Comments on: Overthinking The Wire (Season 1)

By: jesscard

jesscard — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:15:10 +0000

Dan Miller addressed a lot of where my mind was going with the article, as well. First, Baltimore as an organism perhaps being the most compelling character on the show, as the current that drives all the interaction. Second, in terms of viewer perspective. When I think of sprawling ensemble casts, for instance, what P.T. Anderson and Robert Altman are known for, it creates the same result of different kinds of characters that are fleshed out to varying degrees. Miawski’s thoughtful categorizations of antihero, victim etc. seem organic to ensembles in general. I see it as not a fault but as almost necessary because those varying degrees of complexity are how we see the world. We can never know that many people in that finite an amount of time (eg. a movie or a season.) Indication of a well-written/well-acted ensemble is when those seemingly two-dimensional characters are capable of nuance that imply complexity that the viewer never has enough time to unearth. While the shot of Wallace’s morning where he cares for what seems like a half dozen children in a slum when he is a child himself flattens him into a victim, but the subtlety of his casual conversations on the outdoor couch with the other dealers implies a fuller consciousness on his character’s behalf, a complexity we’ll never have the opportunity to know. Compare this to William H. Macy’s character in Boogie Nights, arguably one of the flattest in the film. His wife sleeps around. And he loses it eventually and murders her. What salvages this flatness is both the good writing in his conversations with other porn techs about lighting and what his brief narrative does for the overarching narrative of the porn industry in the 70s. I’m not even a big fan of ensemble casts, but can appreciate when they’re done well, often for the sake of a larger theme. What separates The Wire from these films is that serialization of good writing allows for the satisfaction of ensembles to become more complex with time (without becoming hokey if they’re written and performed well), which is precisely what The Wire does.

By: mlawski

mlawski — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:27:42 +0000

@John: I’d love love love to do more Wire posts. However, I can’t promise anything at this point, because Lost. Oh, Lost. It will almost certainly eat up all of the Overthinking RAM in my brain. I’m also not sure when I will have time to get through the other four seasons of The Wire since there is so much TV on the actual TV right now. I watched season one in December when everything else was in reruns… But I’m not ruling anything out completely. We shall see. We shall see.

@dock: Thanks for the suggestion! We will, in fact, be posting a Lost predictions thread this week, so keep visiting!

By: John Perich

John Perich — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:36:24 +0000

@Dan and @Dock: I don’t know that we can do an entire Wire-week. But I can jump in with Shana for some coverage of the later seasons. Shana: you up for it?

By: dock

dock — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:52:06 +0000

Thank you Mlawski, you oontinue to be my favorite contributor to Overthinking It. A series-long overthinking of The Wire would be awesome, and you are in for a real treat with that series. However, much like most of the television watching world, right now at least 78% of my daily mental energy is devoted to one topic only…Feb. 2nd, 9pm (EST). One thing I think would be great- a predicitons thread. We have to get these prediciton recorded in case someone is right, they could brag about it forever, and have documentation to prove it…

By: Turin Hurinson

Turin Hurinson — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:17:48 +0000

I think one of the most important things about the characters on The Wire – and this doesn’t just apply to the characters – is how *consistent* it all is. You don’t get characters doing absurd about-faces for no apparent reason, or picking up and dropping the “idiot ball” every other episode. They are of varying psychological complexity, but the complex ones are complex in plausible ways, rather than just being a combination of a bunch of contradictory character traits, and the simple ones, e.g. Omar, take a handful of powerful attributes and focus pretty much only on those attributes. Omar’s mythic, but it’s a clearly-defined myth; he’s not just a card the writers can use to get out of any situation.

In fact, I think I’d say that the reason the characters are so compelling is that the show is so tightly plotted.

By: mlawski

mlawski — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:22:40 +0000

Weirdly enough, the AV Club also has an article up today about the first season of The Wire: http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-wire-season-one,37471/

Looks like I’m not the only one who had to put up with obsessed Omar-lovers over the past few years…

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:00:23 +0000

In one sense, it might be good to look critically at The Wire’s first season characters and their developments without having seen the other seasons. You rightly point out that not all of these characters are three dimensional (in this season) and not all of them are on the same page as far as narrative intent goes. But, trust me, things change and characters change along with them. It wouldn’t be so regularly deemed as one of the best shows to ever grace television if it didn’t. So, I would say keep this post around, but go take a month or two and work your way through the rest of the seasons. Seasons three and four especially. If those two don’t change you a little as a person, something is wrong :P

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:40:02 +0000

Thank you for overthinking The Wire. I love your take on the multifaceted personalities that are the characters created in this show – I’ve never looked at them in this way before and seeing it makes a lot of sense. From the leviathan like stature of Omar to the whimpers of Bubbles, this is a great way to stack the characters in their spots.

By: Dan Miller

Dan Miller — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:39:51 +0000

First of all, let me say that an Overthinking It series of Wire articles would be spectacular–I will definitely donate money if you guys do a full week like you did for Verhoeven. Secondly, I think the goal of the Wire is to give you a picture of Baltimore, not (or not only) as it actually is, but as it would be experienced by someone living there and seeing this story happen. At the least, it’s a very useful way to think about who the “viewer” is intended to be, if that makes sense. And from that perspective, it’s totally logical to have different characters presented in different modes. Every person’s life contains some people that you can understand, and some people whose behavior is so extreme or unusual that it borders on the mythical. Think about the worst boss you’ve ever had, or the one guy in your college dorm who was just completely off his rocker, or Marion Barry. The Omar you see on the screen is the Omar that other figures in the drug trade see–a legend as much as a man. Meanwhile, other characters are all too human.

By: KnowsNothingAboutPopCulture

KnowsNothingAboutPopCulture — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:58:39 +0000

The Fact that The Wire characters are all so different “written” works for me because they all play different roles in the story. In any other police-story we expect the good-guys (the cops) to be identifiable and heroic. It´s a bonus when they also multidimensional, realistic and morally-gray.
That the villians in The Wire (Avon, Stringer) are multidimensional is what makes it such great television.

Bubbs and Wallace on the other hand are the victims so of course they have to be lovable. Stringer can´t be that, or at least not in that extent, or he would stop being a villian.

In short: Different Character play different Roles in the story so you have to write them different.