Do you know how hard it is to choose title quotes that don't come from the Bunk? He had two or three keepers this episode alone. That's not so much a reflection of his Wildean wit (or the Baltimore police version thereof) as it is a sign that he's become the moral center of this show. With Lester falling hard, Haynes confined to the newsroom, Colvin nowhere in sight, and even Omar going back on his word, it's up to Bunk to remind us how the system was supposed to work. And remind us he does, through acidic little asides or simply the roll of his eyes as Jimmy digs himself and the department deeper and deeper into his lies. So many of the shots in this episode position Bunk with his back to the other characters, face to the camera, as if we are the only people he can confide in, the only people who can share his outrage. Nobody in his world can be trusted.
The scene where he tells off Landsman and refuses to drop his casework brought me to my feet the first time I watched it. A knowledgeable professional tells off his supervisor, refuses to play along with the bureaucracy's meaningless rituals, and gets away with it by the sheer force of his moral indignation: that's one of the best victories on The Wire right there.
Sadly, this being The Wire, that victory is hard-fought and largely meaningless.
One of Mark Bowden's criticisms of The Wire was its seemingly unremitting bleakness, its sense that progress is impossible. Sure, there are heroic individuals like Walon or Bunny Colvin who can help people on the interpersonal level that the show prizes; there are seasoned professionals like Haynes or Daniels or, until recently, Lester Freamon, who do important jobs and do them well; there are even institutional players like Tommy Carcetti or, for that matter, Joe Stewart and Stringer Bell, who intermittently dream of reform. But their reforms fail. Their institutions remain unchanged--or grow worse. If there's any merit to any of Bowden's charges, this would be the one. And Exhibit A would be the trial of Clay Davis.
The trial shows season five's narrative compression at its worst. I can forgive the show the dramatic license of putting the trial within a week or two (at most) of the arraignment; it's not like they have the luxury of waiting another season. But squeezing the whole trial into half an episode, and letting Davis off on such transparent pandering, ruins the entire subplot--which up until this week was one of the season's best-executed storylines.
For a couple of weeks now, the writers have been planting all sorts of indicators that Davis's trial might not turn out to be the slam-dunk that it seemed. Bond deciding to try the case himself for political points, and cutting down the number of witnesses. Bond and Carcetti shutting out the federal prosecutors. Davis martyring himself in the local media. Possibly even Freamon and Sydnor getting distracted by their illegal wiretap, and neglecting the case they've been detailed to. There are plenty of plausible, well-advertised ways Davis could skate on his charges. Instead, Richard Price and David Simon make him so silver-tongued that he runs roughshod over Bond and turns the courtroom into his cheering section. It reduces Bond to an idiot who doesn't know how to run a trial in his own city. It reduces the judge to an idiot who can't run her own court. It reduces the jurors and gallery members to idiots, too. Would the entire courtroom buy into Davis's act? Would they all, every one of them, burst into applause? That's not Baltimore, it's Springfield.
I hope Davis's strained reality show references weren't intended to be part of this season's media critique. Yes yes, everything in the media is fake, we understand that--but by making Davis's trial so wildly implausible, Price and Simon insult our intelligence as viewers of this season and our emotional investment as viewers of the last four. A plotline that's been building for five seasons came crashing down in half an hour so the show could score a cheap, obvious point. And it takes other, better scenes down with it: McNulty turning into the homicide unit's money faucet is funny (as is his inadvertent, unwilling transformation into middle manager--absolutely the last character suited for the job and even he knows it), but then it's too obviously twinned with Davis's testimony. Whatever else was done right in episode seven, the Davis trial is a huge step backwards.
The newspaper plot fares about as well. After getting it right last week and showing us how good journalism is made, the writers brought out the expository sledgehammer again. Did we need to see Fletcher told not once but twice to "write how it feels"? I mean, it's nice to see Bubs stepping back into his informant role--and very interesting, maybe very telling, that he refuses payment this time. That scene may have shown a quiet but profound development in his character, but it does nothing for our understanding of Fletcher or the Sun.
The episode is much better on Haynes's discovery of Templeton's fabrications (which are not exactly subtle anymore). He practices the other side of the David Simon model of good journalism: while Fletcher is standing around listening to people, Gus cultivates his local connections and draws on their knowledge to blow a hole a mile wide in Templeton's lies.
Connections can turn back on you, though. The Wire has never flinched from comparing the war on drugs to the war on terror or the war in Iraq, and Templeton and Gutierrez repeating McNulty's concoction carries more than a hint of Judith Miller and other journalists who parroted the Bush administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction. I'd love to see the consequences of such uncritical coziness come back to bite the Sun, but I don't know if we have enough time left in this brutally foreshortened season to broaden the critique beyond the absurd particulars of this case. The show has gotten so caught up in the logistics of the serial killer deception that it's starting to lose sight of the institutional problems that deception was supposed to highlight. Maybe something will happen in the next three weeks to point the blame back where it belongs: police departments that value stats and money above good police work, sure, but also newspapers that value access more highly than the truth.
Other Wire business:
- Richard Belzer and Jay Landsman in the same bar? Good thing Delaney Williams didn't walk in or my TV set would have been sucked into the resulting tear in spacetime.
- So, is everybody else assuming they'll work in a Prez cameo when Lester seeks a consultation on Marlo's clock code? I'd like that. Maybe we'll even catch a glimpse of Marcia Donnelly or Namond...
- Dominic West can do an amazing American accent and a truly shitty Bawlmer one.
- From the trailers for next week: I think I already have my quote, and it's not from the Bunk.
- I don't know where they plan on taking Dukie and the junkman, but as an old Homicide fan I'm getting seriously bad vibes from those previews.
Adena Watson bad.
No mention of the vulnerable Omar exposing his hobbled status on the street? I think that's going to be a key for next week. Kenard's sheer exasperation at Omar's little heart to heart with Michael is a harbinger for _something_, as is the fact that Omar was a little out of character when he kills Savino instead of just shooting him in the knees or something. I think he's losing his code in pursuit of vengeance and frustration that Marlo isn't coming out to play the game he wants to play.
Posted by: Jim | February 18, 2008 at 01:24 PM
I can completely understand the problems you have with the Davis trial, certainly the timeline is hard to deal with, but I don't think the outcome is as implausable as you believe.
Wouldn't be the first time some slick talk helped a guilty man out of jail. I guess I fill in the blanks and assume that Davis's supporters were the ones that filled up the courthouse. Now the performance by the prosecutor makes him look stupid, so I agree with you, but I don't think this was as egregiously bad as you believe(and I love the work by the guy playing Clay Davis)
Posted by: gar | February 18, 2008 at 06:39 PM
Isiah Whitlock is great, yeah. My problem isn't with the outcome (although it's another classic example of the show dangling a happy ending in front of our faces only to yank it away at the last instant), it's with how we got there. I completely buy that Davis would angle for jury nullification but, as shown here, his strategy only works because every other person in the courtroom behaves like a moron. Even Pearlman, a little bit--could she and Bond really not see this coming?
On Omar: Yeah, he's losing his code all right, and giving away his injury just to deliver an obvious message seems like a tactical mistake. On the other hand, I pity the first soldier who underestimates him because of that limp.
On Kenard: Briefly, for the first and, I hope, the last time in my life, I wanted to see Omar pull his gun on a ten-year-old kid.
Posted by: Marc | February 18, 2008 at 08:35 PM
Last night I gave in and watched the new episode a week early on HBO On Demand. Do you have access to that? It was well worth it to find out ... well, I'm not even gonna say.
Posted by: Jose | February 19, 2008 at 05:04 PM
Please don't say, thanks! I usually watch the next week's episode by Tuesday or Wednesday (gotta see the Wisconsin results tonight) but I try to keep the posts and comments absolutely spoiler-free until the episodes have aired.
Posted by: Marc | February 19, 2008 at 08:49 PM
For a complete discussion of the plausibility of the Clay Davis outcome, reference the career of the actor who interviewed him on the radio in the previous episode. That would be Md. state Del. Larry Young, who wryly plays himself in that scene. Young's career and the ultimate outcome of the state case against him is instructive.
Or for that matter, the masterful nullification of the jury by Billy Murphy, who plays himself as Davis's lawyer, in the Don King federal case several years ago.
Or O.J. Simpson, for that matter.
Presumably, we were not shown the whole Clay Davis trial -- the re-cross by Bond/Pearlman, their attempts to show that Davis spent the cash on other things, their mitigation of the damage. But sometimes, it isn't about whether the prosecutor is competent or moronic. Why were we not shown that? Perhaps because then The Wire would become a lopsided courtroom drama, with one storyline dragging the whole down.
But perhaps sometimes, it's about how disenfranchised the individual jurors can be made to feel. And in an African-American city like Baltimore, where law enforcement and economic priorities are seen as institutionally oppressive, they can be made to feel very much indeed.
Posted by: anonymous | February 20, 2008 at 10:35 AM
reference the career of the actor who interviewed him on the radio in the previous episode
Yeah, covered that.
Why were we not shown that? Perhaps because then The Wire would become a lopsided courtroom drama
Courtroom scenes have always been part of the show. Wasn't the first scene (or close to it) in Phelan's court? And Omar's exchange with Levy was probably one of the show's greatest moments.
But those scenes worked, and the Davis performance didn't. Telling us what we already know about jury nullification doesn't redeem it--in fact, that's part of the problem.
Posted by: Marc | February 20, 2008 at 03:06 PM
Your description of McNulty as unwilling middle manager is spot-on and I think it helps unlock some of the keys to the season. It seems we've reached a point where reform and education are so impossible that the best and the brightest feel they have no choice but to become exaggerated parodies of the system to get anything done. So McNulty becomes the greatest of all jukers of stats, Templeton writes stories from a personal perspective that are too good to be true, and Omar tries to recapture his magic by recasting himself as the ultimate bad-ass in violation of his code. Is the final insult of our decaying institutions their ability to replace our morality with their own? Or am I just reaching here?
Posted by: Daniel | February 20, 2008 at 03:17 PM
No, that sounds really good--except that Omar, who's not part of any institution (although he plays a well-defined role in the criminal ecosystem) can only become an exaggerated parody of himself, the badass swagger without the staunch moral code.
I like it! Good call!
Posted by: Marc | February 20, 2008 at 09:08 PM
I'm with you 100%, Daniel. It's part of what makes the serial killer angle work (though that took some time) for me; if we view the previous four seasons as a symphony building up to one great big god almighty bombast (on a Wire scale), it makes sense the major players would become increasingly desperate to the point of compromising themselves.
Which leaves open the idea that all the corrupt sons of bitches "our heroes" are fighting right now were someone else's heroes 20 or 30 years ago.
Posted by: Ken Lowery | February 23, 2008 at 07:07 PM
Jesus you mentioned Adena Watson?!?!?!? I swear I put on my glasses just to check and see if I saw what I thought I saw. Maybe you should compare and contrast Luther Mahooney and Marlo.
Thanks for bringing up my other favorite show that left the air far too soon!
Posted by: upset! | February 28, 2008 at 07:51 AM
I loved Luther Mahoney (I'm sure you recognized actor Eric Todd Dellums, who played Mahoney, as the M.E. back in seasons one and two of the Wire, right?), but he was a comic-book character, the suave supervillain. Marlo, Chris, and Snoop are terrifying because they seem so plausible. They would have killed Luther Mahoney back in season three.
Nice seeing Clark Johnson back on TV, isn't it? I always thought Meldrick was completely underrated--laid-back, low-key, but the best detective in the unit after Pembleton.
Posted by: Marc | February 29, 2008 at 12:46 PM
I did recognize my dear Luther! I remember saying to my mom, damn there goes Luther Mahoney again! God I loved Homicide. I was sooo young when that show originally aired. Almost too young to be so engrossed in a show about the wiley cops of the BPD Homicide Dept (100 grilled cheese sandwhiches!). I can honestly say that the name Adena Watson haunts me just about as much as it did Balis. Ugh, Adena Watson, how many nightmares did I have about that? I think the biggest issue I had with it as a child was the fact that the "good guys," meaning Balis, didn't catch the killer and it just shattered that whole innocence thing. It's like the day you realize that not only do OTHER people die, but YOU can die too. It's upsetting when reality and mortality hit someone all at the same damn time.
Also, I have a tendency to call Clark Johnson "Meldrick" when referring to "Gus." I honestly think my television would have exploded if Balis had just strolled up at some point in that episode.
Posted by: upset! | March 02, 2008 at 01:26 AM