# 51. The Wire (2002-2008, HBO)

(characters from left to right: Roland Pryzbylewski, Cedric Daniels, Jimmy McNulty, Lester Freamon, Rhonda Pearlman, Kima Greggs)

by Adam Ferenz

Executive Produced by Robert F. Colesbury, seasons 1-3 & Nina K. Noble, Seasons 3-5.

Written or story by: Simon, Burns, Rafael Alvarez, Joy Lusco, George Pellacanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmayer, William F. Zorzi, Kia Corthron, Chris Collins.

Directed by: Clark Johnson, Peter Medak, Clement Vigo, Ed Bianchi, Joe Chappelle, Gloria Muzio, Brad Anderson, Steve Shill, Tim Van Patten, Elodie Keene, Thomas J. Wright, Dan Attias, Rob Bailey, Robert F. Colesbury, Ernest Dickerson, Leslie Libman, Agnieszka Holland, Alex Zakrzewski, Christine Moore, Seith Mann, Jim McKay, David Platt, Anthony Hemingway, Scott Kecken& Joy Kecken, Dominic West.

Starring:  Dominic West, John Doman, Idris Elba, Frankie Faison, Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. Wood Harris,  Deirdre Lovejoy,  Wendell Pierce,  Lance Reddick,  Andre Royo,  Sonja Sohn,  Chris Bauer,  Paul Ben-Victor,  Clarke Peters,  Amy Ryan,  Aidan Gillen,  Jim True-Frost,  Robert Wisdom, Seth Gilliam,    DomenickLombardozzi, J. D. Williams, Michael K. Williams, Corey Parker Robinson,Reg E. Cathey,Chad L. Coleman, Jamie Hector, Glynn Turman,Clark Johnson, Tom McCarthy,GbengaAkinnagbe, Neal Huff,Jermaine Crawford,Tristan Wilds, Michael Kostroff,  Michelle Paresi, Isiah Whitlock, Jr. Michael B. Jordan, Felicia Pearson, Robert F. Chew.

There Will Be Major Spoilers in this discussion.

For those who are interested, this video is a collection of the variations of the theme song, the original of which was heard as the second season variation,

In the opinion of this author, this is not just the greatest program from the United States, but the greatest program, period. While other programs have a serious claim to the title, the nod is given here due to the clarity, determination, focus and consistency with which Simon and crew conducted their examination of modern American urbanism, which, in co-creator David Simon’s words, is the death of the American city. Yet, it is a young man, sitting on a stoop, in front of a corpse, speaking with Detective McNulty, who encapsulates the series. Asked why the man and his friends kept allowing the dead man play in their crap game, despite stealing the earnings and getting beaten for it, week in and week out, the young man turned to McNulty, and gave him a sideways glance, before casting his gaze back on the body, saying with a sigh “Got to. This America, man.” Welcome to The Game, the endless cycle played out on the streets by those labeled criminals, and by the police charged with stopping criminal activities.

This is not a mere story of cops and robbers, of addicts and pushers. The Baltimore presented in The Wire is a city alienated from itself by entrenched economic forces so powerful that they bleed into every aspect of social life. Rather than a single shop owner controlling the means of production, a city like Baltimore has politicians, dock workers, newspapers, universities and police, among other institutions, and the city is both the owner and the victim, as the institutions are both owner and proletariat and the same with the dealers, police and politicians. Everything, in the words of Lester Freamon, is connected. There are traditions and ways of doing things beyond those traditions.

Detective Jimmy McNulty talking to a judge about setting up a unit on the Barskdale gang, rather than taking his idea to his immediate superior, broke the chain of command, but more importantly, it broke the ability of lesser men to take credit for hard work and for the system to push aside any real progress, a protective mechanism in place because of the complex relationship between organized crime and inner city politics and finance. It is a story about the people and city, about institutions, in great details, often achingly intimate. Season by season, it examines different aspects of the American City and System. While it is easy to look at each season as being simply about one thing, it is not, because each season simply focuses on one aspect which has always been there.

(Stringer Bell, McNulty’s nemesis, upon whose death he discovers a copy of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, and asks Bunk “who was this guy?” realizing he’d been chasing an idea as much as a person)

     The Wire is a series unlike any other in terms of the depth of its socio-economic understanding. As the series demonstrates, an important element in the construction of any culture or society is the way in which its people are educated. This affects their endeavors, both their labor and industry, but also their political and social interactions. When the system of education, or the labor and production, which is the foundation of industry, collapses, that society faces a dilemma.

On The Wire, we bear witness to both the death of labor and of education, which symbolize the death of “industry” in the classical sense, and a neoliberal (defined here in the Milton Friedman meaning of the term, as extreme Laissez-faire economic liberalism, which is arch conservative) reimagining of the terms. Education is rightly viewed as both a prison and an escape. One can become trapped by false knowledge or poor understanding. One can also be set free because they realize there are always choices, no matter how difficult. If one is trapped, then one has few alternatives. Freedom in The Wire is fleeting and often only a mirage.

The series hook, at first, appears to be a sting operation, good guys versus bad, but very soon this is proven not to be the case, as the investigation allows us access not only to the characters, but the institutions under investigation, and not just by the characters, but the writers. This is no more a cop show than Buffy was a High School series. It may have the settings, but it is so much more. This goes beyond procedure, into deep investigations of items of importance that matter beyond the borders of the United States, using Baltimore as a case study in the decline of urban social, political and economic health.

(season 2’s Frank Sbotka, head of the stevedors and Spiros, who kills him on orders of his boss, a smuggler called The Greek, who is definitely not Greek)

It takes until the second season, an examination of “the death of work” in the words of co-creator David Simon, for the series far reaching ambitions to become crystal clear, one which is well handled by his small and dedicated crew of writers and directors. Here, we meet a mostly new cast of characters, for the season, the stevedores, for whom the docks no longer provide the stable living they once did. This is a place where the police, politicians and business leaders make their money off the losses of those that struggle to earn by plying their trade.

Juxtaposed with this is the rise in power of Stringer Bell, former second in command of Avon Barksdale, who is now in prison serving a sentence after the fallout at the end of the first season. Stringer’s attempts at solidifying power include running his organization like the businesses he studies at the classes he takes in secret at a local college, and through a co-operative venture, New Day, which he runs alongside erstwhile rival Proposition Joe. As this takes place, he main cast of season one become supporting players to the mostly new lead set of characters, with McNulty now working harbor patrol, punishment for going over the bosses heads despite the “success” of the detail in season one. This is the season where the canvas is secured for years to come, because this is where the audience realizes the entire city is the playground of the writers, and their scope is beyond the daily lives of dealers and police.

(Howard Colvin, explaining his theory)

In the third season of the series, the politics underpinning the series, come to the fore in a way that will not fade. Howard “Bunny” Colvin, the officer who heads up the district of West Baltimore, sees a rise in violent crime related to drug buys, and decides to set aside a section of one neighborhood as a “drug yes” zone, a site which comes to be known as Hamsterdam. This is based on Colvin’s memory of the “brown paper bag” laws, in which as long as one did not take an open bottle of booze out of the paper bag it was carried in, a cop would not stop them for public drinking.

(Tommy Carcetti, future mayor and governor)

Colvin, of course, finds that his experiment does not fit with what the politicians and upper brass want to sell the city, which is a “tough and punishing war on drugs” and so he is forced into retirement and Hamsterdam ends. Meanwhile, Marlo Stanfield assumes control from the Barksdale gang, after Avon is released from prison and arranges for Stringer to be killed in retaliation for the death of Avon’s nephew the previous year. From here on out, only echoes of the Barksdale crew will remain, as a leaner, meaner crew patrols the streets. As this happens, a man named Carcetti decides to run for mayor, a decision that will alter the course of everything else in the series, as Carcetti goes from opportunist with some ideals to purely playing the game for his own gain, including helping to kill Hamsterdam.

(characters from left to right: Duquan, Randy, Michael, Namond)

The story of the four young boys, Namond, Randy, Duquan and Michael, over seasons four and five, illustrates the means and importance of education, both in school and in life on the streets, and crosses this with journalism, the supposed guardian of truth. It is a stunning achievement, and is drawn largely from the experiences of former Baltimore police officer turned teacher turned writer, Ed Burns. It is no small thing that Burns created the series with Simon, nor that he is who the character of Roland Pryzbylewski is slightly drawn from, particularly in his shift this season to teaching at a school so poor and uncoordinated the bathroom doors are broken, there is often no toilet paper-Randy owns a thriving black market business in school supplies and other goods-and the computers, left over from years prior, remain unpacked, sitting in boxes next to brand new yet out of date textbooks, gathering dust in an unused room.

The viewer can sense the reality, the truth of what it witnesses in this season. It is not without merit that many people have hailed the fourth season as the greatest single season in television history. If you can watch this and not become angry, sad, frustrated and heartbroken, feeling at once hopeful and despairing, particularly after watching one of them slowly become the next Bubbles-everyone’s favorite junkie-you may need to check your pulse.

That the fourth and fifth seasons of the series spin out of the events of season three is no coincidence, because the show was always going to present the viewer with as complete a possible overview of how the various structures or institutions in a major American city work, from the cops and the workers to the dealers, politicians, educators and press. As we watch the final two seasons, and see McNulty find peace, lose it in his need to prove himself correct-by way of faking a series of killings-we begin to question our perspective. Who can we trust? Can we even trust ourselves?

The fifth season, with the aforementioned fake serial killer story line, in which Jimmy uses drug killings to create the illusion of a killer, to increase funding for his task-force to take down the Stanfield crew, and which is picked up as a “real” story by a press that no longer cares about anything except circulation, we see how everyone, in the end, sells out, even if it is to their own vanity. At the same time, we see personal triumphs, like those of Bubbles, the addict played by Andre Royo. Bubbles finally earns his sister’s trust enough that she lets him come upstairs from his basement apartment, which she has only recently and grudgingly leased to him, to join the rest of his family for dinner. In the entire series, there may not be a more powerful moment of success than Bubbles coming to the top of the stairs and stepping through that door to sit down for his meal.

This scene is worth discussing. We have watched Bubbles for five years. We have seen him lose friends, and people he considered brothers and sons, to violence both internal and external. We have seen him abused by pushers and thieves. In desperation, he seeks aid from his sister, who is hesitant to allow him in her home, and instead offers him a room. This is a holding cell, of sorts, a purgatory where Bubbles awaits his redemption. It is only with time and great effort, a tremendous force of will that Bubbles is able to prove to his family that he has corrected his mistakes and will not easily fall back to old behaviors, pose a threat to his family. It is not a scene, when it comes, which is done with a lot of fanfare. It happens during a montage. We see Bubbles set down some items and turn his head toward the door at the top of the stairs, which he has been denied entry through, so many times before. And he walks up those steps. His hand lingers briefly on the handle and then he walks through the portal, and sits down at the table. It is a moment of catharsis for audience and character alike. So many of the best moments in this series are small and character driven, in a way most other programs are not.

By this time, the end of the series, viewers have been fed a steady diet of loss and near misses. Simon, Burns and their cast and crew, have told a story of the indifference and unchanging nature of institutions. The boys from season four end up in very different places, seemingly random, yet all because of processes and power structures beyond their control. If you can watch the sequence in which one child drops the other off to live with the scrappers of Baltimore, and then watch what happens as that child starts down the path to being another Bubbles, you may need to check your pulse. For a series as interested in telling us about institutions, it also tells us about people and places, spinning such lively characters and stories, that we become invested. We care. This is the secret of The Wire. It is not homework. It never was. The famous “Talking fuck” sequence, in which Bunk and McNulty communicate using variations of Fuck, as they investigate a cold case crime scene, is a masterwork of the easy blend of humor and drama in the program.

Yes, this is a series which is very important because of how seriously it took the issues it covered but this is also a series which knew what brought people back, and that is the people on the screen each week. While the plots concerned drug deals, surveillance, business and political schemes legal and extralegal, among others, it was always a story of how these people we came to care about were shaped by their various institutional connections. That the series was determined to comment on everything never seemed an issue because it did so almost effortlessly.

Consider that the series covered socio-economics like no other program by delving into the ways in which our society commodifies people along with products, and how it delineates the connections between education, gender and race in the American city. Consider the opening scene, in which Jimmy speaks to his witness about the crap game thief. That is the push of the series. It is also the conceit. Nobody may be more perfect an example of the mercenary and chaotic neutral nature of capitalism than Clay Davis, a Senator who over the course of the series, goes from being investigated by the detail, to fleecing Stringer Bell and blackmailing anyone that gets in his way. He is also fondly remembered by fans for the way he would, when upset or frustrated, say the word Shit, in a way that only the actor Glyn Turman, can provide.

If America is about a dream or promise deferred or denied, what then of the American city, which Jane Jacobs posited was not steel and concrete but people? The people of The Wire are a diverse lot. Men and women, straight and gay, young and old, black, white, Asian, and from all walks of life. Namond’s mother wants him to be the dealer his daddy, then in prison, was, but when Bunny Colvin comes along and promises to take Namond from the path to prison that the youth finds himself on, Namond’s mother balks. She cannot fathom a world in which a young black man, and particularly a son of hers, does not follow in the footsteps of his father. This she cannot imagine both because her mind is too small, but also because she wants to be provided for in the style to which she has become accustomed.

We saw this earlier, when D’Angelo Barksdale’s mother, the sister of Avon, the kingpin of the outfit, brought her son his meal during his “ work day”  in “The Pit”-low rise  bungalows as opposed to high rise apartments-as though she were bringing food to a legitimate job. These women did this because to them, this is a regular job. This is normal. The realization of that, for the audience, should act as an awakening. Nowhere in the series does it posit this is how the world is for every black family, nor every black family in west Baltimore. The program has come under fire for its depiction of women and African-American women, in particular. Yet, this is unfair, because there are fine examples of African American women in the series.

Kima Greggs, a dedicated, intelligent and fierce detective, is also one of the series two ongoing LGBT characters, the other being Omar Little, the man who makes a living stealing from drug dealers and who, with his scarred face and rough code of conduct-he does not kill civilians, only other criminals-is seen as a Robin Hood figure, and became perhaps the series most unlikely breakout character. Lt. Daniels wife, Marla, is a successful attorney, who eventually chooses her career in politics over her husband and his career. Beadie Russell is the sometimes lover of McNulty, a ranking officer in the Harbor Patrol, who does not suffer fools gladly and will not enable our dear, drunken, self-destructive Jimmy.  These are not women who act in mere support roles to the men around them. Instead, they have lives and stories all their own. The Wire is not a series with a “secretary” character, nor a “hot blonde” or even the clichéd “hooker with a heart of gold” because The Wire is concerned with maintaining a sense of realism throughout the proceedings.

This level of realism extends to the dialogue, including a smattering of Baltimore patois like the police referring to certain criminals as mooks, and to the officers and dealers both having only slightly different vocabularies. Instead, the way in which the intelligence, knowledge and attitude of the two is enacted makes the difference. This can be seen as a comment on how one is trained, or acculturated, which is a major thrust of season four’s story about the ways in which members of a society are educated to serve the various institutions of American life.

(McNulty with his partner, Bunk)

Throughout The Wire, the media fails the public, by not pointing out the inequalities in government programs and public institutions, by being complicit in their deeds through ignoring large segments of the population and not holding those in legal authority responsible for their actions. This is an outgrowth of the normalization of the socio-economic system present in the world of The Wire. The series demons how the police, drug dealers, politicians, schools and media are all part of the same system, ruled by fear of upsetting the balance achieved through years of social conditioning to accept the status quo, and to only seldom question ones leaders.

     The Wire says that for a society founded on industry, America, or the United States, has seen its roots destabilized, resulting in panicked moves towards other means of economic survival. A service economy is not going to sustain growth, and the demand for maximum profits and cost effectiveness, means that labor and its industry will always seek newer, cheaper locations. The modern American city is especially hard hit, because of the loss of jobs and tax base. The systems once sustained by growth and tax revenue have not been allowed to evolve, to adapt to their changed circumstances, because institutions are slow to change, and quick to defend themselves from perceived loss of control.

(Rawls, ever the small man clinging desperately to power, telling McNulty about his choices)

In The Wire, the media fails to act as the watch dog of the business and political worlds, which allows them to move industry out of the country, and for neighborhoods to decay, including the public school system, all without any meaningful reporting. The institutions of City Hall, the Police Department and the School System run in parallel to that of the illicit drug market, constrained by the same norms, and adhering to a very similar ethos. Neoliberal capitalism has created a situation where the means and the ends never justify one another.  McNulty learns this firsthand when he is told by Captain Rawls that it is not his place to give a fuck. If it is not his place, then whose is it? D’Angelo Barksdale feels the same way.

At the end of the first season, McNulty is bounced to the Harbor Patrol, and over the course of the series, becomes a beat officer, twice rejoins the ranks of detectives and eventually finds himself fired after his frustration with the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy of the police department leads him to fake a series of murders in order to capture Marlo Stanfield. D’Angelo is killed in prison, in order to keep him from asking too many questions. In both cases, The Game and The Department eat their own in order to maintain the status quo. The effects of neoliberal economics are prevalent.

What is the programming suggesting? With a reduced tax base because of the loss of labor to other states and other shores, the longshoreman of season two become involved in smuggling at increased rates, while the school system, reliant on tax revenue, is squeezed out of effectiveness through neglect and pressure to perform to business standards that operate not in the manner a child learns, but in the ways corporations expect to maximize profits. In this neoliberal society, people, as well as drugs, have become commodities, as easily bought, sold, traded or discarded, as any other item of sale or value.

(Bubbles)

The character of Bubbles, real name Reginald Cousins, exists on the bottom of the social construct, forgotten, pushed to the street, where he lives, and surviving by any means he can manage, including hustling dealers and selling information to the highest bidder, be it rival gangs or law enforcement. The experience of the four young boys of season four presents much of what is wrong with not only the city of Baltimore, but the American Social-Economic system as constructed along neoliberal lines.

In such a social construct, true advancement is nearly impossible, and, as with a position within a high-end law or stock-brokering firm, the most minor infractions can get you released from duties, or marked as a trouble maker. This sets one on a path to becoming either McNulty, who will lose his job, D’Angelo, who will lose his life, or Bubbles, who will exist on the lowest rungs of society. Neoliberal policies are not simply “bad” but actively destructive to learning, to cooperation, and to existing as men, women, children, friends, family or lovers.

     The Wire has a macroscopic look at what ails the Modern American City, and one is left with the feeling that it is very nearly everything, and the diagnosis is not simply to end the War on Drugs, and to rethink education and have a media that demands accountability from those with legal and political authority, but rather that society, as a whole, has to want to change, and be willing to change, or nothing will change. The betrayal of the institutions of society and their negligence can be seen in the interactions of the characters and situations of The Wire.

Perhaps the most hopeful words ever spoken in the series, the ones least exclusive, and free of institutional bias, were those spoken by that witness during the first scene of the series, when the witness said “Got to. This America, Man.” Indeed, if this is America, we have to include instead of exclude. Only by opening up institutions, which resist such activity by their very nature, can society hope to regain a chance at education, lowered crime rates and accountability from authority figures.

Aside from the thematic and conceptual strengths of the series, which speak to very sharp writing, The Wire also features a level of performance and direction which is rare. It is almost impossible to imagine anyone except the performers, playing the various parts. These are parts that in some cases, made careers, such as for Dominic West, Idris Elba and Michael K. Williams, while in others, they achieved the most perfect match of talent and character, in the cases of Wendell Pierce and Felicia Pearson. This is a series that knows what it is about, and keeps the focus on the story and the characters. Only in the first and last episodes does the show stray at all from an almost documentary style, something akin to that found in the early days of Homicide: Life on the Street. In both cases, the change in style is minimal, featuring hints of surveillance in the first episode-McNulty viewed by a closed circuit camera, inside the elevator at the courthouse-or the unusual flashback, featured at the end of the first episode and during the closing moments of the finale.

(The Stanfield Crew, from left to right: Snoop, Marlo, Chris)

The show does not lack style, however. Instead, the show allows the strength of its setting and characters to be the style it most prefers. There is a quiet power in the way the camera lingers over the abandoned row houses in season four, when detective Lester Freamon realizes that “these aren’t houses…they’re tombs” upon discovering the places where the vicious Chris and Snoop have been stashing the executed enemies of their boss, Marlo Stanfield. Indeed, watching Chris and Snoop calmly walk their victims into those houses, armed only with a pistol and a nail gun-used to seal up the house-is one of the most chilling recurring images in the series. Only once or twice do you see or hear an execution. The series knows that less is more.

Still, there are so many indelible images in the series that it would take an entire chapter in a book devoted to the program to list them all. Instead, there are scenes which stand out above others. There is the scene in which Omar is in court, facing off against the Barksdale’s lawyer, and he achieves victory with a simple declaration.

There is also the attack on Kima during a bad bust, in season one, perhaps the only true action sequence in the entire series, which leaves her clinging on for life, and McNulty sits on the curb, wondering how it could all have gone so wrong. Then, Rawls, the person who told McNulty it was not his turn to give a fuck, who has shown absolutely no compassion toward others nor any ability to care about anything except covering his own ass, has a moment of warmth, where he tells McNulty to get off his ass and he takes him to the hospital and reassures him that this is normal, though tragic, and as “good police” he and Kima, and the rest of the unit, will pull through it. The scene is striking not because it is so unexpected and because we never see that sort of warmth again, but because it demonstrates, in hindsight, how much of these characters lives are performances. Do not forget, they call it The Game. Everyone has a role to play. The streets of Baltimore and the halls of political power are far from fair conditions.

Practical control is a concern of the institutions present in The Wire. The sociologist Emile Durkheim held a belief in an “authoritarian socialism which reordered economic production in guild-like organizations that could act as authoritative centers of activity. The state would have a role, too, but a limited one; it would interact with these centers of activity and even help coordinate them.” Imagining these guild-like organizations as, say, the New Day Co-Op that Stringer created with Proposition Joe, and the Baltimore Police Department as the “businesses” in charge of daily city interest, City Hall, The Federal Government and the Governor’s office would then constitute the state clearinghouse, a rather neoliberal conception of the division of labor. Indeed, the primacy of business, or any self-interested organization, would require the power of a central agency such as a governmental structure, in order to succeed. This tension is at the heart of the push and pull between the authority of the police and the interests of the dealers in the Barksdale and Stanfield crews, who supply their product to a market whose customers do not trust official centers of power.

The series makes clear that drugs and political power are commodities, and the conditions which create the markets commoditize the users, or the consumers. If economic and social conditions are such that there is little recourse for one group or another to turn to the sale of narcotics, why does another group hold that group to a different standard? It is fair to ask why prescription drugs are legal, but narcotics are not, unless given under the direction of a physician. Corner boys and beat cops both serve the same role, pushing their product on a market. Interestingly, The Wire never delved too deeply into whether the market itself is a creation of pre-existing conditions or if those conditions were created by regulations put into place in order to control subordinate groups. Instead, it leaves it up to the viewer to consider that.

Is The Wire perfect? No, but it comes as close as anything else in television history. That final season has the regrettable “fake serial killer” story but even then, it is understandable within the desperation of the character behind it, and the ignorance of the press in doing their due diligence may once have looked like David Simon standing on his soap box and screaming, but today, with attacks on the press and the press itself not following stories with clear evidence that the story lies elsewhere-admittedly, not a new phenomenon-seems less absurd than it did when first broadcast. At least this story gave the great Clark Johnson, formerly of Homicide: Life on The Street, a chance to play the principled but fictional news-editor of The Baltimore Sun, Gus Haynes. He also directed the first and final episodes of The Wire.

(Gus Haynes)

The series has been off the air for nearly a decade. It premiered almost fifteen full years ago. Yet it has lost little to none of its power, because of how it presented itself not as a ripped from the headline tabloid tale, in the form of Law & Order, but as an evaluation, and some may say an evisceration, of the codes of conduct in the American social and political institutions, including how it affects African-Americans, which some critics have accused the show of vilifying, when the truth in the viewing is far more nuanced. Yes, Stringer Bell, for instance, is clearly a criminal, but he is not a criminal because he is black, and none of these characters are criminals because they are “stupid” but rather because of institutional consequences, often aimed at keeping African Americans down. If anything, the show deserves credit for dealing frankly with a system of oppression against a large minority.

     The Wire very clearly presents a set of leaders, economic and legal controls, and social consequences for violating that which is expected. The calcification that occurs within any long-standing institution is apparent equally within the Barksdale organization and the Baltimore Police Department. There are rules. McNulty pays a social price, first for going to Judge Phelan, and then being banished to the harbor after the special MCU detail fails to turn the type of case the bosses wanted, despite placing Avon Barksdale behind bars.

The bosses wanted more splash, something grander to reaffirm their control, something to parade on the evening news. McNulty was never going to benefit from the spoils of these labors. The Barksdales, through the characters of D’Angelo, Wallace and Bodie, show how corner boys are just as caught in their own system. Wallace, who spoke to the police, is executed by Bodie, who does this because it is expected as the only remedy for a police informant, and D’Angelo, beginning to question his place in the organization, nearly turns State’s Evidence himself, before his mother reminds him of the obligations of legal, economic and social standing within the outfit. In the same way, race and gender is stratified and understood by the characters of The Wire, who find themselves caught, as McNulty and D’Angelo, between family and business.

What The Wire gives its audience is a look into the people of a city, and how the system they are in defines them, and how they define the system within which they exist. These characters are actors in the system that is the city of Baltimore, but also within the capitalist system. Taken as a group, we witness the range of human identity, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, homosexual, heterosexual, criminalized, law abiding and everything in between. To quote the series tag, we begin to see “how all the pieces fit.” Taken as a single character, what emerges is a frustrated and contradictory person, who reflects the concerns of those in the neoliberal system.

The police in the series have to navigate bosses interested only in presenting numbers to their bosses, who want to present these numbers to the public, regardless of meaningful change, in order to become elected or to stay in office. This is reminiscent of capitalism and the monopoly of power, where once a market is under effective single-control, any threat to that order is swiftly dealt with, by loss of privilege. This is mirrored in the drug business by similar loss of privilege, such as when D’Angelo loses his tower and must sit in the pit with the young “hoppers” following his trial in the series premiere. In the drug game, the cost of too much loss is one’s life, and this too reflects neoliberal capitalism, in which, as with the death of Omar, it is a “market correction” where a non-productive unit has been removed. Under these enormous pressures, certain individuals will flourish, and others will fail. The types of people who exist do so in large part because the system demands it. Rawls is a product of his institution, as is Omar, as are Kima and McNulty.

Kima has made the choice to be like Bunk, and to a lesser degree, Daniels, in order to remain effective “good police” while McNulty has been beaten by the system. Rawls typifies the company man, who does everything his superiors want, and steps on every back that he can during his ascent to the top of the command chain. His commodity is loyalty to his institution, something McNulty lacks, and which Omar and Kima are wise enough to understand must exist without the absolute self-interest of Rawls. Of all the characters on the police side of the Wire, Rawls is the most purely neoliberal, concerned only with his own advancement. In this way, Rawls is the most masculine, in the aggressive, capitalist, self-interested sense of the term. He is also gay, as proven by a wordless, matter-of-fact sequence in “Reformation” the 10^th episode of season 3, where Rawls is shown relaxing in what are the obvious friendly and familiar environs of a gay bar. The Wire is therefore subverting stereotypes, as four of the most dominant characters, Snoop, Kima, Omar and Rawls, are all gay.

If having to scrape by, to struggle and to be better than everyone around you, is a lesson of survival for homosexuals, then one way in which identity is constructed in The Wire is through hardship. For Namond, who is seen as soft by his mother, and is shown to be an ineffective corner leader, he was given everything, and then suddenly expected to provide what he had never had to worry about. McNulty got by with his enormous talent, his ego eventually swallowing him whole, because he had never had to navigate the same hazards as others.

For Bodie, the “corner boy” the story his grandmother tells Herc, a member of the Barksdale detail, illuminates his trajectory. She states that “Preston came to me when my daughter died. He was four years old. But even then, I knew he was angry. His mother lived out there, caught up in it. After a while, you couldn’t make her see nothin’ else. So how you think you gonna carry it?” Bodie came from the streets, knowing little else, consumed with anger, a child lacking a mother, and a grandmother overwhelmed with the task of raising him. He has a family, or at least one person, that cares about him, no matter how powerless they are to stop him from dealing narcotics. Nobody intervened on Bodie’s behalf, because nobody considered his neighborhood important, because nobody invested the time or money there, and so, within the neoliberal model, Bodie and his fellow denizens of West Baltimore, do not matter. It often leads to a violent end, as it did for Bodie.

The example of Bodie is but one of an identity of estrangement, living within a space that rejects you not only for how you are, but where you come from, and refusing to understand the links between the two, or to admit its culpability in creating that identity. While everyone may, theoretically, have a choice, the streets of West Baltimore leave young men, predominantly black, pressured to join gangs, do drugs or leave, which is rarely possible. Those with the money and power do not care about the people, but rather with making more money and acquiring more power. In the mercantile model, there must be a poor, exploitable class in order for the rich to exist. Neoliberalism as The Wire sees it is not simply capitalism without a conscience, but the return of cruel mercantilism. The difference is that the criminals participate in the same ventures and the antagonism is between what society considers licit or illicit. All are defined by the level of participation within capitalism, and limited by the identity they perform within society.

Identity performances  within the program include that of happily involved romantic partner. Yet, the neoliberal system does not allow for interpersonal relationships to flourish. Daniels must leave the force in order to have his relationship blossom with Rhonda Pearlman, just as McNulty had to approach his work differently in order to be happy with Beadie Russell. More than anyone or anything else on The Wire, Baltimore itself is the main character, and its identity is shaped by its citizenry, who run the gamut from innocent bystander, to killer, to dishonest real estate agent.

All elements share responsibility and rather than the city itself letting the people down, the people, who truly are the city, have allowed themselves to be let down by acquiescing to the demands of various institutions. The Wire offers little concrete advice on how to fix these problems, but gives the audience much to consider in order to reach their own conclusions. If capitalism is paternal and masculine, with the feminine subordinated, then perhaps instead of stoic stubbornness, what is needed is compassion, understanding and open dialogue. As we have seen, the Baltimore of The Wire is none of that, and those within it that are, soon find themselves marginalized as the corporatization of America rolls on.

That the series remains relevant, because of its focus on institutions, which change very slowly if at all, is part of its greatness. That it did not win a single Emmy award, and was only nominated twice, for writing, is evidence of the meaningless nature of awards. What matters is what one enjoys, and what one gets out of, a work of art, which The Wire most assuredly is. The writing, direction and performances all shine as clearly today as they did when first aired. Again, in the opinion of this author, this is the greatest program ever produced by any country at any point in the history of the medium of television. It is one of the most powerful statements on modern urban life ever produced. Do not watch it because you have to. Watch it because it exists, and because it is, like all great art, worth the time, and yes, the effort, but never fear that this will tax you. Instead, it may enlighten you and it is certainly aiming to entertain you, but not in the way you are accustomed to.