A fond farewell to HBO's 'The Wire'

By RICK KUSHMAN - McClatchy Newspapers --

When "The Wire" began five seasons and a lifetime of innocence ago, it opened with a scenario that said everything about the beautiful, piercingly honest pain we were in for.

A homicide cop, working on his own time, innocently tells a judge about a drug boss who is a big killer but under the radar. The judge wants to know more, so he calls police brass.

The police commissioner is ticked - not about the murders, he doesn't care - but because he's embarrassed to be asked questions he can't answer.

That flows down the chain. When it hits the homicide chief, he is livid because the commander, too, is embarrassed. He sets out to punish the cop.

That cop, of course, was Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), and if there ever was a character who should heed a core warning of this booming, brilliant series, it is McNulty.

That warning, in fact, comes in the show's theme song: "When you walk in the garden, you better watch your back."

Because if you don't - as so many real people, and all of "The Wire's" characters can confirm - you will be crushed by ego, ambition and greed; by bureaucracies and systems scarred and immobilized after years of self-serving choices, and most of all, by the simple capriciousness of life.

HBO's "The Wire" ends its run Sunday night (at 9 EST) with 90-plus minutes of virtuosity. The finale is a righteous, satisfying tour through the Baltimore and people we met, and through the complex story that's five seasons long.

And it will remind fans that throughout its run, "The Wire" was unsurpassed by anything on TV - ever - in its depth, storytelling, wisdom, wit and sheer, searing honesty.

Creator David Simon and his crew of powerful writers poke through the rubble of American cities and institutions. It dissected politics, cops, unions, schools, bureaucracies (both in government and on the streets), and, this season, newspapers.

But "The Wire" is not just sterile analysis. It's a show alive with humanity and every human foible and strength. Even more, it broke so many rules of television, and we're the better for it.

It bluntly showed African-Americans as textured, complete people, sometimes noble, sometimes selfish, sometimes evil, sometimes unsure, just like people of every other race. It gave an authentic look at the other urban America, the side we'd rather not see, in its hopelessness, neglect and decay.

It also bluntly showed what it's like to be in any part of a real city, where cops, teachers, laborers and - even - the boys selling drugs on the corners get irrational pressure to perform, to make their bosses look good, to, as one person says, color inside the lines. Woe to anyone - cop, teacher or corner boy - who reaches too far, asks questions or tries to change. And woe to them all, sometimes, just for being in the wrong place.

How many good men and women fell because of chance, or carelessness or someone else's mistake? Baltimore's docks got crushed by the political need for a shiny waterfront. Politicians or corporate bosses drained the cops, the newspaper, the schools, then told them to "do more with less," though all anyone could do with less is less. And the collateral damage was wide and unpredictable.

Rick Kushman: rkushman@sacbee.com

 

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