The Wire Returns

The best show on television¹ is back, and (judging from the first episode) in fine form.

The Wire always has a whole slew of plot threads running at any given time. The first episode introduces a half dozen new threads (and continues 3 or 4 others), (which can be fairly daunting for a first time viewer; I would advise starting with Season 1, rather than coming to season 4 cold). The first episode connects some of these, and gives tantalizing hints of how the others might be tied together later on.

The 'wire'--which refers, in a broad sense, to whatever investigation is being conducted by the unit formerly headed by Daniels--is the lens through which Dave Simon and Ed Burns examine some aspect of contemporary Baltimore. Season 1 focussed on street-level drug operations; Season 2 was about the destruction of the (unionized) blue collar employment base; Season 3 got into attempts at systemic reform...

This season the theme is education, in a broad sense (as Ed Burns says: kids will learn; the question is, where?). So the first episode introduces a group of kids whose education (on and off the streets) we will follow through the season; Prez² is back as a rookie teacher (so, it seems, is Bunny Colvin...or maybe a different character played by Robert Wisdom); and there's a mayoral race on (Tommy Carcetti is running hard, and hating it) which we can expect to make education a central issue. I'll admit that I was dubious when I heard about the theme being education, but based on the first episode I think they've done it in a way that brings it very naturally into the existing milieu of The Wire.

The pre-credit sequence is a classic example of the tone of the show as a whole. A young girl (she looks to be about 14) in Marlo's crew goes to a Home Depot-type store and discusses nail guns with a white middle-aged clerk, who sells her on the top of the line model (she tells her partner "he say it the Cadillac of nail guns; he mean Lexus, but he don't know it"). Underlying the when-worlds-collide humor of the scene is a sense of dread about exactly what she means to do with the nail gun. (When you introduce a nail gun in act one, somebody has to shoot some nails in act three (I think Chekhov said that). We do get the nails eventually, near the end of the episode, but until then we're just...imagining.) As is always the case in The Wire, hilarity is never far from tragedy.

It's a great show, and so far at least Season 4 looks to be worthy of its predecessors.

¹Notwithstanding Scott Lemieux's wrongheaded claim that The Sopranos is better, IMO only Deadwood really comes close. The Wire is better because:

• The characters are more compelling and believable. Now, this is sort of apples and oranges, because The Sopranos has a smaller core cast and a bunch of characters who come in for one or two plotlines, while The Wire follows upwards of 20 or 30 regular characters. I don't think there's any single character in The Wire as compelling as Tony or Carmela or maybe Christopher; if we left it there, it would be advantage Sopranos. On the other hand, at least two of the primary characters in The Sopranos (Silvio and Paulie) often strike me as little more than the sum of their exaggerated tics. In The Wire, all of the characters seem perfectly believable to me--real humans with real motivations. The Sopranos explicitly explores the interior life of its primary character (through such devices as the therapist and those love-em-or-hate-em dream sequences), while The Wire has a purely external approach to its characters' internal lives...but we do grow to understand what they're thinking.


• The plotting is tighter. The Sopranos has a bad habit of introducing a character (or elevating a completely peripheral character) who becomes vitally important for one or two episodes, but is treated as if he or she has been important to the plot for a long time. The Wire, I think, does a better job of keeping putting characters in the background before bringing them to the foreground, so that even if you suddenly ask yourself 'who is this guy?', when you go back and re-watch you'll see that he was there all along. In The Sopranos, characters are often Introduced; The Wire more closely replicates the real-world process of getting to know characters.


• It's more ambitious. The Sopranos is ambitious in its own ways, but it has very little connection to the world outside The Sopranos; occasional references to the rest of the world come off as either perfunctory or artificial. For better or worse, it's all about the Sopranos. The Wire is an amazing attempt to capture the life of an American city--and it's amazingly successful.


• The acting is better (with all due respect to Ogged, who doesn't think much of the acting on The Wire). Or maybe it would be fairer to say the acting is more to my taste. In The Wire, most of the cast are acting; in The Sopranos, they tend to be Acting. I prefer the more naturalistic, low-key style to the kind that calls attention to itself. The latter doesn't preclude amazing performances (Edie Falco, James Gandolfini), but can also devolve into annoying caricature (did I mention Paulie and Silvio?). Some of The Wire cast are Acting (I love Michael K. Williams as Omar, but it's a distinctly showy performance), but for the most part the acting is understated and spontaneous. (I don't even understand Ogged's complaint about the directing. There are no gimmicks, which is consistent with the realistic intent of the show, but I wouldn't call that 'flat' direction.)


• It's funnier. Like any good tragedy, both The Wire and The Sopranos are often hilarious; I just find the humor in The Wire more organic, more subtle, and...well, funnier. The Wire convincingly captures the crudely inspired wit of the working class; the wise guys' humor in The Sopranos has more of a sense of artifice to it. Okay, so maybe this is a matter of individual taste.

²One character says "I won't even try to pronounce his name." Similarly, I won't even try to spell it.

[That's all, folks]