The Wire Week Nine: The Beginning of the End

After a couple of very good but not great weeks, The Wire launches into the final third of the season with a vengeance.

First, I hope the foolishness with sticking students in 90-minute test prep classes, but then turning up the heat in order to keep them docile in said classes, apparently without considering that the heat also means they're sure not to learn whatever meager test prep lessons are being presented, can help put to rest this whole argument about accountability and teaching to the test. Craig made this point last week, but it needs repeating: When people do stupid things in response to a sensible policy, that's not evidence that the policy is stupid, nor does it mitigate the responsbility of people who do stupid things.

For example, let's take the obvious parallel of the Baltimore police department. I think most reasonable people would agree that police departments have two mains goals: reducing crime and apprehending criminals. Most people would also agree that crime statistics are a pretty good way to measure success in accomplishing those goals.

Faced with the challenge of being evaluated by crime statistics, there are a number of things a police department can do. It can act strategically, tasking its best people with implementing a long-term plan to take down the high-level criminals. That's what Daniels' Major Crimes unit did, with much success. Or it can innovate, think outside the box, and try to reform the drug trade itself. Thats what Bunny Colvin did last season, also with some success.

Or it can be stupid and make a lot of meaningless low-level arrests, which will just antagonize people and do nothing to solve the problem--and thus, improve the crime statistics--in the long-term. That's what happened this week. I wonder if there's a Fraternal Order of Police blog out there somewhere pointing to this as evidence of how we need to stop holding police departments responsible for crime statistics? Probably not, because while we can criticize ineffective police departments, at least we respect them enough to hold them responsible for their own bad choices. Yet when it comes to teaching to the test--or messing with the thermostat--the refrain is too often, "No Child Left Behind made me do it."

The exchange between Colvin and the administrator about the goals of the special class was also interesting: "You're socializing them, but not educating them." I've been reading Diane Ravitch's history of 20th century school reform recently--back in the '30s and 40s, most leading progressive educators would have said that socializing Namond et. al. is educating them, that if the school can help them with practical lessons like learning to be a waiter or interacting with government, its job is pretty much done. Times certainly change.

But as has been the case all season, the most compelling storylines about the education of urban children on The Wire take place outside the school walls, as the writers constantly draw parallels between the fate of children caught between highly dysfunctional formal institutions and highly functional informal institutions. Take the unfolding tragedy of Michael's corruption by Marlo. Despite his unusual intelligence and integrity, the school system has all but ignored Michael. He turns in perfect homework problems and all Prez can do is look at them quizzically, like he's not quite sure what to do. Meanwhile, Michael and his brother have to live with a drug addict and a child molester.

Marlo, by contrast, sees Michael's potential in an instant (literally, with a shock of recognition in the first episode that I suspect will turn out to be the anchor moment of the entire season. While the writing on the The Wire is often and justly praised, many of the most significant passages this season have been dialogue-free, consisting entirely of silent moments of recognition and wordless shots of character's faces. Rawls' definitive break from Burrell happened in the mayor's office, with three consecutive half-second reaction shots--Rawls, the mayor's aide, the mayor. Or the lingering, Al-Pacino-in-the-Godfather-style shot of Michael's deadened face after he sent Chris and Snoop to do murder. Chilling.)

The lesson seems to be that highly efficient, well-managed organizations like Marlo's drug gang win out in the short-term--at least long enough to consume the likes of Michael, Namond, and possibly more. But in the long-term--and this is one of the meta-themes that runs throughout the entire series--the efficiency of untrestrained capitalism embodied by the Baltimore drug trade consumes everyone. When willingness to kill becomes just another competitive advantage, everyone dies in the end.

And so the The Wire's creators are caught between their frustration with the way politics and human imperfection diminish the value of vital public institutions--schools, police, cities--while at the same time acknowledging that reforming those institutions is the only thing that can save students like Michael. It's that combination of unforgiving realism and sustained hope that makes The Wire so great.