12-18 Aug 2017^ guide^82
Jump the shark
Pinpointing the moment
when good shows go bad.
This week: The Wire
The Wire is briefl y
The McNulty Show- and a self-parodic
McNulty at that
lmost a decade after it
finished, The Wire still
stands as the pinnacle
of the box-set era: Baltimore,
shaken down block by block,
institution by institution, in a
peerless 60-episode stickup of
the American dream. Among its
embarrassment of virtues was
its nose for character. Not just
the feat of conceiving a carefully
individuated gallery of cops and
robbers, casting them perfectly
and watching each one pick their
appointed path through the city’s
tatty rowhouses and gleaming
bureaux. But also knowing when
the hour came to rein them
in. From Stringer Bell’s fatal
over-reaching into legitimate
business to Ziggy Sobotka’s
faceplant entry into the world of
drug trafficking, it never lost its
feel for how every player fitted
into the polity, and when their
actions would cause them to
lose their place. Hamartia turned
out to be just as applicable
to the Baltimore badlands as
ancient Greece.
Maybe it’s the sheer
momentum of The Wire’s
character-writing that led it to
drop the ball with its favourite
son: Jimmy McNulty. Of course
we came to know and love him
as the incorrigible loose cannon
of Baltimore homicide. But
it’s not just his partner Bunk
Moreland who had to cock an
eyebrow at his antics in season
five: McNulty, outraged by
the slashing of police funding,A
decides to fabricate evidence
that a serial killer is stalking
Baltimore’s homeless. Hmmm.
The 10 episodes of the season- in which the whole of Baltimore
is reeled into his fantasy – are
the worst of The Wire’s run. Tied
with the mechanics of the fakery - red ribbons around the victims’
wrists, heavy-breathing phone
calls to the local rag – any tension
in the storyline is stillborn.
The Wire briefly becomes The
McNulty Show. And a self-
parodic McNulty at that, with
some of Dominic West’s heaviest
mugging; the series was teetering
on the edge of the trap over-
extended TV shows often fall
into, indulging crowd-pleasing
characters. Even voice of reason
Lester Freamon, who becomes
McNulty’s partner in crime, is
dragged into this farrago.
Of course, being The Wire
there was a serious point beneath
this. The storyline runs in parallel
with another about Baltimore
Sun reporter Scott Templeton,
who – like Jayson Blair at the
New York Times – spices up his
reporting with details of his own
invention. Eventually, the two
fabulists trip over each other
in the “killer’s” wake. Creator
David Simon, 12-year stalwart
of the Sun, is questioning the
sensationalist and commercial
needs underlying modern news
reporting; and, deeper still, the
audience’s appetite for crime-
fiction itself. But meta ground- the first time the show puts
a foot there – is perilous for The
Wire. At best, the detour seems
frivolous; at worst, it threatens
to dissolve the observational
realism the previous four seasons
were built on.
Simon pulls it around. McNulty
eventually gets his comeuppance,
and the show manages a
magnificent crescendo of a finale.
Rewatching it, the McNulty-Will-
Kill-Again swerve stands out a
bit less as a conspicuous drop
in standards, perhaps because
fabrication has gone mainstream.
Fake news is now a trademark
and – caught in the social media
hothouse – we all understand the
conditions under which it has run
rampant. The once-criminal has
gone legit: meat and drink to The
Wire, even in its weakest hour
ILLUSTRATION: JULIA SCHEELE Phil Hoad