. The procedural is nothing new. Sherlock Holmes was doing it 120 years ago and the mass market paperback charts are dominated by the likes of Sue Grafton and James Patterson. I don't know how many CSIs, SVUs, and NCISs we need, but television execs will continue putting out the same uninspired, formulaic and melodramatic cop shows as long as we keep watching them.

It took nearly four years of people telling me that The Wire was the best show on television before I decided to sit down and finally watch the pilot episode. After all, it was a cop show, a genre which I've come to despise. I've never even watched any of the critically acclaimed police shows like NYPD Blue or The Shield.So it was with great reservations that I began my first episode of The Wire.

The first episode failed to engage me. As a pilot episode it fails to make its concept clear and doesn't introduce any particularly intriguing characters. At this point I was ready to exert my superiority over the so-called critics by dismissing the show as another typical procedural. But at least it felt different than most of the slickly produced network cop shows. It throws you into the middle of a culture that you may not be familiar or comfortable with. A lot of the lingo and legal speak went over my head but I had to give it credit for not trying to coddle the audience. At the end of the episode I was more interested in the style of it than the plot or the characters but if it hadn't been for the shows reputation I might not have given it another chance.

By the end of episode 2 the pieces started to fall into place and something finally clicked with me. We're left with a ragtag detail of police officers who seem ill equipped to take down a much more organized and disciplined drug organization. The detectives are hamstrung by the bureaucracy within their own department and the forces of the drug runners are comprised mostly of desperate young men who live in abject poverty. We can see that the conflict between these two groups is going to be the major conflict of the series but The Wire manages to paint them both as underdogs. In acknowledgment of this hopeless situation one of the characters in episode 2 utters the words "The game is rigged but you cannot lose if you do not play."

Watching The Wire is sort of like being in an abusive relationship. It will kick your ass and break your heart and you will still keep coming back for more because you don't know what else to do. I've never felt such a compulsion to watch a show. I devoured over 60 hours of this series in a few weeks which is an obsessive quality that I don't normally exhibit.

While watching this show you are never consciously aware that you are watching a scripted drama. The Wire is so honest and uncompromising that you feel like you're involved in some kind of fictionalized documentary. Shocking and horrible things will happen to people that you come to care about and these things have such a weight to them that you may feel like you've lost a member of your own family. All the artifice and contrivances of network cop shows are stripped away and events feel like they are unfolding naturally rather than carefully constructed to fit within an hour drama. One of the The Wire's major failings as a TV drama is that it is not a show you can watch casually. You're not likely to drop in for an hour and get any kind of self contained story. But by that same token, you wouldn't read a single chapter of a book out of context. And The Wire plays more like a novel than a television show, with plot lines taking a whole season (or even a few years) to resolve. And just like real life, those resolutions don't always deliver a satisfying conclusion.

Perhaps The Wire's greatest strength is that it's essentially a sociology class disguised as entertainment. And like any good class it doesn't necessarily give you the answers, but it does lead you to ask questions. In season three when a desperate police captain creates a free zone for drug dealers, you have to ask yourself if essentially legalizing drugs is justifiable even though it seems to have a positive effect on the community. Season four introduces you to the world of an inner city school as Officer Roland Pryzbylewski transfer into a different kind of public service: teaching. He soon learns that a middle school can be every bit as dangerous as the drug corners. Here the show steps dangerously close to echoing one of those cliched "inspirational teacher" movies; that is until we remember that in the world of The Wire a happy ending is not guaranteed.

I've heard people say that The Wire is a show that will ruin TV for you. I've given myself a few weeks to process the show and I'm afraid that might be true. The other day I watched the pilot episode of Fox's "Fringe", essentially a police procedural with a sci-fi twist. I had seen this episode before and I quite liked it the first time. The second time around I felt like I was watching it through a veil of artifice. Lance Reddick, who plays Lt. Cedric Daniels on The Wire, plays a very similar character on Fringe. After watching him over the course of The Wire's five seasons it was painful to see him chew on Fringe's hackneyed dialog. While the man may be happy to be working, I'm that deep down he knows he'll never be involved in something as raw and powerful as The Wire ever again. Looking at the new fall television lineup it's easy to see that the networks have fallen into the same old trap again. Nothing looks particularly risky or innovative. In the past I might have been willing to give some of these shows a try but I guess my heart just isn't in it. I'm afraid that The Wire has ruined TV for yet another viewer.

As for that bold claim that The Wire is the best show ever broadcast on television, well that's really hard to say. Everyone has their own tastes and opinions so it's kind of pointless to make such a claim. However, if someone said to me that this was the most important show ever, I don't think I could put up much of an argument.