The show’s pilot–which ran back on June 2–was, quite frankly, a snooze. Nothing happened. The first of two protagonists, Baltimore homicide Det. Jimmy McNulty (played by English actor Dominic West) was–stop me if you’ve heard this before–a brooding, divorced, loose cannon with no respect for authority. His superior was a company-man jerk. His partner was a fat black man.
The pilot’s only innovation was that it simultaneously introduced members of a powerful black street gang. The protagonist here was D’Angelo Barksdale, cousin of gang leader Avon Barksdale. D’Angelo, played by a stunning young actor named Larry Gilliard Jr., had just beaten a murder rap. Obviously, McNulty and Barksdale’s worlds would soon collide; “The Wire’s” gimmick was that it would trail both spheres in epic detail. I felt like I’d seen the cop story dozens of times before, but the gang story felt new to me. I decided to give the show another week–a luxury I had because this was HBO, and HBO never cans a show until it gets a real chance to thrive.
And boy did it thrive. With each passing week, “The Wire” blossomed, quietly becoming one of the smartest, most engrossing series on television. It’s the second home run for series creator David Simon, a monster talent whose six-part HBO series “The Corner,” about the desolate world of crack users, won Emmys in 2000 for writing, directing and best overall miniseries. He is quickly becoming the inner-city version of David Chase. How patient was HBO with his new show? Consider this: “the wire” of the show’s title–a series of taps on pay phones in Barksdale’s territory–didn’t get up and running until episode six. The first season was 13 episodes. Unfortunately, HBO says it doesn’t plan to re-air the episodes until March and the second season isn’t scheduled yet, so if you missed it–and chances are you did–make a mental note now before all the terrible new shows on the networks crowd your brain. Then come back in six months. In the meantime, bug your friends for any episodes they videotaped. And e-mail HBO to rerun them sooner.
So what’s the big deal about “The Wire”?
For starters, no TV series–or, arguably, no movie–has ever portrayed the full sociological range of an inner-city ghetto as vividly and revealingly. One marvelous episode midway through the season began with a 16-year-old low-level member of Barksdale’s gang named Wallace waking up, fully clothed, on a mattress on the floor in his dump of an apartment. He walks through the place banging on doors, rousing his half dozen younger brothers and sisters for school. He throws each kid a bag of potato chips, then leaves to meet up with his boss, D’Angelo Barksdale. There is, of course, not a parent in sight. Then we see the start of D’Angelo’s day: his immaculate apartment, his closet full of designer clothes, stereo system, gorgeous girlfriend in a long T shirt cooking breakfast. Wallace and D’Angelo spend their days together, but their lives have virtually nothing in common.
Another unique feature: the first season of “The Wire” devoted 13 hours of television to a single police case. The result was a criminal investigation portrayed with an unprecedented degree of realism and detail. We watch the special unit assigned to the Barksdale case as they try to translate the gang members’ incomprehensible vernacular, decipher 12-digit pager codes that secretly mask drug buys and pick through phone conversation after phone conversation. They listen for the slightest hint of evidence–often scraps as tiny as establishing which gang members are identified by nicknames like “Wee Bay” and “Stinkum.”
Thankfully, most of those silly cop-show cliches slowly dissolved away. The police characters on “The Wire” remain the weakest part of the show, but they vastly improved after the pilot. Det. McNulty, we came to learn, wasn’t merely a self-righteous insubordinate–he was utterly self-destructive and myopic. He’s also a lousy father. At one point, while shopping with his two young boys, he spots Avon Barksdale’s No. 2 and plays a spy game with his kids: he teaches them to follow the gang member and lift his license plate number. The kids love it and succeed–but McNulty loses them and, panicked, has to summon mall security.
As the season unfolded, glowing secondary characters emerged. Det. Greggs, played by Sonja Sohn, is just one of nearly a dozen wondrous black actors in the cast that you’ve never seen before and who knock your socks off. Greggs is the squad’s only female cop and she’s a lesbian, and the show makes a thunderous point by rarely making a big deal of either. There’s also Det. Freamon–played brilliantly by Clarke Peters, who, if there’s any justice, will be remembered at the Emmys next year–a virtuoso cop banished to a desk job 13 years earlier and tossed on the Barksdale case because, rather comically, his superiors forgot about him and considered him useless. His slow resurrection was a joy to watch.
The miracle of HBO is that its executives give a show as long as it needs to find its voice. HBO makes its money from monthly subscriptions–not advertisements–so the overall reputation of the channel is what matters most to them. The traditional networks simply don’t–strong ratings are just too important. You can cry foul all you want, but ratings drive ad dollars and ad dollars pay for good shows. It’s not quite that simple, but it’s close.
And in fairness to the networks, it’s partly the media’s fault that some shows die in a matter of weeks. We review pilots, and that’s about it. We write stories about actors before their shows start, or at the very latest, a week or two into their run. We can’t afford to look slow. Hence, network suits are justified in concluding that if viewers don’t hear about a show early on, they never will–because they won’t hear about it from us. (Case in point: here I am finally writing about “The Wire” after the first season’s over. Sorry, HBO.) With its so-so pilot, “The Wire” drew very little advance media attention. It wasn’t until the credits rolled on, say, episode five that I thought to myself, “Wow, this show is great.” By then, on any other channel, it would’ve been long gone. Fortunately it’s on HBO, which is why I get a chance to give it some overdue praise–and you’ll get another chance to watch it.
