The Wire

Bubbles: What good is a story like that?

Fletcher: Like what?

Bubbles: Like me and Sherrod getting high, not getting high. My sister, all that shit in there. What good do any of that do to put in the newspaper?

Fletcher: People read it. They think about it, maybe see things differently.

Bubbles: I don't know, man.

* * * * *

Lester Freamon: We're building something here, detective. We're building it from scratch. All the pieces matter.

* * * * *

Back in 2002, I started seeing ads on HBO for a new series they were debuting called The Wire. I was intrigued. After all, HBO was still riding high on The Sopranos and Six Feet Under - wasn't anything they were willing to debut probably worth watching? And yet...a cop show? Still, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot.

Now, I wasn't quite sure what to expect at the beginning of the show. Maybe a murder; maybe a glimpse inside a busy patrol room. What I got instead was an opening that set the tone quite nicely for the show to come.

What a strange opening, I thought. It was funny, sad, thoughtful, and almost profound. It treated the murder victim like a person. It let the characters talk naturally. It found both the morbid humor in the moment and the sadness in another wasted life.

In other words, it was The Wire in a nutshell. In the five seasons this was on the air, before it ended beautifully last night, The Wire became the best show on television, and perhaps one of the best of all time. It was that blend of humor, sadness, rage, and profundity that made the show so brilliant.

There's no doubt that The Wire was a deeply, deeply cynical show. Over its five seasons, The Wire cast a critical eye at the drug trade, the police and legal institutions, politics, schools, the media, unions, and more, and found them all wanting. The show went out of its way not only to show the failings of these institutions, but to make the human cost of them all too clear, to devastating effect. This was not a show that often left you optimistic for the fate of humanity.

And yet, that's not to say that the show was hopeless. There was always the hope of redemption in the world of The Wire; it just wasn't easy. But, by God, when one of these characters made it out, they earned it. So many shows have easy resolutions; there are quick fixes, easy reconciliations, and the audience goes "awwwww" and moves on. The Wire wasn't that easy. Lots of the characters tried to break out of their lives, to escape a fate that left them addicted to drugs, or selling them, or sacrificing their ideals, or compromising their morals, or whatever. A lot relapsed. A few died. But those that made it...when you saw it, as a viewer, it made you tear up, because it was earned. It wasn't just a "happy ending" for those who made it; it was redemption, and one that we knew they deserved, because we've seen what they went through.

It's easy to forget, too, just how hilarious the show is. Rather than, say, Tell Me You Love Me, which took on serious issues in a humorless, miserable way, The Wire lets its characters live and laugh, and frequently the show was so funny I had tears running down my face.

But what everyone will remember about the show years from now is the way it looked at places that no other show did, and made us look. The quotes I put at the top of this article sum up the show nicely. Everything - and everyone - matters. The show took the time to make sure we knew these people. It didn't admire the drug dealers, or excuse them, but we knew them. We understood where they came from. We understood why many of them were there. They weren't heroes, but they weren't simplistic villains. They were fully realized characters, and the show made it harder and harder to condemn them outright without understanding them more.

You may read all my praise, all my acclaim, and wonder why you haven't heard more about the show. Despite critical acclaim, the show never really gained a lot of awards. It's not surprising. Take a largely black cast, add a show that looks at the lowest parts of society, and factor in a plot that doesn't lend itself to stand alone episodes (more on that later), and it's no wonder that the show never attained the honors it deserved. But it did deserve them. The acting on the show was top-notch throughout, and there are actors on this show who created characters so lifelike you genuinely felt like you knew them.

Every season of the show introduced more and more characters, but none who touched me as deeply as the kids introduced in season four, where the show turned its attention to the schools, and how in many cases, the schools laid the groundwork (or, more accurately, failed to do so) for the kids to become entrenched into the Game (the show's term for the drug trade). Watching these kids evolve from innocent, funny kids into their original fates was one of the hardest journeys the show ever took me on. The fates of some of them were absolutely heartbreaking, and rank as some of the most devastating moments of television I've ever seen. But when there was hope, or redemption...god damn, it was good.

That, in the end, is why I leave the show feeling that it's a masterpiece that may never be equaled. So many shows have great moments, or great episodes, but it's hard to pick those out of The Wire because it's one organic whole. There's a moment in the final episode where a character walks into a dining room. That's it. No dialogue, nothing exciting...but when it's taken in context, when you've watched the show for all these years, it's one of the most beautiful and moving scenes of the series. There's a police raid near the end of this season that's not the most exciting thing I've ever watched. It's pretty pedestrian by cop show standards. But when you take in as the climax of a story that's taken over two years to build, it's not hard to understand why my heart was racing and I was more excited than I can remember being in a long time. It's satisfying in a way that so many shows, fixed on instant gratification, never realize.

In the end, The Wire feels less like a TV show than a great, great novel that happened to be on television. There were arcs that lasted the entire series, characters who changed, developed, and found their fates by the end, and whose fates were set into motion within the first episodes. There were themes, ideas, concepts, motifs, recurring jokes, twists, and payoffs galore. It was demanding viewing, and frequently asked a lot of its viewers. "Follow us," it said, "into these dark places. You won't always like what you see, but you'll walk away wiser, and you'll see the world differently. We'll entertain, and we'll thrill. You won't always get what you want, but when you do, you'll appreciate it all the more."

And you know what? I did. There were moments that enraged me. The Wire is our world. Justice isn't always served. The good guys don't always win. Most victories are Pyrrhic, at best. The best are squandered, and the worst thrive.

But The Wire had the guts to say all this, to show all this...and still find hope. It was in individuals, not institutions...but there was hope. It never made it easy, or promised that things would be okay, but in little ways, it showed that people could make a difference. You might not change the world, but you could save one or two, and that was a start.

More than that, The Wire took the time to not only cast an eye at a part of the world that we like to ignore, but to understand it. It took the time to see these people not as heroes or villains, but as people, first and foremost. We might never empathize with them, but The Wire made us see that too often, there were factors we never considered that came into play. Was it the institutions that failed them? Was it their own failings? Yes and yes, the show said, and more.

All of this, of course, came together in the show's stunning finale, which worked not only as an excellent conclusion to the storylines brought up this season, but to the show as a whole. The overall picture became clear. Little, if anything, changed in Baltimore but the names. Some moved on; some got promoted. Some died, and some managed to get out of the Game, whether they wanted to or not. It wasn't a downbeat ending, but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. The ending montage (a tradition at the end of each season) made it quite clear: all of what you've seen? It's just another day. Nothing's really changed.

And yet, the show celebrated the little victories, and made us see that even the small wins were worth celebrating. That dinner table scene I mentioned. A speech by a recurring character, delivered to an appreciative set of parents. A head laid on a shoulder. They don't sound like much, but (once again) in context, they're beautiful and moving.

Not all ended well. Some beloved characters died. Others slowly had their dreams, hope, and potential crushed. There may be no more painful shot than seeing a character we've invested so much in shooting up in a run-down alley. It's hard seeing the state of the Baltimore government or the Sun by the end of the season. Hard to believe? Not at all. But it's not what we want.

But that's the beauty of the show. It never gave in and gave us a happy ending. Those who got their happy endings earned them. Those that didn't, we at least see why. It may be unfair, and it may be unjust. "So do something about it!" the show seems to yell at us.

In the end, that's what The Wire was. It was an unflinching look at a world that few of us would ever willingly look into, and it made us look, and look, and look, until we understood. We might not approve, but we were forced to see the complexity of it all, and how everything matters, how everything fits together to create the world we saw there.

It's the best book I ever read on television, and quite possibly the best show I have ever seen. I don't know that I'll ever see anything like it again, but god, do I hope so. It may have been draining, and it may have infuriated me, but it also made me feel alive. And, in the end, to go back to that reporter: it made me think. And I have no higher praise than that.