Part of #JohnWithTheWind—a week-long editorial event.
Just one question: What would Omar say, John?
I think he’d be a touch miffed, personally. I wish I could defend you, but…how? As I have explained elsewhere, you bailed! On The Wire! I know cartoons are great and all, but I can’t know how you managed this one. This was one of the boldest, most brutally realistic shows ever stuck on a screen, a show that took a city much of America forgot about and flipped it into an indictment of our own tendency to forget.
I know you don’t need reminding, John, of its greatness. I know it’s mostly a matter of circumstance and time management and Too Much Content that forced you to shunt this narratively ambitious indictment of American institutional neglect and decay off to the side. I know there is no urgency in conversations about The Wire anymore, no Game of Thrones–like rush to the takes or the theories. I also know The Wire and what you’ll get out of finishing it are all the better for its removal from it, and that’s mainly because The Wire is made up of real people. You know this as I know it. David Simon based his characters off the characters he encountered as a beat reporter in Baltimore, and the journalism branch of the novelistic, five-season tree he developed out of those encounters may be messy, but I also know it pays off, emotionally, and that as art, it all deserves your attention.
You’ll watch it one day. But until then, content yourself with this monologue from Bunk Moreland, and Omar Little’s quiet, perfect reaction at its close.
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