Conventional logic says that in recent years, the gems in HBO’s crown have been the popular success of The Sopranos and the critical acclaim of Six Feet Under. It also says that the definitive hard-hitting, realistic drama about shades-of-grey cops in recent years has been The Shield. Screw convention : The Wire is cruelly overlooked in both discussions. The critically adored cop show is both HBO’s hidden gem and the modern epic about policing. Often compared with The Shield, with both series having similar ideologies in providing alternative takes on the cop show, premiering in the same year and sharing a pilot director in Clark Johnson, the comparisons aren’t entirely fair. The Wire makes The Shield look like a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, but they’re two very different show, with The Shield outlining the antics of Vic Mackey and The Wire being a spiralling epic about the American justice system.
The Wire is about an investigation by the Baltimore police into a drug dealing organisation. The story opens with Jimmy McNulty, a Baltimore homicide detective, complaining to a judge about the department’s lack of action against the Barksdale gang, an organisation headed by Avon Barksdale and controlling much of the city’s drug dealers. The judge uses political pressure to force McNulty’s superiors, against their will, to set up a detail of officers dedicated to making a case against the Barksdale organisation. A case that his superiors don’t want but McNulty sees as requiring a lengthy investigation and a wiretap. The other half of the story is about the drug dealing operation – mostly seen from the perspective of D’Angelo Barksdale, Avon’s nephew, who is up against a murder charge at the start of the series.
The show’s main strength is in the depth it offers its characters. There are a lot of them, and they all have layers to be peeled away like an onion. McNulty, ostensibly the show’s lead, at first seems a combination of numerous generic cop characteristics (alcohol problem, divorced wife, clashes with his superiors) but evolves into a detective the likes of which haven’t been seen on television before. One of the joys is seeing the group of officers assembled for the Barksdale detail – including several drunks, a screw-up who only has a job because his father-in-law is on the force, two detectives who prefer chasing and beating up suspects to developing a case, a veteran who’s been doing paperwork for thirteen years and a highly ambitious lieutenant who doesn’t want to do the case – transform into a somewhat functioning unit. The department, where everyone is obsessed with statistics and clearances and people get shafted for ignoring chain of command, is a refreshingly realistic approach. Although there aren’t any corrupt cops, the series challenges you to question whether the institution itself is corrupt and whether the war on drugs is being fought the correct way. The show doesn’t force any view on you – there aren’t good guys, there aren’t bad guys, only shades of grey and you’re left to make your own mind up.
Perhaps the show’s most memorable characters come from the drug dealing side of the plot. D’Angelo and his pit crew are a fascinating group, and some are the most sympathetic on the show. Avon’s second-in-command, the business minded Stringer Bell, is both scary and intriguing. However, the show is stolen by Omar Little, a shotgun-wielding, crazy, homosexual stick-up artist who makes a living stealing from drug dealers. Omar is like nothing seen on television before, transformed into a noble, heroic, larger-than-life figure.
The plot is also top-notch. It starts off slow, but snowballs into a frantic, intense storyline as the pay-off of the early set-up just keeps coming. The conclusion is nothing less than perfect, a beautiful slice of real life that contrasts the heroic showboating of other series. Throughout, the attention given to detail is immense. The drug dealers almost have their own language, and the phrases used by the cops seem alien at first. The show makes no effort to talk down to the viewer with exposition or explanation, and the first few episodes can be a confusing experience as you have next-to-no idea of what’s actually going on. On second viewing, however, it’s beautifully written and the dialogue is very subtle in its humour.
Simply put this is one of the genuine delights of television. It doesn’t strike a wrong note, and while its complexity means it’s not for everyone, those who do dip in will find a treasure trove of delights waiting for them.
June 14th, 2006 at 01:25am
Rob
So I just stumbled across this list of the 13 most unpopular characters on TV. The choices are a combination of some of the worst ever television characters – Scrappy Doo and Cousin Oliver – but the choice of Livia Soprano in fourth place astounds me. Now, she was a miserable old hag, but she was an incredibly entertaining miserable old hag. I must confess to not making it far past the first season of The Sopranos, but the storyline involving Livia’s machinations to have Tony whacked was one of the highlights of the show.
The other choices are entirely sensible – irritating omnipresent kids characters like Barney the Dinosaur and Pikachu, along with the likes of Dawn Summers. I reserve a special hatred for Dawn, who managed to whine her way through three seasons of Buffy. I also heartily concur with the choice of James Hurley from Twin Peaks, although it’s unfair not to also include Donna Hayward. The pair of them, at first intriguing players in the Laura Palmer murder mystery, literally sucked the life out of the show with their irritating love story. The storyline involving James leaving Twin Peaks is mostly responsible for the major mid-second season slump the show suffered. There’s also easy target Wesley Crusher on there. I never went much with the Wes hate personally and I’d like to throw out there how awesome Wil Wheaton is. Leave him alone, you big meanies!
This is sure to inspire me to knock up a list of my own at some point, but I’d like to give special mentions to Lee “Apollo” Adama, Sydney Bristow, Allison Cameron, and the entire cast of Lost.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:47am
Rob
With most of the shows I watch currently off the air, I’m currently working my way through Farscape on DVD. Having got up to the sixth episode, I can say that it, er, comes in an extraordinarily large box. A box so large that I get distracted marvelling at the sheer size of it while watching the series. Which I’m pretty sure isn’t a good sign. I’m hoping the series picks up soon, moving away from generic alien-of-the-week episodes, but thus far I’m less than inspired. I’m willing to give it a shot though.
June 11th, 2006 at 10:25pm
Rob
The second season of the BBC’s update of Doctor Who has thus far failed to make much of an impression on me. Sure, it’s missing the farting aliens and other nonsense that marked the worst of the first season, but it’s also been lacking anything of the quality of the high points of “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” and “The Unquiet Dead”. That said, I actually enjoyed this two-parter quite a lot – it’s truly old-school Doctor Who, with eery alien planets, a generic space station crew (right down to the security guy who sacrifices himself to save the others) portrayed by a bunch of people you instantly recognise but can’t work out where from (Alien 3, crappy ITV dramas, Linda Green, Casualty and Eastenders, for those wondering), and sinister alien voices.
Apart from the idea of a planet being suspended in orbit of a black hole, which is a brilliant idea, it’s sadly all very unoriginal stuff. Demonic possession, Satan being an alien entity which portrayed itself as evil to many races, a giant pit, and the crew being knocked off one by one. However, it’s entertaining, and it’s good to see some decent, proper sci-fi back on the screen.
Unfortunately, it’s marred by my growing gripes with the season as a whole. The leads are becoming more and more unlikable (what with Rose and the Doctor prancing about arrogantly with little concern for anybody else involved in whatever crisis has befallen them), every crisis is solved with some form of deus ex machina, and there’s no semblence of an arc, aside from the Torchwood references which seem a dull rip-off of ‘Bad Wolf’ while reminding us that Captain Jack is no longer on the show.
Entertaining, yes, but the series really needs to shape up if it’s going to meet its potential.
June 11th, 2006 at 10:13pm
Rob
The season might have ended, but that doesn’t mean there are no new shows on the air. No, it means there are dozens of new, summer shows just premiering. Shows that were so good the network didn’t want to put them on the air during the proper season. One of these is Windfall, an ensemble show about a group of people who win the lottery. I must admit to being interested in the concept when I first heard about it, especially since Jason Gedrick and Lana Parrilla were tied to the project, and I was a big fan of both Murder One and Boomtown. Sadly, Windfall is truly, truly awful. Just about everything that could go wrong does go wrong – so much happens in the pilot that no real impact of winning the lottery can be examined, the acting is excruciating in parts and both the dialogue and script are hilariously bad.
To work with the unusual concept, the writers have decided to introduce numerous romantic triangles. The series centres around two couples, Cameron (Gedrick) and Beth (Sarah Wynter, 24), and Peter (Luke Perry, Beverly Hills 90210) and Nina (Parrilla). Cameron is Nina’s ex-boyfriend, and shocker of all shockers, they’re still in love! Worse, Nina picked Cameron’s birthday as the winning number for the ticket. There’s also a former student of Cameron’s claiming that she’s had his child who may or may not be in it purely for the money.
Yes, one of the ‘themes’ of the show is that money’s bad. The reactions to the news that they’ve won the lottery is divided fairly equally between camps : ecstatic celebration (usually taking the form of some of the most poorly acting dancing to grace the small screen) and “this can’t be happening!” style panic. Falling into the latter category is Beth’s mysterious flower shop assistant, who entangles a sweet lawyer (despite being the recipient of the flirting of another winner, Maggie) in his plans to collect the money and may or may not have committed a series of crimes. I’ve got ten bucks on him having a heart of gold – a considerably better investment than the lottery, I think.
Then there’s the most unintentionally hilarious plot strand. On her way to buy the ticket, Nina bumps into Damien, who contributes the money used to buy the winning, potentially marriage-destroying ticket. Regrettably, Damien is underage and can’t spend the winnings until he turns 18. So he hatches a cunning plan, which involves running off with the Russian mail order bride of one of his dad’s friends. After marrying her and emancipating himself, he realises he’s actually in love with Frankie, the daughter of some fellow winners who are fighting over the money as part of their divorce.
The lottery group is tightly knit – so much so that it includes the woman who delivered pizza to the party and a whole bunch of other people who are so interesting we don’t get to meet them in the pilot. The only potentially interesting storyline involves an ER nurse, Maggie, who uses her winnings to fund a patient’s operation. Clichéd, yes, but not as preposterous as the rest of the action.
Windfall needs some serious work but I’m not sure it’s possible to salvage it – it just all seems too contrived, what with the lottery pools at parties, Russian mail order brides, and the colossal win ($382 million) off just five numbers, which offer considerably less rollover potential. If you feel like having a look for yourself (I don’t know why you’d want to), NBC’s website includes a trailer video for the series.
June 10th, 2006 at 02:26pm
Rob
So I had this whole other opening post typed up, the start of a thorough analysis of the best season finales. But then I realised that blogging about TV was actually harder than it seemed. You can’t just throw a bunch of mp3 links up, and it got me thinking about the blog and what I was hoping (rather optimistically) to achieve. Truth be told, I’m not quite sure, but it’d be great if somebody tried one of the shows off the back of it.
So here we have it : Veronica Mars, my favourite show airing at the moment. I tend to rave and ramble a lot about it in discussion, though, which is what torpedoed my original post about its second season finale (although it also distracted me by making me want to watch the episode). The show follows Veronica Mars, a high school girl who works for her private detective father after school, and solves crimes of her own. Thankfully, the thing has depth : the main arc concerns the murder of Veronica’s best friend, Lilly Kane, and the subsequent firing of Veronica’s father as the sheriff.
I have to say that the early outings didn’t inspire me all that much. Sure, the early outings are entertaining enough, but the mysteries-of-the-week the show was so fond of failed to grip me, while the little attention offered to the Lilly Kane murder case failed to satisfy my hopes of a grand arc. Thankfully, it turned things around pretty quickly. The supporting cast were given substantially more depth, particularly in the case of Logan, and the show began to find its feet with trademark witty banter and twists-out-of-nowhere. It also helped that the show shared my sensibilities : it’s a clever show, in both its dialogue and structuring. The show’s sense of continuity is particularly strong, something really well developed in the second half of the season.
However, the show’s main strength is its characters. Veronica is a genuinely interesting lead character and while seeming at first to be a perfect know-it-all, turns into a fallible heroine by season’s end. Perhaps the best work is done with Logan, who turns into a surprisingly complex character without straying into clichéd “bad boy with a heart of gold” territory. Wallace and Keith (Veronica’s dad) provide cute, funny sidekicks for Veronica. There’s also a good bunch of recurring characters, from computer geek Mac to consistently hilarious semi-villains Sheriff Lamb and Dick Casablancas. However the most important piece of the puzzle is a character who isn’t even alive at the start of the pilot : Lilly Kane. Once the show hits its stride the backstory of Veronica and Lilly becomes one of the most interesting aspects, and it genuinely makes you care about the mystery. I defy anyone not to feel gut-wrenchingly sad by the end of the finale. The series hits new highs with the final run of episodes, providing an action-packed finale and a satisfying conclusion to almost all the questions you have.
Thankfully the entire first season is now available at a cheap, cheap price so this is the perfect time to catch up:
Veronica Mars – The Complete First Season
June 9th, 2006 at 09:14pm
Rob
Welcome to Taking Civics Lessons from Hookers, the new TV-type blog-type thingy. I would promise lots of exciting stuff, but the season just finished, so I’m not sure what we’re going to be talking about. I’m sure we’ll find something though.
Right. Here’s how I think this is going to work. When the TV season is in, we’ll review episodes. Other times, there will be TV DVD reviews and articles about shows. And there will be randomness.
June 7th, 2006 at 02:31pm
Rob