Note that David Simon himself shows up in yesterday's thread about The Wire to disagree with me. It's an interesting discussion all around and I won't intervene further in it. But to answer Ogged's question here, I have no intention of leading an anti-Wire backlash -- assuming things don't go horribly awry in Season 5 it'll be the best television show anyone's ever made and its outlook, even if not one I totally agree with analytically, is integral to the drama.
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David Simon's View
03 Jan 2008 12:15 pm
Comments (42)
Simon writes:
Camus rightly argues that to commit to a just cause against overwhelming odds is absurd. He further argues that not to commit is equally absurd. Only one choice, however, offers the slightest chance for dignity. And dignity matters.
You ought to save your dignity and come out strongly for John Edwards, Matthew.
"a just cause against overwhelming odds."
Glad to see you finally have a realistic picture of the Edwards campaign, Petey.
you missed a fabulous opportunity to entitle this post "simon says." just saying.
Ah, Petey, that made me smile.
I've repeatedly seen folks refer to THE WIRE as "the best TV show ever"...but what heck do they really mean by "best"? It seems like they really mean "show that tells a particular type of story better than/unlike any other show ever on TV". But can other shows be judged inferior if they aren't interested in or even attempt to tell the same sort of story? I think some people are using the term "best" when they really mean "unique show I really, really love".
I mean, can you really call something "the best TV show ever" if nobody ever really watches it, even after it gets as much critical praise as anything ever has?
Mike
I've repeatedly seen folks refer to THE WIRE as "the best TV show ever"...but what heck do they really mean by "best"?
All other shows are worse.
can you really call something "the best TV show ever" if nobody ever really watches it
Yes.
Matt,
Congratulations! You made it to the metafilter.org mainpage.
Good work,
Gus
"Glad to see you finally have a realistic picture of the Edwards campaign, Petey."
Running against corporate greed when your message has to get filtered through a corporate owned media has always been an uphill struggle.
Running strongly to the left when opinion-makers prefer candidates who run to the mealy-mouthed center has always been an uphill struggle.
I've never thought Edwards was the favorite, but he's got an honest to goodness shot to win and completely remake American politics here.
Running strongly to the left when opinion-makers prefer candidates who run to the mealy-mouthed center has always been an uphill struggle.
Sounds like Edwards should have stuck to his original persona.
"Sounds like Edwards should have stuck to his original persona."
If the goal is simply to become President, Edwards would have been better served by running a more Obama-like campaign.
But if the goal is really to make America a better and stronger nation, I'd say he's been doing the exactly correct thing.
He's got a real shot at winning. And if you're trying to effect transformational change, that's all you can ask for.
The Wire doesn't evoke the REAL tragedy of those poor neighborhoods -- that the people are too poor to afford cable TV -- and hence can't watch the Wire which watches them.
Kinda hard to rouse the rabble that way. About as likely that some angry, poverty-stricken mob will storm the barricades in Manhattan after seeing La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera ($120 per seat)
Karl Rove would argue that's not a bug, that's a feature.
You know, I love the Wire, I really do, I think it's an incredible show. But as time goes on I chafe more and more on people's insistence that it's the best show ever, and that fact is certain, and that their certainty comes somewhere other than their own subjectivity. It's really aggravating that people-- many of whom would in other contexts agree wholeheartedly in the essential subjectivity of critical response to a TV show, or any other kind of art-- are so invested in enforcing their taste. Again, that's something people don't seem to want to do in general, but when it comes to the Wire, all must be proselytized to and converted. And I know many will say, of course, it's just opinion, and had I read "The Wire is the best show ever, period" 999 times, I probably wouldn't react this way. But the 1,000th time got me.
Personally, I think The Twilight Zone accomplished things that the Wire couldn't dream of. But that's just my taste.
Public expressions of sympathy for the poor in
this dog-eat-dog country are a bizarre form of sentimentality bordering on the surreal.
Kinda like lifelong slumlady Leona Helmsley ("only the little people pay taxes") leaving $12 Million to her dog. Or Adolf Hitler ordering the SS to protect Jewish veterans of WWI who were holders of the Iron Cross.
Freddie--
It's all a release of pent-up frustration from the years that no one paid attention to the show. Ya just gotta roll with it. I mean, until last year there was hardly anyone talking about it, so you only have to put up with two seasons of obnoxious wall-to-wall hype.
Besides, it's not just the best TV show ever; it's the best artifact. It's better than Guernica, better than brie. Attention must be paid, you know?
I'm sure The Wire is the best TV show ever. But if TV were on fire and I could only save one show, it would be season 2 of "Slings and Arrows."
David Simon's comment points out, once again, that successful artists shouldn't try to explain their art.
"The Wire doesn't evoke the REAL tragedy of those poor neighborhoods -- that the people are too poor to afford cable TV -- and hence can't watch the Wire which watches them."
They manage. The Wire is popular in the South Bronx and Brooklyn -- some young children watch (on cable at home). HBO certainly advertises the show there: An enormous billboard promoting Wire Season 4 went up less than three blocks from the NYPD's notorious 46th Precinct.
By the way, can somebody explain what in the world Simon was talking about with his boilerplate about capitalism and oligarchy? I thought his show was about the Baltimore inner city.
"Best. Show. Ever."
That's something 26-year-olds have always liked to declare about their favorite hour-long drama. Perhaps "The Wire" really is the best show ever, but some perspective is in order.
What they don't realize is that, relative to the half-hour sit-com, the hour drama format tends to have a big immediate impact, but then fades rapidly in memory over time. Thus, 55-year-old B-W episodes of "I Love Lucy" are still on broadcast channels (and I think The Simpsons and Seinfeld will last fairly well too), but critical favorites of the 1980s like "thirtysomething" or "Hill Street Blues" are mostly forgotten. (The main exceptions are sci-fi dramas that appeal to the geek audience, like Star Trek.)
Note that David Simon himself shows up in yesterday's thread about The Wire to disagree with me
Congrats on that! I really enjoyed it as a reader.
And let me kvetch a related pet peeve" that that that kind of conversation is what I would wish would happen on more blogs with comments, it is what I am always looking for. Increasingly though, I see it as an impossible dream, as it would require two things that are not going to happen:
1) bloggers would have to stop responding to each other with a new blog post on their own blog in order to get hits, and instead participate in a thread discussion
2) rigorous and enlightened moderation of comments so that interesting people using their own names with their own reputation at stake are not afraid to jump in, those not using their own names are not turned off from participating by having to read trolls, and bloggers are not turned off by the idea of getting dragged into troll discussions.
Don't you ever wonder who is lurking out there and refraining from commenting on second thought? I know from being on the other side for a short while that you know some of them, because they email you. Too bad the latter feel they can't share their thoughts in public. Ironically, a rigorously moderated blog might be a blog that would get a lot of lurkers and a lot of hits, it's just that the lurkers would be the ones no one wants to read comments from rather than vice-versa. I might include myself, I might shut up a lot more and just read and learn if I wasn't knee-jerked into responding to disinfo. or even idiocy....yes, that's a not wanting to be a member of a club that would have me sort of thing. :-)
Steve Sailer has a lot to say about a TV show he's never seen! IS THAT BECAUSE IT HAS BLACK PEOPLE???
Argghh, sorry to interject me humble observations, me bein nothin but a filthy pirate and all.. but holy crows nest, are ye really thinkin it be valuable to be arguin wheather somethin is "best." Come on now, lads! It's an opinion, and as such, is unprovable. Now if ye were talkin aboot Kobe... well, ol' one eye gots plenty of amunition (his cowardly retreat in the 7th battle against the Suns) with which to batter ye into submission. Me comprehension o Kobe's character and basketball IQ ain't an opinion, but a scientific fact. But argugin over "best show?" Ye all sound like a bunch of comic book reading weaklins...
If you look at the world as a whole isn't it always a story of both rise and decline?
Aren't there always lots of places where institutions mostly and undermine the common good, and also places where institutions work pretty well?
Why is it that a show about a place where failure is more common than success a show that preaches despair in a broader sense? Would a show about a place with functioning institutions then have a message of complacency?
Is the idea that complicated positive and negative feedback loops lead some cities/societies/institutions to broadly improve and others to broadly decline too big for our little heads?
The Wire has the guts to present life as comoplicated enough so that sometimes the wrong thing happens. Few television shows do that because a pessimistic story is unappealing to many people. This is also the real reason behind the controversy. In the Wire, as in life, the good often pay and the evil sometimes prosper. A lot of people don't want failure in their stories.
it'll be the best television show anyone's ever made
Typical American-centric bullshit, what a load of blinkered nonsense.
Let's see.....off the top of my head.......better TV series than the waaaaaaaay overrated cliches of The Wire:
Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, originally a 4-part TV series before being edited down to movie length.
Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz.
The Prime Suspect series, especially the first three.
Blackadder Goes Forth, set during WWI.
etc. etc.
"I've never thought Edwards was the favorite, but he's got an honest to goodness shot to win and completely remake American politics here."
If you like him so much, why don't you marry him?
I like Edwards but my guess is that Obama has the magic voodoo to knock out Hillary, whereas Edwards probably does not. Is it possible that some Edwards supporters are really for Hillary?
It's a fact that Iowans are concerned by jobs being shipped overseas, but aren't Edwards and Dobbs essentially scapegoating the workers in other countries? What about solidarity with them? I know they are sort of like scabs, but it just seems like a wedge issue which scapegoats foreigners. Seems like a distraction - let's pit foreign workers against American workers - even if the Iowans' concerns are real and justified.
Edwards' rhetoric about corporations is on the money, but The Wire demonstrates that courageous and hardworking writers/creators/actors/etc. can make something worthwhile even in the midst of the HBO corporate environment (or whatever holding company owns them) and that makes me hopeful, even if my take on things is darker than either Simon's or Matt's.
I'm just finishing up season three of The Wire, and it is greatness. I still maintain that season one of Veronica Mars is the greatest TV season in history, but The Wire will probably overtake Buffy as the best show I've ever season over its entire run.
Hey Henry Holland, quite a Euro-centric list you have there. One might even be tempted to call it blinkered.
David Simon comments:
"Writing to affirm what people are saying about my faith in individuals to rebel against rigged systems and exert for dignity, while at the same time doubtful that the institutions of a capital-obsessed oligarchy will reform themselves short of outright economic depression (New Deal, the rise of collective bargaining) or systemic moral failure that actually threatens middle-class lives (Vietnam and the resulting, though brief commitment to rethinking our brutal foreign-policy footprints around the world)."
Seriously, what does this have to do with the price of tea in China or the price of crack in Baltimore? Isn't this just another Tolstoy-like example of what happens when artists try to explain the politics behind their art and end up humiliating themselves?
"end up humiliating themselves?"
Steve, I think you are projecting.
""Best. Show. Ever."
"That's something 26-year-olds have always liked to declare about their favorite hour-long drama. Perhaps "The Wire" really is the best show ever, but some perspective is in order.
What they don't realize is that, relative to the half-hour sit-com, the hour drama format tends to have a big immediate impact, but then fades rapidly in memory over time. Thus, 55-year-old B-W episodes of "I Love Lucy" are still on broadcast channels (and I think The Simpsons and Seinfeld will last fairly well too), but critical favorites of the 1980s like "thirtysomething" or "Hill Street Blues" are mostly forgotten. (The main exceptions are sci-fi dramas that appeal to the geek audience, like Star Trek.)"
Steve Sailer,
The distinction isn't between the length of the show or its genre but between the narrative arcs, as Dick Wolf has astutely pointed out. "Hill Street Blues" pioneered the season-long (and longer) narrative arcs, and "Thirty Something" is in that tradition too. In "The Simpsons", "I love Lucy" and Dick Wolf's Law & Order dramas, the narrative arcs are nearly all limited to one episode. This is mostly true of "Seinfeld", but Seinfeld also had some longer narrative arcs -- e.g., the one about the "Jerry" show.
Dick Wolf's insight has made him a lot of money: Law & Order reruns routinely crush the reruns of NYPD Blue, ER, and other long-narrative arc dramas in ratings.
"The Wire doesn't evoke the REAL tragedy of those poor neighborhoods -- that the people are too poor to afford cable TV -- and hence can't watch the Wire which watches them."
They manage.
They certainly do. Poverty in American inner cities does not preclude cable TV, video games, replica jerseys, or $100 sneakers.
Fred,
Good point, although hour-long dramas didn't have multi-show narrative arcs before Hill Street Blues. They just "reset" each week, like The Simpsons. And nobody watches those either.
Nor does anybody watch Miami Vice, which was a non-arc show too, and had some good writing in its second season and excellent writing in its third season.
Simon dropping in was very neat. It's good to know someone as anti-capitalist-oligarch as him can get a gig making content for HBO.
In the Bowden article I found it ironic that Simon was unhappy with the lead paint problem being pushed since given the new research into low level lead poisoning it may well have had a huge impact on the violence in the city.
"Simon dropping in was very neat. It's good to know someone as anti-capitalist-oligarch as him can get a gig making content for HBO."
Yeah, he's probably distributing his producer's and writer's earnings to his cast and crew according to their needs, and keeping only a small stipend for himself.
You Wire fanatics should look up the article (in the NYT? I forget where) about the friction between Charles Dutton (the ex-con black actor/director who starred in "Roc") and David Simon when Dutton directed some Wire episodes. Dutton didn't think there were enough blacks on the crew, and made HBO jump through hoops to round up more black crew members.
"capital-obsessed oligarchy"
So, _that's_ why African-Americans are imprisoned at a rate 33 times higher than Asian-Americans.
The scales have fallen from my eyes!
Thank you, David Simon. Your political thinking is a revelation to us all.
It always comes back to the black folks with you, doesn't it steve.
Have to agree with Steve that "Hill Street Blues" IIRC was considered "the best show ever" at one point.
Plenty others have been, too.
Some of the Brit shows on public TV have been incredibly good - I'm thinking of "The Sandbaggers" for one, a Brit spy show that reportedly was yanked because it offended the Foreign Office and MI6.
I haven't seen "The Wire" because I don't have TV, and even if I had the bucks to buy the season DVDs, I wouldn't because the topic doesn't interest me. However, by all accounts, and based merely on the episode recaps, it would seem the show is pretty good.
Still doesn't make it "best" except in somebody's opinion.
Here's TIME Magazine's list (annotated by me):
* The Abbott and Costello Show (don't remember)
* ABC's Wide World of Sports (please...)
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (yup)
* All in the Family (yup)
* An American Family (don't know it)
* American Idol (please...)
* Arrested Development (don't know it)
* Battlestar Galactica (please...)
* The Beavis and Butt-Head Show (yup)
* The Bob Newhart Show (Eh, okay...)
* Brideshead Revisited (never saw it)
* Buffalo Bill (Eh?)
* Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yup)
* The Carol Burnett Show (maybe)
* The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (wrong - new shows don't apply!)
* A Charlie Brown Christmas (nah)
* Cheers (I hate that show - losers in a bar)
* The Cosby Show (Eh)
* The Daily Show (okay)
* Dallas (cool)
* The Day After (Never saw it)
* Deadwood (ditto)
* The Dick Van Dyke Show (okay)
* Dragnet (given Webb's style, hard to justify)
* The Ed Sullivan Show (yup)
* The Ernie Kovacs Show (don't remember it)
* Felicity (never saw it)
* Freaks and Geeks (ditto - but the title!)
* The French Chef (please...)
* Friends (never thought it was funny)
G - M
* General Hospital (maybe)
* The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (yup)
* Gilmore Girls (never saw it - nice babes)
* Gunsmoke (yup)
* Hill Street Blues (yup)
* Homicide: Life on the Street (never saw it)
* The Honeymooners (great comedy)
* I, Claudius (never saw it)
* I Love Lucy (yeah, it as funny)
* King of the Hill (never saw it)
* The Larry Sanders Show (ditto)
* Late Night with David Letterman (NBC) (don't count talk shows)
* Leave It to Beaver (no)
* Lost (never saw it)
* Married... With Children (definitely funny)
* Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (definitely not funny)
* The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Eh)
* M*A*S*H (yup)
* The Monkees (please...)
* Monty Python's Flying Circus (probably)
* Moonlighting (yup)
* MTV 1981-1992 (not a relevant type)
* My So-Called Life (never heard of it)
* Mystery Science Theater 3000 (never saw it)
N - S
* The Odd Couple (Eh)
* The Office [American] (Never saw it)
* The Office [British] (Ditto)
* The Oprah Winfrey Show (Please...)
* Pee Wee's Playhouse (hardly)
* Playhouse 90 (maybe)
* The Price Is Right (a GAME SHOW?)
* Prime Suspect (Never saw it)
* The Prisoner (Definitely, if a little weird)
* The Real World (never saw it)
* Rocky and His Friends (animation?)
* Roots (Never saw it)
* Roseanne (Oh hell no)
* Sanford and Son (Eh)
* Saturday Night Live (Okay, a variety show, maybe)
* Second City Television (Ditto)
* See It Now (Never heard of it)
* Seinfeld (maybe)
* Sesame Street (kids show)
* Sex and the City (never saw it)
* The Shield (ditto)
* The Simpsons (probably, even though animated)
* The Singing Detective (WTF?)
* Six Feet Under (never saw it)
* 60 Minutes (full of agendas - no way, plus news)
* Soap (yup)
* The Sopranos (Never saw it)
* South Park (another animated funny)
* SpongeBob SquarePants (please...)
* SportsCenter (NO - I mean NO - sports shows!)
* Star Trek (yup)
* St. Elsewhere (never saw it)
* The Super Bowl (and the Ads) (Oh, hell, no!)
* Survivor (no "reality shows", please!)
T - Z
* Taxi (funny)
* The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Eh)
* 24 (never saw it)
* The Twilight Zone (yup)
* Twin Peaks (too weird)
* The West Wing (never saw it)
* What's My Line? (No game shows, please)
* WKRP in Cincinnati (yup - funny)
* The Wire (under discussion)
* Wiseguy (not bad)
* The X-Files (yup)
* Your Show of Shows (Going way back for this one)
In my view, he left out:
1) The Avengers. (Imaginative)
2) Wild Wild West. (Imaginative)
3) La Femme Nikita (even though I never saw it)
4) Doctor Who (despite the piss-poor effects)
5) Mission: Impossible (Imaginative)
6) The Fugitive (even though I rarely saw it)
7) Star Trek: TNG. (Better than the original)
8) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Imaginative)
9) Perry Mason (if a bit repetitive).
10) NYPD Blue.
11) Miami Vice.
12) Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (the funniest show ever)
Ricahrd,
I think they mean the new Battlestar Galactica, which is excellent, not the chessy original.
By the way, IMHO most of the shows you've never seen are the best of the the list:-)
Seriously I'd recommend renting DVDs of at least Battlestar Galactica, I Claudius, Homicide, The Wire, Prime Suspect and Deadwood.
* Mystery Science Theater 3000 (never saw it)
One of the funniest shows ever.
Seriously, what does this have to do with the price of tea in China or the price of crack in Baltimore? Isn't this just another Tolstoy-like example of what happens when artists try to explain the politics behind their art and end up humiliating themselves?
Sailer, by now Simon has an extensive body of work that describes his thoughts on the economic roots of Baltimore's ills very clearly. "The Corner", for instance, is about almost nothing but this. There's also a ton of interviews and essays by and about Simon, that delve into the topic as well. Do your own research, you twit.
Comments closed January 17, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
That is cool.
Posted by otto | January 3, 2008 12:29 PM