The Wire

I’ve been watching DVD versions of the HBO series, The Wire. I know, I know: the program is ended and I missed all five years of its run. But as it ended I began reading interesting comment on the show in The Nation and In These Times, and so I decided to give it a try. I so enjoyed the time I spent catching up on The Sopranos, and then actually screening in real time the final season.

This is not a review. I am in the middle of Season Two, and watching episodes is like a secret pleasure. When I can create an hour I put the DVD in the player and spend an hour almost lost. The plot is rich enough to maintain my interest, and the characters are complex as round characters ought to be.

Of course, there is a part of me which feels always soiled by some of the characters: the corruption runs very deep on this show, and crosses all kinds of boundaries. Sometimes the cops are more corrupt than those they are meant to arrest, and sometimes the moral sense of the criminals highlights the venality of the cops and politicians who assume a false sense of indignation when corruption is discovered. I can’t distinguish between Stringer Bell and Lt. Rawls, between Barksdale and Lt. Burrell, and I ache for D’Angelo who tried in the face of inevitably powerful forces to be moral. I hope for him, but I fear for his moral and/or physical survival. The self righteousness of so many of the characters--legal, political, judicial on both sides of law appalls me. I am stained by it.

But in this series there are some wonderfully complex and good people, and watching them refuse to succumb to the pressures of the corrupt worlds in which they daily function offers me a real alternative to a sense of defeat. I admire McNulty and Daniels despite their human flaws. Detectives Griggs, and Freamon and Moreland are good people in a corrupt world, and they don’t know it; they just do their job because they believe in the moral value of what they do. Sargeants Carver and Hauk are admirable because they grow in the part. They actually become better cops and better human beings in the course of the show. Knowing there is no way that they will ever succeed, these characters never stop trying; knowing how everything is organized to defeat them, they persist in their belief that they will succeed not in cleaning up the world, but of ridding it of certain predatory elements. They are admirable because they are so self-aware of their flaws; they are admirable because they refuse to live as if these personal flaws should taint their public life. A part of them remains clean, clear, and incorruptible. They do not surrender their lives to their flaws, but distinguish between their private peccadilloes and their public purpose. Watching them makes me feel better, and I rise from the couch not clean, but unsullied. I adore this program. I grow stronger after each screening. I’m not perfect, but I’m not alone.