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Gritty crime drama down to 'The Wire'
The HBO show begins its fifth and last season of skewering institutions.
By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic
Published January 6, 2008
Nothing comes easy for David Simon, creator of HBO's amazing crime drama, The Wire.
These days, he should be basking in the fifth and final season of a series acknowledged as one of television's best.
Renowned for marathon interview sessions, he should be helping the world's media convince you to give a final look at a TV show that unfolds like fine literature - a book's worth of plot, character and social commentary wedged onto the small screen.
Instead, an angry Simon has been muzzled by the Hollywood writers strike. He's obeying a request from the writers union that members avoid press interviews to promote shows filmed before the work stoppage.
So let me speak for him. If you haven't yet seen this intricate, Baltimore crime fable, head down to your nearest Blockbuster, Netflix account or Wal-Mart and grab a DVD of the earlier seasons.
Enjoy a funny, incisive, sometimes profane, often endearing take on the failure of modern American institutions. Doesn't matter if it's today's TV industry, Baltimore city government or the so-called war on drugs - in The Wire's world, there is no cause so exalted that American bureaucracy can't screw up.
And prepare yourself. Because Simon is about to stick it to everyone, proudly, one last time.
"This show is about the other America," he said to me last year, during The Wire's fourth season, which focused on a group of kids trying to survive in their drug-ridden West Baltimore neighborhood and jacked-up school system. "Other America never gets a TV show. Never gets to talk about itself or argue for its own humanity. Either poor people are the salt of the Earth or they're hunted down. I'm looking for people who are writing from the other side of the coin."
For its final season, The Wire has added another institution to its long list of failed urban bureaucracies: the press.
Where past seasons dissected the shortcomings of Baltimore police, government, schools and even drug dealers, this time Simon folds in the Fourth Estate.
It's ground the producer knows well, given his 13 years as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun. His former employer let him use the paper's name, and a host of former Sun employees make cameo appearances, but no one who works there now was allowed to participate.
A look at the new episodes shows why. The Sun that Simon puts on film is a rollicking, realistic newsroom - roiled by layoffs and buyouts and run by a cluelessly elitist management that gives short shrift to important metro news in favor of pieces calibrated to win awards.
In an appearance at the St. Petersburg Times last year, Simon made no attempt to disguise his contempt for former Sun editors Bill Marimow and John Carroll, whom he blames for hobbling the paper by implementing cutbacks demanded by distant owners in Chicago.
"By the time I left, dissent was death for reporters," said Simon, who took a buyout from the Sun in 1995. "It was a very cynical and insecure way of doing business."
Marimow, now the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, says he's unsure why Simon nurses such a grudge, citing stories in the Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism Review lauding their stewardship of the Sun.
"A year ago, when he named a loathsome character on The Wire 'Marimow,' I decided to take the high road and say David Simon was an excellent journalist," said the editor. "I still say he's a brilliant and creative journalist who has this obsession about John Carroll and me that, instead of demeaning us, it demeans him.. . . I think what he's done is cowardly and deceitful."
But these grudges often lend fire and flesh to The Wire. At times, the series can feel like one long primal scream launched against the injustices of the modern urban world.
No wonder Simon indulges his grudges so heartily. In an odd way, they form the core of his creative process.
This year's Wire pokes at the same fault lines in journalism - showing an institution that disregards experienced reporters and shuts down savvy editors.
"They had no choice but to put in the media this season," said Clark Johnson, who shines as Sun city editor Augustus "Gus" Haynes.
"Somebody has to comment on what goes on in a midsize American city . . . what the press should be doing to report on it all . . . It was a perfect choice to close out the series."
In the final edition, budget cutbacks have forced police to stop investigating 22 murders by West Baltimore drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield one of the funniest scenes involves Detective Jimmy McNulty taking a bus to a crime scene because the homicide bureau has few working cars.
To counter the budget crunch, McNulty (played with amazing spirit by British actor Dominic West) dreams up a massive con that cannot be detailed here without drawing Simon's ire. His put-on pulls in the press and his fellow officers, providing an absurd lesson on the tension between perception and reality in news coverage.
"You think if 300 white people got killed in this city every year, they wouldn't send in the 82nd airborne?" asks one bitter detective. "Negro, please."
The scene resonated with former Baltimore Police Chief Ed Norris, who has a supporting role as a homicide detective named - wait for it - Ed Norris.
Norris knows how tough Baltimore can be. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to misuse a discretionary account and to not reporting the income, though he still maintains the charges were a political hatchet job.
These days, Norris has a Baltimore radio show and spends less time in Tampa, where he initially landed after a brief jail sentence. He calls The Wire "the most realistic police drama I've ever seen," and he pops up in scenes as a constant visual gag for people who know Baltimore politics (other cameos include rocker Steve Earle as a drug counselor and rapper Method Man as a drug dealer).
Now he's in the first scene of the new season, helping question a suspect by pretending a copy machine is a lie detector - "a legendary police joke . . . usually done with drunks," Norris said.
"When I got crucified, I was devastated . . . but watching The Wire, I realized it happens to everybody," said Norris. "As a cop, I saw a lot of (officers) who drank too much and did s----y things, but they also did really heroic things. And they portray it that way: real heroes working in some really dysfunctional institutions."
There may be no hero more dysfunctional than West's Jimmy McNulty, a detective on the wagon throughout last season, who drops off with a vengeance this year.
West directs this season's seventh episode, as McNulty returns to homicide and picks up his drinking, curdled with frustration over the stalled investigation. Which raises the question: Why can't McNulty pull himself together?
"Change and redemption doesn't happen that easily," West said. "David's thing is people can't get it together that easily . . . I don't think he's a pessimist, but I do think he finds it difficult to be optimistic."
That may be the perfect description of Simon, a forceful auteur writing what many critics call the best show on television, though it has never won an Emmy and seems almost purposefully overlooked.
"The fundamental difference is, we're not selling (anything)," Simon said last year. "NBC, CBS, Fox - the programming is there to help advertisers sell cars and cell phones and feminine products and Viagra.
"How can you do that if you're trying to be complex and dark?. . . You can only tell a story like this once in your life. You don't want to be ashamed (when it's over)."
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com" or blogs.tampabay.com/media.
Fast Facts: Catching up
Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West): Last season, McNulty was lured from a comfy patrolman's life to join a task force investigating 22 murders committed by drug king Marlo Stanfield. When budget cuts kill that effort, he turns back to drinking and comes up with a con destined to change everything.
Augustus "Gus" Haynes (Clark Johnson): As city editor of the Baltimore Sun, he's an old-school news-hound caught between clueless bosses and relentless cost-cutting. He suspects one of his young reporters of "cooking it" to produce scoops.
Michael Lee (Tristan Wilds): A middle school kid who became a straight-up gangster last season, Lee rises in Stanfield's organization while trying to shield his less streetwise friend, Duquan "Dukie" Weems. As Stanfield moves to dominate the East Side gangs with whom he has an uneasy alliance, Lee makes a merciful decision that could bring them all down.
Tommy Carcetti (Aiden Gillen): Struggling with budget shortfalls and an ambitious plan to run for governor, the mayor cuts police funding to the bone despite campaign promises to crack down on crime. As a grand jury investigation focuses on State Sen. Clay Davis, Carcetti looks to take down the police commissioner and install his handpicked successor.
On TV
The Wire debuts its fifth and final season at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO.
Grade: A.
Rating: TV-MA (mature audiences).
[Last modified January 4, 2008, 16:34:40]
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