I Am NOT the Beastmaster

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.

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?

And the Categories Are...

It started out as a cheap and easy way to fill posts and spark discussion in the fall of 2006. It's evolved into one of the standbys of my Wire blogging, the neverending game to determine who's the nastiest, dumbest, or wiliest schemer in a cutthroat world--the Asshole Sweepstakes.

I thought I'd celebrate the end of the greatest show ever made for television with a big awards ceremony and retrospective, but an "Asshole Sweepstakes" is too crude for such a momentous occasion.  Instead I've decided to name them the Andres, in honor of Andre "Bubbles" Royo's famous street Oscar.  And I've expanded the contests to include two new honors that I've been tracking for a while without labels.  Here they are, the categories for the First Annual Fifth Anniversary Andre Awards...

Biggest Asshole: What makes an asshole?  Is it murdering people, importing heroin, mismanaging a police department, or wrecking a city?  In your book or mine, sure, but many of those actions actually serve the institutions that set the perverse logic of this show.  The institutions demand nothing less.  That doesn't make the guilty parties good people, just good workers in a sick economy.

What makes an asshole is more than just the scale of the damage.  It's the violation of the codes that are supposed to govern your trade, or the pure glee taken in doing it.  It's ordering the murder of your best friend's cousin, while you're screwing his girlfriend, while he's in prison taking a sentence for you.  It's calling a hit on Sunday morning.  It's humiliating a district commander in front of his peers before you fire him; insulting a security guard so you can invent an excuse to kill him; warping a child's mind and sending him out on the corners because you've gotten used to your idle lifestyle.  It's making life miserable for everybody else purely because you can.  It's always being ready to do the cruel or selfish thing, whether it's necessary or not.  Isn't that what makes an asshole?

Mm, sure. That and a sphincter muscle.

Dumbest Asshole:  And then you have the incompetent workers, the bad decisions, the...

Oh hell, just look at Herc.

 

Craftiest Bastard:  This is not to say they are not assholes.  Sometimes they are the most destructive characters on the show.  But a bastard does not abuse his or her assholery, applying to one end and one end only:  their own advantage.  Whether they use their gifts for advancement, profit, or simple self-preservation, the crafty bastards are consummate professionals.

And while they may break a few eggs along the way... roll back a few programs, bust a few unions... they are exceptionally competent at what they do.  Remember, siccing the Major Crimes Unit on Frank Sobotka wasn't just ruining hundreds of lives in pursuit of a petty grudge--it was a great hunch about how much money Sobotka had and where he was getting it.  It was solid police work rooted in strong local knowledge, the knowledge The Wire most respects, and it made the entire rest of the series possible.  Underestimate the Craftiest Bastard at your own peril.

Heart of Gold:  I nearly called this one "Teacher of the Year," but these characters aren't always teachers.  Whether they mentor young officers, bring addicts into twelve-step programs, teach troubled kids, legalize drugs, or carry a shotgun under their trenchcoat, these characters are the moral centers of their seasons.  Though not always of every season, Lester Freamon.

Most Improved:  Speaks for itself.  The Wire isn't unremitting tragedy.  Every year a character or two will try to straighten themselves out, find a new job, a new mentor, or a new lifestyle.  Some backslide and some don't, but they remind us that postmodern America isn't as bad as it looks.  Or rather, it is as bad as it looks, in spite of the fact that a few people still manage to get themselves right.

By the way, I wasn't planning to choose all my examples from the police; I guess I must think of them as the show's protagonists.  I suppose you could do the same with the street characters, since they've been around just as long and offer at least as many options.  It would be educational to see who lines up with who.  Here's one point that flies in the face of season three's parallel structure--the criminal counterpart to Bunny Colvin is not Stringer Bell.  It's this guy:

   

To whet your appetite for the upcoming Andre Awards for season five--for which suggestions will be welcome--I thought I'd run through the past seasons.  The season four Andres were set pretty firmly in my mind, but I had to assign them retroactively for previous years.  I'm drawing a few blanks, so any suggestions (or disputations) are welcome here, too.

Season One:  The Barksdales

Biggest Asshole:  Bill Rawls
Dumbest Asshole:  Wallace (runner-up, Wendell "Orlando" Blocker)
Craftiest Bastard:  Ervin Burrell?  Maurice Levy?
Heart of Gold:  Omar Little
Most Improved:  Cedric Daniels (runner-up, Roland Pryzbylewski)

Season Two:  The Port

Biggest Asshole:  Stringer Bell
Dumbest Asshole:  Ziggy Sobotka
Craftiest Bastard:  The Greek
Heart of Gold:  Beatrice "Beadie" Russell
Most Improved:  absolutely no idea, though Daniels pulls off a great career move

Season Three:  Hamsterdam

Biggest Asshole:  Bill Rawls
Dumbest Asshole:  no idea, but when in doubt go with Herc
Craftiest Bastard:  Tommy Carcetti (runner-up, Marlo Stanfield)
Heart of Gold:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Most Improved:  Ellis Carver (with a late-season challenge from Jimmy McNulty)

It's not impossible that Bunny Colvin is both the Heart of Gold and the Dumbest Asshole in season three.  Clarence Royce also drops the ball pretty badly.

Season Four:  The Schools

Biggest Asshole:  DeLonda Brice
Dumbest Asshole:  Thomas "Herc" Hauk
Craftiest Bastard:  Stan Valchek
Teacher of the Year:  Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Most Improved:  Namond Brice

Interesting how the show's nominal protagonist, Jimmy McNulty, is never the noblest, craftiest, most selfish/antisocial, or dumbest character.  That's probably as it should be, with the caricatures generally displaced to the borders of the story.  Even more interesting, McNulty only shows the capacity for improvement in a couple of seasons, and he's always eclipsed by other characters who make bigger changes.

Of course, this year he may be on pace to win two Andres at once.

And what about this year?  Who should win for season five?  Start mulling it over now, but save your thoughts for the next post, when I handicap the races and give you the insider predictions... and since I choose who wins, they're pretty far inside.

In the meanwhile, I'd love to have a full list for the awards ceremony.  Who should win for the past four seasons?

"Time to 'fess up"

Another terrific episode as The Wire builds toward what looks to be a huge finale.  It's no accident that the well-received weeks eight and nine (which weren't included in the screeners all the critics received) have focused on the wiretap investigations that are the bread and butter of this show, playing down the less successful newspaper storyline--although that plot makes some great advances, too.

The arrests of the Stanfield organization (including Cheese Wagstaff--good on you, Omar) look like a typical Wire false dawn, much as we saw at about this point in previous seasons.  McNulty's shit is critically fucked, as they say, so many different ways that I can't see this case holding up in court, with the possible exception of Bunk's honest arrest of Chris Partlow--and even that's tainted.  Nevertheless, the busts were great fun to watch. I notice they were all coordinated on the ground by Sydnor; back in season one Daniels lobbied hard to get him on the Barksdale detail, and we're seeing how good that decision was as he grows into the roles Freamon and Daniels once filled.  He's the best hope for a future Major Crimes Unit, as long as he doesn't go down with the ship.

I have no intention of naming or linking to the guilty parties, but it's absolutely appalling to read fans on other Wire blogs complaining about Kima "snitching" on McNulty and Freamon.  Set aside for a moment the fact that the serial killer story was always a house of cards, already tumbling... or that Kima does it the right way, taking steps to protect Carver and telling him to protect his people.  What kind of Wire fan could watch Randy's story in season four and still berate someone for snitching?  What show have they been watching?

The Colvin scene had absolutely nothing to do with any of the plotlines, but it was great seeing Bunny, Namond, and the Deacon just the same.  The encounter with Carcetti, especially Colvin's final rejoinder, would have made a fine epilogue for the series (although I'm sure the writers have something even better in store).  The Mark Bowdens and others looking to dismiss The Wire will no doubt cite Colvin's "there's nothing to be done" as proof of the show's bleakness, but I read it very differently:  Colvin is saying there's nothing to be done if people like Carcetti don't have the political will to do anything.  Which is to say, if their constituents don't have the will to demand that they change.  It's the Carcettis who offer nothing but despair and the status quo, and the writers have made it pretty clear what they think of Carcetti.  ("Be creative?"  A new low, even for Steintorf.)

And then Namond provides just the right amount of levity at the end--another note-perfect reading from Julito McCullum.

The newspaper plot takes a couple of good turns this week.  First, there's almost no Templeton, Klebanow, or Whiting--though still more than enough.  I'm sorry to say that with only one episode to go none of them have risen above one-dimensional caricatures, and "the Dickensian aspect" has now been beaten over my head as many times as "we'll have to do more with less." 

Second, and more important, Gus gets out of the office, stops waiting for stories to come to him, and investigates his fabulist in three scenes that do a lot to re-establish his value as a journalist and as a protagonist.  Offices are always suspect places on The Wire, sites of isolated and detached management on a show that values local knowledge and field work.  (The MCU office avoids this tarnish because it is literally connected to the street through its wiretaps and surveillance teams.)  Haynes seemed to wither in those middle weeks when he was confined to his desk, but episode nine gives us exactly what the newsroom scenes have needed--less newsroom.  I wish this had started weeks ago.  I'd love to see more of the returning reporter as private eye, and besides, the fallout when Haynes formally exposes Templeton should have been good for a couple of episodes of politcking at least.  Another mark against the ten-episode season.

The visit to Walter Reed also provides an understated but undeniable reminder of the consequences of fabrication.  Haynes is only investigating Templeton's lies, but every shot of amputated veterans is a worst-case scenario for what happens when politicians make up their own facts and reporters don't call them on it--or join in.  I would have loved for season five to have shown the cozy relationship between government and the media a little more directly, perhaps with city hall as the vehicle, but this is probably the most elegant way the writers could have alluded to the nationally, globally destructive lies of the war in Iraq.

Finally, getting back to false dawns, Bubs appears to have reached a place of peace, or at least a willingness to forgive himself, in his anniversary speech.  (And he looks healthier than ever.)  But he still hasn't quite confessed about Sherrod yet--I don't think his story is over.  Maybe he'll do it in print for Mike Fletcher, airing out his sins for the whole city to read?  That would be a fitting end, and a note of hope, if a season built around lies ended with Bubbles finding the biggest possible audience for his harrowing truth.

Other Wire business:

• Cool Lester Smooth knocks the Bunk off his three-week reign of the title quotes!  If this post had gone a different direction I would have gladly used Colvin's line to Carcetti, which is one of the most heavily weighted in the series.

• Dukie's job with the junkman turns out to be less Adena Watson and more Gary McCullough.  That ending isn't much better.

• Back in the first week of the season, I was told I was too quick in calling Herc the Biggest Asshole for working for Maurice Levy.

Always go with your first instinct, kids!  Herc's not only spying on his friends and feeding information to Levy, he's doing it to help Marlo--and he just might get the sociopath who cost him his last job off the hook.  (If Freamon and McNulty haven't already made a successful prosecution impossible.)  With that, he officially has no redeeming features whatsoever.  He's officially the Biggest Asshole of this episode, and depending on what happens next week he's the inside favorite for the Biggest of the season--which would place him high in the running for Biggest worldwide.  If you think there's a bigger one, your case had better be bulletproof.

Prosecutor Obonda and Congressman Clay

If The Wire does nothing else for American society, it's still made an indelible impression on Maryland politics. Clay Davis isn't just drawn from a couple of disgraced Baltimore politicians. He's so perfectly archetypical that a number of local bloggers and commenters--and apparently a few journalists--have started using Clay as a synonym for corrupt machine politicians like Maryland's Al Wynn, recently voted out of office in a primary challenge from local activist Donna Edwards.

I was reminded of Wynn when Clay Davis took his crack at "Prosecutor Obonda" in episode seven, and when he insinuated that Rupert Bond was doing the work of white puppetmasters the week before that. Wynn is an Obama supporter (as is Edwards), but he, like Clay Davis, was perfectly happy to argue that his opponent was a pawn of white interests bent on bringing down a black politician. In the days before the primary, Wynn's supporters in the real estate and credit industries funded a barrage of ads that attacked the netroots-supported Edwards because she was funded by "super-rich people from out of state who don't get our community." Emphasis very much in the original.  (Edwards, like Wynn, is black, so he couldn't aim the smear directly at her. He did say she was part of a "vast, dare I say, left-wing conspiracy.") Davis merely went one step further, implying that his prosecutor was inauthentically, insufficiently black--the last remnant of an odious argument floated by Clinton surrogates in the days before South Carolina. (BET founder Robert Johnson compared Obama to Sidney Poitier in much the same way that Davis linked Bond to Obama. That was positively genteel compared to Andrew Young.)

Those attacks generated a powerful backlash in the primaries--a backlash that The Wire failed to see coming. You can tell this season was written and filmed a year ago; looking at the Maryland primary results, I'm guessing no defendant in a Baltimore courtroom would try to link his prosecutor to Barack Obama today.

I had thought the shared race-baiting cemented the Clay Davis-Al Wynn connection until Wynn entered the cast of The Wire this week, in heavily doctored form, as Congressman Upshaw. The scene where Carcetti goes to DC to put down a Prince George's County challenge for the governor's mansion alludes to the 2002 gubernatorial race, when Democratic Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend passed over black DC-area Democratic prospects to choose a former Republican from Annapolis as her running mate, and generally neglected the DC suburbs (which are increasingly rivaling Baltimore for power in the Democratic party and the state). Plenty of people in the DC area were not pleased by the snub, including Al Wynn, who had been using his congressional seat to position himself as a kingmaker in state and county affairs. Wynn is even rumored to have squeezed Townsend for money if she wanted to keep him from throwing his Get Out the Vote operation behind the Republican candidate, and to have done the same with Tommy Carcetti Martin O'Malley four years later.

Townsend went on to lose her race, the first time Maryland elected a Republican governor in nearly forty years (since that paragon of class and ethics, our gift to the nation, Spiro Agnew). That loss had little to do with Wynn per se and a lot more to do with Townsend's inept strategy and lackluster campaigning--upon hearing that Townsend endorsed Hillary Clinton, this Obama supporter breathed a sigh of relief--but it set up Wynn to pretend he had more influence than he did. He continued to play kingmaker and to vote against his constituents, at least until Donna Edwards scared him in 2006 and unseated him in 2008.

That upset is an indication that maybe things aren't as hopeless as they sometimes seem on The Wire.  Sure, the show's done elections before, and the challengers have won, and they have learned how little they can change. But the Donna Edwards victory removes a Clay Davis Democrat from office, and Al Wynn was failed by the tactics that let Clay wriggle off the hook.

I write this as a P.G. County native and a proud graduate of the Prince George's County public schools.  Held together with glue?  Look out, Upshaw--maybe the netroots of the Wireworld are coming for your ass, too.

Missing Persons

A comment thread for all you Wire fans:  With only two episodes left in the series, who else needs to put in an appearance?  (No fair giving away anything from episode nine, On-Demanders.)  Here are some of the choices:

Prez, Namond, and Colvin.  This is the most essential one.  These characters were the emotional core of season four, and Colvin was the show's moral conscience for two seasons straight.  I'd like to see how they're doing.

Cheryl.  We've already seen Kima's ex this season, but we haven't seen her in her professional capacity as a television news worker.  That seems like an obvious connection this season--and I'd like to see television news splayed out on the examination table the way newspapers have been, if there's time.

Claude Diggins.  No real need to see the Marine Unit boat pilot again.  I just like this character because he has possibly the most Baltimore name (and face) in the entire series.

Caroline Massey.  Whatever happened to the Major Crimes Unit's chief westside translator and coupon clipper?

Officer Walker.  Presumably he's still out there, shaking down children and homeless people.

Marcia Donnelly.  I'd love another look at the toughest and one of the best administrators in the series.  Even if she royally screwed up with Dukie.

Wee-Bey and DeLonda Brice.  Admit it.  You know you want to see DeLonda again.  Plus I'm curious to see if she can snag Asshole of the Year for a second year running on a single cameo.

Shardene.  Is she still with Lester?  I would guess so--as this week's bar scene makes clear, he is still Cool Lester Smooth.

Stan "Super Bastard" Valchek.  Because one brief scene just isn't enough.

I don't expect to see all of them--although you can fit a lot of faces into a series-ending montage--but I hope we see most.  Prez, Namond, Colvin, and maybe Wee-Bey and Marcia Donnelly strike me as pretty much essential.

Who did I miss?  Who do you need to see one more time?