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.

Soft Eyes

“Just shut up and play it up.” – Walchek
“Better to be lucky than to be good” – Bunk

What stayed with me after watching this episode was the immense dysfunction that inhabits every segment of the population as portrayed in “The Wire.” Even though everyone acknowledges that they live in a crime-ridden city in serious need of attention, the system is set up in a way where everyone ends up valuing their own piece of the pie and protecting themselves, their jobs, their way of doing business rather than trying to bring about any kind of change. No one is willing to make any personal sacrifices. In this sort of climate, the city’s problems sit and fester as Walchek memorably puts it, “like a bad pirogee on the plate.” Isn’t this what economists call “The Prisoner’s Dilemna?”

For a show that features so much rapid-fire dialogue, the slow scene that opens this episode served as an appropriate intro to an episode called, “Soft Eyes.” Herc may be making a career move being on the Mayor’s detail but his wiry, impatient nature can’t stand idleness. But when you don’t perform as expected you can find yourself in a whirl of trouble.

Carcetti appears to initially be in the throes of a Bullworth-like meltdown. Why not play a game of Battleship if you can’t win? But he finds his resolve at the end (one question: why did Landsman tip off Valchek about the dead witness?) Carcetti, Fraemon, ladies-man Cutty and the middle schoolers seem to be the incipient heroes of this season. At they very least, they’re all underdogs who challenge the established order in some sort of way. At least they seem to thinking freshly about the things around them instead of just following orders and following lock-step behind the organizational flow chart. They try and make some sort of community out of all the surrounding discord and dysfunction.

The greatest breakdown in the community is in the black community affected by the drug trade. Lex’s Mom shows no concern about where her son is. All she’s doing is protecting herself. “It’s like she’s off somewhere else in her head,” as Bunk describes it. Wee-bey talking to his son about his burgeoning drug dealing career the way Ward Cleaver might have spoken to Beaver about working as a soda jerk down at the corner store. At least Marlo is giving back to the community that he’s taken so much from.

One thing I find curious, every police officer in the Major Crimes Unit has been given a pretty vivid and detectable personality. But why not Sydnor? What’s he about? He just seems to go along with everything. When he delivers the subpoena to Clay Davis (“sheeeeet”), is he just following orders or following through on some deep vision of justice? Hard to say, but I wish the film’s producers would flush him out a little bit more, give him more a persona that is more recognizable like Herc or Carver.

And another satisfying final scene: Namond lighting up a blunt as his Mom smiles at him, prattling away on the phone. How is he going to evolve? On the TV screen, Gray talks about helping out Baltimore schools, but Namond just wants to play a shoot-em-up video game.

"Boys of Summer"

An excellent beginning to Season Four of "The Wire." "Boys of Summer" introduces us to the middle-schoolers and continues the story thread of the mayoral race. We also see the adjustments on the street to Marlo’s hegemony of druge dealing in West Baltimore. This episode also used a lot of interesting scene juxtapositions. Of the four season openers of “The Wire” I think “Boys of Summer” is second only to “Ebb Tide,” which began the Second Season.

On a half-hour HBO special that delved into Baltimore and what to expect in Season Four, either David Simon or Ed Burns said about the show, “I’m very unconcerned with good and evil.” Hmmmmmm, I would say that has largely been true the last three seasons but I sensed some more firm moral delineations of character in this episode than in episodes past.

The four middle-schoolers and Prez, in particular, come across as virtuous. You can’t help but root for them when you see the derelict alley they play in and the equally derelict classroom that Prez has to turn into a learning center. Carcetti, the“lost-ball-in-the-high-grass muthafucka” (love that line by Royce) strikes a sympathetic pose in this episode, particularly after milking a few connections to get the “tank traps” removed from the blighted neighborhood he calls “Fallujah.”

While this season has been talked about as the “education” season, “Boys of Summer” was really about Carcetti. Next to a pouty Gray and the slimy, corrupt Royce, he looks fresh and energetic. Behind his pretty boy looks and coy political maneuverings and despite his petulant outbursts, he appears to have most of his moral compass intact. Or so it appears.

But I did find it to be an odd directorial juxtaposition between him dialing for dollars while Lex waits patiently – like Omar would – for Fruit to emerge from the club. Two killers on the prowl? I’m not sure what this was about. And yes, Carcetti’s right, the Orioles’ pitching does suck.

And Marlo. He’s the Sun Tzu of West Baltimore. He knows when to hold back, restraining himself from engaging in endless reprisals of the twisted ghetto honor culture that ended Stringer and Barksdale. He sends a message with his assassinations, but as they are targeted and discriminate, he avoids falling into the cyclical nature of violence, at least for now. He stays above the fray and realizes that you don’t need to make too many bodies to get your point across.

But, above all, the best part of this episode is the ending: the juxtaposition of Carcetti and Randy both looking out into the night. One sits tipsy on a bench in tony Federal Hill overlooking the harbor overwhelmed by his own ambitions, the other guilt-ridden after sending Lex into a fatal trap. One boy and one man staring into very different realities of life in Baltimore. It’s something you see a lot at the end of TV shows, characters plaintively staring out into the night, but in this instance it looks fresh. And powerful.