Home Rooms

“It’s not what you take, it’s who you take from. You feel me?” – Omar

As we know, David Simon and Ed Burns have said that this season is about education and about the different factors and inputs that contribute to a child’s education. They’re trying to challenge people’s notions of thinking of education as confined to schools and textbooks. School is a process of socialization and if schools fail on this part, where and how do the children become socialized and educated? What does a child identify with in a world characterized by non-existent family structures and dysfunctional public institutions?

This episode reminded me, thematically at least, of the movie “Thirteen” that came out a few years ago where two Southern California teenage girls forge an identity out of celebrity culture and the material shopping culture. They both come from broken families and create meaning and a sense of relevance from their friendship and by how much they fit into the wider material culture around them. By the end of the film - before of course, they find themselves – their self-journey looks as comical as it looks grotesque. But, you can see why it played out the way it did. It looks almost natural and expected.

And that is why the image of Namond wanting to ink himself with Chinese characters he doesn’t understand stayed with me. In the absence of role models, of father figures, viable economic opportunities, functioning families and public institutions, these kids create their own identity. It looks perverse and skewered to us but it makes perfect sense in their context. Identity is forged, clumsily, out of the random grab bag of symbols of the surrounding culture. But what is the alternative?

“Home Rooms” also brought back uncomfortable memories of junior high – surely the lowest point in anybody’s adolescence. The scenes at Edward P. Tilghman are a great depiction of this stage of adolescence, the viciousness, the in-your-face insults, the immense pressure to conform. My own junior high had a strong inner-city presence to it, and I can totally imagine this scene playing out at my alma matter – except for the slashing (still, “Welcome to the Dollhouse” will always be my favorite “junior high as hell” film depiction).

I like the scene where Bunk brings some wine when he visits McNulty and Beadie. With the end of the Barksdale investigation, life has gotten a little boring for these guys. That’s one aspect of the cop’s world on “The Wire,” whether it’s Colvin, McNulty, Greggs, Herc or Carver – everyone is built for action. Standing still, not being out there, seems to be more painful, more difficult to fathom than a busted case.

A great image of these two big guys, sitting in those god-awful yellow chairs drinking a wine that no one seems to know anything about other than the fact that it cost “two digits.” Try saying that at a dinner party in Northern California. Domesticity ain’t their thing. It’s a bit like the fake “lake trout” they make fun of being sold around town (“ain’t no lake nor no trout”). But McNulty seems calm and happy for once.

There’s an odd sort of parallel between Omar and Carcetti. A streak of pragmatic idealism runs in both of them. They both understand that they live in an imperfect world and negotiate with it as best as they can. They both understand that world they operate in is in many ways a game, but that underneath that gamesmanship, there’s something real worth fighting for and something real to win. They both get the irony of what’s going on but soldier on unafraid.

It’s nice to see the “downtown, tie-wearing, trying-to-do-good, stay-to-do-good, college type” that Colvin teams up with for the study. Even though Johns Hopkins University is the largest private employer in the City of Baltimore, we’ve had little to no exposure to academic Baltimore. The cultural divide in that holding cell is vast, almost incomprehensibly so in a town Baltimore’s size. But the interviewer does violate some basic tenants of conducting sociological research that does make him seem a tad unbelievable.

Rawls redeems himself in this episode. After gutting the Major Crimes Unit and outmaneuvering Fraemon, he begrudgingly recognizes his strength as an investigator. Rawls seems distraught with himself. The way he looks at the floor as he talks to Fraemon, he seems to be saying, “I know the way things operate is fucked up but I still want to do good.” Beneath his job enforcing bureaucratic standards, there’s a buried idealist. Something you would never expect from Burrell.

This was also the first episode this season penned by one of the three great crime novelists employed by the show, Richard Price. The others are, of course, Dennis Lehane (who wrote the next episode, “Refugees,”) and George Pelecanos. I think Pelecanos has penned some of the best episodes of “The Wire.” My question, how do these guys nail Baltimore slang so well? I’d love to know more about how the show is written.

I think “Lake Trout” would have been a better name for this episode. I want to get the transcript for that conversation between Bunk and McNulty. That was the gist of this episode….

I promise to post by Monday next week.