Mandel Maven's Nest on The Wire:
The Best Novel on Television

Third in David Simon's brutal and gritty Baltimore version of the Law-and-Order franchise, after Homicide and the drop-dead searing mini-series The Corner (available on DVD and HBO repeats it On Demand). Simon explains, in Q & As on the HBO Web site posted after Season #2 hereafter referred to as "Simon Says" that I'll re-post excerpts here as who knows how long HBO will retain the comments: "Ed Burns and I wrote The Corner together. That book is a subtle argument against the drug war. But we both felt that since the book was for the most part a microcosm of that war in the tale of a single open-air drug market, there was more to be said about the nature of the disconnect between law enforcement and the drug culture. And we felt that this could be accomplished through a narrative like The Wire. The show also owes a debt to Richard Price's magnificent Dempsey books, and Clockers in particular, which first demonstrated the narrative poweruof a split-POV between police and their targets."

Inspired by true events (Simon as quoted in Newark Star Ledger 8/6/2006: "God is not a second-rate novelist. God knows what he's doing, and if you just take what actually happened and marry it to where you want to go, it's better than if you thought of it yourself."), Baltimore is a major character, its architecture, ethnic and racial antagonisms, music, food, geography, and especially its politics, are particular, yet so resonant to Any American City (which is more effective than the anonymous city in the almost-as-good-and-classic cancelled E Z Streets (streaming online and 4 episodes available on DVD; also showing on Sleuth TV)). Simon Says: "I think The Wire is subtle but genuine of the real in this city. It is not the work of Hollywood types coming in from out of town and slumming, finding fault with a place they barely know. It is the work of East Coast rust-belt writers, most of them from Baltimore proper, speaking to the problems, failings, joys and humor of a city they love. I live here in the city. I am angry at much that has happened here and grateful for much that has survived and in some cases, continues to endure.

This is the Best Novel on Television -- Simon Says: "The show is crafted as a visual novel; most of episodic television, even when its very good, is crafted as a series of short stories. It was initially hard convincing HBO that we could do a "copshow" that would be distinctly different from network fare, cop shows being the storytelling backyard of the other networks. They needed to see several scripts and then they needed to get a sense that the show would build as the episodes progressed, which is kind of what happens when people pick up a book and read it, chapter by chapter. . . You have to consider that the nature of a novelistic television show is that each chapter builds on the previous, so that the pace accelerates. That means that the first episodes of any season are much like the early chapters of a long narrative. They set the stage, introduce characters and begin the plotting that will result, hopefully, in the payoff. Tellingly, the first episodes of first season were a revelation not only for viewers, but for HBO as well. [Simon added a year later: It took Ed Burns and myself more than a year to come up with the first three scripts and then rework them to the satisfaction of Carolyn Strauss and Chris Albrecht at HBO.] Trained to watch episodic television, many people were stunned to find that the show was deliberately pacing itself much more slowly and intricately. Some people were bored, but others were drawn in. The moment when I knew we'd be alright was when Chris Albrecht, then the head of programming for HBO, said he was glad that each episode was getting better. That was a good sign, he said. To me, they were all good episodes in that they were progressing the single story exactly in the manner intended, but Chris's impression was important. Many people pick up a book and read it to conclusion with the same sense that each successive chapter leaves the reader more involved and more committed to finishing."

Simon is fond of comparing the series to Moby Dick, particularly in how it slowly unfolds to deal with larger themes, as he did when he participated with other writers, producers and members of the cast in a panel February 10, 2005 on "Unraveling The Wire" at The Museum of Television and Radio in NYC (taped for viewing at their facilities in NYC and L.A. and available on the Season 3 DVD) I didn't get to ask my question about why he as an artist chooses to work in the collaborative television medium but I indirectly got an inkling from his other responses: "This is a very hard show. The hard portions are getting all in a room boiling it down to get what we want. Each weighing in on their experience. There’s a lot of pride in that. A lot to be argued. That’s what makes it good. The thing does not have the fragility of being one guy’s idea. It has to come out of this back and forth. . . I’m the court of last resort. I take the last pass over each script so that it all makes sense [and sticks to the overlying themes, according to Ed Burns]. . . I thought each season would focus on a separate case and targets. But I saw a wonderful dynamic between the actors playing "Avon Barksdale" and "Stringer Bell" and felt I could sustain that for three seasons, though we put it on the backburner for Season 2 in order to grow the city. For season 3 we had to add politicians because I wanted to add the political references to explain how the problems with drug legalization would be. I needed to show an infrastructure. But from the story comes the characters. . . This is a very tough show to be an actor on. You don’t know what’s coming. You have to trust the writers have a plan. Characters take one step forward, two steps back. When you have this many characters you’ve created what is a schematic of a city through the characters. We are blessed as we go deeper and deeper into the cast. . . Everything is strange. The fact that I’m doing TV is strange. I’m supposed to be on the obit desk bumming cigarettes."

Simon Says on who he is writing for:

David Simon in an August 2007 interview with Nick Hornby for The Believer: “My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell. Beginning with Homicide, the book, I decided to write for the people living the event, the people in that very world. I would reserve some of the exposition, assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out. I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.

This is a substantive show dealing with urban issues Simon feels passionately about: "There is no overnight solution to this disaster. For thirty years, we have systematically deindustrialized our cities, sending union-wage jobs overseas and gutting our labor base. The affluent have fled these same cities, taking the tax base with them and rendering the school systems shells of their former selves. And in the vacuum that remains, an illicit drug economy has moved in to become the only credible and legitimate employer of the masses. In Baltimore, more than half the adult residents are out of work. More than half. Where do you think they go, if not the corners?

How to Watch and Listen

The key to following the story is conceptualizing corrupt, warring bureaucracies, The Law and The Out-Laws, with the focus on the pressures on middle management on all sides; for the second season add the waterfront and the drug wholesalers, for the fifth add the newspapers. It is particularly trenchant about the blind eye of the FBI post 9/11. Simon Says: "But I can only add that we are not selling hope, or audience gratification, or cheap victories with this show. The Wire is making an argument about what institutions - bureaucracies, criminal enterprises, the cultures of addiction, raw capitalism even - do to individuals. It is not designed purely as an entertainment. It is, I'm afraid, a somewhat angry show." He reiterated a year later: "Since day one, this show has been about what institutions do to the individuals who serve them or are supposed to be served by them."

Each episode does take two+ screenings to understand, let alone trying to start watching not from the beginning of the series, such that Slate is even providing a weekly critical guide to help get you to watch, with commentary by TV writer David Mills, journalist/author Alex Kotlowitz and a filmmaker of Hoop Dreams. The opening quotes, provided in the HBO online episode summaries so I haven't been repeating them here, are pithily important guides to each episode's theme. At the MTR seminar Simon drily noted that they had to "train viewers to watch us. . . There are rewards for people who don’t come to it casually." Simon Says: "We want the show to be entertaining. Any buncha storytellers would. But more than that, we want the show to be argued about and discussed and considered. A lot of what we feel about the drug war, about what has happened to the working class, about race and class and the dignity of individuals is there on the screen. If people are merely entertained, then we've failed what ambitions we had, I'm afraid." It's especially challenging to understand what language comes between the frequent "fucks." As to the reality and the profanity, including a brilliant forensic scene in the first season whose dialogue consisted entirely of different ways to say the "F" word, here's an online interview with creator David Simon and his riposte that he posted on the HBO BB in response to criticism of the first episodes: "So, for example, no one made any conscious effort to tone down the profanity, I'm afraid. Nor could we if we wanted to. Indeed, episode four contains a scene in which copshop profanity arrives at its natural apogee. If this is bad writing, so be it. Weak sisters like myself are unmasked and undone and perhaps it is only a matter of time before David Fucking Mamet is fucking told to give his fucking Pulitzer back to the fucking idiots that thought he knew what the fuck he was doing. I can only say in defense that a) veteran Baltimore cops are incredibly, relentlessly, profane and b) the show is making a particular point that both sides of bureaucracy have been equally coarsened and brutalized by the drug war, and that both are equally conversant in the same debased language. If we get a second season, all characters will speak the King's English in iambic pentameter. I promise..." Simon Says: "Omar never curses, alone among the characters. He is beholden to no institution other than himself and therefore he is not, in the logic of The Wire, debased. He therefore does not speak the debased language of those who are subject to the caprices and indifferences of the institutions they serve."

Background on what else drove the music selections for Season 4 from from: Bow Down to the Wire by Dave Walker, Times Picayune, 12/9/2006: “Lucky New Orleans viewers who've found the show know they've seen -- and heard -- plenty of us in it. This season, the show's soundtrack was salted with New Orleans music, with snippets of songs by The Iguanas, The Wild Magnolias, Deacon John, Raymond Winnfield and The Meters slipping into, under and out of the action. And, as a bonus, [the] finale concludes with Paul Weller's version of Dr. John's "Walk on Gilded Splinters."

Because New York Times-linked articles disappear online, I'm posting this whole piece because it's so informative about the music: from September 10, 2006, For The Wire Rap That’s Pure Baltimore By Jon Caramanica

I initially categorized it as a hunkfest (and funny connection between the resident hunks of The Wire and Deadwood) but that turned out to be just an added bonus. And there's a bunch of hunky formerly dead cons from Oz resurrected as complicated cops. But you have to try not to fall too much in love with any one character, as Simon Says: "On this show, the characters -- how they are presented, what they do, what becomes of them -- are there to serve the story we are trying to tell. The story does not serve the characters; if we are anything more than hacks making a TV show, it has to be the other way around." He continues: "But nothing lasts forever, and if it does, it usually lasts to diminishing results."

By Chapter 2 - The Detail they got his shirt off. As Simon Said two years later: "As to love/sex scenes, they come when the story dictates and are not gratuitous, or at least we hope they aren't. And one thing that viewers never consider: Some actors/actresses are reluctant to work undressed. Won't say who, but it is something to consider above and beyond the intentions of the writers." Davis corrects that when "Prez", "Herc" and "Carver" are drinking beer and arguing about the case, "American Woman" is playing by the Guess Who (from their 1970 album of the same name). Jeremiah let me know that while "McNulty" is drinking in his car, "Love is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia plays.

Chapter 3 - The Buys "McNulty" was in bed with a woman -- yet another hard-driving, ambitious Jewish woman lawyer on TV "Rhonda Pearlman" (played by Deirdre Lovejoy) who I discuss elsewhere in the context of Critical Guide to Jewish Women on TV but, unusually, she's earthy and vulnerable below the rumpled toughness -- foreshadowed by her listening to Lucinda Williams sing "2-Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" (from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road which was on my Best of '98). How can you not love a stubborn, complex rebel tryin' to do the right thing who responds to the state's attorney's post-coital plaint that he's an asshole with, what becomes a trademark response What the fuck did I do? (each chapter that's intonated with different emotion and meaning). Simon Says: "McNulty was the most difficult character for us to define initially. There is the complex mix of genuine talent and intellect and all those self-destructive impulses." Jeremiah let me know that in Orlando's, Ja Rule's "Down Ass Bitch" plays.

In Chapter 4 - Old Cases by Simon and Burns his supervisor agrees: It's not Jimmy's fault. Jimmy is addicted to himself. It's a fuckin' tragedy. He's come to believe he's always the smartest fuck in the room. It makes him an asshole but it's also what makes him good po-lice, while the lover of his lesbian partner's response to his attempts at off-hours camaraderie for doing genuine police work together amidst the corruption and apathy is That's one confused white man out there! (Terrific choice of Nina Simone's "Sugar in My Bowl" leading into the scene.)

In Chapter 5 - The Pager, by Burns and Simon, his police skills are paying off and being resentfully recognized, while his negotiations with his ex-wife for child custody are a total failure. (And there was even relevance to my job: the Judge gives the Deputy Commissioner helpful and accurate fundraising advice: Did you ever think of bringing in private resources to help you? I have a connection at the Abell Foundation.)

In Chapter 6 - The Wire by Simon and Burns, he finally gets his kids for a night --and brings them to the morgue with a drug-dealing CI, because as the Major's spy protests, He's got this fuckin' case in his gut like a cancer. "Wha?" retorts the revenge-seeking higher-up, He doesn't drink any more? A poster on the HBO BB says the jazz piece at the end is "Fleurette Africaine" off of Duke Ellington's Money Jungle. Another poster reports that "Wax Music Box" by Cytoplastik, a local experimental electronic composer, is playing when "Avon," "Stringer" and "Stinkum" walk into the projects.

Chapter 7 - One Arrest, story by Simon & Burns, teleplay by Alvarez, not only do we see him drunk with his partner (with a memorably metaphorically vulgar conversation about their relationship), but when he sobers up, he returns for sympathy to the arms of the attorney: I love this fuckin' job but they're gonna do me.

In Chapter 8 - Lessons, he uses his kids in a game of "I Spy" on the #2 drug dealer (to the tune playing in the market of The Tokens' popularizing version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" according to the Alvarez book) then pushes his partner into a drunken accusation of You're no good for people, Jimmy. Damn, everyone around you, Christ. . .

In Chapter 9 - Game Day by Simon and Burns, he's hectored his fellow cops into following the constitutional rules for the wire tap and caring about bringing down the elusive kingpin (Stupid criminals make stupid cops. I'm proud to follow this guy.) -- then resists running after an opportunity to see him at his sponsored basketball game - We get him by the voice alone or else we don't get him -- and cheats on the wire tap log. Thanks to fan Jeremiah who identified "Rock the Nation" by Michael Franti and Spearhead from Stay Human on "Avon"s car radio when the cops are tailing him after the game on a merry innocent chase.

In Chapter 10 - The Cost by Simon and Burns, his wife hauls him into court to keep him from endangering the kids, and he convinces her he still loves her-- and is only, No. Yes. A little continuing the affair with the attorney that she had a detective follow him to discover. HBO BB poster methvschef thinks that "Hater Players-Blackstar" by Talib Kwelli & Mos Def is playing when "Kima" approaches her doom.

In Chapter 11 - The Hunt, it's his bureaucratic enemy who gets him through a guilt-ridden Post-Traumatic Stress-- You are a gaping asshole, but believe it or not, not everything is about you. --and he lashes out at ambitious lawyers: Everybody's got a fuckin' future. -- except him.

In the penultimate of the season Chapter 12 - Cleaning Up, story by Simon & Burns, teleplay by: Pelecanos, he regrets pushing the case: It was just a way for me to show how smart I was. The Lt. that he sparked says into his face: You can stand there dripping with liquor smell and self-pity if you got a mind to, but this case, it means something. Now.

In the ironically titled season finale Chapter 13 - Sentencing by Simon and Burns, "McNulty" gets a "Nicely done" from the #2 drug dealer, the judge, the very excited state's attorney, and his boss (You do not make it easy, Jimmy, I got to admit you got some stones on you. But did you really . . .) -- before getting the fatal question: Where don't you want to go? Jeremiah let me know that while "Bodie," "Poot," and "Wallace" are having chili dogs in the restaurant, "Put Your Head on my Shoulder" by Paul Anka plays. The closing song on the first season finale was "Step by Step" from Jesse Winchester's Let the Rough Side Drag album on Stoney Plain Recordings.

Second Season

HBO slyly promoted the second season as: "A new case begins. . ." with an image of a body floating in the harbor. David Simon backgrounds the 2nd season -- which USA pretty much stole most of the plot from for its Traffic mini-series, more than from the BBC series or Soderbergh movie, though with less cynicism. Simon Says: "The waterfront is, to us, cinematically beautiful. Those cranes are gothic. And we were looking for a world that would represent for the working-class in Baltimore. We could have done the steel mills, but they are bankrupt, or the GM plant, or some other union-wage industry, but the port felt right." A year later he reflected on the second season: "When we did the port story, we used the actual CSX grain pier as a location and indeed, that facility has been idle since it was damaged serveral years ago. Traditionally, idle piers around the outer and inner harbors of Baltimore have been targeted for residential/commercial development for the last two decades. When we began filming the second season, the CSX pier was not so targeted, and our writing that the longshoremen were concerned that if it wasn't repaired, the developers would get to it -- that was fiction. Except that by the time we finished filming, a group of developers had proposed condos for the grain pier. Last time I went by there it was fenced off for the redevelopment and, alas, 'you'll never see another grain ship in Bawlmer, my friend.' Life imitating art, I suppose." (See how the shipping business has gone to China in the documentary Manufactured Landscapes). The Alvarez book identifies that in an episode where "Frank Sobotka" is worried about a lost container of contraband that's 1972's "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) by Looking Glass "playing on a beat-up radio."

The mix of corruption, good intentions, class and ethnic and racial tensions are again intimately intertwined in Chapter 14 - Ebb Tide by Simon and Burns; "McNulty" takes a bribe, but is then irresistibly drawn into being a good cop on a homicide even when his bureaucrat-oozing cohort snorts that Fuckin' McNulty is the 'Prince of Tides' marooned out in waterfront patrol - It's all about self-preservation, Jimmy -- something you haven't learned, -- as he works meticulously for hours to plot jurisdictional "murder po-lice" revenge on the Colonel who demoted him. Director Ed Bianchi beautifully used sounds as sonic metaphors for how people living in the same city occupy different perceived spaces -- from the bluesy bar band (The Nighthawks doing the ironically significant "Sixteen Tons" in a longshoremen's hang-out (I found a '96 CD that could be theirs Pain & Paradise, as its recorded in MD and dedicated to the memory of local blues guitar master Danny Gatton, and Still Wild from 1999 with covers of classic blues by Willie Dixon and R & B such as by Strong; they were also on a March '04 episode of the blues performance radio show Beale Street Caravan. The Alvarez book says the 'hawks are emblematic of the longshoremen. George Pelecanos in a July 19, 2006 interview with City Pages: "The Nighthawks was the blues band. We used them in The Wire, because they're heroes around here. The season we did with the dockworkers. There's a scene where they're all drunk and there's a band up onstage. Those are the Nighthawks.") to the Polish kid listening to the old punk of The Stooges' "Search and Destroy" (from Raw Power, according to folks on the HBO BB) to when a young punk Baltimore drug dealer is sent out-of-town for the first time and freaks because he can't understand why he can't get his usual radio stations and is completely alienated by listening to A Prairie Home Companion on Philly public radio.

"McNulty" creates "Collateral Damage" even among his friends in Chapter 15 by Simon and Burns, as he sets different agencies at war with each other, all unaware of how the criminals (new ones and the ones from last season) are brutally dealing with the homicides themselves. The Deputy fumes: I happen to know my man in the marine unit intimately and I know he is the most swollen asshole in American law enforcement. Even his ex-partner says, You're not the run-of-the-mill asshole, Jimmy, you're a special asshole and fumes He's dead to us as his machinations saddle them with seemingly unsolvable homicides. As Lyle Lovett's "Goodbye to Carolina" (from I Love Everybody) plays in the background, his lawyer lover complains: Last night you were too drunk to fuck. Today you're too hung-over. What's the most useless thing on a woman? A drunken Irishman.; so he blithely notes we're good together then shrugs that he'd rather get back with his ex-wife. But the opening quote is his philosophy: They can chew you up, but they gotta spit you out. As to the stereotype of the drunken Irishman, Simon Says in reference to all the various ethnicities on the series: "If you watch this show, you know that every single ethnicity and religion that comprises a modern American city has been in some way insulted and abused by the behavior of one or more characters. The traffickers in the high-rises are black; the drug suppliers this year are Greek and Israeli and Russian/Ukrainian. "McNulty" drinks too much? An Irish-American stereotype perhaps. The malevolent major who misuses his power is Polish-American, and his worst excesses come because of a moment of ridiculous Roman Catholic pride. And "Morris Levy"? Uh oh, someone inform the Anti-Defamation League that the corrupt drug lawyer is decidedly Jewish." An HBO forum poster notes that's Aretha Franklin's "The House That Jack Built" playing in the longshoreman's truck when he's pulled over for a breath test. I wasn't able to catch the the jazz that's playing in Avon's room, er, jail cell.

In Chapter 16 - Hot Shots by Simon and Burns, director Elodie Keene leisurely created elegiac images (with so much character-appropriate ambient radio-listening music that I couldn't ID it fast enough, including a lovely cover of "So Fine") as the seed is planted for the old investigative team to be gradually re-round up to facilitate a major's personal, implacable revenge. "McNulty" has been butting in some more - It's got me thinking is all. I worked some things out in my head -- while his ex-partners skewer him that it was that altar boy guilt talking, he mocks, But what do I have to be guilty about? HBO BB posters ID'd "Cisco Kid" by War playing as "Uncle Avon" proves he is in charge, even in jail.

In Chapter 17 - Hard Cases by Simon and Joy Lusco Kecken, Keene focused on the meanings in silent exchanges of looks, between spouses, between bosses and underlings. Most significantly, between the Colonel and "McNulty", such that as the old team is being reunited for internal political purposes - Except McNulty. No McNulty. Nothing that even resembles the son of a bitch. He quits or he drowns. That's the only thing that gets him off the fuckin' boat so help me God." "Gilligan" himself is being uncharacteristically introspective, as he hands over the divorce papers to his wife: Signed and notarized. I don't want to argue about the money. I want to get back together. Ambient music continues its thematic importance. "McNulty" is listening to classic soul music, with songs by the Velvelettes ("He Was Really Saying Something"), Frankie Lymon ("I Promise To Remember"), and Irma Thomas ("Ruler Of My Heart"), as he pursues his old and new case on his own time. His former partner invades the longshoremen's bar by controlling the jukebox, eschewing country music (identified in the Alvarez book as Gram Parsons's "Streets of Baltimore") for a Ray Charles oldie. The cops and the longshoremen are all listening back for the future. Also heard in this chapter: "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf and "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" by Tammy Wynette.

In Chapter 18 - Undertow, by Simon and Burns, the criss-crossed relationships are being revealed -- from the docks to the drug dealers, the port to the prison, with many ironic chuckles on race and bureaucracies. But "McNulty"--My detecting days are over-- is out on his own, even up to NJ, trying to trace his floater-- I kinda feel it's on me to find her people. . . You seen what happens down at the morgue when they can't ID a body? I have. That's Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" on at the pizza parlor where the port policewoman plays her CI. Folks on the HBO BB report that the song playing during rooftop surveillance is "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" by Akrobatik from the album Balance.

The Chapter 19 - The Prologue, by Simon and Burns, is in effect the end of Season #1 as loose ends from the first case are literally tied up. "McNulty" delivers his star witness to court, gives up on finding his floater's family for a funeral (Fuck it. Let her go. Just a way to pretend I was still a murder po-lice.), reconciles himself to "retirement" out on the boat (On a good day I catch crabs and count seagulls.), and moderates his drinking to have a reconciliation date with his wife (And fucking the waitress? she cynically suggests. I don't do much of that anymore either, he claims). So, that's everything that pissed you off -- the drinking, the women, the work. I want another chance. -- earning him just a fuck for the road before she kicks him out of the house again. Is that it for him on the case now that his colleagues are just beginning to figure out how to untangle the criminal connections around the docks? This chapter has cameos that Simon Says: "Also Richard Price, who wrote Clockers, Samaritan, The Wanderers, and other notable novels and screenplays, was in the prison library when Gatsby was discussed. That was homage. For those of you who have read Clockers, it is clear that this show owes a debt to that remarkable book."<

In Chapter 20 - Backwash, by Simon and Alvarez, director Thomas J. Wright (new to this series, but not to network dramas), plays on a continuing visual theme of characters sitting outside on the stoops of their different Baltimore houses, enjoying their very different views and neighborhood lives. There's "McNulty" still trying with his ex-wife and kids (he's just a stubborn kind of fella, after all), but she says definitively that she just wants to be friends: "I can care, but how the hell am I supposed to trust you?" We got country music-turned-gospel at his counterpart's funeral, and "Love Child" by the Supremes on the bar juke-box used as a very funny joke on "Ziggy," about whom Simon Says: "Accents are touch and go. It isn't possible to use an actor pool of Baltimore performers only, so the actors often have only a passing sense of the Bawlmer accent. When we can do it, we do. James Ransone who plays "Ziggy" is a Bawlmer boy and we encouraged him to use the accent. He has, delightfully. I've known twenty characters like him, and indeed his character is based very loosely on a legendary longshoreman named Pinkie Bannion, who used to take his duck to the bar and repeatedly expose 'pretty boy' and all else. As they said in Bawlmer about Pinkie: 'That boy ain't right.'"

In the pun-filled Chapter 21 - Duck and Cover, by Simon and Pelecanos, "McNulty" has returned to his roots, doing all the things his suspicious wife thought he wouldn't give up. Drunk, he crashes his car as he sings along to the Pogues' "Transmetropolitan" (as Andrew L. insisted correctly -- from their album Red Roses for Me): "This town has done us dirty/This town has bled us dry/We've been here for a long time/And we'll be here 'til we die/So we'll finish off the leavings/Of blood and glue and beer/And burn this bloody city down/In the summer of the year/Going transmetropolitan." He still manages to bed a waitress. His voice cracks as he confesses, Who am I? Captain Chesapeake? [a reference to a local "Captain Kangaroo" type TV show host] I need to get off that boat. I need a case. If I'm not good for . . . to his ex-partner, who pleads to his boss to get "McNulty" on the multi-tentacled detail. He's a picture postcard of a drunken fuck-up but when he's on a case. . . That's as close to the man comes to being right. You know that "McNulty"s back when he walks in, just as the team agrees that they need a whore to catch a whore, protesting What the fuck did I do? And he easily picks out the john who'll get him his "ticket to the dance": Lying to your wife is easy. It's looking your kid in the eyes that's the hard part. The grin is back! This episode was written by noted D.C. crime novelist George Pelecanos. This Salon interview with him about his and Simon's novelistic approach to The Wire is available online with a one-day free pass. And at a CNN interview with Simon that says the he is preparing the plots for a renewed third season.

Chapter 22 - Stray Rounds by Simon weaves all the story lines together in a complex corrupt pattern and "McNulty" is the comic relief. There's an inside joke that he has to trick the Madam that he's from way out of town to get into the brothel, so Dominic West gets to use an imitation of his native English accent and silly Brit slang "Spot on" as the code word for the bust (which he forgets). So Jimmy gets all spiffed up in a suit to pick a prostitute, "Decisions, decisions -- I'll take two," and when they strip him and quickly and efficiently get him off, he protests about his violations of regulations, "There were two of them. I was outnumbered." Mary Wells's classic Motown "You Beat Me To the Punch" was playing in the longshoremen's bar as a comment on "Ziggy's" argument with "Nick".

Chapter 23 - Storm Warnings, by Simon and Burns, opened fittingly with Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line." McNulty, sober, is in his element in police work, bringing in FBI computer software gimmicks, using his experience out on the contraband-captured police boat to do surveillance, and figure out, innovatively, how to triangulate a text message source for tracing. Will he put other links together that some of his blundering cohorts are missing? That was Joan Jett's cover of Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" wryly commenting from "Ziggy's" car radio.

Chapter 24 - Bad Dreams, the penultimate episode of the season (written by Pelecanos and the first one to be directed by noted Spike Lee cinematographer Ernest Dickerson-- with Simon doing a Hitchcockian cameo as a Member of the 4th Estate), had McNulty and his detail, thanks to a FBI mole and what, as the Lt. throws down, "even for a supremely fucked-up police department this takes the prize," just miss tagging the big guys, The Greeks -- though McNulty atypically puts in a PC protest, "Hey, lay-off those Greeks. They invented civilization." (And his partner retorts: "Yeah, and ass-fucking too.") "njmandal" on the HBO BB ID'd: "The two songs at the end of the episode were sung by the late Stelios Kazantzidis. In the restaurant, the song playing in the background was 'To Psomi tis Xenethias (Bread in a Foreign Land).' The song played very loudly at the end is a less well known song from the same album, 'Ena sidero anameno;' it's actually a steamy love song. The artist was a favorite of lower class Greeks and immigrants most of his life although he became more trendy in the 90's. He died last year, unfortunately. A gritty singer who was not glamorous, he sang about workers, immigrants, and failed love. The music would almost certainly be played in a Greek restaurant in the U.S." "Suspire" adds: "Also there appears to be at least 2 different versions. . .one where the tone isn't quite so dark and he is singing the chorus duet with some chick. It's from his album Palia Laika." The Alvarez book says that one of the Greek songs is "She's Gone, She's Gone" by composer Vassilis Vassiliadis. Simon Says in reference to the Greek cultural references: "George Pelecanos is to be credited with the Greek phrasing. And if you are into it, you should check out some of his earlier D.C. novels which feature a Greek-American protagonist who has some McNulty-like characteristics as well. His later novels aren't as heavy on Greek culture, but they are excellent in their own right. Try The Big Blowdown to start."

Chapter 25 - Port in a Storm, the Season #2 finale, finds the union reeling -- but all the criminals and the corruption just swirl and eddy on, from the opening and closing that are dialogue-less, finishing to the tune of Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright." (Earle was in Season One as ex-junkie "Waylon"; this is the title song of his album.) The East Side cats are laying down with the West Side dogs, "The Greek" isn't even Greek, and McNulty goes back to flirting with the prosecutor. Simon Says: "I will say that it might help if viewers thought of "The Greek" as more than a specific character. In the second season story, and in the world of The Wire, he represents an elemental force. He is pure capitalism, amoral, utterly rational, and unencumbered by ties to community, nation-state or humanity in general. Regardless of whether we see "The Greek" again or whether the detail catches up to him, can you ever really catch or contain such an elemental force?" Gregg provides that's Baltimore native Joan Jett and the Blackhearts covering Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" (from the album The Hit List) playing at the longshoremen's bar.

Third Season - The rules change. The game stays the same.

From an interview with The Man from HBO: The draw for the high-wattage writing talent, Simon says, is ability to control the final product. "This is a writer's show," he says. "If you're already telling stories in the medium of a novel, the equivalent is a long form season on HBO. I think part of the appeal for someone like Richard [Price], who's had a very long and successful career as a screenwriter, is that here the writers are in control. It's not like in features, where once you turn in the script, it's the director and the studio and the stars who exert influence."

For season three, Simon will write three episodes, Pelecanos, Price and Ed Burns will write two episodes each, and [Dennis] Lehane, Joy Lusco Kecken and Rafael Alvarez will write one each. "The trick is finding a story that everyone wants to tell a piece of, and still feel connected to the whole," says Simon. "It's like we're building a building, You don't want anyone to feel like, 'Well, I can't control the other floors, but the third floor of this building is really beautiful." He continued later in the year: "We work out the storylines in detail before we begin filming every season. This happens by Ed Burns, George Pelecanos, myself, Bill Zorzi and at times, Dennis Lehane [podcast interview includes Wire insights] and Richard Price, getting into a small room and annoying each other for many, many hours. That's the heavy lifting of the show, plotwise." He noted: "This season, is, however, an allegory for the tragedy ongoing in Iraq, something that only a few people have picked up on."

Chapter 26 - Time After Time, the season premiere, by Simon and Burns, was filled with delicious ironies -- they have "the wire" all right, but it's not turning anything up, except one talkative drug dealer who "If that idiot worked for us, he'd be a deputy commissioner by now." "McNulty" is less central but he's still resentfully going out on his own sniffing for clues through old files, determined to get the top dealers ("You don't look at what you did before, you do the same shit all over.") When his annoyed colleague complains: "It's you against the world, is it?", he, as usual, protests: "What the fuck did I do?" Other of the cops are aggressively full of themselves, frustratingly chasing dealers in circles while blasting the updated theme from Shaft on their car radios. The notorious public housing towers are intentionally blown up as an impotent reminder of 9/11 -- that we're losing the domestic war on terrorism, against drug dealers who are destroying our cities. For my discussion of Rhonda Pearlman as an unstereotypical Jewish woman character on TV in this season. Davis says: The song playing during the opening wiretap sequence is 50 Cent's "In Da Club."

In Chapter 27 - All Due Respect writers Simon and Richard Price (commentary on this episode by the latter on Season 3 DVD) were still ironically laying the groundwork web of relationships, while "McNulty" is doggedly following up on D'Angelo's death--the character who has been the Rosetta Stone throughout the series-- that everyone else wants to call a suicide. HBO BB posters are reporting "Stand Up" by Ludacris played when a rival dealer drives up on the corner and "Atomic Dog" by George Clinton played during the dogfights.

Chapter 28 - Dead Soldiers, teleplay by Dennis Lehane, story by Simon (commentary by the latter on Season 3 DVD) and Lehane, was full of gritty, ironic poetry and funny, brilliant lines from beginning to end. His fellow cops ask "McNulty" where he was: At the library. Yeah at the prison library where he vividly demonstrates that D's death was no suicide, to their protests that We're supposed to be finding less murders not more. But they grudgingly josh that he's "here in spirit" as they pick their next focus to fixate on, and his lesbian colleague moans that I'm turning into McNulty as she recounts her drinking and infidelity to avoid returning home to her partner and baby. That's the Pogues doing "The Body of an American" in tribute both to the dead cop and the late actor/executive producer of the series, Robert F. Colesberry. Simon Says: "If it is not a tradition for the detectives to lay one of their own on a pool table and sing "Body of an American," it should be." (Mikey1962 says we also hear them singing Shane McGowan's "Sally MacLalane".) JThornton 13 on the HBO Forum says that's "In My Life" by DJ Technics playing at the party Cutty went to with Bodie.

In Chapter 29 - Amsterdam, by Simon and Pelecanos perfectly crystallized "McNulty"s problems and brilliance, as both po-lice and a man. According to a fan post on the HBO BB: "The track playing in the background at the party was done by a local Baltimore club producer named DJ Technics". Posters say that another background song was Biggie Smalls doing "My Downfall" from Life After Death, which Jay Z has also sampled and that the song playing in the fancy wheels is "Splash Waterfalls" by Ludacris. Davis says: "In the background of the bar when "McNulty" and "Bunk" are drinking 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' is playing" (maybe by Marvin Gaye).

Chapter 30 - Straight and True, by Simon and Burns, is the out and out LOL funniest episode of the series. (Simon in an interview with Alan Sespinall in The Newark Star Ledger 8/6/2006: "You can't do a show this dark and not make it bearable (without) the humor.") "McNulty" scores points all around for his dogged po-lice work, then is roundly put down by the classy one-night stand he picks up in front of his ex at the school open house for his kids. An HBO BB poster reports: accompanied by "Stringer", "when "Avon" was throwing his prison clothes out of the window, War's 'Me and Baby Brother' was playing in the background." Davis says: "When "Avon" and "Stringer" are in the club, the song playing is Lloyd Banks' 'On Fire.'"

Chapter 31 - Homecoming, by Alvarez and Simon, had "McNulty" as the keystone in a very complex interplay among the machinations of law and outlaw. First he brags that he'll re-hook up with his one-night stand - What kind of detective would I be if I couldn't find a white woman in Baltimore? But his boss turns down his dogged following of the criminal mastermind - Fuck respect. He ain't right. His new partner wryly notes: With you on the other side of the argument, he'd rather be wrong. . . Not that you'd ever go in back of anyone's back on anything like that. Which of course he does, to his old friend, now a Major looking for innovative ways to deal with drug dealers, who accepts his inside info: You willing to backdoor on your lieutenant like this? You ain't changed Jimmy. It's always about your case. Ironically, "McNulty"s counterpoint has also lost in his efforts to turn the dealers into an organized cartel of businessmen - and the bodies are piling up in Baltimore again, forcing the higher-ups to reluctantly be open to "McNulty"s angle. The virtual lack of music was very significant in this episode- as any other series would have cheapened up the tension with unnecessarily dramatic counterpoint. Davis says: "In Hampsterdam, Jay-Z's 'Dirt Off Your Shoulder' is heard."

Chapter 32 - Backburners, by Simon & Joy Lusco Kecken has "McNulty" in vintage form, as he defends his backdealing against his boss who has gone to great lengths for him: I'd have gone to the devil himself. . .I did it because it had to be done.. His boss confronts him as you piece of shit and he tries ineffectually to justify his actions: I know you went out of your way to get me off that boat. As bosses go you're the best. But "Daniels" is implacable: When the cuffs go on Stringer you need to find a new home. You're done in this unit. Sheryl Crow's "Are You Strong Enough to Be My Man?" is ironically playing on the stereo as the crafty councilman plots his future with his wife and campaign advisor/"McNulty"s lover. He crashes her event in D.C., to the confusion of staffers as to what a Baltimore cop is doing there. He realizes he's out of his element when Jameson Irish whiskey isn't being served and is instead offered Bushmills: That's Protestant whiskey but laughs when the bartender notes the open bar makes the price right. He breezes late back to The Detail, Sorry, I woke up in the wrong town. His female partner wrinkles her nose - You smell like sex. Can't you even take a shower? I was late to work he leers in response. According to posters on the HBO BB, that was LL Cool J's "Head Sprung" playing on the radio of the two hit men. But even "McNulty" is set back on his haunches by "Hampsterdam" -- both for the audacity of creating it without the Bosses' knowledge and how it's turning into a circle of hell.

Chapter 33 - Moral Midgetry, by Simon and Price featured the Big Man - Clarence Clemmons of The E Street Band, perhaps as an HBO in-joke what with bandmate Little Steven being featured in The Sopranos. He played a similar role to Steve Earle's "Waylon" in the first season. "McNulty" was his usual obnoxious fulcrum - crucially moving the action forward for internecine warfare on both the Street and the po-lice, as he confronts "D'Angelo"s "Livia"-like mother about her son's death that only he investigated as a murder: Frankly, no one's gonna do shit about it anyway. I'm not supposed to give a fuck, but I kinda liked your son. All things considered, he was a pretty decent kid. He just got squeezed between the sides. But I was looking for somone who cared about the kid. Whew, he even drew tears out of her! But on a "road trip" with his lesbian partner the cad drolly describes how he arranged infidelities to his ex-wife as lotsa extraditions. I brought back something like 500 fugitives in a five year period and even puts the moves on her. That was Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" ironically playing at the minimart. An HBO BB poster reports: "DC/Baltimore bluesman Daryl Davis was the first person "McNulty" and "Kima" interviewed on their burner quest. He was the store clerk behind the counter." That almost sounded like Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" playing in the country police station such that McNulty misreads the local cop as a cracker (he points out to "Kima" that her partner is a real asshole -- and she has to act surprised). An HBO BB poster thinks that "Everybody in the Club Gettin Tipsy?" by J-Kwon was playing in the club when Marlo picks up Avon's bait. Davis says: "While "Colvin" and the Deacon are in the billiards parlor, James Brown's 'The Payback' is heard."

Chapter 34 - Slapstick, by Simon and Pelecanos has "McNulty" with all his faults flying. He goes out on a booty call while he has overnight custody of his kids. He's in work on Sunday: No life, no marriage, no kids, no problem. What the fuck else am I going to do? . . .You know something Lester? I do believe that there aren't five swinging dicks in this department who can do what we do. I'm not saying that like all chest out and shit, it's just, you just think about it. There's maybe 3,000 sworn, right? 100 or so are bosses, so not a fucking clue there. A few more hundred are sergeants, lieutenants, most of them want to be bosses one day, so they're just as fucked. Then there's 6 - 700 house cats, you kow desk men. In the patrol department there's probably a little bit of talent there, but the way the city is right now that's probably 100 or so guys chasing calls and clearing corners. I mean nobody's nobody's post [?], building nothing right. CID's the same. Catching calls, chasing quick clearances, keeping everything in the shallow end. Who else is there out there can do what we can do with a case? How many are there really?. . . Ed Burns. . . Oh they bring it in, but there's not many. There's not many. We're good at this, Lester. In this town we're as good as it gets. . Fuck, yes, natural po-lice. "Det. Freaman" puts him in his place with a pungent monologue back, including: The job won't make you whole. The job won't save you Jimmy until the next case. It won't fill your ass up. "McNulty" wavers: I don't know. A good case. . . "Freaman" shoots right back: Ends. They all end. . .The next morning it's just you in the room with yourself. "McNulty" ripostes, but stubbornly insists: . .until the next case. . "Freaman" won't let up: . . Hey, a life, Jimmy.. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens whie you wait for the moments that never come. "McNulty" also overplays his hand with the lover, cutely asking for a dinner date to expand their relationship. While we learn more about "McNulty"s biography (that he spent a year at Loyola before he dropped out to marry his knocked up girlfriend), it's painfully obvious, with the U.S. Capitol in the background, even as he lamely tries to repeat his braggadocio monologue, that he's not in her class - heck he didn't even bother voting. She as a campaign manager is a CNN junkie; he falls asleep to the History Channel. An HBO BB poster reports that was OutKast playing in "Gerald's" car.

Chapter 35 - Reformation, by Simon and Ed Burns features McNulty in very uncharacteristic introspective mode. His boss is still burning against him - We're're all pieces of shit when we're in your way. He ruminates to his partner on the latest relationship that's turned to shit via a special floor in her fancy hotel: Feel like I don't even belong to any world that even fucking matters. . . Some sneering fuck was calling upstairs to give me permission to go get laid. First time in my life I feel like a fucking doormat. Like anyone with any smarts would do something else with his life, like earn money, or get elected. Like I'm just a breathing machine for my fucking dick. I'm serious. I'm the smartest asshole in three districts and she looks at me like I'm some stupid fuck playing some stupid game for stupid penny ante stakes. She fucking looks through me. The episode has a theme of every character who feels like a big fish in one pond getting their comeuppance as a small fish in another pond. The Councilman's wife was reading a crime novel by Dennis Lehane, who has also been writing for the show this season.

Chapter 36 - Middle Ground, by Simon and Pelecanos, was positively Shakespearean - and finally earned the series its first Emmy nomination, for writing. (But in Simon really is this pessimistic, Simon disdains the comparison: “It's funny you should say that, because the portrayals in Deadwood are in the Shakespearean model. On The Sopranos, there's an awful lot of Hamlet and Macbeth in “Tony”. But the guys we were stealing from in The Wire are the Greeks. In our heads we're writing a Greek tragedy, but instead of the gods being petulant and jealous Olympians hurling lightning bolts down at our protagonists, it's the Postmodern institutions that are the gods. And they are gods. And no one is bigger.” Amidst breathtaking confrontations among the druglords and political and legal machinations by the law--with a forgiving handshake between McNulty and his boss as they savor what will be a Pyrrhic victory on the wire tap after the judge warned him Jimmy, what's done is done. For your own fucking sake, just let it go., "McNulty" actually Does The Right Thing - his D.C. political operative ex-lover suddenly reappears in his life, but with a quid pro quo proposition as she suggestively fingers the hotel card key while plumping him for info on the Baltimore Police Department. He denies knowing his colleague who initiated Hampsterdam and then actually walks out on her! There was a lot of ambient music playing in backgrounds in many scenes that I couldn't catch or ID. HBO BB posters claim "White Tees" from 'Dem Franchise Boyz was playing when Bubbles was selling white tees. Another poster says that the background to a "McNulty" scene is "Little Bit of Soul" by Music Explosion. On the HBO BB JimKing says that "A Place Nobody Can Find" by Sam & Dave is playing inside the barbershop as "Brother Mouzone" confronts "Avon" about how "Stringer" tried to have him killed.

Simon Says: "Ed Burns and I wrote a book called The Corner which was published in 1997. It was an examination of one Baltimore drug corner, and by extension, the drug problem in microcosm. The book suggests that the drug war, which Ed himself fought as a 20-year detective in the BPD, has gone badly astray. "Hamsterdam" has been tried in a number of European cities with varying degrees of success. Drug decriminalization was suggested by Baltimore's mayor in 1988, though everyone beat him up for suggesting anything of the sort. It was not much of leap for Ed and myself to contemplate a fictional story based on our earlier reporting and the general notion of decriminalization. . . ."

Peter Moskos, Assistant Professor of Law & Political Science at CUNY’s John Jay College, comes to the same point-of-view in Cop in the Hood: “My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District” as a participant observer researcher/cop. (And makes The Wire sound even more realistic than non-fiction.)

Chapter 37 - Mission Accomplished, the season finale by Simon and Burns, had characters shaken to the core. (commentary on this episode by Simon and producer Karen L. Thorson on 3rd season DVD) "McNulty" is practically in shock over "Stringer's" body: I caught him on the wire. And he doesn't fuckin' know it. He later admits to his old partner: I'm tired. The wheels are turning in his head as he re-evaluates his life --even though he covers up for his lesbian partner as she screws around like he always did. He looks up a Port Authority cop/single mother he had flirted with last season. I was in my old district tonight. Which is where I used to feel pretty good I think, when I wasn't so angry there anyway. . . I finished something today. (A case? she asks.) More that that. It's like everything I poured into a glass came out the bottom and I just kept pouring like the thing had a hole in it, y'know. Maybe things that make me right for this job made me wrong for everything else. (She invites him in for a drink.) Not tonight. But if it's not too late I wouldn't mind meeting your kids. "Daniels" offers him the possibility of continuing to work for him on The Detail if he can trust him. "McNulty" surprisingly demurs: It's better for me if I do something else. It's not you, it's me. The Western [District] feels like home. We last see him happily in uniform walking as a beat cop and joshing with the local residents -- exactly what the community had said in the previous episode they felt makes for good policing. Ironically, his boss's promotion is over that district. I've read mention that Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" is heard. The closing song is Solomon Burke doing Van Morrison's "Fast Train" from Don't Give Up on Me (which made my Best of 2002).

Simon is annoyed at fans and critics who weren't discussing the substance of the show, gee like this Web page:

Chapter 38 - Boys of Summer - "McNulty" is sobered up on the beat, happy living with "Bedie" and her "ankle-biters", even as his colleagues keep trying to tempt him with booze and work You're too damn good to be humpin' calls. They complain He's in the wrong fucking place. . . For us yeah, for him? He is still just as cynical as he dumps the anti-terrorist training manual and saves the binders: Back to school for the kids. "Det. Freaman" is now key as he's mystified by this phase of the drug war, How do you hold that much real estate without making bodies? and the less technically adept detectives up on the wire and the computers mourn I miss Prez man I do. . . I hear you.. But "Prez" is getting his first taste of a parallel bureaucracy- the school system. He's hired even before he's certified just on the basis of his credential: I was police. In the city. He's brought right to a messy classroom: So this is me. Watch for the camera angles as the silences in the visuals are even more telling then the spot-on dialog and you'll feel a bit queasy the next time you go by nail guns in Home Depot. Much of the episode and the season, recalls the Oscar-nommed doc about the tough tactics in the Newark mayoral race Street Fight even as it remembers another former Maryland corrupt politician: One man's shithead is another man's Vice President. . . Truer now than it ever was.

Chapter 41 - Refugees continued the series' tradition of leisurely waiting until the 4th episode of each season to get everyone in place (symbolized by "Bunk"s drunken plaint in the cop bar: Where's McNulty?) and set up the basic confrontations. It was in the 4th episode of the 1st season that the titular mechanism got set up - and now the 4th of this season when it was disconnected. "McNulty" in effect passes his stubborn wise-ass baton to "Det. Freaman" as he grins: Guys like you never learn. In my first watching, I couldn't understand most of what the dealers said in the teleplay written by Dennis Lehane, with a story by Burns and Lehane. But it didn't matter because Jim McKay's direction was so superb that I'm going to pull out my tapes of his previous TV and other films and I immediately nom him for an Emmy for Best Directing, as if the Academy notices this show. The camera was brilliantly restless, roving like a drive-by observer around all those reflecting tables of very different meetings - from poker games to ministers to teachers to barflies to campaign strategists of very different campaigns, all woven together with very complex editing. Unlike virtually all TV directing there was a minimum of close-ups. Instead, the camera moved along in long shots on ensembles of reaction to speakers and empty corridors of streets and hallways. Black and white faces and body language passed by in what could have been pantomime, if the story wasn't also so compelling, though one must have watched this series from the beginning to pick up all the subtle issues - otherwise you wouldn't GASP when "Omar" takes on "Marlo".

In Chapter 42 - Alliances by Burns and Simon, "Prez" is trying to get control of his class with incentives, but the kids are full of back talk, and virtually the whole class ends up in detention -- until they talk him out of that too. And then easily help him break into his car where he's left his keys. "Marlo" is recruiting the kids just like the military: We always in the market for a good soldier. But no wonder one of the students is freaked out - he has personal knowledge that there's no zombies: No special dead. Just dead.

Renewed after just one episode of the 4th Season to universal ecstatic acclaim and even editorials in newspapers around the country! Per HBO Co-president Richard Plepler at the summer Television Critics Association presentation, The Wire will come back for its final season in first-quarter 2008. "The fifth season, says Simon, will focus on America's 'culture of violence,' which encourages people at all levels of society to solve their problems with aggression instead of diplomacy." (from "Down to The Wire: Why television's best crime show ever may not be coming back" by Matt Zoller Seitz, 12/19/2004, Newark Star-Ledger)

From Rocky Mountain News July 20, 2006 by Dusty Saunders: [HBO's CEO Chris] Albrecht says the response to season four will determine if creator David Simon's five-season arc of stories will be completed. . . The fifth, if one is produced, will concentrate on the media. 'We'd ruffle some feathers on that one,' says Simon, a former print journalist."
An additional Simon quote in USA Today, 7/13/2006 by Robert Bianco, from the same session: "'In our own heads, we have a five-season arc. ... They all connect in a way that explains why we are what we are and why we can't get out of our own boxes.' The goal is to pose a question he's unable to answer: 'Why is it the richest, most powerful country in the world can't solve its fundamental problems when it comes to places like Baltimore? And there are a lot of places like Baltimore.'" TV Guide's Matt Roush blog posted different quotes from the same session between HBO and TV critics in July 2006: "Albrecht isn't yet willing to commit, taking a wait-and-see approach to episodes he describes as, what else, brilliant. 'There's definitely a sense that life goes on after this particular season, and you could certainly tell more Wire stories.... There is also a thought that you don't necessarily have to wrap everything up.'. . . Simon reiterated that he had mapped out a five-year arc after finishing the show's third season. If the show were to go forward, the fifth season's theme would focus on the media. 'I want to take a very careful look at how all of what we've been portraying on The Wire has been perceived, and how it is that it never quite gets back in any honest fashion to the people. . . Quips Simon: 'Would that we be grit-less and simple, we'd be fine.' But, he insists, "I don't think the show is any more complex than any modern novel with multiple POV.... It is complex by the standards of television." He's also added his thoughts about a potential Season 5: "I'd be a lot more confident if the messy situation with Deadwood hadn't happened. But that's a different story, and let's hope HBO takes the high road and gives this most excellent series a fifth and final year. Having seen all 13 episodes -check out my review - I can tell you that while this particular season's story has a satisfying arc, the elements are in place for one more dynamite season, and fans will not be happy if it's canceled. The best we can hope for is that critical acclaim will help drive more viewers to the show this year, and maybe HBO's strategy of moving its movie night to Sundays as a lead-in will also do the trick. And if not, HBO needs to live up to its "not TV" motto and disregard ratings where a show this uncompromising, this powerful, is concerned."

My Younger reports that Simon at the Block Museum Q & A vented ire at the Tribune Company that he felt had decimated The Baltimore Sun, so the role of 50% cutbacks in reporting staff on the press's ability to cover hard news will definitely be included in Season 5. In Simon really is this pessimistic, Simon says he hopes Spike Lee will direct an episode, but he’ll probably be busy with his Karina-inspired NBC series. Cousin Danielle, newly moved to Baltimore, reports she was an extra in an episode.

From the AP: “Fans Await Closure Of HBO's `The Wire'” By Jake Coyle, 11/5/2007: “HBO has kept firm ties with Simon . . . He and writing partner Ed Burns . . . are now producing a miniseries for HBO titled Generation Kill, based on Evan Wright's 2004 book about Marines in Iraq. Simon hopes then to do a series about musicians in New Orleans.” (out on DVD) (updated 12/16/2008)

Next up is Treme in N’Orlins: Says Dave Walker in The Times-Picayune, July 10, 2008: “To research the script for the pilot, a prospective first episode of a drama based in the New Orleans music community, Simon consulted with Donald Harrison Jr., Kermit Ruffins and Davis Rogan. Eric Overmyer, a sometimes New Orleans resident with writing and production credits including . . . Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire, collaborated with Simon on the Treme pilot script and is expected to write and executive produce for the series. . .Location scouting has already begun in New Orleans. Casting will begin soon, but production issues surrounding the practicality of shooting during hurricane season could affect the show's time line. "If it were up to me, I'd shoot it in the fall," Simon said in a recent interview. If the pilot pleases HBO, shooting on regular-season episodes could begin as early as late winter or early spring provided subsequent episodes could be written in time. Simon said he expects the casting mix of imported actors and locals to match the cast mixture of the Baltimore-set The Wire, which used non-Baltimore actors for most of its lead roles. "We're looking to use local people when we can," he said. Though the show's main storylines will focus on musicians, other elements of the city's unique culture will be spotlighted. One of the pilot script's principal characters, Simon said, runs a restaurant. The pilot story begins two or three months after Hurricane Katrina, Simon said. If Treme goes to series, each season would advance New Orleans recovery story by one year.

As the series came out on DVD, it gained more and more fans, famous fans discovered it, and posthumous references pop up. I’ll add them in as I get a chance.

The Brazilian TV series about Rio's favelas City of Men (completed in the film City Of Men (Cidade Dos Homens) ) eerily, sadly, and equally as strikingly shows how it's the same the whole world over for inner cities wracked by drugs and corruption. (I'll expand on the comparisons after 10/4/2007.) In Sin Nombre, the same cinematographer, Adriano Goldman, follows another sadly similar fate for boys in a gang in Mexico.