“You told me to watch this show, and so far in two episodes, nothing’s happened,” a friend complains. The most frequent objection to the THE WIRE, and one of the biggest ways it diverges from traditional television drama, is its pacing. By the end of each episode, nothing is neatly wrapped up, and, if you are not paying careful attention, you might think nothing much happened at all. (I nearly gave up on the first season more than a few times before I became hooked.)
But THE WIRE isn’t just trying to tell the stories of particular characters. It’s using those characters—what they do, what they experience, and what they learn over the course of a season—to tell the story of an entire city. From scene to scene, it might seem like nothing much is happening, but look closer, and you’ll see a larger, more complex tale unfolding.
Take last night’s episode and what it said about “urban education.” Yes, school hasn’t even started yet. But that doesn’t mean no one is teaching—or trying to teach—our young protagonists. Visiting his father in prison, Namon gets advice about surviving and advancing in his part-time job—dealing drugs. Bubbles the drug addict tries to teach his business—selling small items out of a cart—to an adolescent “intern” he has taken under his wing. Cutty, the ex-con who juggles landscaping with mentoring boys in a boxing program, sizes up Michael as a potential protégé. Assistant principal Marcia Donnelly sends Dukie, who has neglectful and/or impoverished parents, a box of clothes to encourage him to show up.
Meanwhile, a group of middle school teachers meet to plan a common classroom discipline strategy that, they hope, will capture their students’ attention when they arrive in a few days. Marlo, the brilliant and ruthless young drug kingpin, takes a more direct approach to getting their attention—having a minion hand each boy $200 to buy new clothes for school.
As producer Ed Burns says in an interview here, “the idea we're trying to bring across is that kids are going to get educated. […] They will learn. It's just a question of where.” And from whom.
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