The Wire - S5E1 - More With Less

6 years ago, I watched the series premiere of this little show on HBO. Back then, I didn't know what I was getting into. For me, it was just another cop show with lots of cursing and occasional nudity. I classed it up there as a slightly higher quality Law & Order, Homicide, or NYPD Blue. Little did I know that 6 years and 5 seasons later, this show would effect me more than any other book, movie or TV show I have seen. And now, in its 5th season, The Wire takes on something very personal to me, the city newspaper.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked for my college newspaper for the last 3 years, The Daily Pennsylvanian. Not to toot our own horn, but we are a good newspaper, and a large newspaper. For a year, I have spent 10 hours a night, 5 nights a week in a windowless office, for the sake of journalism. And for the most part, I enjoyed it. That job has taken me on visits to the newsrooms of such papers as The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Baltimore Sun, in which parts of this season of The Wire are actually filmed. I have been in the same room, in the figurative and very literal sense, as the fictional City News Editor Gus Haynes in this episode. And, if it weren't for the shitty pay and dismal job prospects, I would probably be considering a career in journalism right now. (But, and somewhat paradoxically, The Wire may have inspired me into a life of city government, despite the many frustrations portrayed. Hey, maybe I can make a difference). So it is with an interested and critical eye that I watch this season, and know that if anyone can get it right, its David Simon and The Wire.

And, if the first episode is any indication, they will get it right. Perhaps just a little too right.

Season 4 of this show was a hard act to follow. It was probably the most perfect season of a TV show that has ever been on television, so understandably, there are a lot of expectations going into this year. And for many people, the Newspaper Newsroom isn't exactly the most riveting setting, (I personally couldn't think of anything more interesting) so there is a lot of room for a letdown.

The thing about The Wire is that the universe is so immersing, that you really feel yourself being pulled into it. It is an act of escapism that somehow manages to pull you into a world you don't want to be in. In only 15 minutes, I felt my living room melting away as I reconnected with the characters that I know so intimately (yeah, not in that way.) And after 4 seasons, we really do know these characters well. Character development is probably the Wire's finest ability.

And so we quickly jump back into the worlds we've come to know and love, City Hall, The Streets, and The Western district Police Department. The season opens on a comical note, with a bad-ass Bunk interviewing a dimwitted suspect, and giving him a lie detector test by duct taping his hand to a copy machine and printing out pages that say true and false. He gets his confession. Mayer Carcetti is facing a budget crisis, and the Police Department is feeling the effects. Cops aren't being paid overtime, squad cars are in disarray, etc. Major Crimes still hasn't made progress investigating Marlo Stanfield and the murder of like 22 people found in boarded up homes from last season. Ice-cold Marlo just is too good of a criminal. Major Crimes eventually gets shut down due to the budget cuts. Our old friend McNulty is drinking and womanizing again. Dukie is unfortunately involved in the drug trade, looking over Michael's corner, who's now a full fledged member of Marlo's crew. Bubbles is clean, and working selling The Baltimore Sun to cars on the street.

And then, speaking of newspapers, we find ourselves in The Baltimore Sun newsroom, with characters we have never met before. Not many shows would dare introduce and entire new cast of characters in the 5th and final season, but The Wire has been able to do it successfully thus far in other seasons. It remains to be seen how successful they will be this year, but so far, the newsroom scenes were both my favorite and my least favorite.

We first meet the Sun staffers smoking in a loading dock, discussing how everyone is getting fired in Philadelphia and old timers are being laid off and the future is grim and how they "wished they worked at a real newspaper." These are the same lines you will hear in newsrooms across America, as more and more hard working people are being laid off or given more responsibility for the same pay. Newspapers are folding, there isn't enough money for anything, and everyone is just trying to keep their own job. Its no different than the Baltimore Police Department that Simon has portrayed so well. Same story, different faces.

We then meet City Editor Gus Haynes (Played by Wire writer/director Clark Johnson), who despite low morale, manages to keep a good attitude, trying to make a difference through hard work and good old fashioned reporting. He believes in the institution of the newspaper. He is the prototypical lifetime newspaper man. The old timer who still believes. Then there's the typical hard-ass managing editor, who likes to hire young journalism majors who have pretty legs, and spits out the line that sums up today's newspaper paradox "You'll just have to do more with less." There's also the ambitious young reporter, always looking for a story, hoping he'll make it to the Times or Post one day. The conspicuously empty newsroom (yes, they are really that depressingly empty these days) is smattered with other walking newspaper clichés like the old grey-haired grammar expert. They also throw a bunch of newspaper jargon at the viewer, like lede, above-the-fold, budget lines, and more. And here is where I begin to worry about this year's The Wire.

I have to be careful not to plagiarize from Slate.com here, because they pretty much summed up my feeling perfectly in THIS article. Basically, because I'm so familiar with the newspaper world, the whole newsroom aspect came off a little trite, as Slate put it. David Simon worked in the Baltimore Sun newsroom for many years as a crime beat reporter. He knows the real deal inside out, and he has a lot to say about his career in journalism. The wire is now his sounding board, and well, I think he got it a little TOO right. The characters came off a little too defined and inflexible, and universally real. Sure its only the first episode, but there's only 9 episodes left to flesh these characters out. I don't see them becoming fully developed beyond their newsroom clichés. And again, as Slate says, I'm not a drug dealer, or a politician, or an educator, or a dock worker, so the first 4 seasons I was an outsider. These worlds were new to me, and I was loving learning all about them.

Now, I of course am far from a professional journalist, but I know enough to consider myself an insider. For instance, there were a few brilliant newsroom scenes that had me cracking up that I think really only anyone who has ever spent time in a newsroom could really appreciate. A reporter writes that "people were evacuated." Editor Haynes yells that you can't evacuate people. This would mean you "gave them an enema." (The building is evacuated, not people.) This kind of conversation happens. All the time. And we find it hilarious.

There's another scene where Haynes is looking over the photos of a building fire. There's a picture with a burned doll in it. "Another fucking burnt doll?" he exclaims. "Every fire photo he brings in there's a burnt doll in the debris. I can see that cheap motherfucker now with his fucking dolls pouring lighter fluid on each one. You check his trunk you'll find a whole collection!" I laughed out loud at this, but if only it weren't so true. (As usual in newsrooms, Photo seemed to take the brunt of the blame for f-ups.)

Anyway, enough of my J-dork rants. I'd be curious to see what those of you not familiar with the newsroom world felt about this episode. Were the newsroom scenes too foreign to you? Or did the characters seem as cliché as I found them?

This episode was still the best hour of television I've seen since the season 4 finale, and I sure we have a lot to look forward to this season.

Official Episode Site - HBO

Also, the Atlantic Monthly has an awesome article abut David Simon by Mark Bowden. If you are a fan of the wire, you should read this article HERE.