The Wire Weeks Two and Three: "You Gotta Start Somewhere"

Travelling all last week and thus only now catching up on episodes two and three of The Wire.

All three episodes have begun with comedy, which is great, although I kind of hope the "beginning with full frontal male nudity" theme of the last two episodes isn't extended too much longer.

Per Craig's post last week, they're taking their time setting up the stories, characters, and themes, which is to be expected--one of the unique strengths of The Wire is the way it takes advantage of having 12 hours of time over a whole season to tell one long intersecting set of stories in far more depth than a series of single episodes could ever manage.

But even after three episodes the central theme is clear--the consequences of allowing children to grow up and be educated in a profoundly warped and dysfunctional environment like West Baltimore. The drug trade hasn't just damaged the culture there—for many children it is the culture, replacing normal social institutions and roles with horrible bizarro versions: Marlo the community leader, Bodie the small businessman, Wee-Bey scolding his son Namond for his laziness and unwillingness to get to work in the family business down on the Corner.

"You gotta start somewhere," he says, and of course that's the point of the entire series this year–everyone starts somewhere, and that starting point matters. Even the refuge of Dennis' boxing gym is overseen by the image of "platinum founder" Avon Barksdale, the jailed drug kingpin shown in a neat establishing shot using the Golden Gloves poster that played a key role in the original investigation all the way back in Season One.

I think Sara is correct that the "these kids are so screwed by their environment that trying to give them a high-quality education is a waste of time and money" attitude is far too prevalent and deeply damaging to public schools. But I'm not sure it's the responsibility of The Wire's creators to be mindful of that; their job is to tell stories about what they believe is true.

And what they show is that a society drenched in drugs, poverty, and violence transforms normal adolescent problems and conflicts into the terrifying scene of a razor attack in a middle school classroom that finished off episode three, Lex executing his romantic rival in episode one, and much more.

Episode two shows another consequence of West Baltimore's devastated family structures by introducing Bubbles' nephew, a student who has simply dropped out of the school system, unnoticed, for years at time, and has thus fallen almost irretrievably behind academically–illiterate, innumerate, and fast running out of chances to achieve a decent education and in all likelihood a decent life.

As it happens, Michael Lewis wrote about just such a student in Sunday's New York Times magazine, documenting the huge effort that went into bringing him back from brink of the educational abyss. The good news: it can be done. The bad news: Bubbles' nephew, unlike the boy Lewis profiles, doesn't have the advantage of being a prospective All-Pro left tackle in the NFL. Educating students in this predicament--and preventing them from ever getting there in the first place--is one of the central challenges facing education policymakers today.