The Wire: The City of Baltimore

"The suspect is most likely a white male in his late twenties to late thirties, who is not a college graduate, but feels superior to those with advanced education, and is likely employed in a bureaucratic entity, possibly civil or public service. He has a problem with authority and a deep-seated resentment for those that have impeded his progress professionally. The sexual nature of the killings is thought to be a secondary motivation and the lack of DNA or saliva in the bite marks suggests possible postmortem staging. He may be struggling with lasting relationships and potentially a high functioning alcoholic with alcohol being used as a trigger in the crimes. The suspect’s apparent resentment of the homeless may indicate a previous personal relationship with a homeless person or the targeting may simply be an opportunity for the killer to assert his superiority and intellectual prowess."

-FBI profile on the (phony) "Red Ribbon Killer"


There are generally two kinds of television shows: those that you like, those that you respect, and both.

For example, I liked Star Trek in its various incarnations. It was enjoyable, and it had an extensive and complex backhistory. However, I never really respected Star Trek. Yes, I loved the show but I realized that Star Trek: Whatever required suspension of disbelief, very much so at times. There were several annoying tropes upon which the episodes rested, namely technobabble and the reset button being the worst of those. It became preachy when the quality of the episodes wasn't high enough to give the franchise the right to be preachy. It was entertaining television, and might have been decent science-fiction in its 1960s incarnation, but by the 2000s it had become a cartoon and was abandoned by its former audience. I used to watch every episode; now I have no use for the franchise.

There are also the shows you respect: most of them can be found on Masterpiece Theatre, usually a BBC production of one of the Jane Austen novels. You know that the show is probably quite good and the acting is superb. Watching shows like that, however, is something like eating the broccoli on your plate. It's good for you, but you realize that the investment you put in is going to be a difficult one. There's not a lot of entertainment to be found, you'll come away impressed with what you see but it's just a hard slog all the way through.

Then there are shows that are both. I'd like to think that Daria is one, although some of the episodes of Daria are quite week. I like Daria because in the late 1990s it was sort of a trope-busting show. Its protagonist was an intelligent female who wasn't at all "girly" but at the same time not a tomboy. Her life not only didn't revolve around the stuff of your typical teenage girl protagonist drama - dates and popularity - but the show's message was that the protagonist rejected the culture as shallow and insufficient. At the same time, the show was not really meant to be an adult show or a serious examination of the issues in teen life. (I think My So-Called Life got closer.) Daria is a show that I think about frequently. Was it one of the great unsung comedy-dramas or is it a massive waste of time?

The other show I want to write about is The Wire. Ostensibly, The Wire is your standard cops-and-robbers drama - the show gets its name from wiretaps on drug dealers. The main character of The Wire, however, isn't any one person but a city, the city of Baltimore. In particular, the main character is the institutions that shape the city and shape every hierarchy in the city, from the police department to the drug game to the unions to the schools to the mayor's office. The theme - if there is one - is that these institutions take on a life of their own, and instead of human beings bending the institutions to serve their purpose, the reverse is true. The institutions warp people to preserve themselves.

I believe Robert Pirsig in Lila wrote that the city might actually be a form of life in the way that a colony of ants is a form of a life - there are the needs of the ant, and then the needs of the colony. People like to believe that they're independent agents but their actions fulfill what the institution needs; if they do not, the institution strikes back to preserve itself. As Pirsig put it, we might believe we can function independently and do what we want in society but that would be like two white cells speaking with each other and one saying, "I can't imagine anything out there more complex than we are."

At the "white cell" level the show is about the many agents who play a role in the life of Baltimore. These agents include:

- the men and women of the Baltimore Police Department, in particular the "murder police" or the Homicide Division
- the chain of command of the BPD from its sergeants to its highest levels
- the Baltimore school system, particularly the inner city schools: both the teachers and the students are examined as agents
- the street, in particular the corner-level drug dealers, hustlers, and other figures
- the drug kingpins, both inside and outside Baltimore
- the mayor's office and the politicians who have power de jure and the ones who have power de facto
- those in the court system
- the union workers on the docks
- the journalists of the Baltimore Sun, from the beat reporters to the editorial staff

I believe it might have been UU who turned Scissors MacGillicutty on to The Wire. Snips, in the meantime, turned me on to it. So as a reward, I'm going to give my random thoughts about various wire characters over the next few months.
Stay tuned.