I’m writing this at an interesting time, for which a week and a half form now might make my writing different. Perhaps at that time I’ll feel compelled to write again, perhaps not.
At this time, I have caught the second to last episode of The Wire before it airs by viewing it on HBO On Demand, a strange option HBO has given Wire fans all season – allowing them to access episodes a week in advance. The show airs its final episode on Sunday, March 9th, and it comes at the end of a shortened, 10 episode season focusing its usual hermetic scrutiny on the media – this season has taken us inside the walls of The Baltimore Sun and found us a morally wise, rather idyllic editor named Gus, played dutifully by Clark Johnson, to be our entrance into another season of an institution in cynical decline in the wake of modern capitalism.
It’s interesting to think of writing that last line – “another season of an institution in cynical decline in the wake of modern capitalism” – considering what really is prompting me to write this. The Wire has to be the most popular series I’ve ever witnessed amongst critical press. Salon.com, Slate, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly each have weekly online recaps and opinions on every episode, some of them including debate amongst its entire editorial staff. And though each vary in the amount they fawn over the greatness of every moment, and nitpick over every line they dislike.
They’ve written a great deal about the Sun plotline, certainly the least compelling of the show’s seasonal focuses. Each season chronicles a different institution in decline – the police force, the port, politics, the schools, and now the media – all while continuing to tell the stories they started even 5 years ago, and while continuing to comment on its main storyline, about the drug trade in Baltimore, and chronicling both sides of how police track down the thugs, and how the thugs “change up” in response.
But again, it’s not necessarily The Wire I want to discuss as much as what critics do to maintain relevance, or feign relevance, as the case may be. I say this as a critic myself, or one who has always seen myself as one, when I’m working as a critic or not. A recent list of Salon’s complaints about this season of The Wire: Omar seems “too superhero-like,” McNulty has re-descended into alcoholism too quickly, the Sun plot is "2 dimensional" and is too quick to label the editors as scumbags, the Sun plotline is 2 dimensional and too quick to label editors as saints. Scott Templeton, the scheming reporter played by Tom McCarthy once "set out on a reporting trip to the underpasses of Baltimore wearing a Kansas City Star t-shirt." Every time a second feels “unrealistic,” the writers of Salon mail three emails to each other, debating the second that is too “unrealistic.” Every time they see a plot coming, they complain. Every time they don’t see a plot coming, they complain.
When even your shirt choices are incorrect, it must be hard to win in that environment, eh? A similar phenomenon took over The Sopranos amongst critics in its final seasons. The first half of season 6, while unpopular by many, remains some of my favorite work of The Sopranos, anxious and confounded about life and meaning in every brave second. Still, critics balked, and balked loudly, every single goddamn episode – Vito plotline moving too slowly? The blogs are set afire! Carmela’s concern for Adriana seems too little too late? Ooh, there’s another topic to “argue.”
The arguments made about The Wire and The Sopranos on episode recaps, however, aren’t just nitpicky – they’re not very much fun. And it’s because these shows drew us in by their astonishing seasonal arcs, marveled at the way they developed characters and set off bombs when we least expected. There is no doubt in my mind these are the two greatest drama series ever to air, and now, writers who agree with that sentiment have found themselves in the position of having to predict their unpredictability, to comment on their perfection by saying things other than “they’re perfect!” And most importantly, the writers of the columns have had to make themselves above the plotlines and above the show in order to make themselves have something to say.
Now, I can’t begrudge people for wanting to move the conversations that fans of the shows are having online, but in all the whining and nitpicking, writers are losing their ability to truly submit to them. Later, one writer, in discussing The Sopranos, made the baffling suggestion that “We expect more of The Wire because the other seasons were so great, whereas when The Sopranos limped into its final season after two terrible seasons, we were truly surprised at everything good that happened.”
That’s a strange case of selective memory even if you agree that Season 6’s first part was not great (and I do not agree with that). Season 5 was a hit by everyone’s standard, won the Emmy for Best Drama series, and won back all of its fans lost amidst the first Sopranos backlash that developed in season 4.
Much the same, I never quite got the fawning the world did over The Wire’s 4th season, the one taking place in the schools. Now, my work is with kids with emotional disruptions and inner city backgrounds, so maybe I just didn’t find the work that surprising – it was very accurate, and very good, but it did not show me something I didn’t really know, while season 2’s great diversion into the port did. Season 4 is great, don’t get me wrong, but it is the season of The Wire I’d least likely watch again – too much procedural ho-hum about budgeting in the mayor’s office and having to take math tests slowed it down immensely.
But here I am again, being above the plotlines, and that, I think, is the problem. These columns that dissect episodes of shows like The Wire and The Sopranos - well, truly only those two shows - cannot continue to treat shows of that magnitude as normal television. Even Buffy The Vampire Slayer, that extraordinary example of network ingenuity, could be treated as normal television. The Sopranos and The Wire exist on their own canvas of time, establishing plotlines over seasons and years, so commentary and judgment on individual episodes as they come out is a bit like yelling at a painter midway through the painting. The thing only works if you surrender yourself to the whole product.
Worse than that, however, is too many assumptions about what it is to be a TV show, or to be these TV shows. This is what I mean by surrending yourself to the whole product - on a network show like Lost, fans can complain about plotlines beginning in October loudly enough that the writers, worried about the loss of fans, can adjust and jettison those plotlines by March (as evident when exactly this happened, famously, in Lost's third season). The Wire and The Sopranos know exactly what they want to accomplish in their seasons. And, they do this by intentionally producing the emotions that the plotlines get criticized for - Slate complained rather loudly that McNulty (Dominic West) seemed to re-emerge too suddenly as an alcoholic this year, and that his fabricated serial killer plotline was frustrating. Yes and yes - McNulty is so self-destructive his tendencies can re-emerge quickly, like many self destructive people; how frustrating! He invented a serial killer, which the audience felt resistance to accepting - much like Bunk (Wendell Pierce) did on screen. Worse - it worked! Imagine our frustration about how easily one can abuse the system. As for Scott Templeton's irrational clothing choices for wandering the streets of Baltimore - yes! True! What an irrational character!
Much in the way The Sopranos "too philosophical" season 6 was too philosophical. Yes, by posing the question "Who am I, where am I going?" famously in "Join The Club" (the love-it-or-hate-it center of that season, for its 40 minute hallucination), the show challenged you to ask that question of its characters - many refused. That's fine enough, but let's not criticize the show for meeting its own intentions.
The problem is that when writers take to whining about shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, they have to attack the details because the whole is too good and established to truly criticize. But in the nitpicking, columns about these subjects only reveal how irrelevant they are. Writing about movies and music that astonishes you can be relevant (Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" column comes to mind, as does Lisa Schwarzbaum's enraptured own Sopranos season 6 episode reviews), but only when a writer makes him/herself deferential to the subject, and approaches his/her experience honestly. Nitpicking the shows is dishonest in the extreme - a lie to maintain relevance, which is exactly what the Sun plotline in this season of The Wire chronicles. No wonder the Slate writers don't like it.
At this time, I have caught the second to last episode of The Wire before it airs by viewing it on HBO On Demand, a strange option HBO has given Wire fans all season – allowing them to access episodes a week in advance. The show airs its final episode on Sunday, March 9th, and it comes at the end of a shortened, 10 episode season focusing its usual hermetic scrutiny on the media – this season has taken us inside the walls of The Baltimore Sun and found us a morally wise, rather idyllic editor named Gus, played dutifully by Clark Johnson, to be our entrance into another season of an institution in cynical decline in the wake of modern capitalism.
It’s interesting to think of writing that last line – “another season of an institution in cynical decline in the wake of modern capitalism” – considering what really is prompting me to write this. The Wire has to be the most popular series I’ve ever witnessed amongst critical press. Salon.com, Slate, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly each have weekly online recaps and opinions on every episode, some of them including debate amongst its entire editorial staff. And though each vary in the amount they fawn over the greatness of every moment, and nitpick over every line they dislike.
They’ve written a great deal about the Sun plotline, certainly the least compelling of the show’s seasonal focuses. Each season chronicles a different institution in decline – the police force, the port, politics, the schools, and now the media – all while continuing to tell the stories they started even 5 years ago, and while continuing to comment on its main storyline, about the drug trade in Baltimore, and chronicling both sides of how police track down the thugs, and how the thugs “change up” in response.
But again, it’s not necessarily The Wire I want to discuss as much as what critics do to maintain relevance, or feign relevance, as the case may be. I say this as a critic myself, or one who has always seen myself as one, when I’m working as a critic or not. A recent list of Salon’s complaints about this season of The Wire: Omar seems “too superhero-like,” McNulty has re-descended into alcoholism too quickly, the Sun plot is "2 dimensional" and is too quick to label the editors as scumbags, the Sun plotline is 2 dimensional and too quick to label editors as saints. Scott Templeton, the scheming reporter played by Tom McCarthy once "set out on a reporting trip to the underpasses of Baltimore wearing a Kansas City Star t-shirt." Every time a second feels “unrealistic,” the writers of Salon mail three emails to each other, debating the second that is too “unrealistic.” Every time they see a plot coming, they complain. Every time they don’t see a plot coming, they complain.
When even your shirt choices are incorrect, it must be hard to win in that environment, eh? A similar phenomenon took over The Sopranos amongst critics in its final seasons. The first half of season 6, while unpopular by many, remains some of my favorite work of The Sopranos, anxious and confounded about life and meaning in every brave second. Still, critics balked, and balked loudly, every single goddamn episode – Vito plotline moving too slowly? The blogs are set afire! Carmela’s concern for Adriana seems too little too late? Ooh, there’s another topic to “argue.”
The arguments made about The Wire and The Sopranos on episode recaps, however, aren’t just nitpicky – they’re not very much fun. And it’s because these shows drew us in by their astonishing seasonal arcs, marveled at the way they developed characters and set off bombs when we least expected. There is no doubt in my mind these are the two greatest drama series ever to air, and now, writers who agree with that sentiment have found themselves in the position of having to predict their unpredictability, to comment on their perfection by saying things other than “they’re perfect!” And most importantly, the writers of the columns have had to make themselves above the plotlines and above the show in order to make themselves have something to say.
Now, I can’t begrudge people for wanting to move the conversations that fans of the shows are having online, but in all the whining and nitpicking, writers are losing their ability to truly submit to them. Later, one writer, in discussing The Sopranos, made the baffling suggestion that “We expect more of The Wire because the other seasons were so great, whereas when The Sopranos limped into its final season after two terrible seasons, we were truly surprised at everything good that happened.”
That’s a strange case of selective memory even if you agree that Season 6’s first part was not great (and I do not agree with that). Season 5 was a hit by everyone’s standard, won the Emmy for Best Drama series, and won back all of its fans lost amidst the first Sopranos backlash that developed in season 4.
Much the same, I never quite got the fawning the world did over The Wire’s 4th season, the one taking place in the schools. Now, my work is with kids with emotional disruptions and inner city backgrounds, so maybe I just didn’t find the work that surprising – it was very accurate, and very good, but it did not show me something I didn’t really know, while season 2’s great diversion into the port did. Season 4 is great, don’t get me wrong, but it is the season of The Wire I’d least likely watch again – too much procedural ho-hum about budgeting in the mayor’s office and having to take math tests slowed it down immensely.
But here I am again, being above the plotlines, and that, I think, is the problem. These columns that dissect episodes of shows like The Wire and The Sopranos - well, truly only those two shows - cannot continue to treat shows of that magnitude as normal television. Even Buffy The Vampire Slayer, that extraordinary example of network ingenuity, could be treated as normal television. The Sopranos and The Wire exist on their own canvas of time, establishing plotlines over seasons and years, so commentary and judgment on individual episodes as they come out is a bit like yelling at a painter midway through the painting. The thing only works if you surrender yourself to the whole product.
Worse than that, however, is too many assumptions about what it is to be a TV show, or to be these TV shows. This is what I mean by surrending yourself to the whole product - on a network show like Lost, fans can complain about plotlines beginning in October loudly enough that the writers, worried about the loss of fans, can adjust and jettison those plotlines by March (as evident when exactly this happened, famously, in Lost's third season). The Wire and The Sopranos know exactly what they want to accomplish in their seasons. And, they do this by intentionally producing the emotions that the plotlines get criticized for - Slate complained rather loudly that McNulty (Dominic West) seemed to re-emerge too suddenly as an alcoholic this year, and that his fabricated serial killer plotline was frustrating. Yes and yes - McNulty is so self-destructive his tendencies can re-emerge quickly, like many self destructive people; how frustrating! He invented a serial killer, which the audience felt resistance to accepting - much like Bunk (Wendell Pierce) did on screen. Worse - it worked! Imagine our frustration about how easily one can abuse the system. As for Scott Templeton's irrational clothing choices for wandering the streets of Baltimore - yes! True! What an irrational character!
Much in the way The Sopranos "too philosophical" season 6 was too philosophical. Yes, by posing the question "Who am I, where am I going?" famously in "Join The Club" (the love-it-or-hate-it center of that season, for its 40 minute hallucination), the show challenged you to ask that question of its characters - many refused. That's fine enough, but let's not criticize the show for meeting its own intentions.
The problem is that when writers take to whining about shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, they have to attack the details because the whole is too good and established to truly criticize. But in the nitpicking, columns about these subjects only reveal how irrelevant they are. Writing about movies and music that astonishes you can be relevant (Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" column comes to mind, as does Lisa Schwarzbaum's enraptured own Sopranos season 6 episode reviews), but only when a writer makes him/herself deferential to the subject, and approaches his/her experience honestly. Nitpicking the shows is dishonest in the extreme - a lie to maintain relevance, which is exactly what the Sun plotline in this season of The Wire chronicles. No wonder the Slate writers don't like it.
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