HBO’s drama series The Wire has attracted a clutch of awards and a fanatical following, as well as spawning a slew of unlikely catch phrases – simple phrases like “chain of command” and “oh, indeed” will never sound the same again.
Rarely has a television drama managed to present such complex storylines from so many points of view whilst maintaining narrative suspense. It is not only the broad sweep of character and plot which animates The Wire, but the honing of individual scenes which illuminates these larger movements. A case in point is the very first scene of the series, in which McNulty (Dominic West) discusses the murder of a youth known only as ‘Snot’.
Street Names
The scene is only tangentially related to the rest of the series, but it lays out some of the themes which will develop later. It may sound grandiloquent to claim that the brief sequence offers us a vision of death, alienation, fate and idealism, but David Simon’s writing is carefully balanced in this opening scene. McNulty’s comments on Snot’s name – “This kid, whose Momma went to the trouble of christening him Omar Isaiah Betts...” – points up how the urban world redefines and renames the people in it, only giving them back their family name when they end up in a court or a mortuary.
Snot’s compulsive stealing – “he couldn’t help hisself” – is revealed as the cause of his death, but McNulty demands why people let him play craps with them if he always took the stakes and ran. “Got to”, comes the reply, “This America, man.” It’s a brilliantly funny line, but it also encapsulates one of the central issues which The Wire plays out: the strain between the ideals of American liberty, and the world the characters find themselves in.
Land of the Free
As the series goes on to demonstrate, none of the characters are free to do whatever they want, and many of their lives work as a larger version of Snot’s story, unable to either curb their impulses or avoid the consequences - McNulty himself being a prime example. The fact that the line is so funny makes us ask why it doesn’t make sense: in other words, why is it so ridiculous to say that we are free?
Of course, the words “This America, man” are also making a claim for the drama’s importance. What happens in The Wire, the phrase implies, is what happens in the country as a whole. It’s a big claim to make, but The Wire’s success suggests that TV drama in general could benefit from this kind of ambition.
