The Wire 2002

The Wire is not a crime TV show nor even a TV show.

The onset was benign and innocuous. One night in Baltimore, the world within which the series operates, a black citizen was shot dead, prompting police cars to surround the crime scene. Detective Jimmy McNulty and another black guy sat on a stoop, chatting about the victim in the nonchalant manner insinuating experience and familiarity. Just another night in Baltimore.

Later on, the Homicide Unit of Baltimore Police Department would learn about Avon Barksdale, the drug overlord ruling the Westside of the city. Led by Lieutenant Daniels, a major unit would start to unravel the scale and brutality of his empire. Using surveillance tools, they would made way into the saying and thinking of his men. Hurdled by higher-ups, they would have to tip-toe around the money trail imprinted with the footsteps of public figures. Galvanized by the shooting of an undercover officer, they would put forth the trial in which the end of Barksdale's dominance began. McNulty would ask himself, "What the fuck did I do?", while the city kept on limping along the vicious cycle of drug and crime, looking forward to its past. Just another day in Baltimore.

Sure, drugs and murders are abound in the show, and the chase between the good police and the bad criminals is featured prominently. Nonetheless, at the center of every scene is not police nor criminals, but the city of Baltimore. An eclectic cast of detectives, attorneys, judges, drug dealers, informants, strippers, hitmen—each broken in their own way—presents a complex and multifaceted mosaic of Baltimore: as the camera follows people into court houses and low-rises, street turfs and strip clubs, it captures the living and perishing of the city dwellers, the rotting economic and social landscape.

Even on the ostensibly good side, it is rare to see corruption and petty politics woven so tightly into the storyline, or how the flaws of every characters displayed as candidly as possible. In the attempt to create an honest depiction of urban life, The Wire effectively puts forth the uncomfortable verities of the American society. Poverty manifests itself throughout every corner of every episode, which stems from and fuels the crime and drug epidemic plaguing the city. As one of the most poignant scene in the show, when asked why she could only do counting problems with vials and packs and not buses and passengers, Sarah simply said "Count be wrong, they fuck you up." Such is a fucked-up world they live in that to escape means either a dead end or death.

The Wire, in my mind, is anything but a show. It is a thirteen-part recording of the happenings there, an intimate account of what has been hiding in plain sight on the streets and in the houses across the city, a candid and disturbing documentary on life of Baltimore as we know it. Vast in scope and careful in detail, The Wire, a rare glimpse into the sombre facets of the American society, is a wire on real life itself.