The Wire Week Eleven: Everything Goes Wrong

This week on The Wire, poor, anonymous Sherrod dies of accidental cyanide poisoning while trying to get high in the middle of the night in his homeless drug-addict uncle's unheated hovel. Randy's foster mother is burned alive and nearly killed after their house is fire-bombed by neighborhood kids angry that Randy helped the incompetent police with a murder investigation. Namond has nowhere to live because his Mom is angry that he's not enthusiastic enough about following his dad in the family drug-dealing business that will quickly lead to prison or the grave. Dukie is promoted to high school, cutting him off from the only adult in the world who really cares about or pays attention to his welfare. Michael, who started the season as the strongest and most virtuous of the group, goes into training to be a drug gang assassin, beats up a small child, beats up Lamond, and stands by while his well-meaning boxing coach is shot and almost killed by his new drug gang buddies.

Growing up in West Baltimore really sucks.

We shouldn't be surprised, of course, the hallmark of The Wire is unflinching honesty. And lest you non-viewers out there (could there possibly be any left?) worry that the show is so depressing as to be unwatchable, it made for great, compelling television.

I'll save most of my final thoughts for next week after the season finale, but a quick note on the theme of circularity this season. There's a point near the end of the opening credits where there are five or so shots in a row that are about circles or cycles -- the revolving plastic thing in the convenience store where patrons exchange money for cigarettes, a spinning tire rim, drugs being packed in a circle around a spare tire in the trunk of a car, a child spinning an old tire around in an alley. The season has also followed a round object--Marlo's ring--on a circular path, from Marlo to Omar to whathisname the bad cop to Michael, who is now involved with Marlo.

On one level this is all kind of obvious--the pathologies of drugs and violence are visited upon children, who quickly grow up to perpetrate them on the next generation. The cycle of poverty, etc., etc. But in the hands of the The Wire's creators, this kind of symbolism, as well as the constant drawing of parallels between various individuals and institutions, is never trite and often kind of profound. As Saul Austerlitz said recently in Slate, The Wire is "a didactic show in the best possible sense."