Revisiting The Wire

"What the fuck did I do?"

I just finished watching The Wire for the second time. A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to watch the whole series again, and Sunday -- after staying up until after 2am -- I finally put down the rest of season 5. Watching the show for a second time was great, as it let me rethink a lot of my opinions from the first time around. Knowing what was coming allowed me to really get critical of things as they happened, and look at the way that the story flowed from one event to the next. While I would kill to be able to watch the show again for the first time, it was very rewarding to rewatch it.

Perhaps the thing that I found most interesting is the way in which I have reevaluated two of the seasons. After watching the series for the first time I had quite a few discussions with friends that revolved around ranking the seasons in terms of most to least liked. My rankings always had seasons three and four in the top two spots, followed by season one and two and finally five. It was never a question for me before which seasons were the best. Now, I'm not so sure.

I think in terms of actual narrative structure and excitement that season one is much stronger that I initially gave it credit for. All the other seasons do a great job, obviously, but they build off the foundation of season one. It was so good that I was inclined to just go back and watch season one as soon as I finished it a month ago. Furthermore, season two was always one of the seasons that I was down on after my first viewing. After watching it again I have completely come to my senses. The Sobatka detail rivals the kids storyline from season four for the most heartbreaking. After watching the series for the first time I was down on this season because it shifted away from what I liked so much about the series to begin with, the drug game. We saw Stringer running the Barksdale crew, but that was about the most of our time on the street. Having watched it season two again with knowledge of how it fits in with the rest of the series, I appreciated it that much more.

However, the season that I have changed my tune on the most is season five. The first time through I was really bothered by the serial killer plot that seemed to be too sensationalist for a show grounded in the gritty reality of the street. However, looking back on it now I think the season is much better viewed as a satire. If you look at it through the lens of the first four seasons of The Wire, it is sure to disappoint. Jimmy and Lester, the two main heroes of the first four seasons go off the reservation and end up as something like villains. However, if you look at season five as it was meant to be looked at, as a perverse look at just how messed up everything is in Baltimore, then season five becomes much more funny and tragic.

Season five is akin to watching a version of Dr. Strangelove about the Baltimore PD (So says even David Mills, one of the shows writers when asked about the season). Think about it. Things are so messed up in the department that they can't afford anything outside of the 8 hour paychecks for the cops and the bare minimum of logistical and tech support. Because it is over a year old, the worst string of murders in Baltimore history isn't even enough to keep the brass from shutting off the money. Carcetti called for a new day early on, but in politics there is always another bowl of shit to eat, and he can't fix the one thing he promised in his campaign: crime. So what does McNulty do? He creates a crime out of thin air. He stages crime scenes, tampers with case files, and even makes a prank call as the killer. The whole thing is riotously funny when viewed as the last desperate act of a man trapped in a broken system. I see a lot of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 in season five, and you can make an easy comparison between the main character, Yossarian, and McNulty. They've both been driven crazy by the system, and they have no other escape than to try to beat the system at it's own twisted game of appealing to the political aspirations of the higher ups. The only way anything ever gets done in the show is if someone upstairs thinks it will help them move up a rung on the ladder.

As Jimmy stages all of this and builds this serial killer case out of nothing, he drinks furiously. He is taking swigs from the bottle at the first homeless scene that he tampers with, and you can see that the only way he gets the nerve up to do it is with a few drinks. The whole season is a farce. The department is so eff'd up that not only could something like this go unnoticed for weeks, but it would be the only way that any real police work gets done. Whats more, McNulty essentially becomes a boss once the serial killer scam gets legs in the media and the brass upstairs is worried about how it will make them look. How he is doling out cars and man hours to other detectives in homicide. Even more he begins to feel the frustration of being this high up the chain. One detective games him for a free weekend in Hilton Head, and on top of things in homicide getting away from McNulty, Lester keeps pushing for more help and time, driving McNulty to declare that he knows why Daniels always cringed when Lester spoke: because Lester is a bosses nightmare -- ironic coming from a man who never knew a chain of command he didn't feel like wantonly breaking at his first convenience. Even the way the whole thing begins to unravel is hilarious. The case grows way too big for Jimmy to control. Now every homeless death is swamped with officers, Landsman is giving Jimmy too much manpower to use --taking away from real policework -- and the FBI gets involved with one of the funniest moments ever in the series, the serial killer profile, where McNulty sits uncomfortably as the profiler that he laughed off just minutes earlier describes him in such exact and unflattering detail that he cant help but begin to hate himself for being the Jimmy the audience has always loved -- the smartest guy in the room.

And how does it all end? Just the way you would expect a satire like that to end. Jimmy and Lester have made a big enough mess that the bosses have to play along or risk their own jobs, but the Stanfield case is screwed up beyond belief and both their careers are over. The one cop, Kima, who looked up to them the most eventually ratted them out. In the end all the people at the top who have gamed the system for so long just find a way to twist this mess into better jobs (as Norman comments in the office, this is the second time that a faked murder has helped Carcetti advance politically). It seems unfair the way things ended for a lot of the characters in politics and the upper seats of the police department, but I think it was spot on. This is the way things work in Baltimore. The way things have always worked. All the hacks turned the disaster into a better job by wheeling and dealing, and all the good cops (Daniels, Lester, McNulty) end up out of the system after being fed up by just how fundamentally screwed up things are. Of course there are new cops to take over, like Carver, Sydnor, and Kima, but only time will tell how they will fare.

In the end the Hollywood style happy endings are few and far between (Bubbles, Namond), but more often than not you see characters just dealing with a transition that is neither good nor bad (Lester and Jimmy adjusting to life off the force, Bunk and Kima honestly plugging away at another murder). In a system so screwed up as the Baltimore PD (and schools, and city hall) you have to end it this way. After five seasons of setting up a place where the audience's omniscient and morally enlightened sense of justice doesn't jive with events on the street, the writers couldn't just backtrack and throw the hacks out and give the department over to real police. Guys like Levy and Rawls almost always win, and even when they don't, they still never lose (see Clay Davis and Ervin Burrel). Even someone like Omar -- who exists outside all of the systems in place, be it the game or the city bureaucracy -- eventually gets got. He tried to fight the system and was swallowed up by the corner culture he wouldn't adhere to. Thats why, in my opinion, Kenard killing Omar works so well. Kenard is a product of the environment that guys like Barksdale and Stanfield created. Kenard is hardened by the street to the point where he pushes around Dukie and talks much bigger than he actually is. He sees his chance to kill the great Omar, and does so. But in that moment as he stands over the body you can see the kid in him again. He has just taken a real human life, and for a moment he is a terrified little kid again. Omar knew it just like Snoop, Slim, and the rest of the soldiers -- sooner or later, everybody got to get got. Guys like Stringer and Prop Joe were off the street too long and they both forgot that. They tried to buy and talk their way out. Omar's death is indicative of just how rough the game is. In the end, season five may be ridiculous for the serial killer and the Templeton story, but it is the cap on the four previous seasons of frustration over an ineffective but culturally ingrained way of doing things. The system is broken, and it is fitting that the end of the story shows us more of the same for Baltimore.

After a second viewing of the series I don't think I could rank the seasons anymore. It is too hard to elevate one season to the top of the heap and drop one season to the bottom. The beauty of The Wire is that all five of the seasons work so well together that if you remove one it cheapens the rest. If anything I'd like to look at just what was the standout part of each season:

Season One: Best Written - Most gripping 12 episode story arc. The reason you came back for, and understood the world of the next four seasons.
Season Two: Best Drama - Could be titled "the death of the american working class". The fates of Ziggy and Frank are horribly saddening despite the fact that we've only known the characters for a dozen episodes.
Season Three: Most Revolutionary - Hamsterdam worked, until it didn't. While it solved real problems on the street it was never sustainable because of how it looked on paper. Honorable mention to Carcetti's campaign*.
Season Four: Most Frustrating - The MCU under Merimow, the vacants filling up with bodies, Marlo's hold on the west side, the failure of the school to do right by Dukie and Colvin's program, the failure of the cops with Randy, and the failure of anyone to reach Michael. Season four made you want to beat your head against the wall, and I almost didn't watch it just to avoid the heartbreak. I know I'm not alone.
Season Five: Best Comedy - "Tell me you didn't kill them yourself, McNulty. At least tell me that." Lines like that (from Rawls) and the utter breakdown of the system are set up as the darkest of black comedy. Season five is the culmination of four seasons of utter breakdown by the system.

*(After watching the series a second time I am even more firm in my belief that Carcetti is not a bad guy, but rather someone who got swept up in the system and kept putting off the real nitty gritty of helping people for some latter date. You can tell in the way Carcetti speaks, not just in front of a camera but behind closed doors, that the guy does care about change. And you would think that Norman would have sense enough not to jump on board with some political hack. I think season three and the beginning of season four are supposed to be about the good people want to do before they get in the system. Looking from an outsider perspective, Carcetti wanted to enact positive change. However, once he got into office he began to realize that it wasn't going to be easy. He had to make sacrifices. Eventually, Steindorf (the devil) won out over Norman (the angel) in the battle of Carcetti's conscience. However, I still believe that in his heart Tommy feels like he is trying to do right for his city. He has just gotten too deep into the system.)

So, that was kind of long, but anyone else have any thoughts?