Wire and Reality

The new Atlantic has a really great article on The Wire by Mark Bowden that we're releasing early -- and for free -- online in light of the pending debut of season five. Regular readers of this blog will probably be familiar with the stuff covered in the beginning of Bowden's article -- best show ever, etc. -- but he goes quite a bit deeper than other profiles, getting into the ways in which the show, despite its "realism" departs quite a bit from reality but doesn't suffer as drama as well as offering a real under-the-hood look at some of the Baltimore media issues that will be the subject of season five.

Bowden's got a background in the Charm City newspaper world just like Simon and it gives him a perspective you don't get elsewhere. Check it out.

Comments

"a real under-the-hood look at some of the Baltimore media issues that will be the subject of season five."

Wow. With riveting subject matter like that, I can't understand why everyone doesn't watch the show.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 1:07 PM

Immediately after the events of 9/11/01 Mark Bowden began to advocate, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, for the use of torture by our government.

Because of that advocacy I will never read anything he writes again. Small minded? Mistaken? Perhaps. But! He was a leader in the promulgation of the idea that torture is acceptable, and I can never forgive him for that.

Posted by Rick Howe | December 31, 2007 1:19 PM

From everything I've read, David Simon sounds like a brilliant and gigantic narcissistic asshole.

Oh well. All the better than I don't have to live or work with him and can just enjoy the series. Even if he is a petty, self-centered jerk, The Wire is the best television show I've ever seen.

Posted by Jeff | December 31, 2007 1:20 PM

Jeff,

I think you'll find a lot of great artists with that profile:-)

Posted by eric k | December 31, 2007 1:32 PM

Erik -- yep.

Posted by Jeff | December 31, 2007 1:43 PM

Bah, that article sucked. He notes that Simon is angry about the effects of capitalism itself, but quickly moves to emphasize the fact that Simon is a petty guy with a bunch of personal grudges, as if that's the true source of bleakness in the show. It's basically an invitation to dismiss what's most serious about the show. Fuck Bowden.

Posted by ogged | December 31, 2007 1:45 PM

Sorry, in a week where the NYT has seen fit to offer Bill Kristol employment and dedicate a full page of the Book review to legitimize Goldberg's stupid scribblings I'm in no mood to sympathize with Bowden. I suspect he and his Sun pals are every inch the careerist soulless "white guys" Simon depicts. If they don't like what they see in the mirror too bad for them. Rick Howe's post just offers further confirmation.

Posted by vanya | December 31, 2007 1:52 PM

Ogged,

Really? I didn't see it that way. I don't know Bowden from a hole in the wall, but I didn't see that he was raising Simon's pettiness as a reason to dismiss the show, but just as something viewers might want to keep in mind as they watch.

Anyway, I thought the biggest flaw in the article was that, though The Wire is plenty bleak, it isn't as bleak as Bowden made it sound. Take Namond and Dennis Wise -- their stories (so far anyway) showed that redemption is possible, though difficult. The Deacon? He's a force for good. And though it appears that McNulty's going to slide in Season 5, he got his life together pretty well in Season 4.

Posted by Jeff | December 31, 2007 1:58 PM

MY:
Do you realize that Bowden thinks it is okay we torture? He said so yesterday in an op-ed in the Philly Inquirer.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | December 31, 2007 1:59 PM

Wire and reality. Good title. The Wire spends a considerable amount of time, more than a season, on a plot where a white man tries to become mayor of Baltimore, and whether it is even a feasible thing that a white man could win an election in an urban political environment. The reality is that in January Baltimore will get its first non-white mayor.

Posted by Jonas | December 31, 2007 2:17 PM

Jonas - What in the world are you talking about? Obviously Carcetti is based on Martin O'Malley, the white former mayor of Baltimore who is now governor of Maryland. O'Malley's two predecessors - Kurt Schmoke and Clarence Burns - were both black, and there'd been black mayors of Baltimore for 13 years before O'Malley's election. At the time, it was considered highly surprising that a white man was elected mayor of Baltimore.

Posted by John | December 31, 2007 2:43 PM

Do you realize that Bowden thinks it is okay we torture? He said so yesterday in an op-ed in the Philly Inquirer.

If Ygelsias had any guts, he'd quit The Atlantic in protest. I've already burned my copy of Black Hawk Down.

Posted by Ronnie Pudding | December 31, 2007 4:38 PM

Matt and others...

If you didn't already know, the first episode of the new season of The Wire is AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW via HBO ON DEMAND.

I believe that they are going to be releasing the new episodes via ON DEMAND the Monday before they are to be shown on the normal HBO channels.

BTW haven't watched it yet...that is for later tonight.

Posted by zAmboni | December 31, 2007 5:20 PM

I watched the first episode of the new season today and just wanted to say that first scene before the opening credits roll is probably one of my favorite scenes of the whole series.

Posted by bwaage | December 31, 2007 6:30 PM

I am wondering if Jonas' post above has broken some sort of record for number of factual errors.

Posted by Andrew | December 31, 2007 7:58 PM

I think a little of that nuance lefties pride themselves on having is in order with respect to Mark Bowden's views on interrogation methods.

Bowden is a great writer and I'm usually eager to read his Atlantic pieces, but I'm not itching to read the one on The Wire. I've only watched bits of it, but I saw the HBO special last week which consisted of critics and cast members talking about how it was the best show ever. Eh. Maybe I'll give it a shot at some point, considering I'm paying for HBO anyway and it's not exactly chock-full of original programming. But if the power of The Wire is supposed to be the revelation that things are shitty in Baltimore's inner city, I don't need to watch the show to know that. If I want TV that "goes there", I'll stick with Degrassi.

Posted by Fred | December 31, 2007 8:48 PM

>if the power of The Wire is supposed to be the revelation that things are shitty in Baltimore's inner city,

Good Christ, what gave you the idea that that's all there is to it? I don't think ANYONE's read on the show is that superficial.

Posted by andrew | December 31, 2007 11:33 PM

Oh, fine, just to be a bit more hospitable to Fred and any other skeptics out there, here's the nutshell deal on why The Wire deserves all the praise:

1) It's the broadest and most complete treatment of a city-level society in American TV, ever. The first season starts off as cops vs. drug dealers, but each subsequent season zooms out a little more (examining dockworkers, city and state politicans, the school system, the newspapers) to the point where the show can't even be called a "crime drama" anymore.

2) The characters are so extraordinarily well-written that you end up relishing not just the good folks who are dedicated to their jobs, but also the bootlickers, careerists, and assorted scumbags. The number of characters who always have a big neon arrow over their heads saying "AUDIENCE SURROGATE" is vanishingly small considering the size of the cast. One of the most fun things about the show is seeing some characters grow and evolve as the seasons pass, while others stubbornly refuse to give up old habits.

3) The show's not afraid to dispense completely with long-held TV conventions: No incidental music cues, no voice-overs or flashbacks, no episode-ending cliffhangers, no "gotcha" plot twists, no self-contained episodes. The effect is so strong that once you've gotten deeply into it, you start to notice these things in other shows and they make you cringe.

4) Despite the bleakness and the rarity of "happy endings" being a supposed selling point of The Wire, one thing you never hear about is how each episode has at least one or two scenes that are just gut-bustingly funny... while still retaining a consistent mood.

Posted by andrew | January 1, 2008 12:01 AM

Okay, look, I know I'm bound to be defensive about The Wire and that that defensiveness will probably extend to its creator David Simon, but this Mark Bowden piece (released early online so that you could read it before Season 5 of The Wire starts) is really bizarre. It's a preemptive-strike debunking of episodes of the show that Bowden hasn't seen yet based on his concerns about whether or not the show will be fair to some friends of his (who are also David Simon's ex-bosses at The Baltimore Sun).

This strikes me as the sort of thing that would never make it into print if it weren't for too things. First, Mark Bowden is a "name" writer who wrote amongst other things Black Hawk Down. Second, David Simon has publicly stated that, having taken on the death of the working class, the inner city, drug legalization and the education system, his final season will be about the media. Thus Bowden gets to fret so very sincerely that Simon's critique might be unfair. He doesn't know, tho, because he hasn't seen it. And a major mainstream political magazine gets to publish it as a way of making sure its readership doesn't take The Wire's criticisms of the media (of which it is a part) too seriously.

Posted by isaac | January 1, 2008 12:32 PM