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The End of the Wire
by hvognjc
03/10/2008, 4:22 PM #
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I'm in major withdrawal, jonesing like a mother, after the final episode of the Wire last night. All day long I've been reading the onlin obits posted by all the Wireheads. If ever there was such a thing as crack TV, the Wire was it. I've been watching for four of the five seasons it was on the air. Its setting in Baltimore's drug infested inner city streets portrayed a bleakly realistic view of a post-industrial America not unlike my own here in Jersey City and Brooklyn. Just like home, the Wire has shown that no segment of the city escapes the damning indictment that winning at any cost is all that matters and that the rules are for suckers and are made to be broken. Each season served up another supposedly respectable group to parallel that group's amoralism with that of the drug gangstas. From politicians to the police, the press, the unions, the school system, the courts, all are morally equivalent to the corner drug dealer and cocaine kingpin. The show's cast was enormous but like most Wireheads I came to care about each character from the meanest hit man to the sleaziest lawyer to the sweetest young black kid destined to drug addiction and homelessness. Throughout the Wire's run, many of the characters I came to care about were gunned down in this televised War on Drugs. In the end, replacing older characters with new faces paralleled the endless cycle of death and despair in the inner city that goes on daily in America. The so-called upper end of society hasn't come off too well either with crooked city politicians getting elected to state office, bad cops given commissionerships, and dirty handed prosecutors becomin judges. The show has been far from a rosy eyed depiction of a country whose Holy Grail is money and power. Yet there was incredible tenderness in many of the story lines: the lesbian detective who cannot stay with her girlfriend yet who manages to heal as a mother to her son; her idealistic Irish partner always believing that he can put a stop to the scourge of street drugs even if he has to break the rules all the while losing his wife and kids because of his love affair with Jameson whiskey; the hardass gangsta hit man whose boyfriend gets gunned down by a rival drug gang. No show could survive with such a totally poisonous diet of desolation and suffering. The Wire offered many poignant moments of bliss in a sea of despair. I will miss it all. Last and not least was the show's incredibly wide ranging score with classics from Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Tom Waits, the Pogues and on and on. One online fan posted the track list for the series with YouTube links at <link>. It's worth a listen. And the show is worth seeing on DVD or downloaded for those of us who view the laws of copyright as rules that are only for suckers and meant to be broken.
Re: The End of the Wire
by zephyrdoc
03/10/2008, 5:12 PM #
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so where do you live: Jersey City or Brooklyn?
Re: The End of the Wire
by hvognjc
03/10/2008, 10:26 PM #
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Grew up in Brooklyn where I work now. Now live in Jersey City.

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