The Wire - Hot Shots: An Unfamiliar Land

The Wire: Hot Shots

Season 2, Episode 3

Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns

Directed By: Elodie Keene

            One of the most difficult adjustments that David Simon had to make when writing and producing the second season of The Wire was to let go of almost every one of his original locations. In many great television series, there are locations and sets that become a character themselves—the main deck of the Battlestar Galatica, the Bluth model home, or Counter Terrorist Offices of Jack Bauer. But in this second season, we’ve abandoned almost every location save for the homicide offices. Gone is the low rises and Orlando’s strip club and instead we get the shipping docks and the church. It’s a bold move that changes a lot of the ways we view how location creates character, though the cinematography of Uta Briesweitz (who I still argue is the visual auteur of the show) keeps us in the same leveled realism with a shade of dark gray morality.

            As you might tell, there’s not so much heavy in theme for this episode, entitled “Hot Shots,” or at least the narratives being spun together have little in common with each other. Each is great in its own right, though not as much stands out visually. We've also got the return of Omar, which will be fun to watch. 

The Wire - Ebb Tide: All Aboard

The Wire: Ebb Tide – All Aboard

Season Two, Episode One

Directed By: Ed Bianchi

Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to see the total coverage. Assume spoilers for the episode.

            Despite being considered by a number of television critics as the best show of the decade, The Wire was an infamous no show at the Emmys, especially considering it aired on HBO, which has won a ridiculous number of statuettes since the network started airing original programming. If David Simon’s epic look at Baltimore crime began airing now, in the spirit of morally complex shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Dexter, it would sure be a lock for many nominations. But what I worry about what would still be lost on the great black actor (Before anyone begins to yell at me for using “black,” Idris Elba is British). The Wire’s first season had a number of black actors performing at levels that rival some of the best film performances of all time. Andre Royo played the crack addict Bubbles with such convincing humility it was sometimes tough to watch because of the authenticity. Mr. Elba, who you wouldn’t know was British unless you’ve seen him in the BBC miniseries Luther, played a reserved and calm leader of a network with quiet understand and fierce will. Larry Gilliard Jr. constantly bended between moral lines by convincing us of his own lack of conviction, and his final sequence in the season one finale broke my heart. Why don’t these performances win Emmys? To get on a high horse for a minute, it’s cause when a voter sees a black man playing a drug dealer or addict, they don’t think it’s a stretch. When a white actor does it for a film, it’s a stretch beyond their ordinary life. Frankly, it’s all bullshit.

            So why have I started my discussion of season two with my praise for black actors? Part is this is it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while and wanted to write on for a few episodes. But also, “Ebb Tide,” the season two opener, clearly takes us out of the world of the drug business and launches us not only into a different type of crime but a different world: the working white class. These guys are a different breed of criminal, though the same qualities we learned from the Barksdale gang—loyalty, family, organization—still apply.

The Wire - Sentencing: Land of the Free

The Wire: Sentencing

Season One, Episode Thirteen (Season Finale)

Directed By: Tim Van Patten

Written By: David Simon and Ed Burns

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to see the total coverage. Assume spoilers for the episode.

            At the end of season one of David Simon’s extraordinary drama The Wire, I’m reminded of our opening scene: a story about a man who kept getting dealt into a craps game, even though everyone knew he would steal the money. “This is America, man,” the witness told McNulty. Everyone has to have a stake, and at the end of the day, the same wheels keep on turning.

            “Sentencing” may not actually be as dark and depressing as I suspected after watching “Cleaning Up,” but in finding the balance between resolution and dissolution, Mr. Simon, along with his co-writer Ed Burns, have found something more profound: life goes on, and the institutions of America are built on that premise. Would be better to do nothing? To keep the status quo? McNulty asks himself that question as he watches a portion of the Barksdale crew walk behind bars for minimal sentences. We’re not sure, and neither is he.

The Wire - The Pager: Out of Sight

The Wire: The Pager

Season One, Episode Five

Directed By: Clark Johnson

Written By: Ed Burns, from a story by David Simon and Burns.

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to see the total coverage Assume spoilers for the episode.

            I’ve been recently reading Sidney Lumet’s great book Making Movies, all about his pragmatic insight into what a director does. Mr. Lumet was a true artist and a list of his films—12 Angry Men, Serpico, Prince of the City—shows a lot of the precedents in both tone and theme for David Simon and The Wire. But one philosophy stuck with me: Mr. Lumet always believes in coming in under budget, and not just wasting money for the sake of art. He understands his contract to his investors, and part of his creativity comes from such limits.

            The last scene in “The Pager,” directed by Clark Johnson (his third episode) and written by Ed Burns (his first) is a pitch-perfect example of a great scene that may have been limited by budget, but works better because of it. As retaliation for Omar’s rampage on the Barksdale crew, Avon orders a hit on his fellow gang members, and near the end of the episode, a couple of young workers spot Omar’s lover at a pizza joint. Instead of a big chase and murder sequence, all we see are phone calls, being traced through pagers that the police have tapped. All we see are the phone calls and the numbers being written down, but Mr. Johnson knows how to quicken the pace of this, while showing nothing that is inherently cinematic, and not even using music, just the sounds of dial tones, button pressing, and data being processed. When we hear the last phone call, “it’s done,” it’s a brutal end. This sequence—the best in The Wire so far—matches the best of Spielberg and Lumet, and proves you don’t have to show your cards to lay down a cool hand.

The Wire - The Buys: Stalemate

The Wire: The Buys

Season One, Episode Three

Directed By: Peter Medak

Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to see the total coverage Assume spoilers for the episode.

            There are two big philosophical discussions at the center of “The Buys,” the third episode of The Wire, and while the chess analogy has become iconic in the series, it was the earlier discussion I found more fascinating. D’Angelo and his workers are waiting for the latest shipment of crack before they can distribute, when one of them chastises an addict for approaching them. D’Angelo asks why this business has to beget violence, why can’t it run just like any other business. He pontificates that if there was no violence, the police would never come to the projects—they wouldn’t care about a bunch of junkies shooting up.

That question goes unanswered till near the end of the episode, when a rival gang led by Omar (Michael K. Williams) smashes in their safe house, steals their stash, and blows one of the workers in the kneecap with a shotgun. Violence is how one controls business. This is a great episode of television—the best in the series so far—because it really shows how drug selling is a business. D’Angelo pays a visit to Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) and gives him the weekly earnings in a backroom of the strip club they run to launder their money. Stringer gives him a bonus, and explains to him how they change their business based on the quality of product they sell. The only thing that truly separates the drug business from any other is that it is these low lives who have gone insane or gone violent.

Many people who I talked to before used the quality “Shakespearian” to describe how The Wire balances its many plot lines. You get a really good sense of that in “The Buys,” as the two major plotlines of the last episode—the article about the witness murder and the riot that led to Prez half-blinding a young boy—are more or less shoved to the side for other narratives. This is in stark contrast to a show like Breaking Bad, where the central plot never changes, but rarely moves forward. I’m not sure one is better than the other, and I think as we’ll see that Mr. Simon loves a grand narrative that really brings elements together.