Monday, January 14, 2008
Another The Wire post....
...so those of you who can't tell the difference between black people should probably just ignore this one.
Short version: I'm still worried. Basically, the main Journalist character is the City Editor at the Baltimore Sun (David Simon's old paper). Of course, he's being set up as the lone smart person in the sea of destructive bureaucracy, a la McNulty or Bunny (one of the very, very few completely honorable characters in the show, but I'll get into that in a later post), and he is, of course, a stand-in for David Simon (or at least how David Simon views himself as a Journalist). The problem is he's presented as this hyper-concientious super-journalist (he calls the office late at night to re-check his story, and ha-ha! he's right all along) that just comes off as one-note and phony; and note that this was never a problem during the introduction of McNulty, who was always presented as a drunk, womanizing, abrasive asshole, albeit one who we were supposed to sympathize with. There's also this hot young reporter (Scott) who is the apple of the eeeevvviilll chief editor's eye who we know isn't 100% on the level from a scene last week, where he was sitting at the bar drinking, apart from his colleagues (foreshadowing, everyone!) who's clearly pulling a Jayson Blair and making up this bullshit, heart-warming story involving a wheelchair-bound kid trying to score tickets to Opening Day. But, guess who is the lone voice in the wilderness questioning the story? That's right the City Editor. This is just heavy-handed crap we can see coming from a mile away. There's no nuance, no dimensions, nothing that The Wire has given us over the past four seasons. The rest of the show, of course, is gold, but this (thus far) lame plotline is still worrying me.
Short version: I'm still worried. Basically, the main Journalist character is the City Editor at the Baltimore Sun (David Simon's old paper). Of course, he's being set up as the lone smart person in the sea of destructive bureaucracy, a la McNulty or Bunny (one of the very, very few completely honorable characters in the show, but I'll get into that in a later post), and he is, of course, a stand-in for David Simon (or at least how David Simon views himself as a Journalist). The problem is he's presented as this hyper-concientious super-journalist (he calls the office late at night to re-check his story, and ha-ha! he's right all along) that just comes off as one-note and phony; and note that this was never a problem during the introduction of McNulty, who was always presented as a drunk, womanizing, abrasive asshole, albeit one who we were supposed to sympathize with. There's also this hot young reporter (Scott) who is the apple of the eeeevvviilll chief editor's eye who we know isn't 100% on the level from a scene last week, where he was sitting at the bar drinking, apart from his colleagues (foreshadowing, everyone!) who's clearly pulling a Jayson Blair and making up this bullshit, heart-warming story involving a wheelchair-bound kid trying to score tickets to Opening Day. But, guess who is the lone voice in the wilderness questioning the story? That's right the City Editor. This is just heavy-handed crap we can see coming from a mile away. There's no nuance, no dimensions, nothing that The Wire has given us over the past four seasons. The rest of the show, of course, is gold, but this (thus far) lame plotline is still worrying me.
