The First Five of "The Wire"

After this post, I'll be writing about "The Wire" with posts divided up by seasons, but I thought it would be good to start out with an introductory entry on the first five episodes. HBO's "The Wire" is one of the most acclaimed television series ever made, though it never received much until the end of its five-year run. As someone who has watched a lot of police procedurals over the years, I think it's easier to talk about what "The Wire" isn't. It's not the show that sticks to the usual formula of the heroic cops solving the case of the week, and moving on to something entirely different in each episode. It's not the show that paints the cops as the good guys and the drug dealers and gang members as the baddies. And it's definitely not the show that presents an idealized version of how law enforcement and judicial systems are meant to function.

The first season of "The Wire" is focused on an investigation of a string of murders linked to Baltimore drug kingpin Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). The investigation is triggered by Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), who presents his concerns about the handling of several of the murders to Judge Phelan (Peter Gerety), who in turn leans on the Baltimore Police Department. McNulty and Detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), under the command of Lieutenant Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), lead the resulting investigation. They're hampered at every turn by department politics, lack of resources, and institutional dysfunction. Because the investigation is largely intended as a face-saving measure, and has little support from the department, the team gets stuck with several officers who are apathetic or just incompetent.

"The Wire" also tells the story of the investigation from the POV of Avon Barksdale's nephew D'Angelo (Larry Gilliard, Jr.) and his crew, who handle some of the most visible drug-dealing operations. D'Angelo reports to Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), Avon's second-in-command. It's through the interactions between the two, and various scenes of D'Angelo's managing his turf, that we learn that these are intelligent, capable individuals who are just as compelling as the police officers working to bring them down. Other characters in the mix include Bubbles (Andre Royo), an addict who works with Detective Greggs as an informant, and the famous Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), who shows up in the third episode to rob D'Angelo's crew, and is currently something of a neutral third party. Perhaps he won't be for long.

I can't stress enough how rare it is to see a show as realistic in its approach as "The Wire." The cast is predominantly African-American. The primary settings are run-down neighborhoods, stricken with poverty. The goal of the investigation is not identifying the perpetrators or solving a mystery, but finding enough evidence to build a case that will stick, in an environment where witnesses are easily intimidated and the majority of police officers don't want to stick their necks out. McNulty, with his strong morals and habit of speaking out, is often treated by those around him as a more problematic figure than the show's dirty cops, and it seems like everyone is constantly advising him to keep his mouth shut. The use of "the wire" of the show's title requires a mountain of paperwork and proof that the police have exhausted all other options. The storyline is complicated, but compelling and insightful. All the characters are painted in shades of gray.

The moment that sold me on "The Wire" happens at the end of the second episode. Three officers who have been assigned to the investigation, including trigger-happy "Prez" Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost), who Lt. Daniels has spent a good chunk of the hour trying to get rid of, are involved in a drunken, late night altercation in the neighborhood they're supposed to be surveilling. Prez puts a minor in the hospital, triggering a potential scandal. In a network police procedural like "Law & Order," Prez would be punished and never be heard from again so the show's regulars could start the next episode with a fresh slate. In a more serialized cable drama like " The Shield," Prez would stick around, but be labeled as an obvious bad guy, to be defeated or redeemed within the specific context of his police career. In "The Wire," Prez is at the beginning of a very different character arc (which I know about thanks to a few spoilers).

Other individual scenes are just as impressive. McNulty and his partner Bunk Williams (Wendell Pierce), revisit an old crime scene in a great sequence where they piece together what happened in almost total silence, expect for the exchange of punctuating expletives. D'Angelo teaches his underlings how to play chess, relating each piece to a position in the drug operations. Bubbles provides advice to an undercover officer on how to look like a more convincing junkie. The character study elements are currently less pronounced, as the plot is being driven by the investigation, but from the moments we've gotten so far, I suspect they're going to become increasingly important as time goes on.

I'm getting very excited about where "The Wire" is going. Stay tuned.
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