The Wire 5-3
| By Kay Steiger - Jan 21st, 2008 at 4:45 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
This week's Wire episode seemed to show a dichotomy in the skills of the writers. The story line on the drug dealers gets more compelling -- although gets less screen time -- while the story lines on the three other fronts, the mayor, the newspaper, and the police, gets less so.
McNulty moves forward with his nutcase plan to create a fictional serial killer and manages to get Lester on board. What seems silly about this plan is that they are trying to get resources for an investigation into murders of black people, but I'm going to be cynical and say that the problem here is that McNulty is targeting white homeless men. This hardly seems the demographic that will launch a full-scale investigation. McNulty, meanwhile, is back to his reprehensible self: drinking too much, and caught by fellow police in a compromising position with a woman in a parking lot. I definitely missed the lecherous McNulty last season, but they seem to have gone too far in the other direction.
On the newspaper front, the management has announced the next round of buyouts. Among them is a character, Roger Twigg, that is surely a representation of David Simon -- an on-the-ball reporter who knows his stuff and promises to move on to write "the next great American novel." Meanwhile, the young ambitious reporter, Scott, is clearly depicted as a fabricator. He manufactures quotes to contribute to Twigg's story. Alma, the only female reporter with a name, sees her reporting on a triple murder bumped from the front page due to the "shrinking news hole." The mayor's office leaks a story to Gus to feel out the prospects of bumping Ervin Burrell for Cedric Daniels. Gus -- the only black reporter depicted -- is safe in this round of buyouts.
Meanwhile, Marlo is inching his way to becoming more powerful, courting the Russians to become a direct buyer so he can shut out Prop Joe. Thankfully, they've brought Omar back into the storyline by having Snoop and Chris dish out some retribution. The next episode promises to have Omar play a more prominent role. Michael is struggling with the desire to just be a kid, spending the day at an amusement park with his little brother and Dukie, and his life on the street. Bubbles didn't even make an appearance in this episode
The story lines on the newspaper end seem pretty simplistic, but I'd like to see more of what's going on in the street. Part of the problem is there are so many plots and subplots going on it's impossible to give enough time to everything. We'll see if the drug dealers and addicts get more time in the next episode.
McNulty moves forward with his nutcase plan to create a fictional serial killer and manages to get Lester on board. What seems silly about this plan is that they are trying to get resources for an investigation into murders of black people, but I'm going to be cynical and say that the problem here is that McNulty is targeting white homeless men. This hardly seems the demographic that will launch a full-scale investigation. McNulty, meanwhile, is back to his reprehensible self: drinking too much, and caught by fellow police in a compromising position with a woman in a parking lot. I definitely missed the lecherous McNulty last season, but they seem to have gone too far in the other direction.
On the newspaper front, the management has announced the next round of buyouts. Among them is a character, Roger Twigg, that is surely a representation of David Simon -- an on-the-ball reporter who knows his stuff and promises to move on to write "the next great American novel." Meanwhile, the young ambitious reporter, Scott, is clearly depicted as a fabricator. He manufactures quotes to contribute to Twigg's story. Alma, the only female reporter with a name, sees her reporting on a triple murder bumped from the front page due to the "shrinking news hole." The mayor's office leaks a story to Gus to feel out the prospects of bumping Ervin Burrell for Cedric Daniels. Gus -- the only black reporter depicted -- is safe in this round of buyouts.
Meanwhile, Marlo is inching his way to becoming more powerful, courting the Russians to become a direct buyer so he can shut out Prop Joe. Thankfully, they've brought Omar back into the storyline by having Snoop and Chris dish out some retribution. The next episode promises to have Omar play a more prominent role. Michael is struggling with the desire to just be a kid, spending the day at an amusement park with his little brother and Dukie, and his life on the street. Bubbles didn't even make an appearance in this episode
The story lines on the newspaper end seem pretty simplistic, but I'd like to see more of what's going on in the street. Part of the problem is there are so many plots and subplots going on it's impossible to give enough time to everything. We'll see if the drug dealers and addicts get more time in the next episode.
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On another note, however, I'm not so sure I like Gus all that much. I know that we're supposed to sympathize with his lone stand against those evil buyout editors from the Tribune (or wherever), but Gus -- and perhaps David Simon? -- represent to a large degree what's wrong with good ol' fashioned "objective" journalism.
Like when Simon says, "If it bleeds, it leads," a silly journalistic convention that many media observers have criticized as hyping crime. Or take the homeless murder series: almost immediately (and someone in the paper notes this on the show), the attention shifts away from Clay Davis and his grand jury indictment, as Gus goes into overdrive to make sure his staff covers the homeless element from every angle.
The news always follows the latest events (and only those), leaving behind the larger narrative in the dust. It's just this sort of media hysteria that misleads perceptions, and the biggest irony of all in this particular case is that it's all based on a detective's fabrication. I don't know if Simon intended it, but the whole storyline on the homeless murders comes across as a big indictment of the way the media works today.
And speaking of which, Gus cannot stand stories that do not "tell it as it is," and reporters who "over-write," as he calls it. I agree with him in part, but I often feel that Gus, stuck with the same traditions that Walter Lippman espoused all those years ago, might not be the savior that Simon thinks he should be. What's wrong with a little decoration now and then? Why not allow a journalist to introduce his thoughts into a piece? Timothy Crouse wrote the best indictment of political coverage in "Boys on the Bus" about the 1972 campaign, and he asked, why do reporters always pretend like they know exactly what's going on in the political campaign? Why can't they say, instead, "I noticed this about such-and-such campaign, but I'm not sure what this means"?
Still, I do find the newspaper narrative interesting, and not just because I'm a journalism student. In many political debates, it's obvious that the media plays a huge role in defining the terms and coverage, and Simon often notes how candidates and officials work their way through the system with/against the media. Hamsterdam, the failed drug legalization experiment, came crashing down first when the Baltimore Sun threatened to cover it--so it's only right, then, that Simon should turn his lens to this other aspect of the crumbling American city.