Generation Kill is the new mini-series by David Simon and Ed Burns, co-creators of HBO’s hit “The Wire.” The show is set in Iraq, and centers around a Rolling Stone reporter trying to cover the war. If it is anything like its predecessor, it will be the best thing on TV until the day it is over.
Read more about the new show here and get more info from HBO’s website.
Why “The Wire” will remain relevant:
I’m not talking about the fact that the show ended in a way that could later produce a movie or a sixth season (not necessarily a good idea, but that’s not the point). The Wire will remain relevant because each episode was so enormously dense. One of the staples of the show was that nothing substantial happened for 80% of each season, and then in the last two episodes all hell would break loose. Well, in that first 80% there were so many references to Baltimore, to crime and drug policy topics, and to historical facts long forgotten by anyone else that unless you were taking notes, you’d completely miss a significant portion of the show’s intricacies.
For example, a few years ago I took a class with Professor Mark Kleiman at UCLA, where we learned about a number of policy ideas that were eventually paralleled by Bunny Colvin on the show. Kleiman, who grew up in Baltimore, once happened to mention that there was a ‘daily number’ racket run through the local paper. A mobster whose name I have long forgotten would publish the daily number, which people all over the city would bet on. If they got the number right, they’d be paid out by their bookies, and if not, the mobster would get a nice little kickback from the bookies.
In an offhand remark that I can barely remember, the architect of the ‘daily number’ racket was mentioned during an episode in Season 3. The point of the conversation was that there was a way to make money in Baltimore without getting caught (a favorite point of Prop Joe). This is one of the few Baltimore references that I actually picked up on and I can imagine that there were countless others that simply fell on deaf ears. As I was writing this piece, I tried to google the reference but its so obscure that I couldn’t find it.
The point of this all is simply to say that The Wire will remain relevant because on the first watch, you can only pick up so much beyond the plot. There were so many things in Season 5 that were foreshadowed (Kenard) or returned to (the detective who tried to throw himself down the stairs in Season 1) that without a second watch, there’s hardly a way to grasp the show’s true depth. A second or third watch will reveal those intricacies as well as the vast number of Baltimore references that undoubtedly permeate the dialogue. As far as I can tell, there’s not good way to figure out the name of that numbers racket mobster without either looking up my old professor, or re-watching the relevant episodes. So when a TV show becomes a valuable repository for a city’s history, one can only hope that the show will remain a valuable and respected resource for years to come.
The hype is building. Its gotten so crazy that now even Bill Simmons is on David Simon’s tit. The finale won’t air a week early on HBO On Demand, so we’ll all be sitting on our hands for a while. (scratch that, it leaked online)
Notes that will be randomly updated:
Some final thoughts on the show, in a newer post.
The finale leaked. I found it through a friendly link on the blogroll, but I get the feeling I shouldn’t be bandying it about. How about this instead: there’s no question it will be up on the torrents relatively soon, but if you can’t figure it out, leave a comment and maybe someone else will have the scoop.
I miss Randy. I hope we see him again in some way. This season Cheese has been referred to as Cheese Wagstaff, which is not a coincidence. Cheese is Randy’s dad!
“how my hair look?” well definitely go down as one of the show’s most intense moments.
Levy is in the new Wendy’s commercial, peep it here.
Read this before you do anything else:
Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker Piece on David Simon
HBO’s The Wire is airing tonight, Episode 6 of Season 5.
At The Smoking Section, Matthew Mundy wrote a great piece about the show, its creator David Simon, and its fifth and final season. Mundy levies this criticism against David Simon:
The ghosts of Simon’s newspaper past also haunt and it’s here that the show has, however briefly, lost sight of the forest for the trees. The contempt Simon holds for his former editors at the Sun, John Carroll and Bill Marimow, a disdain by now legendary, permeates every scene in the newsroom. His scorn for them, which he claims results from their misplaced ardor for prizes at the expense of good journalism, threatens to overwhelm. We’re often left with one-dimensional caricatures of these editors, rather than the full-bodied complexity of the rest of the show’s cast. This is a minor gripe though, as the rest of the season – as per usual – has been superlative.
I’m not accustomed to watching it on weekly basis, but until episodes 8-10 leak online, I’ll be forced to endure seemingly endless pauses. That being said, Mundy’s article is a great way to get back in the mindset of the show.
McSweeney’s today has a link to The Believer magazine’s repost of a Nick Hornby conversation with David Simon.
Here’s a quote in which David Simon attempts to explain the show’s departure from pure good and evil to more complex and realistic narratives:
“The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason.”
Here’s a preview clip from Season 5:
Also, the Season 5 trailer:
And, while I’m at it, I’ll link to the Wire with a laugh track, on YouTube.
Lastly, a link to a book written by Rafael Alvarez regarding the Wire, focusing on the first 2 seasons. I read it and its fascinating, so many of the characters and stories are based almost entirely on real events and memories of David Simon and Ed Burns. Hopefullyit will be re-published with updates for the last three seasons as well.
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