Although nominally no longer seeing my amiga chinesa
in Fort Lee, NJ, I am still in contact with her, and she helpfully clued me in
that Amazon Prime had many HBO shows on streaming – until May 20. That sparked me to finish off The Wire
(ready for Season 5) and Boardwalk Empire (Seasons 4 & 5, blog
forthcoming).
While I’d done a blog on Baltimore before, I had not
reviewed this show, which as just noted, I only now finished. Sadly, for various reasons, many TV shows or
movies are set in one place but filmed somewhere else. Any film taking place on Mars or another
planet is obviously filmed here on Earth.
Some shows have to be filmed elsewhere because the actual location looks
too different nowadays than it did when the movie or show is supposed to take
place. In some cases they take extreme
liberties, as they did filming “Baretta”, a 1970s TV show set in Newark, New
Jersey, in Los Angeles, a city which bears absolutely no resemblance to any
place on the entire East Coast, much less a city from which NYC’s distinctive
skyline can be seen.
Be that as it may, the producers of “The Wire” succeeded
at filming this show in Baltimore, Maryland.
Some of it takes place down town in front of city hall – the downtown
area which I recognize the most, though I’m in Baltimore County courts in
Towson far more often than in the Baltimore City courts seen on this show - but
much of it takes place in the less upscale neighborhoods, where the criminal
element lives and does its business. I
can’t say I recognize those parts of town, but I’ve been through enough to know
that it is, in fact, Baltimore.
The narrative concerns the endeavors of the Baltimore City
police department, which on occasion interacts with Baltimore County, Maryland
State Police, and those pesky and arrogant bastards in the FBI (Feds). There are various criminal elements, led by
charismatic figures such as Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), attempting to establish
or defend, as the case may be, their empire from both the legal authorities but
also, more often, from each other. The
show also covers politics in the mayor’s office and at the Baltimore Sun, which
seems to have an inferiority complex relative to the Washington Post, located
southwest by about 30 miles.
What seems to really push peoples’ buttons, in a good way,
about the show is that it describes all these organizations as being similarly
dysfunctional. Even the drug dealers
have these meetings in a room around a table in which they discuss policy and
strategy – what drugs they’ll be selling, who gets what territory and who
should be whacked next - and for his part Stringer Bell seems to want to
incorporate business ideas into the drug trade.
Having said all that, the show revolves around all these
colorful characters, and here are some of the more prominent ones I noticed and
cared about:
Street
Level Cops (Baltimore City PD)
McNulty (Dominic West). The main dude, back as a patrolman in S4 and
back in the detective section for S5, where he plots with Freamon to accumulate
police resources for one task (a serial killer who only exists because McNulty
himself is playing with the corpses of whichever homeless guy turns up dead) –
APPROVED! – to be reallocated to the other – UNAPPROVED – to take down Marlo
Stanfield, the up and coming drug kingpin, actually a much bigger threat and a
much more worthwhile target of limited police resources. An alcoholic with a string of failed
relationships, he remains sympathetic despite, or maybe because of, his
consistent dysfunctionality.
Kima (Sonja Sohn). Half black, half Asian, lesbian police
detective, very sharp and just as ethical.
My eyes are on her if she’s onscreen.
Freamon (Clarke Peters). One of the detectives – he has a highly
amusing WTF attitude, the epitome of COOL.
Bunk (Wendell Pierce). A homicide detective leery of McNulty’s games,
but just as on the ball as the rest.
Higher
Level Officials
Cedric Daniels
(Lance Riddick). One of the more
scrupulous and honest police superiors, we want to see him rise to the top,
mainly because almost all of his superiors are complete assholes.
Carcetti (Aiden Gillen, well
known as Littlefinger on “Game of Thrones”).
A councilmember who works his way up to Mayor – a white mayor of
Baltimore, imagine that – by the end of season 4. In season 5 he finds out the hard way how
stressful the job is for a city that can’t simply solve all its problems by
printing infinite amounts of money with no gold behind it. I found him a bit slick but not slimey enough
to be called dishonest, certainly nowhere as bad as Littlefinger.
Bad
Guys
Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams,
in Boardwalk Empire as Chalky White). A
robber whose exclusive target is drug dealers.
I couldn’t like him enough to cheer him or, nor hate him enough to want
him dead.
Stringer Bell
(Idris Elva). The charismatic second in
command of the west side gang, but his ambition and skill eventually put him at
odds with his boss, Avon. Here’s a line
of work where being too good might well be just as deadly as being not good
enough.
Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). The head of the west side gang until he winds
up in jail; his nephew doesn’t do too well.
Kind of arrogant but knows his stuff, at risk of being eclipsed by Bell.
Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector). Effectively takes over from Avon Barksdale after Barksdale winds up in jail. Young and arrogant but sharp enough to navigate the politics of Baltimore's underworld and imminent prosecution.
Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector). Effectively takes over from Avon Barksdale after Barksdale winds up in jail. Young and arrogant but sharp enough to navigate the politics of Baltimore's underworld and imminent prosecution.
I like how the show doesn’t try to make all the crooks 100%
likeable, and acknowledges that many of them are just plain bastards. Among the more sympathetic ones, the deal is
that traditional routes to success (college at University of Maryland or Johns
Hopkins) are off limits due to the reality of coming from the streets, so they’ll
do the best they can in the alternative career program of the criminal environment,
until they reach a point where they can cash out and transfer to legitimate,
legal sources of income. But many are
doomed to live and die entirely within the criminal underworld – again, as
likely to be taken down by criminal competitors as by the police or the justice
system.
Miscellaneous
Bubbles (Mike Smith – just kidding,
Andre Royo). The user who finally gets his act together in Season 5.
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