Wire Must It All End?
As Brigitte and I flipped through channels this Friday, we ran into some notable moments -- a "Scrubs" episode that was shot in multi-camera format with a laugh-track (and obv it was just Zach Braff's imagination, and when we went back to "reality" we were served with a Garden State-esque voiceover telling us that real life isn't solved in 30 minuts but sitcoms certainly were great -- what, does Braff write "Scrubs" now, too?), then David Letterman talking about hot pockets (why not?), then Jay Leno showing an invention that allows people to shave a perfect goatee. Skipping out on these three excellent choices, I changed the channel to something that totally shocked me -- a new Pepsi commercial featuring Sean Combs (Puff Daddy? P. Diddy? Diddy? What is he these days?) and JIM-TRUE FROST, aka Det. Roland "Prez" Przybylewski together. Really, Jim? Pepsi? Really, casting agents across the country? Pepsi?Of course, that doesn't compare to tonight's television viewing -- at long last, most of the Blogulator contingent viewed the series finale of, yes, the best television show ever, The Wire. This was so much more satisfying than seeing my beloved Prezbo hangin' with Diddy and drinking Diet Pepsi. So yes, here are my thoughts. And yes, there will be spoilers. So, I will type in white font, and you can highlight it if you want to read it. But seriously, at this point forward, I will be writing about what what I thought of the series finale. And there will be some maybe-spoilers about Six Feet Under and The Sopranos if you care.
SERIOUSLY! Avert your eyes.
Okay. Dave Ryan? Sean?
Okay.
Whew.
***SPOILERS BEGIN HERE***
Wow! What a beautifully constructed finale. Where do I begin?
First, Duquon. His story is probably the most sad -- why did he have to be the one to end up on the streets? In season four, he showed the most promise as a student, and was the most diligent one. He didn't misbehave in class and he showed interest in the lessons he was taught by Prez. So what are we to take away from Dukie shooting up heroin in the series-closing musical montage? The other boys from season four were mostly privilidged enough to get out of the streets. Are we to take away that it doesn't matter how smart you are or hard working you are -- sometimes your circumstances in society prevent you from getting out of your situation? Bubbles? I was greatly satisfied with how he ended up. Of course, as Walon (my TOTES FAV NON-REGULAR CHARACTER EVER!) said, it's easy to believe the bad things you did in your life, but it's hard to forgive yourself. It's true whether you are addicted to drugs and hurt people in your life, or not. Either way, bravo. The whole case / streets / McNulty thing? I was skeptical of the serial killer plot, but I think how it wrapped up was fitting. You didn't think McNulty was enough of a screw-up to totally let his scheme go to shreds, did you? His fake eulogy was a great round-about way to bring the death of the other Irish detectives into the fold and the tradition of police in Baltimore.
Of course, I could go on and on about the various characters' fates and circumstances in the various institutions in the city, but that would require me to fill many pages of thoughts. The world of The Wire is simply too vast for me to cover everything. How did the finale wrap up the series?
Extremely well. In fact, I cannot honestly think of a more well-contructed finale to any show I have ever seen. That doesn't necessarily mean it touched me the most (Six Feet Under's finale did that -- even if, in hindsight, the last scene / montage was unnecessary and heavy-handed), nor was it the most tension-filled (the last few minutes of The Sopranos made me pee my pants). But, The Wire didn't need any gimmicks to make its closing chapter memorable. Instead, the closing episode is chockful of deliciously well-written and well-acted scenes between actors that have proven their craft and characters that we, through 59 other episodes, have grown to love. Think of the memorable scenes in this episode that I will be looking back at -- Rhonda Pearlman and Maurice Levy working each other to shut each other's cases down and avoid going to jail themselves, Duquon asking Prez for money with Prez giving a look that perhaps gave away the fact that he knew he wasn't really going to go back to school, McNulty and Daniels in the elevator together, totally silent, with Daniels exiting, turning around, and saying "To be continued...", Slim Charles suddenly grasping the drug trade from Cheese, McNulty and Beadie Russell sitting on her front steps together, looking out at the moon. The show didn't need any flash, because the substance that carried the show through its entire run carried it through the finale.
Writer David Simon was able to successfully close out all of the important plotlines while showing us the golden rule applies to society, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." As long as the drug trade is a viable economic business for people living in urban areas, it will continue to be done. As long as police juke their stats to pad their resumes and win elections, chances are they will. As long as thinking outside the box, whether it is creating a legal drug zone, starting an alternative education program for at-risk kids, or inventing a serial killer to funnel money into a wiretap, is fought against by the powers-that-be, our society will have a hard time making the progress that needs to be made.
And what other television show can possibly say that it was highly engaging both on an entertainment level and on a societal level? Yes, The Wire is full of the best acting, writing, and cinematography I have ever seen on a television show, but I can pay it a higher compliment by saying it left me indeniably wanting to do more for the problems our society faces.
Bravo to everybody involved in making the show. It will be missed.
***END SPOILERS***
In other HBO-related news, my man-crush for Gabriel Byrne will continue in Fall 2009, as In Treatment has finally been renewed for a second season. Drax, will you be casting extras again? Meanwhile, True Blood, the Vampire-related Alan Ball series starting in Fall 2008, is getting more tepid pilot reviews, but the pictures look totally scary. The jury is obvs still out. And tomorrow, Documentary #3 of the Summer Documentary Series premieres, Hard Times at Douglass High, a documentary about No Child Left Behind and how it has affected a school in inner-city Baltimore (sound familiar, Season Four of The Wire?) Given the fact that the first two docs were highly entertaining and thought provoking (celebreality / justice-system themed Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and high school debate doc Resolved), I have high hopes for tomorrow night's premiere. Yes, HBO, you can now send everyone in the Blogulator free subscriptions.
Labels: Cable Television Rundown, qualler, TV
This entry was posted by Unknown, on
Sunday, June 22, 2008.
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So you're flipping channels past Leno and Letterman... on a Saturday?!
Something's fishy here, and I'm not just talking about this headline from the Cape Cod Courier...
I gotta second the Doktor's comment: wubba-wha?!
It was indeed a great finale and I expected nothing less. SPOILER: Just as Michael became the new Omar, Fletcher the new Gus, Sydnor the new McNulty, Carver the new Daniels, Duquon became the new Bubbles. Just as smart, capable, warm, and friendly, he will end up okay after some troubled years.
Whoooooooops -- Friday, I meant Friday! (Fixed.)
****SPOILERS!!!!****
That's true, he is the new Bubbles, but the real tragedy is that it has to happen to him (or anybody). We don't know what will really happen to him, despite the passing the torch scenes throughout the finale -- he could end up clean with a story to tell like Bubbles, or he could end up dead like Johnny and Sherrod. David Simon, do I smell a movie deal?????
***Spoiler*** I know Prez was told early on that these aren't his kids, but I was very disappointed that gave the money to Duquon in the first place, cause he knew what he was going to do with it and even drove him right back to the streets. The whole scene shows that Prez has really "caught on" at his job, but then he still gets caught up in Duquon's situation without actually helping.
Besides that, I was totally shocked about Slim Charles since he has always sort of followed who was in charge (was a Barksdale boy, then went with Prop Joe) - ironic because that's what Cheese did too (Prop Joe, then Marlo), until this episode.
spoilers!
I don't think that Duquon will have the same happy ending as bubbles, since while bubbles has a sister, Duquon has no one. I don't see his story ending well. bubbles is the exception, not the rule.
you can read all about it in my wire fan fiction.
Fixed?! Now my comment makes me look like an idiot, Minister of Revisionist History, aka Chairman Mao, aka Qualler.
(I have yet to watch The Wire, so this is all I can comment on. I did go to three Baltimore Orioles games this weekend, though. They were gritty and realistic.)
More spoilers of course:
You guys aren't giving Duquon enough credit. Unlike Johnny and Sherrod, he's smart, clever, and personable. He, like Bubbles, has a much better shot at surviving on the streets than most people.
Remember what happened to Randy when Carver did "the right thing" at the end of Season 4? He turned into a hard hate-filled kid who could very easily end up under Slim Charles' wing in a hypothetical Season 6. I'm not saying the orphanage is no better than the streets, but Prez also knows there's no way he can get Duquon even into an orphanage or foster home (he's in that impossible age bracket of 12-17 that are left helpless) without either turning him into the cops for something he did wrong (then he goes to juvey, not an orphanage/foster home) or by some incredible accident happening forcing him into a hospital (like Randy's house burning down). He goes to child services and tells them there's a homeless 14-year-old that needs a home, what're they going to do? Go out with a giant net and capture him? Duquon's not going to go willingly. Nothing would happen.
Harry -- there's more to the post than just the very top! You can safely scroll below since it is all hidden in the shroud of white.
***SPOILERS (again)***
I agree that Duquon is smart, clever, and personable, but the conclusion certainly does not give us any certainty that he is going to be "OK". As the show went on, the morals of the people living on the street deteriorated (arguably, they improved again when Marlo became "the new Stringer Bell") and the times became more dire. And even if Duquon eventually gets off the streets and gets clean like Bubbles did, why did he even need to get to that point in the first place? It is a failure of our systems that we can let kids like that slip through the cracks. Is it Prez's fault? The school? The foster care system? Not enough adoptive parents? To me, it's not important if Duquon eventually is OK or not, the fact remains that at the end of the show, he is not OK. In an interview with David Simon in Slate magazine, he said the kids on the show reflected the statistics of the kids he tracked in his book "The Corner" -- two of them went on to college, two of them were shot, and one of them was in prison. Not everyone gets "out" eventually; that's what I took away from the series at least.
p.s. Brigitte, I can't wait to read the Wire fan fiction.
But that's the thing, from what I've read, you aren't blaming "the system." You're blaming Prez for giving him the money instead of doing something else. But there is no something else that can be done for Duquon by the end of this series because of the system. I'm saying you can't be mad at Prez. I'm not saying, don't worry about him, he'll end up okay. I'm saying all you can do by the time we see him shooting up at the end of the finale is hope that he'll be okay because of who he is, because there is no system or anyone else that can do anything for him at the point except Duquon himself.
who is blaming prez? who are you talking to, chris? it is the system--and prez is a part of it, just like everyone else. no one person can really be "blamed" but no one should be let off the hook, either. that's what i took away from the show--we're all to blame, aren't we? the system failed him, and we are all operating as a part of (in whatever small way) this system.
and yes, i think the important thing is that at the end of the show, he isn't OK. no use speculating about whether or not he'll be OK someday (unless you're writing fan fiction. which i am.)
I'm not blaming Prez, I am blaming the system -- what I said was, "Is it Prez's fault? The school? The foster care system? Not enough adoptive parents?" -- intended to be hypothetical questions, not pointing blame at any individual or societal choices in particular. I think you can look at Duquon's situation in a number of ways, though -- can we really let everybody off the hook just because the system is flawed?
In your original comment, which I was responding to, you said "...Duquon became the new Bubbles. Just as smart, capable, warm, and friendly, he will end up okay after some troubled years." You WERE saying "Don't worry about him, he'll be OK" which is I think what everybody is responding to.
And, Duquon might or might not have the skills he needs to survive on the streets, but when he's put in that situation in the first place, do his skills even matter? Look at Sherrod before him, or Wallace, or Bodie -- Bodie played by all the rules he was given, and he was still killed at a young age. In the end, Duquon's smarts might help him get out of the hole that he is in, but the odds are stacked incredibly against him making it out. Even if they help him survive for longer than the average homeless person, it is still a story of an individual who showed promise who, through multiple circumstances, slipped through the cracks of society.
I think we are actually agreeing on that point here.
Okay, not blaming, but accusing him of "not actually helping." How is he supposed to help? This is the question no one has answered yet.
Duquon has never been okay, not just at the end of the series.
Hypothesizing that he'll be okay doesn't infer that I think he shouldn't be worried about.
Okay, then I think this string of comments is boiling down to semantics -- I'm not saying Prez is supposed to help in any way. He did try to help, I think, with good intentions, by loaning Duquon the money and giving him a ride to where he was supposed to go. Obviously, he did what he could possibly do. It is possible that some people might think he could have done more to advocate for Dukie -- I don't necessarily agree that he could have -- so I was just posing the fact that there are a number of factors leading up to where he got. I agree, too, that he's never been "okay", but he was certainly in a better position to succeed when he was in school with the kids. When he was socially promoted to 9th grade to juke the stats for NCLB, he actually was left behind, because it was a promotion he did not welcome. Could Prez have vouched stronger with the administration? Possibly, but it's likely he wouldn't have been succesful. I don't blame Prez whatsoever for what he did -- in the end, teachers like Prez are doing what they need to do by watching over their students at a higher level, and it's not their role to act as parents. And I think we can both agree that how we each phrased things lead to misunderstandings, right?
i don't think that the finale indicates duquon will be OK. if anything, i felt like it was showing us a kid who could have been OK, and we thought that maybe he would be, but ultimately (ultimately for the purpose of this character who exists inside this show) he isn't OK. i don't see him as the new bubbles in the same way that michael was shown as the new omar. i saw him as just another drug addict--the population of people who were not OK, who were pretty much consistently shown as the bottom of the barrel in this series. they weren't even REALLY a part of the game--they weren't even the pawns (from that first episode? was it the first episode?).
also, chris, when you said "not actually helping" where is that quote coming from? which other comment said that? cite your source, please.
ok, i found it. it was lady amy. if you're interested, that should look like this:
"not actually helping" (Amy, 2008, Paragraph 4).
I think he got that from The Wire 2: The Streetz Fan Fiction, episode 9, "Better Late than Neville (Brothers Play a Concert at Marlo's New Hang-Out / Night Club)" that you wrote:
Prez: What do you mean, I was not actually helping Duquon?
Gabriel Byrne: I don't know, what do you think?
Wish Bear: If we only wished hard enough, we could make Dukie into the boy he can be!
hahahahahaha...that is SO the fan fiction i was thinking of writing. The Wire meets Gabriel Byrne meets the Care Bears.
which brings me to another good point: why didn't the care bears ever think to step in and help?? they really could have set things right in Baltimore.
also, i think we're all agreeing. The system stinks!
Yes, sorry, I think I thought that was Qualler that wrote that comment instead of Amy. Hopefully everyone can understand why the whole discussion hits a little close to home for me.
Not quite as close to home as your brazen mocking of the art of fan fiction, though! How dare you, sir!
That's not mocking! I would love, unironically, to see Marlo open a music club that everyone hangs out at, a la The Bait Shop, The Peach Pit, or The Peach Pit After Dark.
Since you are, ahem, a teacher, I would like to know, from your perspective, what a teacher can and cannot do in that situation -- care to elaborate a little?
Haha well I'm mocking fan fiction then. It's not an art form at all.
A teacher really can't do anything, it's sad to say. It's the student's choice (or in the rare case where there's a caring parent/guardian, it's their choice) when it comes down to something like what Prez was encountered with. If one of my homeless students from last year showed up at my doorstep this year asking for money, I could see myself taking one of two paths: 1) doing exactly what Prez did in implying he had a lot of potential and could indeed get a G.E.D. and/or finish high school and I'd front the cash if he could promise to do that, knowing full well that that's all it could be - a promise that could make or break me helping him again in the future, nothing more, nothing less. Or 2) Talk to him about the other option that could be available to him if he were willing to work hard, change, and be patient: child services, and offer to take him through the process that best I knew how.
From an adolescent's eyes, Option 1 shows you care for him. Option 2 makes him think you want him to be someone else's problem. Which one do you think will almost definitely make him run?
Now I certainly do not know the extent of what my students from last year could be involved in or what their lives are like here in Mpls compared to what Prez probably knew about Baltimore due to his time as police and older age. Also, it all depends on the student - I'm thinking of a couple potential former students I had that could actually be open to being talked about child services, but if it was a student like Duquon - I just don't know. Like so much of The Wire, there really isn't a right answer. Another thing I could hope for besides the fact that I faith in Duquon's intelligence is that Prez could do his best to keep an eye on him through a contact at the force. Or now that his uncle's commissioner, who knows what he might be able to do with the right motivation, right?
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