I Am NOT the Beastmaster

All Policing is Local

King Suckerman and Hard Revolution, by George Pelecanos

Sometimes I get the feeling that George Pelecanos writes his novels with an ADC map book close at hand.  In addition to writing and producing The Wire--he got all the gut-wrenching penultimate episodes--he's the author of sixteen crime novels set in and around Washington, DC.  And his geography is impeccable; you could navigate the greater DC metropolitan area using nothing but Pelecanos books.

That's not always to their credit.  This passage from King Suckerman crystallized the doubts that nagged at me throughout the novel:

They drove north on Wisconsin Avenue, out of the city.  Vivian bent forward to light a cigarette in the wind, and when it had burned down to the filter she lit another off the first.  She didn't try to argue or make conversation with Karras.  Wisconsin Avenue became Rockville Pike.

"Go right there," said Vivian, and Karras turned east onto Randolph Road.

They got over to Viers Mill and made another turn, entering a neighborhood of smallish houses originally offered to World War II veterans on the GI Bill.  Vivian was in the place in which she had been raised.

Anybody can follow that route to Vivian's neighborhood; I could even tell you what it looks like today.  But until Pelecanos feeds us that one thin line about the smallish houses and the GI Bill, I have absolutely no idea what it looked like in 1976 or who lived there, or what sets it apart from the novel's other locations that are equally defined by their street names and little else.  Pelecanos is renowned for writing about the DC you don't see much of in popular culture, the one that extends far beyond Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, but King Suckerman pursues its geographic precision at the expense of the human detail that could bring that city to life.

That's a shame, because the book has great promise as prose blaxploitation set at blaxploitation's height.  (Pelecanos lavishes enough attention to the city's vanished movie houses that I had to get this book for Christmas.)  He gives us a wonderful description of an invented movie that reads like a surreal cross between Superfly and Bertolt Brecht, and the finale captures something of the freewheeling anarchy of DC on a Fourth of July, but otherwise King Suckerman comes across as less than the sum of its meticulously itemized cinematic, musical, and cartographic influences.

Hard Revolution, written several years later, does a much better job of setting the place without relying on street names.  The book still has a couple of ADC passages ("They walked the east side of Georgia's 6200 block...") but Pelecanos spends more time evoking an even more alien city, DC in early April, 1968, just before and just after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I may not be the most reliable judge here.  When Pelecanos describes a chop shop in a lonely stretch of cinderblock and gravel in P.G. County, back when the county was home to white bikers instead of upscale black professionals--that's my neighborhood, and I can still see a few garages that might have stood alongside (if not inspired) Pelecanos's locale.  When he records a rally on the steps of Douglass Hall at Howard University--I teach classes there, and I can picture the students filling The Yard.  When he locates Derek Strange's apartment building "on the northeast corner of 13th and Clifton, just above Cardozo High School"--I have been in that building, and I've seen the million-dollar view that keeps Strange there.  (On the Fourth of July, no less, lining my experience up with King Suckerman, whose climax unfolds just on the other side of Meridian Hill Park.)  I can't evaluate the Pelecanos novels with any objectivity because I sit right in the bullseye for their ideal audience.  I can't walk away from DC any more easily than Strange can give up his view.

But the local color serves a purpose in Hard Revolution that it was missing in King Suckerman, possibly because Suckerman was about small-time criminals and Revolution is about police.  Pelecanos cops don't solve crimes through their ability to spot seemingly innocuous details, deduce improbable chains of events, or read a man's life story from the soil tracked on his shoe.  They don't solve crimes through any special knack for getting knocked on the head while shuttling from social caste to social caste either, although you might expect that would be closer to Pelecanos's generic turf.  His detectives, police or private, solve crimes because they are all DC locals who can draw on lifelong professional and social networks to identify and locate their suspects.  Detective work is a matter of diligently checking in with contacts, or making new ones, a social rather than intellectual trade.  In Hard Revolution, a robbery is foiled because a liquor-store employee happens to know one of DC's first black police officers through neighborhood ties; he also, completely by chance, knows Strange's father through the local American Legion post.  (This raises a question you could build another novel around--what the hell was going on in a black American Legion post in 1950s DC?--but that ground is left untrodden.)  In Pelecanos's world all policing is local, and you can't solve or punish a crime if you're not fully at home in the city where it's committed.

The novel has other virtues.  Even non-DC lifers should be able to appreciate Hard Revolution's urgent blending of personal and public history as it chronicles the days (shockingly few) between LBJ's declaration that he would not run for re-election and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  The riots that followed King's assassination were the most significant event to befall DC in the last sixty or seventy years; some neighborhoods still have yet to recover.  Pelecanos smartly intercuts the national and local tragedies with the more personal but equally devastating traumas that befall Derek Strange and his family.  The sprawling, citywide nature of the riots puts his penchant for geographic minutiae to good use, and he chronicles the spreading violence with admirable clarity.  He also identifies those parties most responsible for the local breakdown without passing easy judgment on them; he simply tracks their actions and lets their incompetence or posturing or inability to foresee the consequences speak for themselves.  (Stokely Carmichael does not come off well, nor does the Metropolitan Police Department.  I do wish he showed us the confrontation between Walter Washington and J. Edgar Hoover that he alludes to here--that would have been fantastic.)

Hard Revolution is far from perfect--it has a long, aimless prologue and a formulaic salt-and-pepper cop friendship, neither of which go anywhere--but it becomes a lot more than just another ADC crime novel.  By writing the story of the 1968 riots, Pelecanos has recorded the terrible birth of the modern DC.

Wire Open Thread

Joltin' Jeff McCoskey recently posted these thoughts on The Wire seasons three and four on a dormant comment thread.  His shocking departure from the conventional wisdom on seasons two and three (we're talking Copernicus here) deserves more attention, so here you go.  May they kick off an open thread for any readers who are deep in the pangs of withdrawal.

Not 'cause anyone asked me, but seasons 3 and 4 are now under my belt. Understand all comments forward are on a Wire relative scale, not intended to be used for comparison to say Desperate Housewives.

I ended S3 respecting the thorough thought excercise of Hamsterdam, enjoying Carver's first steps to respectability, McNulty turning on Daniels, the nice (too-nice really, but why not?) Avon-Bell double betrayal, but in the end couldn't stack it above S2. I think Bell poisoned himself in S2 against my sympathy, so while I found his arc intellectually tragic, emotionally I was uninvolved. The new element, politics, was cut off mid-arc to my mind (the election in S4 would have been a tighter structure, though probably not story). I enjoyed the Mayor's agonized deliberation of the pros to Bunny's experiment... but I missed the scenes of wheels moving against each other tightly and inexorably, and did take points off for retrenchment to Barksdale ground already covered. Ultimately it felt like a slight letdown after S2. (Relative scale, remember?)

So S4 just up and blew it all away. The stock central conceit, cresting innocent youth into adulthood, is supercharged here with inner city concerns and premature aging. Each of the 4 kids' character arcs was compelling on its own, so much so that McNulty can rehabilitate himself (becoming a better, more boring, person) and not take anything away. The political angle comes into its own here too -- ending what S3 started. If anything the school system gets shorted in its own season by the compelling character and political drama. Prez gets some nice moments but by and large mouths stock-if-accurate 'why can't we just teach' speeches, and it's still the best use of the character yet. Carver's arc, Carcetti as frustrated crusader ultimately doomed by his own pride if not political ambition, Bunk and Omar... A thoroughly rich backdrop to the intensely engaging Front 4. Who each get a wrenching Sabotka-worthy arc making it, what, 4x S2? Maybe 3.5? The only sour note I could come up with was the neutering of Prop Joe - it becomes more and more difficult to see him as a drug kingpin as easily as he's played by Omar and Marlo. But really? Window dressing.

All the praise I lavished on S2? Quadruple it for S4.

And it is true that the linearity and focus on Barksdale->Bell->Marlo, as well as their intimate connection to Hamsterdam in S3 and the schoolkids in S4 make S2 standout as disconnected (the Greek link only apparant at the end). I still vaguely find that an issue with S1,3,4 rather than 2.

Kind of sad now, actually, with only 1 more season ahead.

Remember, Jeff hasn't seen Season Five, so don't tell him that Marlo hired Kenard to strangle Kima and Cheryl's kid.

I hope to be back in a couple days with a new post looking at two books by Wire writer and Washington, DC novelist George Pelecanos.

I Feel Alright

Not a lot of time for blogging around here.  In addition to the usual end-of-semester crunch, I spent a couple of Saturdays driving up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to canvass for Barack Obama (after doing some much easier, and tremendously rewarding, local canvassing here in Prince George's County in February).  I wasn't planning to go back up again after mid-April--I was out of town the weekend before last, and classes are wrapping up, and I had an important talk to deliver on Wednesday.  I figured I was entitled to sit one out.

Then I bought Steve Earle's I Feel Alright, one of the first albums Earle made after his release from jail.  The tracks are anthems of survival and defiance and perseverance and continued fuckups, especially the title song (which ran over the montage that ended season two of The Wire).  It's great music for digging deep, picking yourself up, and starting all over again.  It would also be great for throwing away a relationship or starting a fight.

Steve Earle's music, in short, can inspire a man to do stupid things.  I'm just lucky I'm enough of a dork that my fight was to go up to Lancaster one last time to get out the vote for Obama on primary day.  The senator owes Earle for one more day of volunteer labor (with partial credit to David Simon and Ed Burns).

But that's not where this story starts.  It starts about five weeks ago when Christy and I went up to register voters before Pennsylvania's deadline.  It was not a great day. We didn't sign up that many people, and we were almost as likely to register McCain or Clinton supporters as Obama ones.

The McCain guy told us that he'd already met some Clinton people doing the same thing, and they wouldn't register him.  That struck me as a pretty characteristic move from the Clinton campaign:  pugnacious, selfish, and short-sighted.  As one of the local Obama organizers told me, he was happy to register any Clinton leaners as Republicans--since that locked them into the other race in the state's closed primary.

Our reasons for registering McCain and Clinton supporters were a little less cynical.  We couldn't refuse anyone on general principle.  Barack Obama runs his campaign on a community organizing model of voter empowerment, and we took that to mean we should register anybody who wanted to register.  We also hoped that, as representatives of the Obama campaign, our willingness to talk to and sign up anybody might cause people to think better him.  So we registered anybody who asked, even if they said they supported Hillary Clinton.  I'm glad we did, but I drove home that evening wondering if we'd netted more than one or two Obama voters for the day.

Last Tuesday, while I was doing a last-minute canvass in a poorer neighborhood in Lancaster, I ran into one of those Clinton voters I'd registered.  She happened to be the last name on my list, the last voter I contacted after three long shifts; I recognized her, but I don't think she remembered me.

This was a list of identified Obama supporters, and she proudly said that Barack Obama was her guy.  In the past five weeks, she'd switched candidates.  I don't think our registering her had anything to do with that; more likely it was a result of media exposure and Obama's campaigning in the state and the steady work of the local volunteers (who ran a great operation--Obama has the best-organized campaign I've ever seen), and maybe the influence of friends or family.  But if we hadn't signed up that soft Clinton supporter, we would have had one less vote for Obama.

That chance encounter was the perfect way to end my Pennsylvania canvassing, and it took a lot of the sting out of Obama's primary loss.  Even more than seeing him rack up a solid win in Lancaster County--proof that grassroots efforts matter--it was good to see that his method of campaigning and organizing does pay off over the long run.

I hope we get that McCain guy in November.

Who Are These Shadows in My Way?

A quick heads-up for the Alan Moore fans in the house. The Dirtbombs' new album, We Have You Surrounded, features a pounding arrangement of Moore's "Leopardman at C&A," a lighthearted "Lord of the Flies"-ish ditty he originally wrote for Bauhaus. The Dirtbombs are known for their garage-rock covers of soul standards, but this doesn't qualify in any sense; the song was never recorded until now, Bauhaus only counts as "soul" on Bizarro World, and the Dirtbombs brilliantly exploit their two drummers by presenting the song with a primitivist swing that's more reminiscent of Gene Krupa than the Greenhornes.

Another note to comics fans--that's Gary Panter doing the album art.

In a telling sign of comics' growing cachet, "Leopardman at C&A" is the primary talking point for most of the reviews of the new album. It was also the opening number at the Dirtbombs' DC show last Saturday, not that you could tell with the ineptly mixed microphones. I didn't know those were Alan Moore's lyrics until I played the CD the next day.

The show was a blast anyway; if you get a chance to see them, take it. The Dirtbombs are one of the most showmanlike garage acts around, and for all their energy, one of the tightest--at least until the end of the night, when all bets are off. What their DC finale lacked in creativity (nothing will top their show at Nashville's Mercy Lounge back in, oh, 2004 or 2005, which finished with one of the drummers playing his set with one of the bassists--not the bass, the bassist) it more than made up for in general band freakout. I'm sorry to say I left in the middle of the second encore, as the hour-long set was approaching its second hour, when the crazy drummer started ranting about DC go-go and Detroit go-go, but I'm not sorry I stuck around that long. The Dirtbombs are one of the best live acts around, and this show did not disappoint. Just ask the sound manager to check his mikes.

History Under Glass

All-Star Superman #10, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Gorgeous cover, isn't it?  And given Grant Morrison's customary interest in radical variations of scale (if this were a Wire post, I would've titled it with a certain Van-Zee quote), it comes very close to being a literal representation of this issue, where Superman plays God (in a good way!) with not one but two pocket worlds.

The interior is even better.  The image of Superman's face smiling beneficently over Kandor (you can see a sample here) is one of Quitely's finest, especially the way he breaks it over two panels--as if we have to pan up to see it all, as if it's too big to take it all in at once.  The kind, patient expression sums up Morrison and Quitely's take on Superman at least as well as the cloud cover that opened the series.

That's only one reason why All-Star Superman was much-anticipated and sorely missed after a long drought.  I'm with Jog, more or less--I loved the Zibarro issue (pretty much the best Fourth of July comic ever), but the follow-up with the Kryptonian astronauts didn't seem to bring anything new to its well-worn story.  And I say this as someone who deeply appreciated that Morrison finally gave us the Steve Lombard stumblebum routine I'd been begging for.  It's been nearly nine months since this series was firing on all cylinders, and even longer since it devoted significant attention to the story of Superman's mortality, but this latest issue returns to the plotline that gave the early ones so much of their melancholy appeal.

Among the other features that make this issue so rewarding are the patterns of allusion--and the multiple levels of allusion--that run throughout it.  There's this series' standard palimpsest of Superman history, condensing and combining the most interesting elements from seventy years of comics.  We get Superman writing his last will and testament on a slab of metal, Leo Quintum in a Flamebird costume, Luthor biding his time in prison, even a reworking of that story where Superman shoots a little Superman out of his hand that so captivated Morrison (note that Van-Zee, leader of the Superman Emergency Squad, is by tradition an exact double for his cousin Kal-El).  We get Superman rushing, with a little help from his friends, to complete his unfinished business and expose a secret to the world (prematurely?), both of which come straight from "The Last Days of Superman."  But it's not all Silver Age nostalgia; properly speaking, it's not nostalgia at all.

That's most visible in the Kandorian council, which makes a nice visual metaphor for this series' signature move.  Their clothing ranges from classic Silver Age headbands and emblems to an ornate Byrne-like headdress to Quitely's own hypermodernist designs. The council is tasked with preserving the last remnants of Kryptonian culture, and their appearance encapsulates just about all of it, much as All-Star Superman tries to preserve all the different eras of Superman--but not under glass, where it can only grow old and die.  This is a living history.

Then you have all the references to Morrison's own work.  You've got the infant universe of Qwewq, where our own planet dwells--only this time it's created by Superman, as one of his twelve super-labors.  (I would love that gimmick a lot more if Morrison gave us a scorecard--it's impossible to tell what the labors are!)  You've got the radical variations in scale from The Filth.  You've got several other callbacks to Morrison's run on JLA, from ominous rumblings about Solaris to a Superman who tells Lex Luthor "I know there's good in you" to maybe, just maybe, a reference to that JSA crossover where Green Lantern artificially accelerated time on that microscopic civilization that was built on top of the Spectre.

I'm not so sure about that last one--I think Morrison is really just playing around with that old idea that if the history of planet Earth were fit into a single day, all of human civilization would unfold in its final second.  A tad more cerebral than the JLA plot, but they both stem from his interest in narrative compressions of time and space.  And boy, do I love Morrison's endpoint for his pocket history of the human race--something that speaks to why he thinks this comic is important in the first place, why All-Star Superman and superheroes in general are, for Morrison, a lot more than just a paycheck.

Finally, because Morrison is Morrison--or because I am me?--I see we have a surprising number of references to Alan Moore.  Watchmen references abound, with a godlike hero who creates life at the culmination of his ascension and plants a city of delicate spires in the soil of Mars, in the shadow of Olympus Mons.  I'll charitably assume the Nietzsche quote originates with Nietzsche, but it does happen to be the same line that opened Miracleman.  An obvious place to go if you're looking to give the superhero a (spurious) historical pedigree, sure, but Moore got there first.

There's no overlooking the parallels with "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" though--not when we meet a messenger from an idyllic future, who shows up in a transparent bubble, no less, and who isn't supposed to share information with Superman but manages to provide a hint about an upcoming menace.  It's the Legion of Super-Heroes cameo updated for the age of text messaging.  And it calls attention to all the ways the larger plot structure of All-Star Superman as a whole--a grand tour of all the elements of the Superman myth, in the face of his impending death--owes a little something to Moore's big, serious, heartfelt, slobbery kiss of a Superman story from twenty-three years ago.

But it's gentle references this time, knowing winks to the reader.  No commentary or anxiety, as befits this most serene of series.  Just another nod to the past as this comic walks, square jaw held bravely up, into the future.

The Andres

Presenting the First Annual Fifth Anniversary Andre Awards, honoring the most devious, obnoxious, honorable, and stupid characters ever to grace the small screen.

At a separate ceremony earlier this week, Officer Caroline Massey handed out the following awards for the past four seasons...

Season One:  The Barksdales

Biggest Asshole:  Bill Rawls
Dumbest Asshole:  Wallace (runner-up, Wendell "Orlando" Blocker)
Craftiest Bastard:  Maurice Levy
Heart of Gold:  Omar Little
Most Improved:  Roland Pryzbylewski (runner-up, Cedric Daniels)
Tragic Hero:  Jimmy McNulty (runner-up, D'Angelo Barksdale)

Season Two:  The Port

Biggest Asshole:  Stringer Bell
Dumbest Asshole:  Ziggy Sobotka
Craftiest Bastard:  The Greek
Heart of Gold:  Beatrice "Beadie" Russell
Most Improved:  Cedric Daniels
Tragic Hero:  Frank Sobotka

Season Three:  Hamsterdam

Biggest Asshole:  Bill Rawls
Dumbest Asshole:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin (runner-up, Clarence Royce)
Craftiest Bastard:  Tommy Carcetti (runner-up, Marlo Stanfield)
Heart of Gold:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Most Improved:  Dennis "Cutty" Wise (runners-up, Ellis Carver and Jimmy McNulty)
Tragic Hero:  Stringer Bell (runner-up, Howard "Bunny" Colvin)

Season Four:  The Schools

Biggest Asshole:  DeLonda Brice
Dumbest Asshole:  Thomas "Herc" Hauk
Craftiest Bastard:  Stan Valchek
Heart of Gold/Teacher of the Year:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Most Improved:  Namond Brice
Tragic Hero:  Bubbles (runner-up, Preston "Bodie" Broaddus)

The Fuzzy Dunlop Award for Inconspicuous Gallantry

For the most accomplished but unrecognized hero/bastard/asshole.

Biggest Asshole:  Marlo Stanfield
Dumbest Asshole:  Ellis Carver (seasons 1-3)
Craftiest Bastard:  Maurice Levy and Lester Freamon (tie)
Heart of Gold:  Walon
Most Improved:  Ellis Carver (seasons 3-5)
Tragic Hero:  Preston "Bodie" Broaddus

And now, the moment all seven of you have been waiting for...

Season Five:  The Media

Biggest Asshole:  Thomas "Herc" Hauk
Dumbest Asshole:  Jimmy McNulty
Craftiest Bastard:  Nerese Campbell
Heart of Gold:  Kima Greggs
Most Improved:  Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins
Tragic Hero:  Cedric Daniels

For the record, my picks before the final episode were Herc, McNulty, Nerese, Kima, Bubbles, and Omar or McNulty, respectively.  The final episode didn't do much to upset the favorites.  A dizzying number of candidates stepped forward to make their bids for Craftiest Bastard:  Steintorf, Rawls, Freamon, Pearlman, and Levy were all in top form, and Stan pulled off his biggest coup yet.  But none of that was enough to knock off Nerese Campbell, who played the best game from start to finish and also showed some moves Sunday night.  That's quite a feat, upstaging Valchek on the night of his greatest victory.

Heart of Gold was a tough call.  Bunk embodied the show's favored approach to police work in the first half of the season, and provided that lone voice of dissent against McNulty's scam.  He also showed that his approach works when he got the warrant on Partlow.  Kima took the spotlight in the second half of the season, straightening out her personal life and moving to protect her department and her friends from themselves.  In the end, I went with Kima.  Not just because Jimmy and Lester recognized that she did the right thing, or that she was a better police for doing it, but because Bunk had a chance to nip the scam in the bud when it would have been easy, and he blew it; Kima came to it when it was already too late to stop it, and she stood up to it anyway.

Dumbest Asshole was easy, especially when Landsman's eulogy all but lobbied for Jimmy Mac (in both the Biggest and Dumbest categories).  Whatever mistakes the other characters made, he set almost all of them in motion.  And there are two other awards that should surprise nobody.  I am glad that Andre snagged an Andre.

The big shocker was in Tragic Hero, when McNulty didn't get the tragic ending that I think it's safe to say we were all expecting.  Getting drummed out of the police is the best thing that could have happened to him, and Beadie seems inclined to take him back.  I would say it's better than he deserves, but he did clean up his act in the past three episodes and solving those real murders reminded us all why the police were willing to put up with his shit in the first place:  sometimes he really is as smart as he thinks he is.  At least when he's working a case and not playing department politics.

Absent the expected McNulty flame-out, Gus Haynes might seem like the closest thing to this season's Tragic Hero:  he is the one who goes up against the institutional gods and falls hard because of it.  (Remember when I said the editors would go after him through his subordinates?  Sorry, Alma.)  But he's not the perfect fit that Bell and Sobotka were, and not just because most of his fall happens off-screen.  For too much of the season, he accepts his institution's flaws and his role within it.  He might bitch about the editors in the smokers' lounge or even toss out a pissy line when he storms out of a meeting, but he never makes any serious bid to challenge Whiting and Klebanow until they've already invested too much in Templeton to turn on him.  I say this as a criticism of the character, not the writing; this petulant streak complicated Gus and belied all those early criticisms that he was too perfect.  More seriously, though--and this was a problem in the writing--Haynes was also too passive to be a great hero, tragic or otherwise.  Too many weeks were spent sitting in the newsroom, missing the stories that swirled around him.

And then we have Omar.  He had the rise and fall, especially if we read seasons four and five as one continuous story (which the Omar, Marlo, Michael, Dukie, and Prop Joe plots certainly were).  In a matter of weeks he moved from godlike superhero to lonely casualty.

But what institution did he rail against?

Omar fulfilled a venerable and well-defined role in the drug trade.  So well-defined that his replacement is groomed almost before the body is cold... but then, you can say that about all the show's supposed mavericks, McNulty included.  Bunny Colvin is possibly the only figure who doesn't get replaced in some fashion in the series finale, a true rarity, somebody with both the institutional power and the moral convictions to try real systemic reform.  A damn shame there's only one of him.  But, getting back to Omar--he never really challenges the drug trade so much as dominates his particular niche.  The one thing that set him apart was his highly developed personal code of ethics, and that eroded as the season progressed.  Factor in his deliberately, brilliantly anti-heroic ending and I think you can say that the writers have finally accomplished the daunting task they set themselves back in season three:  they have made it impossible to view Omar as a hero.

Cedric Daniels makes a much better Tragic Hero in the Bell/Sobotka mold, though that only gains force with the last couple episodes.  But he challenges the mayor's warped priorities from the beginning of the season, he refuses to compromise his principles, and he falls a lot farther than Haynes does.  His rise to commissioner offered the best hope for the city, and his fall is a tragedy for everyone.

(Part of me, the part of me that gets completely emotionally invested in the show and can't write about it with any detachment at all, wonders why he accepted Nerese's hold over him so easily.  I'm afraid Simon and Burns have stacked their bittersweet ending. Daniels had the dirtiest dirt of all time on Carcetti and Rawls, and it's not like he'd have to dig too deep to find some on Nerese.  Hell, put Lester to work on her.  Baltimore would be a lot better off if Cedric Daniels had asked himself one simple, always appropriate question:  WWSVD?)

Once again, the worst fate befalls one of the kids--last year Randy Wagstaff, this year Dukie Weems--as the show continues its shift from the outsize personalities of Greek tragedy to the smaller and more painful suffering of naturalist prose (and, this season, postmodern black comedy).  "Tragic Hero" doesn't seem quite appropriate anymore; the kids fall the shortest distance but they have the roughest landings.  If there were an Andre for Helpless Victim, that could only be Dukie.

(So the category I added at the last minute was the toughest one to decide.  Thanks for nothing, Jones.)

And finally, the bragging rights for the whole series...

The Ray Cole Lifetime Achievement Award

Biggest Asshole:  Bill Rawls
Dumbest Asshole:  Thomas "Herc" Hauk
Heart of Gold:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Most Improved:  Ellis Carver
Tragic Hero:  Stringer Bell
and Craftiest Bastard for Life:  Commissioner Stan Valchek.

Always remember, friends...

He would take your punk ass to school, that's what.

"You ain't the only one who knows how to play this game"

So there's this story.

It's a story about a story.  There's this guy, or girl, who makes up a story.  Or they read somebody else's story.  Or both.  And they like the story.  They believe in the story.  They believe in it so much that they react as if it really happened.  And because they react as if it really happened, and other people have to react to their reactions, pretty soon it's almost like the story really did happen.

I refer, of course, to Foucault's Pendulum.  I refer, of course, to The Crying of Lot 49.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.  "The Blue Hotel."  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Al Qaeda in Iraq.  Episode 1F02, "Homer Goes to College."

I refer, of course, to the fifth and final season of The Wire.

It's only fitting that a show about the postmodern economy, and a season that looks at some of the cultural effects of that economy, would close by drawing on one of the classic postmodern plots (and one with some precedents in naturalism, the show's closest literary model)--the story of the believer who, through sheer force of belief, forces the world to behave as if his fantasies are real.  Sometimes external reality reasserts itself with a vengeance, and sometimes these holy fools never rejoin "the reality-based community." Sometimes, as in Iraq, both of those things are true, but it's rarely the people who believe they create their own reality who pay the price.

I wasn't surprised to see The Wire go down this path--a copycat begins copying killings that are fake to begin with, saddling McNulty with a real serial killer--but I was surprised that it waited until the final episode.  David Simon and Ed Burns, the only people who could have written this finale, didn't leave themselves a lot of time to tease out the suspense or the media circus (complete with stories of a fabricated gray van reminiscent of the sniper scare here in DC several years back), although they did give us another nice swerve with Templeton and the homeless guy outside the Sun building.  Once again, The Wire is not The Shield and they know it. 

The subplot wraps up in record time with the quickest murder investigation we've ever seen on this show, but it's good to see that Jimmy can still close a real murder (or two) when he has to.  His swift closure might look like a gift from Simon and Burns, but it's based on solid local knowledge (from that fake canvass Lester insisted that he do!) and a memory for detail that makes Jimmy a natural, if inevitably self-destructive, police.  Imagine what he could have accomplished if he'd just worked those vacants the honest way all along, like the Bunk.

Imagine what the writers could have done with two or three more episodes!  Maybe the postmodern fool plot gets just enough breathing room, but Gus Haynes's fall at the Sun is so abbreviated that we don't even get to see the political infighting that would have done a lot to justify the sometimes rocky newspaper plotline.  I know The Wire does many other things, but for me, that kind of political maneuvering is what it does best--what no other show on television can even touch.  (The Steintorf/Rawls scene was pure Wire, and pure genius.  And it made me like Steintorf, even if his influence on Carcetti has been and remains poisonous.  He can run with the craftiest, that one.)  On the other hand, the infighting at the Sun and Haynes's downfall would be so familiar to us from past seasons of The Wire--or from other plots this episode, like Daniels--that we can imagine it for ourselves, can't we? 

After five seasons we know that the guilty will (mostly) get off easy, the few principled holdouts will be removed quietly, and the system will keep on rolling, replacing any worn-out parts.  (I love the scene with Sydnor and Phelan.)  The biggest surprise is that most of these characters got better endings than many of them had a right to--Dukie and Michael excepted.  They aren't part of any institutions anymore, which is why they can fall so hard.  (I know it felt good to see Michael carrying that shotty--and to see Vinson catch some shot--but what's his life expectancy?) The system that protects itself also protects McNulty and Freamon, and Templeton.  (God damn it, if only McNulty had charged him with filing a false report instead of confessing to him!) 

Even Haynes gets his little triumphs.  Given the choice (presumably) between taking a buyout and going into exile on the copy desk--you know, the pawnshop! the marine unit!--he chooses to stay at the newspaper he loves, in the city he loves.  And he gets the comfort of knowing that he's groomed a good replacement, no easy task on this show.  Look at that smile on his face as Fletcher works the newsroom--no envy there, only pride.

This surprising, contradictory, but ultimately consistent ending--generally upbeat personal narratives thrown in relief against ongoing societal dysfunction--is the truest one The Wire could have given us.  This has always been a show where successes and reforms can happen interpersonally, but never on a larger scale.

Individually, most of us will be okay; socially, we just can't seem to turn it around.

Other, and final, Wire business:

• That was the only song they could use for the series-ending montage, wasn't it?
• I thought the security-camera footage was lame back in season one, but here it makes a nice homage.
• The couch!
• The boat!  The closest we'll ever come to seeing Diggins again, alas.
• And Crutchfield gets Kenard for Omar.  Nice.
• Great to see Rawls berating McNulty again.  Those two play off so well against each other.
• Also great to see that even Rawls knew he couldn't get away with hanging the fake murders on the homeless guy.
• Which is more infuriating--Templeton getting a Pulitzer, or Marlo getting what Stringer Bell wanted?  (I'm hoping there's also an implication that he'll get what Stringer Bell got.  The one time I would have killed to see a grinning, victorious Clay Davis pressing the flesh--where the hell was he?)
• I'm glad the courthouse leak didn't turn out to be a major character (honestly, some of the theories I've read... Pearlman? Daniels?) but it's nothing less than amazing that it would be Gary DiPasquale--Gary DiPasquale, played by Gary D'Addario, the Baltimore homicide lieutenant who allowed a young reporter named David Simon to shadow his shift and thus started this whole crazy redball rolling.  Seems like a cruel way to pay the man back.
• In case you were wondering, I don't think Valchek was the Craftiest Bastard of this season, actually, or even this episode.

But he is the Craftiest Motherfucking Bastard of All Time.

Next up: the Andre Awards (now's your last chance to lobby), and then some sort of season or series wrap-up.

And then I think I need to go back to Baltimore.

That

is how you end a series.

More tomorrow.

Oh yes, and one more thing:

NOBODY FUCKS WITH STAN VALCHEK.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Over in the comments to the Andre categories, Jones has suggested another award for the most Tragic Figure on The Wire. I'm tweaking that slightly to announce our sixth and final category, the Tragic Hero.  This is not necessarily the character to whom the saddest thing happens (Bubbles, Wallace, Randy); it's the character who most conforms to the classical model of the tragic hero, the character who challenges the godlike institutions that run the show and falls hard because of it. Unlike the Asshole/Bastard categories, which often go to the caricatures on the fringes of the narrative, this (even moreso than Most Improved and Heart of Gold) is the domain of the protagonists.

To better outline the category, here are my best guesses for the Tragic Heroes of the past four seasons. Three are easy; one is hard.

Season one:  Jimmy McNulty, setting the whole series in motion and winding up on a boat for his troubles. Runner-up is his opposite number, D'Angelo Barksdale, who doesn't challenge the system with the same vigor--in fact, at the end of season one he upholds it by taking the sentence for his family. His tragic arc comes to a head halfway through season two.

Season two:  Frank Sobotka.

Season three:  Stringer Bell. Runner-up, Howard "Bunny" Colvin.

Season four:  This is a tough call. Colvin makes a good run at changing the school system and he fails. That failure is a social tragedy, but he's cautious enough after getting burned on Hamsterdam that he doesn't pay a personal price.  He even manages a small victory by saving Namond Brice--currently the only one of the four kids to end up better off than he started the season.

If you regard seasons four and five as a continuous narrative--and there are many reasons to do so--the Tragic Hero is clearly Omar Little, who bucks the system, steals from the gods (including the Greek), gets his friends killed, and follows them to an inglorious death. But looking at season four on its own, he ends up doing pretty well, albeit having set in motion his own demise.

Randy Wagstaff has one of the most tragic stories of the season, followed closely by Michael and Dukie. They're all abused by the systems they encounter (school, legal, street, social services), but a tragic hero is supposed to hold some exalted station and these kids are too powerless. They are simply victims. Protagonists in a naturalist novel, perhaps, but not a Greek tragedy.

The best tragic heroes in season four would probably be either Bubbles or Bodie Broaddus. Their stations are not exactly exalted either--season four plays out as a downscale parody of the grand tragic falls of seasons two and three.  But unlike Randy, Bodie and Bubbles both challenge their local authorities (Marlo and the mugger) with more agency, both seem to have a better shot at success, and both fall much harder when they fail.  I would give the nod to Bubbles here.  Even though he gets that moment of grace from Landsman, his self-destruction is absolute while Bodie goes down fighting (and keeps himself out of the vacants).

I wonder if this departure from the classical models of seasons two and three in favor of a more naturalistic mode explains why season four was so powerful.  Maybe, maybe not; season three is right up there with it as The Wire's best.

And as for this season? Omar is a contender, though he's paying off hubris from last season. McNulty and Freamon both think they can game the system when they, of all people, should damn well know better. Marlo has made a huge power play and lost--but will the case hold up? Also, unlike Stringer Bell, his goals are only to thrive within the existing criminal system, not to challenge it. He doesn't come anywhere near the "hero" label, even in the most purely dramatic sense. Gus Haynes could be in the mix, although his few challenges to Whiting and Klebanow so far have been fairly impotent, even petulant. 

It probably won't be Scott Templeton; he plays within the rules of a broken system, and his fall isn't even guaranteed. Violating a professional code of ethics is a moral failure in The Wire, but not necessarily a bad career move.

What do you think?  Did I miss anybody?  Who's the tragic hero of season five?  (One last time, a reminder:  absolutely no spoilers for the series finale.  I'll be quick to delete any comments if I even suspect they're giving away future story developments.)

It's an Honor Just to Be Nominated, Really

Here it is, your inside line on the Andre Awards...

Biggest Asshole:  The Sun plot has furnished us with no shortage of possibilities.  Whiting, Klebanow, and Templeton are all symptomatic of what's killing newspaper journalism, and their air of entitlement (patrician in Whiting, childlike in Templeton) gives them an added edge in this category.  But while the problems they symptomize have dire consequences nationally and globally, these characters just aren't as destructive on the human, interpersonal level of the show's dramatic action.  The show rightly castigates the media for promoting the fabricated cause for war in Iraq, but it does so mostly through analogy and metaphor; Whiting, Klebanow, and Templeton don't have anything to do with that on-screen.  Their chances also suffer from a weakness that, as you'll see, plagues all the Sun nominees:  their plot is too isolated from the main action of the series.

Marlo has shown himself to be a sociopath with absolutely no honor or loyalty, but we knew that already.  Still, even by the standards of the drug trade, he's poisonous.  Even if you chalk up the attempted hit on Michael as part of his survival strategy, killing Butchie, Joe, Junebug, and Junebug's family places him high in the running.  The fact that he never dirties his own hands makes him all the more contemptible, for some reason.

Reader Daniel made a pretty good case in the early comment threads for Michael Steintorf, the Chief of Staff who pushes Carcetti to gut the police department and turn down federal help for political advantage.  The "Be creative" line certainly helps his chances.  Carcetti's been no prize this season either, but Steintorf's whispering in his ear has pushed him the wrong way every time.  (As an aside, I wish we'd seen more of Norman whispering in the other ear.  How does he feel about Carcetti's decisions?)

Is that everybody?  I could have sworn there was somebody else...

Oh, yes.  A former police popping up in a couple of episodes working for a criminal lawyer may seem like a little enough transgression.  But if the lawyer works for the same drug organizations you spent four seasons trying to bust--and he defended the soldiers who shot your mentor, getting one of them off with baking soda--and you are now spying on your best friend, funneling information from him right back to the lawyer so he can defend the sociopath who cost you your last job--then you, my friend, have just negotiated the leap from Dumbest to Biggest Asshole.

Unless the final episode has Marlo ordering Kenard to strangle Kima's kid, this one's a lock.

Dumbest Asshole:  This is all but guaranteed to be one of our serial killer fabulists.  McNulty starts the ball rolling and Freamon escalates it when he really should have known better.  (That said, I find their decisions, appalling and unrealistic as they are, to be perfectly in character for both of them--the writers have done a great job resting this absurd storyline on well-established traits like McNulty's self-destructiveness and their shared intellectual vanity.)  They could easily destroy the MCU over this, maybe even the careers of Sydnor, Carver, Carver's people, Landsman, and Daniels.

Other nominees would have to include Joe Stewart for getting caught in a trap he really should have seen coming, considering he helped set it, and Rupert Bond for letting Clay Davis control his trial (with a little help from the writers).  But neither of them have jeopardized as much hard work or derailed the city as much as Freamon and McNulty.

 

Craftiest Bastard:  Stan Valchek commits a beautiful and masterfully-executed act of bastardy when he sinks Burrell (still, to this point, my favorite scene of the season) and true to form, the consequences are good for the city even if his goals are thoroughly venal.  But it's hard to see him taking the prize on a single appearance.  Will somebody else beat the master at his game?

Marlo's been pretty slick in setting himself up as the kingpin of the city.  On the other hand, his takeover was built largely on writer fiat (Joe's idiocy), his authority was seriously destabilized by a one-legged stick-up artist (who he himself brought back into the game), and you can't say that Lester Freamon didn't outwit him.  Lester's been pretty damned crafty this season but, like Joe Stewart, he might have dug his own grave with the fake serial killer.  Many of the show's craftiest bastards have been too crafty for their own good this season, taking themselves out of contention.

Right now, I have to like Nerese Campbell for this one.  She convinced Burrell and Davis to go quietly, she got Carcetti to give away the farm in exchange for the firing, she's dealt herself into a prime position to become the next mayor, and she still has that file on Daniels.  For a woman who was dealt a huge blow in the first episode, she's come out looking pretty good.

Heart of Gold:  This one seems like it should be a Daniel Day-Lewis/Javier Bardem-style lock--Gus Haynes is all too clearly cut from the Bunny Colvin cloth.  But while he's the moral and professional center of the newspaper, he's stayed too isolated there.  Can he be the conscience of the season when he almost never leaves the newsroom and has no idea what's really happening in the main storylines?

With Omar breaking his code and Colvin relegated to a cameo, this category could be wide open for the first time in three seasons.  Bunk Moreland and Kima Greggs have both acted on conscience when it's been hard to act on conscience; they don't just throw a fit, storm away, and let Klebanow overrule them.  I have to like one of these two as the inside favorite, depending on what happens in the final episode.  Assuming nothing else changes, give the edge to Kima for doing the truly hard thing and doing it the right way.

Most Improved:  A hard category to handicap without knowing where everybody ends up.  Michael Lee shows he hasn't completely lost his conscience, and his tactical savvy grows by leaps and bounds in the penultimate episode--but whether he ends up as the new Marlo or, I grudgingly concede, the new Omar, it's hard to call that an improvement either way.  If through some miracle he finds a way off the corners he might be in the mix.

Mike Fletcher is developing into a good reporter, but the change is too minor and the consequences are too small.  There's also something off-putting about a David Simon-written character earning David Simon's praise for developing into a reporter who works like David Simon--not that I don't expect Simon to promote his view of journalism, but this award shouldn't go to the teacher's pet.

Leander Sydnor has become that most exalted of figures on this show--the effective middle manager.  (Compare to Bodie, Colvin, Haynes, or Daniels.)  He can break codes like Prez, work a paper trail like Freamon, even coordinate a large team of officers like Daniels. If the MCU survives at all, he will be the only guy who can rebuild it.  But he may be fatally compromised by his own complicity in the scam.

Bubbles has come far, hasn't he?  The hardest work was done between seasons, but he's still come a long way this year--getting tested for HIV, volunteering in the soup kitchen, becoming Fletcher's guide, making his anniversary, and almost, almost unburdening himself about Sherrod.  (Also, it would be nice if Andre Royo won an Andre.)  If he can take this all the way I think he becomes Most Improved for the entire series, no question.

But this show feeds on false hope.

So what do you think?  Did the academy overlook anybody?  Who should win the first and final Andre Awards?