Image via Complex Original
Though it flew mostly under the radar while it was on the air, HBO's The Wire has ballooned to become a massive cultural phenomenon, giving television a 21st century Dickensian story and providing annoying white dudes at parties ammunition for faking knowledge of urban education policy. Considering how successful the series' portrait of Baltimore and its institutions—a run-down police department, grinding drug organizations, a failing school system—reading early writing confused by the series' pacing and skeptical of its long-term success is just surreal. Now, The Wire is its own institution—it's inspired several college classes, a brutal character bracket, and is even President Obama's favorite show.
But for practically the entire time since its run ended, criticism of The Wire has been practically non-existent (thanks, Obama). Of course, much of The Wire is a polemic by series creator David Simon, a brilliant writer and renowned asshole. The intensely argumentative and particular nature of the show makes it hard to criticize, on some level, since practically everything that happens is an attempt to fit into a worldview, and framework for that worldview, which the viewer either accepts or rejects. But that doesn't mean there aren't problems with the show beyond a general heavy-handedness. Some characters don't fit; others do things that don't make sense. Like McNulty fresh off the boat, we're ready to investigate: Here are The Wire's biggest flaws.
Eric Thurm is a contributing writer. He tweets here.
The Totally Unnecessary, “Realism”-Compromising Pilot Flashback
When: “The Target” (season 1, episode 1)
The first episode of The Wire is a marvel in the way it establishes many of the main players and throws them right into the action (whether they want to be there or not). Honestly, it’s maybe a little too efficient and confident, making it difficult for first-time viewers to follow the characters, what they’re doing, and why. But that’s not the biggest problem with “The Target”—no, the real problem is that it’s the only episode to formally violate the series’ very dogged attempt at realism.
When D’Angelo finds the dead body of William Gant in the street, there’s a flashback to Gant’s testimony in the trial from the beginning of the episode. Not only are flashbacks to things that happened in the same episode kinda condescending, the edit breaks the linearity of the story, and takes the viewer out of the episode. David Simon has complained about HBO forcing him to insert the flashback, and, on rewatch, it’s clear he was right.
Fitz, America's Most Worthless FBI Agent
When: Entire series
The Wire has hundreds of characters, almost all of who get at least one moment to suggest a depth and humanity beyond their job. This is one of the most important things about the show—everyone from Poot to Rawls had some dimension in that first season, and even the bloated Deputy Commissioner Burrell had at least some paternal interest in Lieutenant Daniels’ career.
But McNulty’s FBI agent friend Fitz was always a thinly sketched character at best, a caricature in a show without any. Fitz served two purposes: giving McNulty stuff after he asked nicely (because how would West Baltimore cops get the gear Daniels’ detail uses?) and reminding us that the country had by and large moved on to the War on Terror from the so-called War on Drugs, leaving an entire police apparatus behind.
Daniels’ Faux-Shady Past
When: Entire series
For most of the first season, McNulty is an awful person and huge pain in the ass for the Baltimore Police Department. But he’s also the audience identification character, and he’s almost always right about the big case against the Barksdale organization. Still, for much of the first season, several characters cast doubt about Lieutenant Daniels’ past, suggesting that he was dirty as a detective in the Eastern district. This does some work for the plot, both because it ties into Daniels’ wife’s political ambitions and because it provides a semblance of conflict between Daniels and McNulty, who’s unsure whether his commanding officer is good police. But the suggestion that Daniels was dirty, even at one point in his career, never really sticks—he just seems too decent (Lance Reddick brings too much starch to his performance to suggest a wrinkled former life).
So while the confrontation between Daniels and Burrell at the end of season one is compelling, it’s not nearly as climactic a reveal as the rest of the finale. Burrell’s file on Daniels comes back in season five, but by then it’s a meaningless bargaining chip. Someone might have earned all of that extra money, but it wasn’t Cedric Daniels.
Ziggy
When: Season 2
Season two is the second-most hated season of The Wire. Lots of “fans” dislike it because it’s the “most boring,” when really the shift to the docks is a crucial part of the series establishing that it’s not just a cops-and-robbers show, not even a super-realistic one. The Wire is about the city of Baltimore, and people who urge their friends to skip season two because it doesn’t have much Barksdale story are bad fans.
But one part of season two does grate: Ziggy Sobotka. The rest of the characters in the port story serve the season’s broader theme about the decline of American labor—Frank tries his best to keep the union together, Nick discovers that the stevedore life he was promised is disappearing, and everyone else struggles to get by—but for Ziggy, the port is practically an aside. There are compelling things about the character, mostly stemming from the way he finally snaps under the weight of trying to be something he’s not (and that duck), but the way he fits in to the season as a whole feels more like stitching meant to connect the docks to the drug dealers. Given how incompetent and unfit for dockwork he is, maybe Ziggy would have fit in better at the Baltimore Sun.
McNulty's Bleeding Heart
When: “Hard Cases” (season 2, episode 4)
McNulty’s involvement in the season two case against the stevedores and the Greek is tenuous, at best—his placement on the marine unit creates a decent reason for him to discover one of the bodies of the Russian girls, and his hatred of Rawls is a hilarious justification for the math he does to prove that the 13 murders in a shipping container are on the city police.
But beyond that? We get two reasons as to why McNulty is tracking down the identities of the dead girls—he wants to help out Bunk and Lester, sure, but he also claims to be upset by what the morgue does to the bodies of murder victims with no identity, and pursues their names on his own time accordingly. That just doesn’t sit right with the McNulty we know, who has a sliver of empathy for victims but mostly because they provide cases to be solved. This is an exaggeration of McNulty’s sentimental side that isn’t sustainable, story-wise. Sentiment only works when he’s drunk, and he wasn’t drunk the entire season.
D'Angelo, Locked Up
When: Season 2
D’Angelo’s murder is a big statement for the show, the first serious death since Wallace and a clear message that no character is safe. It drives a wedge between Avon and Stringer, who reveals his role in Avon’s nephew’s death to win an argument about whether or not he’s hard enough for the game, thus beautifully setting up their mutual betrayal at the end of season three. But everything else that happens to D’Angelo in prison feels like a retread of his story in season one—we don’t need the hot shots to know that he’s come to morally reject the drug game—and a way to keep him around, a dead man walking.
Where’s Kintell? (And Are We Supposed to Care?)
When: “Homecoming” (season 3, episode 6)
When McNulty and Kima go behind Daniels’ back to get the detail back on Stringer, it seems like a victory—after all, we’ve been following String this whole time, and he’s the one in charge of the drug organization we’ve come to know so well. It shouldn’t feel that way, though. The detail had spent months getting wires up on Kintell Williamson, a drug kingpin we barely see. Kintell might not be as big a target as Stringer (and he eventually joins String’s New Day Co-Op), but Prez and Lester still put in good police work trying to catch him and close his murder cases. Without time spent on that investigation, it’s practically impossible for Simon to land the argument that McNulty and Kima have actually ruined the investigation, in a concession to the constraints of TV drama (which focuses on a limited number of characters). Investing an episode or two on Kintell might have felt like a waste of time, but that would’ve been the whole point.
The Ballad of Stringer and Donette
When: “Hot Shots” (season 2, episode 3)
Idris Elba is a sex icon, but Stringer Bell isn’t. When he gets together with D’Angelo’s girlfriend Donette, are we supposed to believe he actually cares about her? It’s hard to imagine Stringer caring about anyone besides his accountant (and maybe Avon). It’s especially hard to imagine that person being Donette, who’s rarely interesting on her own terms, considering how much time we spend with her. Maybe it’s an attempt to humanize String, but all we needed for that was his econ class. Maybe it’s because he wanted to keep tabs on D’Angelo through her, but Stringer is such a cipher when dealing with anyone who’s not involved in his business that trying to think about him maintaining a romantic relationship strains the bounds of credibility (and is pretty cold, even for String). Besides, he’s so clearly emotionally invested only in Avon that the demise of their partnership resembles a bitter divorce.
The Sunday Morning Truce
When: “Slapstick” (season 3, episode 9)
Season three often tends toward the absurd, turning the creation of Hamsterdam into a bizarre social-experiment-cum-nightmare-zone, pushing past the bounds of reality in a way that augurs the fake serial killer story in season five. But that gave the writers’ room a bit too much of a presence. When Gerard and Sapper comically attack Omar’s grandmother and shoot off her hat, it’s necessary as a way of drawing the stickup boy back onto the Barksdale crew. Beyond that plot function, though, the Sunday morning truce is introduced and never spoken of again, serving as an excuse to have people yell about Omar’s grandmother’s crown in a manner that reeks of unnecessary dark comedy, an exaggeration of the rules in a series that rarely dropped its poker face.
Police Brutality
When: Entire series
Tony Colicchio might be the worst cop in The Wire’s Baltimore Police Department, which is saying a whole lot. He’s a power-hungry racist asshole who buys into the Broken Windows theory and beats a black civilian simply for getting in his face. Sound familiar? Meanwhile, Eddie Walker beats on the kids of Tilghman and steals from Omar. The police on The Wire are trapped in institutions that strip them of their and prevent them from doing their jobs—the tragedy of these cops is that it’s hard for them to catch the dealers. But while characters like Herc are often casually racist and stupid, they’re less often presented as seriously abusing the power of the badge in ways that are all too familiar. The biggest problem with how The Wire handles Colicchio and Walker is that there aren’t more like them.
Kima and Cheryl—Really?
When: Seasons 1–3
The parallels between Kima and McNulty are one of the backbones of the series, so it’s not the worst idea to see Kima wreck a relationship because of her devotion to the job just like McNulty does. But Cheryl isn’t the best partner for this story—she’s almost comically bourgie, going shopping for juice box holders and other unnecessary kitsch before their baby is born. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it definitely doesn’t make any sense with the hard-nosed Kima, who might be callous and less than invested in the success of their family, but is also right when she tells McNulty that Cheryl always knew she was police.
The real problem here isn’t that they don’t make sense as a couple—lots of real partners are terrible together—it’s that we never really get a sense for why they were together in the first place. Their sex scenes come close to overcoming this (and are impressive depictions of a lesbian relationship given when the show aired), but pretty much every other time we see them together, they’re uncomfortable and snippy, the writers claiming they’re together just because. As their relationship collapses in the background of season three, it’s hard to see it as anything more than inevitable, and harder to care.
The Iraq War Allegory: Mission Unaccomplished
When: Season 3
Season three is, in part, a sustained allegory for (and argument against) the Iraq War, to the point where the finale’s ironic title is “Mission Accomplished.” The comparisons between the “war on drugs” and the Iraq War are valid, up to a point—both are pointless, requiring engagement with a populace that has no interested in overbearing American troops—but the comparison still falls flat. Both are serious issues, but only one was started on a series of elaborate lies rather than a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to a serious policy problem (you know what I mean). The comparison is occasionally instructive, but often it’s more indicative of what was going on in David Simon’s head at the moment. And it helps date the show in a way that not even pagers could.
Boring Rupert Bond
When: Seasons 4-5
The new State’s Attorney gets elected primarily as a way of elevating Pearlman, allowing her to continue working closely with Daniels and the rest of the homicide unit as the unit chief for violent crimes. At first, he seems to be idealistic, promoting Rhonda because of her independence, before rejecting federal help to go after Clay Davis himself (with one eye on the mayor’s office)—sound familiar? The self-serving decision that lets Davis get away is a mirror of Carcetti rejecting the governor’s education bailout, a refusal to sacrifice personal fame in exchange for real results. And not only is Bond no Tommy Carcetti, Dion Graham is no Aiden Gillen—Bond is a presence, but he’s not a particularly charismatic one, even with all of the time he gets.
Shots Fired…at Deadwood?
When: “Final Grades (season 4, episode 13)
After he’s shot trying to pull Michael off the street, Cutty winds up in the hospital, next to an old white guy entertaining himself by watching Deadwood, The Wire’s biggest competition for the title of “best HBO show” at the time. The man laughs at the use of the word “cocksucker,” repeating it to himself as if the profanity is the only reason Deadwood is worth watching, which comes across as a snipe at the other series. It’s a particularly striking moment of pettiness (of which there are many in season five), and an uncharacteristic, distracting acknowledgment of The Wire’s own fictionality and its competition. There’s more than enough room for people to like both The Wire and Deadwood, David(s).
The Greek Rides Again
When: “Final Grades (season 4, episode 13)
Once it’s clear that the detail is on to them, the Greek up and leaves at the end of season two, cautious to the point of leaving over $100,000 of heroin at the port. It’s easy enough to go to another city, and no one we know will ever see them again. But at the end of season four, we find out that his organization has set up shop in Baltimore again, that Spiros is dealing directly with Prop Joe. It’s not that this return is totally unreasonable—after all, it’s not like anyone was going to make them so long after the stevedore case—but it’s supremely unnecessary, a premature beginning of the greatest hits parade that characterizes much of season five. (Marlo could have just as easily found another reason to kill Joe, or another connect.) The Wire had earned the right to take a victory lap, but it didn’t need one.
The Season 5 Cameos
When: Season 5
The Greek plays more of a substantive role in season five, but that last run of episodes is still filled with lots of old faces making appearances solely for the hell of it. Nick Sobotka returns, seemingly out of witness protection, to heckle Carcetti over the decline of the port, something Horseface or any of the other remaining dock characters could have done. (And with the Greeks back in town, might his life be in danger?) Prez shows up to get scammed by Dukie in one of the most heart-breaking moments of the series. Even John Munch shows up, making his first appearance in Baltimore since leaving Simon’s last series Homicide: Life On The Street for Law And Order: SVU. These are all nice nods to the fans, acknowledging the journey we’ve gone on over the course of the series, but too many of them and the seams start to show.
Sober McNulty, Relapsed McNulty: Take Your Pick
When: Seasons 4-5
Lots of fans turn their noses up at the season where everyone’s favorite asshole settles down with Beadie Russell and spends all of his time with their “ankle-biters,” having given up liquor. After all, how could the endlessly egotistical, womanizing workaholic Jimmy McNulty, who is, in part, supposed to serve as a corrective to the images of antihero cops that dot standard cop shows, become a good partner and father? And why with Beadie?
Others react negatively to the corrective to this story, when McNulty relapses into both police work and alcohol, culminating in the insane creation of the red ribbon serial killer. If we accept that McNulty’s getting out, why pull him back except as an act of acknowledgment that he ought to play a part in the final season somehow? Even after he gets fired and goes back to Beadie, it’s hard to imagine anyone totally happy with McNulty’s full arc.
The Fake Serial Killer
When: Season 5
The product of the full McNulty, the fake serial killer is the closest thing the fifth season has to a main plot, mocking the “one last job” cliché by putting all of the cops back together on a topsy-turvy version of a major case. After creating a fictional serial killer to prey on the homeless in order to get money for real work, McNulty essentially becomes the commissioner of his own private police department, a hypothetical that doesn’t work as well as “what if a cop tried to legalize drugs.” Admittedly, the success of the ruse is about as plausible as Hamsterdam, but this one doesn’t dig nearly as deep into the possible consequences of everyone’s actions, or make a larger thematic point. Mostly, the story is about
McNulty and Lester (and Kima, who has to choose to rat them out).
It’s a way of pulling in all sorts of other things, too; material that pushes the boundaries between dark comedy and outright satire (think of the FBI agent who makes a big deal out of his media appearances and consulting for CSI). The interesting stuff here is all reactions from characters we already know, but The Wire was never really a character study so much as an institutional one. Worst of all, we barely even see Lester’s case against Marlo, the justification for the entire scheme.
Templeton, the Recipient of Simon’s Hate
When: Season 5
Simon has claimed that the real point of the Baltimore Sun plot is the absence of stories—that journalists won’t cover any of the important stories, the things we’ve been watching consume the city for the past four seasons. But it’s hard to believe that when most of the screen time at the Sun is spent on serial fabricator Scott Templeton. Templeton’s encouragement of the fake serial killer and his repeatedly rewarded terrible journalism are given so much attention that it’s almost possible to believe that the problems at the Sun would be solved if only someone would fire him (or if he would only put in the work to be a good reporter). He’s a creature of pure selfishness, an almost inhuman force like Clay Davis, but Tom McCarthy doesn’t have nearly as much personality to transform that ego into a living, breathing character the way Isaiah Whitlock does.
Infallible Gus
When: Season 5
Templeton’s main rival in the newspaper plot isn’t so well drawn either. Clark Johnson is a great, soulful actor (and a better director for the series), and he embodies Gus Haynes with all of the world-weary competence you’d expect from a reasonably successful career newspaperman. But what he’s given to work with is less potent. Though he’s not exempt from missing some of the bigger stories throughout the season (only giving a few paragraphs to an obituary for Prop Joe), he’s right about almost everything else. Gus is essentially a saint for journalism, increasingly skeptical of Templeton and right on with his disdain for the paper’s leadership. He’s functionally a mouthpiece for Simon, a way to air personal grievances in a setting that normally strives to be all business. Johnson’s performance is solid, but that doesn’t make Gus’ time on The Wire any less distracting.
Crazy Lester
When: “Not For Attribution” (season 5, episode 3)
Lester is perhaps the biggest single casualty of the fake serial killer story, comically turning into the overriding force behind the hoax. Lester piggybacks on McNulty’s resources to try and catch Marlo for good, perpetually stringing McNulty along and claiming it’ll always be another week or two before they close the case. Sure, Lester is sore over losing Marlo to Marimow’s brief command, and season five clearly wants us to think things have gotten so bad in Baltimore that he’d snap, but Lester’s devotion to good police work comes from a similar dedication to paperwork and straight-up good policing. He’s clearly comfortable being off the trail of major cases after his long stint in the pawnshop unit, and he also has Shardene to worry about. Wise Lester indeed.
Sydnor Is the New McNulty
When: “-30-” (season 5, episode 10)
“-30-,” the series finale, makes a big deal out of how cyclical this world is. Several characters are consciously positioned as younger versions of the people we’ve already spent time with—Dukie on the path to being a new Bubbles, Michael the next Omar, and Carver the new Daniels, for example. But while most of these are effortless, premised as they are in the way the institutions that comprise Baltimore force people into the same familiar roles, Sydnor going to Judge Phelan rings false. He’s never seemed the type, never consumed by ego like McNulty. And the Baltimore Police Department might be deeply dysfunctional, but that’s not enough to drive someone who’d always been good police to aggressively try to fuck his bosses.
Where Are the Latino Characters?
When: Entire series
West Baltimore is predominantly black, and The Wire reflects that. Whenever the characters talk about race, it’s always in terms of black-versus-white, which makes sense based on what the characters think and the problems they’re dealing with, especially in the second season. But the lack of a real Latino community, or really any Hispanic characters (with the exception of Alma Gutierrez), is a major failure in the show’s attempt to depict all sorts of different people, and to paint a fuller picture of the city. There was a rumor that a proposed sixth season would have focused on immigration, but it never materialized.
A Man's World (But Why?)
When: Entire series
The Wire is a man’s, man’s, man’s, man’s world. That’s partially because it’s trying to realistically depict patriarchy—all of the institutions on the show are male-dominated, and adding more female characters could reek of tokenism. The drug dealers, cops, politicians, and certainly stevedores are all acting out different conceptions of masculinity, which means that most of the fleshed-out female characters are all “strong” in the sense that they act like dudes. (This is literalized in the case of Kima, who has several “ugh, women” shit-shooting sessions with McNulty.) Many of the other women of The Wire are almost completely non-presences, to the point where it’s tough to remember the names Michael’s mother (Raylene), who perpetually asks him for money and seems totally uninterested in her own children or Carcetti’s wife (Jen), moved increasingly to the background as her life becomes consumed by the ambitious man she had the misfortune of marrying.
This isn’t to say that The Wire is a terrible show in its depiction of women, but it’s remarkably clear-headed about most of the other social issues it engages—it’d would’ve be nice for the show to have tackled systemic bias against women in the same way.
No One's Watching
When: Entire series
Season one is noticeably less visually interesting than the rest of the series—it’s more deliberate, flatter, and just has less going on. The diminished overall look of season one is, in part, because the first season is trying to teach the viewer how to watch the show, suggesting that maybe we should just focus on learning everyone’s names and getting up to speed on what’s happening. But it also means something is lost in the change to a more confident aesthetic.
One of The Wire’s early stylistic signatures (and only real visual flairs) is a heavy reliance on surveillance footage, whether in the FBI office or the security camera in the lowrises that Bodie clips with a rock in the opening titles. Clark Johnson, who directed three episodes of the first season, bears primary responsibility for this touch, but he doesn’t return to the director’s chair until “-30-,” so this technique falls by the wayside. That’s too bad, because when it’s used well (as it is in the long shot of Daniels and McNulty uncomfortably riding the elevator together), that sense of voyeurism and omnipresent eyes helps hammer home one of the series’ main arguments about institutional entrapment without a single word.