The Wire
Institutional failure remains as poignant as ever
This review contains spoilers about the show’s themes, but no plot spoilers.
Genre: Crime drama TV show (five seasons, 60 episodes)
#television #capitalism
When The Wire first aired, it didn’t really rate. It won no awards, the viewership was nothing to write home about, and the critical response was good but not phenomenal. Yet today, almost every list of the greatest TV shows of all time feature The Wire somewhere in the top five. Why?
Many of its qualities are timeless. Its portrayal of police work, poverty and drug culture, education, and local government is not only totally honest and unpretentious, but also deeply human. It has a talented ensemble cast of actors who accurately represent Baltimore demographics. And then there’s The Bunk and all of his memorable zingers.
But The Wire is more than just a cops-and-criminals show. Over five seasons, it explores how institutions betray the people they’re meant to serve and the impossible challenges faced by those wishing to do something meaningfully good within those institutions. It’s an unusually realistic look at hopeless circumstances many Americans will find all too familiar.
Though the Baltimore Police Department takes center stage, it’s not the only star of the show. The department’s stories are part of an impressively consistent and well-written narrative thread that runs through all five seasons, weaving itself through those of other important institutions: the port union, the school system, the media, the courts, and of course, the criminal organizations.
Their parallels are ever transparent. Gangs share eerily similar hierarchies as the legal administrations tasked with taking them down — and are often, through backdoor handshakes and laundered money, more connected than it would seem.
And just as street-level thugs “stand tall,” silently eating charges to protect so-called friends whose loyalties end as soon as it is convenient, so too must corrupt politicians stand tall to avoid exposing their fellow white-collar criminals. There’s no such thing as a corrupt person in power working alone. Everyone’s got a hand in somebody’s pocket.
For all the small victories and feel-good moments peppered throughout its 60 episodes, The Wire ends on a bleak note. Its final message is unambiguous: nothing really changes. There are simply too many cogs in the machine, too many perverse incentives, and too many conflicting interests pulling in all directions.
If you have good intentions, institutions will grind you down until you choose to leave, are made to leave, or have nothing left of your former, optimistic self. The only way to get in a position to enact real change is to make so many deals and compromises that, by the time you’ve finally gotten into that position, you’ve essentially traded all its power away.
Almost two decades after The Wire first aired, Americans have long lost any trust that institutions have got their backs. Society is reaching all-time high levels of apathy and cynicism. More than check all the boxes that make good television, The Wire resonates powerfully. Let us hope it eventually falls down the ranks in those greatest TV show lists, not because newer and better ones are released, but because it stops being so goddamn real.