I don’t find it vital to discuss TV much since most of it is drivel. I can’t find a lot to recommend these as unfortunately. But about 3 months ago, I started on a journey through Baltimore that I do feel it quite vital to share with the world. The Wire is an hour long HBO drama widely hailed as THE best series of all time. It is also quite possibly THE most slept on show I've had the deep pain to try to advocate for. I finished it about 2 weeks ago and have just recently been able to let it sink in enough to share my feelings on it. I'm not going to try to spoil anything, but some thematic discussion may sour the experience or at least tip a few things that deserve to be surprises so be warned.
As simple as it is complex. As wide-reaching as it is intimate. The minds behind this show present a fictionalized Baltimore city from just about every narratively and dramatically interesting viewpoint focusing on the more depressing facets of our so called American Dream. Capturing an unflinching, unyieldingly truthful perspective on the American city, The Wire lets no one off the hook.
The Wire is much more than a simple crime show. This is not your regular cops and bad guys procedural with "ripped from the headlines" storylines. You can't describe it as anything less than an immersive, detailed, uncompromising experience focused on one bleakly disparate theme: The Game is the Game. One of the series' most recurrent character Omar repeats this notion reminding the characters and the audience that we've created a system in which transformation and transcendence is difficult, nigh impossible. Characters constantly engage their surroundings pushing and pulling grow. Hoppers are hoppers. Drug dealers are drug dealers. Muscle is Muscle.
America runs on a system. This system resists change and men and women who try to redefine themselves or challenge the system are chewed up and spat out. The brilliance of the show comes from the series’ ability to create a moral economy in which characters must abide. Characters try to work the rules to their benefit, but few find success in getting out. If they step out of what the world expects them to be, the consequences are fatal. Characters such as the beloved Stringer Bell and Wallace from season 1 are evidence of how our society resists change. Both of these characters find adversity in trying to improve their circumstances or deviate from the expectations put upon them.
The Wire examines at every level, the streets the courtrooms, the classrooms, how we are entrenched in a battle of poverty and fading values in which the corruption and ruthless govern. It never ceases...just keeps on going. It's a never-ending game in which the soldiers who blindly or even knowingly indoctrinate themselves into its rules survive. They prove this disparaging fact time and time again as the detectives, hoppers, and kingpins move in this concerted systematic program of routine busts, court hearings, slayed witnesses, and drug trials.
This TV show is more of a call to action than a simple Sunday entertainment choice. By no means am I saying that, The Wire isn’t entertaining. I just feel it’s necessary to point out that this show has more to offer than pure bland enjoyment that most networks offer. It reminds me of something I heard on the Taxi Driver DVD. Schrader, the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, discusses how some films, or more broadly entertainment, as being pure narcotic. He’s referring to fiction that lulls you into a soft state of complacency, giving you exactly what you want exactly how you want it. That is about the most contrary to The Wire. It’s a show that cannot be appreciated without assiduous attention, mental provocation, and an open mind in which to receive. The minds behind this show are speaking to America, holding a mirror to us and saying, “The Game is rigged.” I wish more television shows had the balls to take a stance on things, but I suppose they have their function. But in any case after an emotionally draining journey with the creators of The Wire it is with a serious and deep heart that I implore you to watch by any means necessary.
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