Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Started watching the new season of the Wire. It was one of my favorite shows last year, and is doing a good job this year as well. It is a pretty unusual cop show. It has all the usual drama of trying to catch criminals, but it takes second seat to the drama of all the relationships in the police department and in the criminal world.

In other words, it's all about politics and survival. For the little fish, its about how to get a decent job, and how to get your overtime pay. For the big fish, it's about how to protect your ass, and move on up. All these struggles play into how well someone will carry out their job.

In many ways, its pretty damn ugly. In the movie, the Untouchables, Sean Connery's character says "Everyone knows where the drugs are, you just have to be willing to carry it out" ( or something like that" ). Here it's the same thing. Everyone knows how everything is laid out it, whether they act on that knowledge depends on how willing the character is to suffer the consequences.

The characters, actors, and the dialog of course make it work. It is really well written. The characters are likeable but often with huge flaws. McNulty, the main character, is a great detective, but a drinker, separated, with questionable fathering skills, and often just an asshole to people. Despite all that, you can't help liking him, because he is one of the few who seems to care about the results of his job. Something which is often is downfall.

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