Season three of The Wire
Season three continues with the theme of urban decay from the first two seasons, but the camera pulls back to show rot and corruption in more areas, particularly how the entrenched interests across the city will work to thwart attempts at reform, or any sort of unorthodox thinking. Major Bunny Colvin, under pressure to reduce violent crime in his district, carves out three “free zones” where the sale and use of drugs is effectively decriminalized, resulting in safer streets everywhere else in the neighborhood. He does this without the knowledge or sanction of any of his superiors, and is eventually undermined by the officers below him who can’t change their mindset from “catch bad guys” to “keep the neighborhood safe.” (Nothing in this season was more vicious than the depiction of the opportunistic, short-sighted media jumping all over the free zone story without an iota of consideration for its merits.)
The Colvin storyline intertwines loosely with the ambitious city councilman Tommy Carcetti, who is looking for a cause to help him make a run for mayor despite the disadvantage of being a white politician in a largely black city. (By the way, either they dropped the ‘h’ after the second ‘c,’ or everyone is pronouncing his name wrong – as it’s spelled, it should be ‘car-CHET-tee.’) Yet for most of the season Carcetti is just a run-of-the-mill politician, uninteresting and uninspiring until making one speech in the closing scenes of the season finale that starts to redeem the character at least in terms of his appeal to the public, if not in any actual substance. Perhaps his character improves in future seasons, but in this one, I found him, and his storyline, flat, far less compelling than any other story arc I’ve seen on the series.
The return of the battle between the Major Case Squad and the Barksdale crew was welcome, as it worked on a macro level and on an interpersonal level, within each group and in the enmity between McNulty and Stringer Bell. The contrast in styles and aims between Avon and Stringer could stand in for almost any organization that has grown to the point where it faces attacks on all sides – from smaller upstarts, from government regulators, from suppliers, from would-be partners – or to the divergent goals of U.S. political and military leaders in the war in Iraq, to which this season made several allusions (including the series finale’s episode title, “Mission Accomplished”). The cat and mouse game involving the burn phones, including the MCS’s maneuver to move from one step behind Barksdale to one step ahead, was easily the best plot thread of the season, including Clarke Peters (as Lester Freamon) getting to step out of character as a slick con man.
But the resolution of the Barksdale/MCS storyline fell short of expectations for me. The death of Stringer, my favorite character – one of the few things on this series that has actually surprised me – speaks strongly to the emptiness of the drug war in the inner city. When McNulty is brooding over Bell’s corpse, the victory seems hollow for a host of reasons, from the fact that the death of a major player does nothing to stop the use or sale of drugs to McNulty’s personal disappointment in losing Bell before he could put him in cuffs. (And it speaks to the emphasis on chasing individuals rather than looking at the problem holistically, such as working to reduce demand, rather than supply, while decriminalizing use.) But from a plot perspective, Stringer’s falling out with Avon had been so far under the surface for so long that the acceleration over episodes S3E10 and E11 was too quick to generate the tension involved in, say, the Frank Sobotka storyline in the previous season. The discord was there, but without any crescendo until right before Avon sets Stringer up (reluctantly, as opposed to what Stringer does to Avon at the same time). A character as good as Stringer Bell shouldn’t be so easily written out of a series.
The season was just as smart as previous seasons, but just didn’t have that same narrative greed; I enjoyed individual episodes, but didn’t spend hours trying to figure out when I could watch the next episode as I did toward the ends of the previous two seasons. A disappointing Wire season is still miles ahead of a good network police procedural season, though.
Stray bullets…
* When Brother Mouzone handed the weapon to Omar and said he trusted Omar would “do it proper,” did he mean disposing of the weapon – or disposing of Dante? (Or both, really.)
* The war in Iraq was just 20 months old at the time the episode aired. I suppose you could at least argue that the war in Iraq had an end, but I wonder how much angrier David Simon would have made this season had he seen how much longer U.S. troops would be on the ground in that country.
* Good riddance to Johnny, perhaps my least favorite recurring character. Bubbles didn’t really need him as a foil.
* Finally, the series’ use of gratuitous sex scenes became ridiculous in this season, to the point where it’s just a distraction from what is otherwise one of the most intelligently-written American TV series I’ve ever seen. Carcetti cheating on his (very cute) wife with a trashy woman he met at a fund-raiser seemed more like a failed attempt at comic relief than any kind of illumination on his character – Terry D’Agostino, his campaign manager with a strong sexual appetite, provides far more humor in the bedroom (through role reversal) without anything that would force me to fast-forward if I’m watching it on an airplane. (McNulty’s experience in the brothel in season two? Now that was funny.) The Barksdale crew party house also served no obvious purpose for the plot or for laughs. Boardwalk Empire had the same problem in the eight episodes I watched before I gave up; does HBO just encourage producers to introduce sex scenes because, hey, it’s HBO, so let’s show some skin? It’s not offensive; it’s just silly, demeaning to the actors and the audience at the same time.