Ode to The Wire

It's been a while, but I had to take my Spring Break, work's been busy and St. Patrick's Day is what it is for folks of my heritage. Although The Wire ended its run more than three weeks ago, I find it fitting for a small and most likely insignificant tribute to perhaps the greatest television show ever created. While the last statement sounds quite hyperbolic, let me explain how I came to formulate such an opinion.

The Wire was one of the few television shows, or any form of media, to expose truth to its viewers on a weekly basis. Writers David Simon and Ed Burns lived a lot of what people saw each episode. They did not try to sugarcoat the actions of the stevedores' union nor the police department. Unlike a lot of the hip hop admiration that goes on in most media, The Wire in no way glamorized life in the street; making fast money selling drugs or hustlin' to get high. The show painted a disturbing and frustrating picture of young teenagers in a system that offers few options; a police department focused on politics and bureaucratic nonsense rather than keeping people safe, a school system trying its damnedest to do right by its students while consistently failing to societal conditions out of its control, and a city ruined by crony politics, the War on Drugs and neoliberalism.

To borrow a title from one of the last episodes, The Wire was closer to a five-season long novel by Dickens than a television show. It showed how the poorest of the poor scraped by on a daily basis to obtain the necessities: food, shelter and heroine. The show depicted how city hall politicians made decisions everyday based more on their own political benefit than for the good of Baltimore residents. Furthermore, the character development of unforgettable characters like McNulty, Omar, Bubbles, The Bunk, Herc, Carver, Cutty, Stringer Bell (just to name a few) is unparalleled in any television program I have ever seen. Even the immortal Tony Soprano was not as well-developed as Jimmy McNulty; few characters have the knot wrenching inner struggle of this alcoholic, cunning, brash "real police". There has never been a character like Omar. He was a violent stick up man with a huge shotgun who would stop at nothing to get revenge on anyone who crossed his path. Yet, at the same moment, he is the only character who never cursed and was openly gay (openly gay like waking up naked next to a cornrowed Puerto Rican man gay). Despite their usual homophobia, most NFL players labeled Omar as their favorite character. With Bubbles, The Wire bought a deeply troubled, yet lovable homeless drug addict into our lives.

Finally, and most importantly, The Wire was a show that explicitly and implicitly called for social change. It exposed us to the waste of the War on Drugs, the desperation of workers whose jobs have been outsourced to cheaper markets or to machines, the frustration of police officers trying to help people but bogged down by red tape and careerism. It showed how schools that only teach to the test not only do poorly on the tests but also fail the students in the long run. It painted a world of ambiguity where drug dealers gave money to kids for back to school supplies, a murderer had morals and a cop who broke all the rules actually made the city a safer place. The Wire was entertaining, but the reality it depicts is anything but. The real reason The Wire is the greatest television show ever created is that it makes us think about the world we live in, how fucked up it is, but also that there is hope. We are that hope and we can change the fucked up world in which we live.