Episode 52: Unconfirmed Reports
when is TiVo like a Crock Pot? when the story rises to a slow boil
2008-01-15
By DeAngelo Starnes

I’ve been told a highly effective method of writing is when you write about topics with which you are intimately familiar and for which you have a passion.  In this space last week, I mentioned David Simon’s passion for Baltimore, its people, and its politics (don’t get it twisted, Proposition Joe’s roundtable is the city council of drug dealers, the chamber commerce for the so-called underworld).  Last week, I also mentioned the two books of his I read and recommended that you read.  And so taking my own advice, I revisited Simon’s The Corner.

Even if you’ve seen the very excellent production he and his buddy, David Mills, put together and wrote for HBO, please read the book.  Interspersed among the excellent journalism, depicting the street-life of a Baltimore family pulled down by the drug game, is some very insightful commentary.  If you read The Corner, you get The Wire.

A lotta people out there think they get The Wire, but they don’t really get it.  For instance, I’ve noticed the white audience is drawn to The Wire like white kids are to hip hop.  They love that fantasy of Black thug life.  They think they identify with it.  Some think they can do it.  Some think it’s about sagging pants, braids, and smoking some weed.  Remember that kid, Ziggy, from the second season?  He thought he was a “thug.”  But then what happened to him?

Being a “thug” requires a whole different mentality I don’t think anyone reading this essay can relate to.  And there are different levels to it.  But for people who think “ghetto” thug life is cool, what they don’t feel is the actual pain associated with a knife thrust through skin, a bullet piercing vital organs, or a strong fist being launched into an unprotected face.  They don’t see the cop beat-downs or eating beans and air for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  When you look at it from that level, so-called “ghetto” thug-life ain’t nothing to glorify.  Hell, suburban life is relatively comfortable but I ain’t comfortable living it in this economy (when they gonna stop lying and go past recession straight to depression?).

For much of the audience, The Wire is like a zoo.  Watch the animals in their limited habitat.  Try to intellectualize where they’re coming from.  And then walk away feeling like you’ve been to an African jungle.
 Simon has done more than go to the zoo.  He’s gotten into the cage and slept overnight with the tigers – for weeks on end.  At least that’s the impression I get when I read The Corner.

I lived in Washington, D.C. – a mere forty-five minute drive from Baltimore - for a number of years.  On a street that could’ve been used as a stage prop for either The Corner or The Wire.  I was in the cage and, unwittingly, part of the zoo exhibit.   But I’ve only been to Baltimore five or six times.  Simon’s books took me back to my pre-gentrification D.C. days and made me feel like I knew Baltimore when I read those books. Sometimes while taking in The Wire, I wonder if I’m zoo-watching. 

I come back quickly though.  I identify with Simon’s love for the grit of Baltimore.  After all, the character is in the dirt.  Because it’s from the dirt that plants and flowers bloom while straining for the Sun.  I don’t care how fertile your imagination or how good your grammatical mechanics are, you can’t write what you see on The Wire from a zoo visit. 

Enough preaching, on to this week’s chapter:

- This was an absolutely brilliant episode.  I had to watch it over and over to get it.  And I’m not sure I got all of it. It didn’t scream out loud but it screamed in its subtleties.  If you got this episode in one sitting, you’re the same person who read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man overnight.  That’s not really a compliment.  It just means you missed a lot to get to the end.   This episode was slow cooking at a low temperature.  Crock-pot episode.  Re-watch this thang cuz there’s a lot in it.  It’s the type of writing that makes you jealous.  Wishing it was you who wrote it and got it on the screen.

BTW, much daps to Ernest Dickerson, who first came on the radar as Spike Lee’s director of photography back in the 80s.  He’s turning out to be Wayne Shorter to Spike’s Miles Davis. 

- Opening: I clapped for Bubs when he declared his sobriety.  I think he’s one of the most underrated characters and actors on The Wire.  His journey is an important aspect of the show as it speaks to redemption.  Struggling to overcome addiction’s a bitch.  His sponsor said it best, “You gotta let it out to let it go.”  Watching his struggle I realize addiction is not a problem of not having feelings.  It’s a problem of feeling too much and wanting all of it at once.  How do you turn that off?  And if you can do it, where do you go?  The light can be awfully bright after you come out of the darkness.  I can’t help but pull for Bubs.  He’s the anti-Huggy Bear.

- Carcetti and his No Child’s Behind Left (stolen from Greg Palast) program.  Typical politician with an eye on winning a higher office.  Didn’t he come off like a boy scout in the two previous seasons?  Just lets you know these guys govern not because they care about the people but to make power moves.  It’s such a selfish motive.  Politic-speak doesn’t translate to a better society.  In fact, it’s poll-speak.  “The ‘numbers’ say” dictates governance.  Reminds me of this poll I took this weekend.  Nothing but loaded questions.  I felt sorry for the young woman asking those asinine questions because I never answered “strongly agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” etc.  Just kept telling her “That’s a f**ked up question.  Next.”  But this is where we are in politics.  Policy is measured by poll numbers as measured by loaded questions.  I’d love to see Paul Mooney write the poll questions and then see where we really are as a society.

- Keeping with the “Doing More with Less” theme, McNulty arriving at the crime scene as the primary detective from a bus? Hilarious!  Street cop, “Why not call a cab?”  Foreshadowed McNulty’s short-cut from a bottle at the end of the episode.

- Clark Johnson’s character’s beat-down in the debate about a “Dickensonian” outlook on public education.  I think I’m gonna deal with this issue in my next essay but for now the lines that ring out, “There’s more impediments to learning than a lack of materials or a dysfunctional bureaucracy” and “If you leave all the details in, soon you’ve got nothing” were augmented by the following juxtaposition: the sista leaving her child in the doorway so she and her girl can do God-knows-what while Lester sat in the car eating potato chips listening to some real soul music.  Statement, example, case made.  Ouch!

- Marlo to Avon face-to-face.  Some Al Pacino- DeNiro face-off.  Okay, not the same high-powered actors, but you gotta admit Wood Harris (as Avon Barksdale) killed.  That’s why we love this show.  Great piece of subtle acting by both cats.  Re-watch that scene as I’ve done via the magic of TiVo.  The facial expressions say much more than the words.  Marlo obviously has much respect for Avon.  And Avon proves that even though Marlo helped take him off the street, he’s still the King and a king-maker. 

Much respect to Simon because he has made a point that Hollywood is full of Black actors who can do more than Flip Wilson in drag.  If Eddie, Martin, and Tyler can make millions doing it, bully for them.  But that’s Clarence Thomas-type money.  That Avon-Marlo scene was Blackstyle at a high level.  Simon’s proving it’s alright to hire somebody whose name ain’t Denzel, Samuel, Morgan, or Wesley.  Even if a white dude wrote the lines.  It doesn’t have to be Amos and Andy Revisited.  Unfortunately, “The game is the game.”  “Always.”

- Clay Davis.  Seen this movie too many times to be comfortable.  Bruhs caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  Can’t play the same game whitey plays and think you can get away with it.  Just so they don’t get caught, they’ll sacrifice you.  I think Clark Johnson’s character might have to face a similar choice.

- Quiet chuckling at the Boyz in the Hood dis.  Actually, I laughed out loud but my family thought I was going insane.  So I toned it down.  I hope John Singleton watched that scene and got hip.  Tired of his schtick.  Make room for bruhs who have a handle on subtleties. “F**k them west coast niggas.”  Amen.

- Next scene – poignant.  If Marlo killed a white ex-cheerleader in Aruba or if there were three hundred white people killed a year, where would the priorities lie?  If I, David Mills, or any other Black writer wrote that line, would it have made it to the screen?

- Chris talking professionalism .  Problem is it’s in the context of killing somebody over “having a big muthaf**king mouth.”  That’s how we get caught.  Trivialism.

I can’t help but admire how this show keeps topping itself.  But that mirror keeps getting uglier and uglier.

DeAngelo Starnes is a freelance writer and attorney who resides with his wife and son in Denver, CO.  He welcomes direct constructive feedback at deangelo_starnes@hotmail.com.

Read DeAngelo on Episode 55: Antagonists 

Fan Mail: Ebonyjet Readers on The Wire

Read DeAngelo on Episode 54: Transitions 

Read DeAngelo on Episode 53: Not For Attribution 

Read DeAngelo on Episode 52: Unconfirmed Reports 

Read DeAngelo on Episode 51: More With Less