The Wire (2002) TV

Created by: David Simon
Starring: Dominic West

I've been thinking about how to write this review for a little while. I've just been so anxious for the series to end so I could finally step back from it and dissect it. The aspect of The Wire that has distinguiushed it throughout and has generated the bulk of its acclaim is the very same thing that I believe to be its biggest flaw.

I've tried to decide how to review a TV series and can't really figure out the best way to go about it. Do I take it season by season or do I review it as a whole? A little of both probably makes the most sense but to begin, Season 1 may not have hooked me in the way some other shows have hooked me but I enjoyed it emmensely. Season 2, while starting slowly, was just as good and at that point, based on what I'd seen and what I expected having heard such acclaim for the following seasons, I started to believe the hype. Season 3 was a disappointment. Easily the worst of the five seasons. Season 4 wasn't much better. Season 5 was. That's about all I'll say as far as reviewing the seasons seperately until I bring up one of my theories on how the series progressed.

The Wire takes place in Baltimore and as much as the creators want the city to be a character, unless you live in Baltimore, it really can't be. We're almost too deep into the city for it to become a character. Every street corner seems the same and I could never distinguish one district from another, never mind try to figure out which drug dealer staked claim on which one and which precinct policed which one. Also, while the detail that goes into the police and the criminals is immense, the world existing outside of those two parties is rarely touched upon. The civilians are not focused on with the same intensity that everyone else is thus we're unable to really see how the city functions.

Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is in most ways the star of the show. It'd be impossible to go into every character in the show as the show does a very good job in creating intricacies in each one of them. McNulty is, however, the deepest of all the characters and rather than going into what makes him tick, I'll point out how West's performance as McNulty is possibly one of the most underrated TV performances ever. Critics go on and on about how great this show is and so often leave out how very good the performances are throughout the series. The fact that not only are there are so many actors that have significant roles, but that many of them are kids is really something at which to marvel.

Dominic West and Wendell Pierce are truely an original TV duo that have gone widely unrecognized in the midst of the shows acclaim. Amy Ryan's small role is nothing short of great. Idris Elba, better known now for his work in The Office, is as brilliant as he is intimidating and Clarke Peters makes us all wish we could solve a crime like him. Despite these performances and all that I left unmentioned, the true stars of this show were supporting characters Bubbles played brilliantly by Andre Royo and Omar played by Michael K. Williams. Bubbles is the friendly dope fiend while Omar is the unforgiving, shotgun toting badass that rogues the streets of Baltimore. Royo and Williams rarely if ever appear on screen together but steal every scene in which they appear.

The performances that have showered The Wire with my praises are not enough to save this series in my mind however. As I mentioned, that which has made this series so widely acclaimed is, in my mind, its biggest flaw and that is its realism. To quote a favorite film of mine, Adaptation... "Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind?" Well, while The Wire doesn't necessarily suggest that nothing happens in the world completely, what they do instead, is make you watch nothing happen while things occur outside in the world. The Wire tells the very basic cops vs. criminals tale by exploring both sides of the war on drugs. This is a drama that's been done in many different styles but is intriguing enough to create drama. Real gritty drama. What The Wire chooses to do rather than create drama is to re-enact it in a sense. The show strives for such realism that oversteps its boundries and forces its audience to watch too many scenes with no drama, all while knowing full well that the drama is out there and the show is capable of showing it and keeping its audience engaged.

A two-hour movie can get away with having segments in which the drama is absent in order to build a realistic story. That way, when the drama unfolds, we're not watching an unrealistic event. In a TV series when we are only exposed to an hour of drama at a time, there needs to be more to engage us. I can't watch three episodes of paperwork by the DA's office so they can get a Wire tap. I need to see the Wire tap.

In short, The Wire is too realistic. If I go back to breaking the series down, season by season I feel like I have an idea of how this happened. Whether I'm right or wrong (probably wrong) I feel like its a plausible scenario. Season 1 was drama packed. It was exciting and it was engaging. Season 2 was equal in just about every aspect. On top of being exciting and engaging it was realistic beyond anything I'd ever seen. There in lies the fate of The Wire. Critics raved about the show, not necessarily about its excitement and about how engaging it was because, after all, we've seen shows that are exciting and engaging. Shows this realistic... this is new. So the show's creators recognized how much people responded to the realism and I think perhaps that its very possible, they began to think the could have the show survive on realism alone. And this is where Season 3 fails and where Season 4 fails again. Then in Season 5, perhaps they realized, that while seasons 3 and 4 still receieved positive feedback, it wasn't the same at their first two seasons. Why? Too much realism, not enough excitement.

So why is this show so universally acclaimed? The most likely answer is that I just don't have the taste for it that so many other people did. I do have another theory however, that I think is about as rediculous as my suggestion in the last paragraph. I think that in everyone's subconscious, a show like The Wire is too much to for them to follow. The show is so smartly written and so similar to the real world that people believe that if they don't like it then its above them, that they aren't smart enough to handle the real world. While this may sound rediculous as I suggested, The Wire does present that kind of internal conflict. Its often so frustrating while watching the show that you can't really follow the subtleties of the situations because they are situations that happen in a world outside of your own. So to combat that frustration, your mind pretends to understand it, thus making it engaging.

Whether my theories and opinions of this show are agreed with or even accepted is irrelevent. To be completely honest, I'm happy to be done with the show. It was draining to watch and despite all the great things about it I truely think that the creator's intentions for the show didn't translate well. Part of me wants to say that the series was disappointing and in a way it was, but as I mentioned before, the most probably explanation for the acclaim for this show was personal taste. I think that perhaps, overall, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

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