Final Grades
“They gonna study your study! When do things change?” - Colvin
“This game is rigged.” – Bodie
Another gripping episode, compelling to watch from start to finish. The episode kept up a brisk pace, exhibited some interesting directorial flourishes, and contained some surprises. It was a worthy coronation for one of the best seasons of any show ever.
“Final Grades,” however, did not possess the finality that previous season finales did. Unlike the strong endings we saw in the finales to seasons Two and Three, the Season Four finale closed a few plotlines but opened up lots of new ones. And it did not resolve many of the open plotlines. What happens to the revenge of Officer Walker? Are Chris and Snoop going to jail? How does Carcetti solve the school budget problem? How will Bodie’s death impact McNulty’s policing?
By contrast, seasons Two and Three had much stronger endings. With Stringer dead and Barksdale sent to jail, the whole Barksdale plotline was effectively over and the Hamsterdam experiment was junked. The entire world of the docks was put to rest and concluded at the end of Season Two. Season Four, by contrast, gives our characters new beginnings but not too many endings. This IS NOT a criticism, I’m just pointing out the differences between this season and the others, which largely stand on their own.
“Final Grades” seemed more interested in setting up Season Five than concluding the story arcs for the characters we met this season. But since this show is so fricking amazing, and the new characters so vivid, that is just fine. It will have to tide us over till next September, or whenever the execs at HBO will decide to bequeath us with Season Five, aka the “media season.”
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The episode was penned by David Simon and after reading his interview on Slate last week, I could see some of his views on display here.
The theme most prevalent on “Final Grades” was pride, its costs and benefits, and particularly how pride relates to work. Pride as a double-edged sword. It brings out the best in people like McNulty, Colvin, Daniels and Lester, causes them to dig deep in themselves and bring out the best in others. But pride also causes Bodie to turn his corner into his own Little Bighorn, and it looks like it might begin to unravel Carcetti as he sacrifices his constituents’ needs for his ambitions for Governor. (let’s remember that Carcetti is modeled after current Baltimore Mayor O’Malley – somebody who Simon has made negative comments about).
Remember Daniels’ line to Carver (I believe it was Season One), “you gotta decide if it’s about you or about the work.” Carver, after some hesitation, saw that it was about the work. To Bodie and Omar, who both show themselves to be consummate professionals in this episode, it’s about the work. To Lester, it is about the work as well. Rawls, it’s about him. And Carcetti, we’re starting to see, it’s about him too.
“Omar ain’t no drug dealer,” the stick-up boy says as he extorts Prop Joe for some “her-o-an” paying the fat man for his clock that baffles everyone in the electronics store. Prop Joe refuses to give up Cheese to a pissed off Marlo. “I can’t do that,” he says. “That’s my sister’s boy.” Even in the bottom-line obsessed world of early 21st century America where as Simon insists, “people are worth less everyday” we see the strong residues of pride intact… but not everybody lives to tell about it.
And then there’s people letting go of their pride for the best. Wee-Bey letting Colvin take his son in being the best example of this.
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My favorite scene, and easily one of the best this season was McNulty and Bodie at the Arboretum. Screenwriting classes should study that scene over and over again. It was just brilliant. McNulty reinforces Bodie’s own thoughts of himself, “You’re a soldier Bodie.” He says this without irony. Through the game of cops and robbers they’ve come to know each other in an unorthodox way. It’s something that Landsman displays – a bit grudgingly perhaps – to Bubbles.
And McNulty also challenges him. “Somebody’s got to step up,” he tells the young slinger. It is a call that goes unanswered. In a parallel world, it would have been interesting to see Bodie survive into Season Five and attempt to answer this call. Become another stick-up boy like Omar or try and go clean like Cutty. Just at the point when we see him become self-conscious about the world he lives in and look at his world with new eyes, he gets shot.
While it is a shame to see Bodie go, this leftover from the Barksdale days, let’s also avoid the temptation to canonize him. He comes across as valiant this season but he often exhibited a self-serving sense of justice, justifying his murder of Wallace with Poot but decrying that of Little Kevin. He is a victim of a system he was himself complicit in. As we see all along in “The Wire” individuals get chewed up by the system they belong to, their sense of morality becomes distorted into something so nakedly self-serving that they end up lying to themselves and ultimately they don’t really know which way is up anymore. At this point, to borrow a phrase from Bunk last episode, “black is white and right is left.”
But he’s right, Marlo is evil. He seemed cool and above the fray earlier in the season - just purely a businessman. But he’s disintegrated before our eyes into just another cold-blooded thug. There’s nothing particularly benevolent about the man, save his handouts for school clothes and books we saw at the beginning of the season. He is the raw, ruthless, no-holds-barred businessman who doesn’t live by any rules. He’s all about the bottom line and is representative of something “The Wire” has taken an interest in: the triumph of people like Marlo who fail to live by rules and how this dehumanizes themselves and those around them.
Even Chris questions him. When Marlo tells him to take out Bodie he doesn’t immediately understand telling his boss he may not have talked. “Doesn’t matter, we gotta send a message,” Marlo says. There’s no trust, no focus on relationships, just money. Anything is legitimate to him since he has no code and little pride. He’s cut off from anything traditional. No surprise this man don’t like Town Cars.
That is why his interaction with Vondas was so interesting. This quiet, physically unimposing old world man who runs his business based on trust – and Marlo can’t really understand it at all. But that’s just him reacting to his own world.
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An interesting, inauspicious start to the episode considering all the other things going on. Landsman has always been a pretty minor character. We rarely see him out of the homicide office cradling his Jugs magazine and shaking his head at all the red ink on the board. But behind the clearance rate obsessed bureaucrat we some humanity. It comes out clumsily at first, “What’s in your head fella?” but we see a notable change in his character. He goes from “don’t pull down any more fucking wood,” to “fuck the clearance rate” in the span of barely one episode. Nice.
Poor Bubbles. He has effectively cried “uncle” to the streets. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Andre Royo does such a fantastic job with this character. He is amazing. He is Bubbles.
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Once again, I have to laud the direction of Ernest Dickerson. The man has an expressionistic touch that the other directors don’t utilize. The direction on “The Wire” always strikes me as adequate and functional, nothing extraordinary or creative. Again, it’s the writing and the acting and the scope of the subject matter that make this show what it is.
But Dickerson is different. The man likes long, long shots. How long did the camera stay on Bodie’s dead body? On the gutter where Monk dumped Michael’s gun? On the tranquil street corner that Namond now calls home? He wants us to ponder, he wants us to look more deeply into what we’re seeing. For a show with so much rapid dialogue, these shots really stand out.
Another shot that stood out was of the one of Carcetti in his red chair after he rejects the Governor’s money. For the first time, he doesn’t look right. He looks isolated and a little evil amid all that red leather. You can’t make out his face too well when he’s sitting in that chair. He has changed, calculating the risks to his future power rather than take a bailout for the schools. But you knew this was going to happen. His ambition and the demands of political campaigning did the switch.
A great shot of Michael in the back of the SUV. You can’t really see his face, you have no idea what he’s feeling. But you can feel Chris’ eyes on him as he tells him the importance of looking a guy in the eyes when you shoot him. It’s eerie and very effective. You have no idea what Michael will become, but it doesn’t look good.
And a great montage of scenes after Michael performs his first murder. Very skillful.
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Before discussing the ending, I want to bring up my favorite quote about endings. David Lynch said, “Endings can be beautiful things but only if they leave room to dream.” I think that the closing image does that. It passes the Lynchian litmus test.
The last scene of the episode was sublime. Donut rides up in his latest find and Namond smiles but lets him ride away. They don’t talk to each other. They’re not on the same page no more. He looks out at a quiet and pristine corner in Baltimore. You can hear the wind blowing, the wind chimes making noise. It’s a picture of urban peace and quiet. And the camera stays there forever. The perspective of the camera is interesting. We’re not seeing that corner through Namond’s eyes necessarily. He may have gone back inside. The shot confirms what the show is in its raw form really about…. Baltimore.
But what does it mean exactly? This is what cities should look like? This is what a child needs to thrive? Hmmmmmmm…
Still, as far as a closing image to a season, I didn’t think it was as powerful or as profound as Nick Sobotka looking through the chain-link fence at the harbor knowing that his uncle was murdered. Looking at him walking away and running his hand on the fence, I’ll remember that.
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And what can one say about the middle-schoolers? We have one successful intervention (Namond) and one botched intervention (Randy). And with Dookie and Michael, they don’t really have any choices. They become what society expects of them. They don’t choose their own path.
Randy falls through the cracks. I liked the scene where an impassioned Carver practically begs the social services worker to get Randy in. She wears a serious expression above her silly outfit. And all she can say is the bureaucratic standard, “the list is the list.” If Cheese is Randy’s father, than Prop Joe is his great uncle. But in a community this broken, no one even knows this. Or maybe they do, they just don’t care.
Michael. He’s on his way. But he’s really doing this for his family, for Bug. But it seems like he’s slowly falling into the trap that success breeds, kind of like Carcetti.
That’s something we saw a lot of in this episode. People trying to save others: McNulty and Bodie, Carver and Randy, Colvin and Namond, Landsman and Bubbles in a bumbling sort of way. Half the time, it’s the institutions that get in the way.
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So I suppose the question on every body’s tongue is, how does this season stack up against the others? Tough call since every season has been compelling and first-rate. However, I would make the call that this one takes the gold. Why? Because for the first time, the show has genuine heroes in the middle-schoolers. Sure we rooted for McNulty and some of the other cops in the past and maybe some of the more conscious and sensitive people on the street like Wallace or D’Angelo but the middle-schoolers gave us something that previous seasons had lacked – an innocent and uncorrupted presence.
David Simon has said that “’The Wire’ is not about good and evil” but I find that sentiment suspect given the evidence this season. We see the boys, surely no angels, becoming victimized by their own environments. By creating characters whom the audience ends up rooting for, Simon and Burns created an emotional focal point. They’re presence roots the show, especially since so many characters, from Prez to Colvin revolve around the kids. With the exception of Dookie, the kids all had strong plotlines (I know some of you disagree with me over that but Dookie’s character did not encounter the same, firm set of challenges and plot obstacles that Namond, Randy and Michael did.)
Carcetti was also a great character as we got more into the political life in the city. Omar faced real tribulations and looked scared for the first time. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here.
And as always, random comments:
- The guy next to Cutty watching “Deadwood,” “Ha, he called him cocksucker.” You can’t say they were plugging the show cause it’s basically done.
- Scene with Carcetti and his wife was interesting. She looked horrible. She looked scared. And they weren’t really communicating with each other. It’s all about him now and power.
- Great to see Vondas back. He’s a great character. I like how they brought back in Season Two. An old world man in a place like Baltimore. What he said to Marlo, “I look into the soul” of his driver… that’s exactly what Bush said when he was asked what he thought about Putin.
- I liked Colvin’s line to Parenti when they get in the elevator at City Hall: “They gonna study your study! When do things change?” He’s a great character. And seeing him storm out of Parenti’s class was instructive too. But Parenti is a hero here.
- Every post I've read today on "Final Grades" on the Internet lauds Bodie's line about feeling like "them little bitches on the chessboard." Yes, that was great.
Well, season’s over now so I suppose this is my last post. Thanks to everybody for reading and for commenting. I may post something here if I think it’s of interest to Wire watchers in the future.
My email address is asywak@gmail.com if you'd like to drop a line.
