David
Simon’s
Vision of
America
More than a decade after The
Wire, Simon proves he’s still
one of the edgiest and most
dynamic showrunners in the
game By ALAN SEPINWALLESSAYILLUSTRATIO
N^ REF
ERENCE:^ PAUL^ SCHIRALDI/HBO,^6
;^ LENA^ HA/
SHUTTE
RSTOCK90 | Rolling Stone | September 2019
TV
THE MOST
BANG FOR
YOUR TV
BUCK
From Treme to
Generation
Kill, Show Me
a Hero, and
The Deuce, all
of Simon’s
shows in the
11 years
post-Wire
have been
masterworks
of high-
wattage
entertainment
that double as
engaging
civics lessons.ILLUSTRATION BY Nazario GrazianoH
BO’S FIRST golden age had its holy
trinity of Davids: The Sopranos’
David Chase, Deadwood’s David
Milch, and The Wire’s David Simon.
In the years since, Chase and Milch receded
before returning to their old favorites — Chase
with a Sopranos prequel, Milch with a Dead-
wood reunion. Simon, though, has no interest
in reviving The Wire. He already told that story.
Besides, HBO has kept him busy since the day
we said goodbye to his fictionalized Baltimore:
first with the Iraq War miniseries Generation
Kill, then the post-Katrina drama Treme, the
political miniseries Show Me a Hero, and the
porn drama The Deuce, which begins its third
and final season on September 9th.
The Wire, little-watched when it originally
aired, is now often hailed as the greatest show
ever made. Its combination of gripping police
stories and blunt talk about failing American
institutions made it the ultimate televised ex-
ample of a spoonful of sugar making the medi-
cine go down. A converted journalist, Simon is
a great pure storyteller who manages to invest
nearly every character with startling depth.
But he’s long pushed back against people
who dwell on the most popcorn aspects of his
masterpiece. Perhaps not coincidentally, his
post-Wire projects have been less commercial.
Treme often felt like one of the jazz com-
positions its trombonist hero, Antoine Batiste
(Wendell Pierce), hustled around New Orleans
to play: lively but amorphous. There were
some clear narrative signposts, but Treme
mostly provided a chance to marinate in theatmosphere of a great American city and the
show’s superb ensemble.
Generation Kill, about the ’03 Iraq invasion,
was also intentionally chaotic — the better to
reflect what its Marine protagonists expe-
rienced during a hastily conceived military
action. Large swaths of it turn into dark road-
trip comedy, until the adventure fizzles out,
because no one in charge has a plan for what
to do after Iraqi forces have been steamrolled.
The public-housing premise of Show Me a
Hero almost sounds like a parody of a Simon
project. But if it’s wonky, it’s also as com-
pulsively watchable as anything he’s made.
It’s Simon’s first time working with a famous
director (Crash’s Paul Haggis), and with
pre-existing stars like Oscar Isaac and Cather-
ine Keener, rather than ones he created, like
Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan.
The Deuce in many ways feels like a culmina-
tion of everything Simon’s done since saying
goodbye to McNulty and Omar. Like Show Me
a Hero, it has high-profile leads in Maggie Gyl-
lenhaal (as a prostitute turned feminist porn
auteur) and James Franco (as identical twins
caught up in vice to varying degrees). LikeTreme, its strongest appeal is its sense of place
(the grimy pre-Giuliani Times Square). And
like Generation Kill, it’s a period piece about
grand plans for which no one has considered
the unintended consequences. It’s sometimes
too sprawling for its own good, but still a
potent reminder that Simon and his collabora-
tors can be as good at pure entertainment as
they are at dramatizing civics lessons.
This final season jumps into the mid-Eight-
ies. Director Harvey (David Krumholtz) tells
Gyllenhaal’s Candy they have to abandon their
loftier artistic impulses to make money in this
new home-video market, and calls her films “a
niche product that I can no longer invest in.”
It’s hard not to view their arguments as Simon
and co-creator George Pelecanos reckoning
with their position as art-house filmmakers at
a network that, thanks to Game of Thrones and
corporate mergers, is looking for blockbust-
ers. But Simon hasn’t been coasting on
reputation in the 11 years since his master-
piece ended. His shows still feel vital, relevant,
and often shockingly fun. So he hasn’t made
The Wire 2: Wire Harder yet. So what? His
stuff ’s still all in the game.