the unique political perspective of the wire, and why it doesn’t jump the shark
TLDR at the bottom
I wrote this as a comment in a now deleted thread where OP was asking when they should “stop watching the wire.” They said something about how they usually stop watching shows when greed/profit-motive begins to impact the quality of the show, and wanted to stop watching the wire before that inevitable nose dive would come so they could quit while still ahead.
My comment:
I can kind of understand why someone would take this approach when watching long-form content. You’re right that profit motive ultimately does deteriorate art, and there are some famously bad examples of tv shows dropping off a cliff when they either sell-out and milk whatever magic recipe they had for as many extra seasons as the producers will allow, or rush the ending under pressure from those same moneyed interests.
The thing is, the wire isn’t like pretty much any other tv show. It was made under completely abnormal circumstances. HBO had just gotten off the ground and wasn’t looking to turn a profit. At no point during the Wire’s 5 season run did it make money, and it had almost no viewership. It flew completely under the radar, and was not incentivized to pander to its audience. HBO kept it around because they recognized its auteurist, intellectual quality would contribute to the prestige of their brand, and with the Sopranos and some of their other successful projects raking in the dough, they didn’t need it to succeed financially. HBO was a subscription model, and came as a package deal. So if a viewer bought the HBO package for the Sopranos, then the Wire didn’t need to put up numbers. In this regard, it is one of, if not the only prestige TV show in the history of the medium whose quality was not chiefly affected by the profit motives of the industry. Its consistent quality is a product of the simple fact that it was not financially incentivized to dumb down truths or toe ideological lines for mass appeal.
The backgrounds of the show’s writing staff are a reflection of these unique circumstances surrounding its production, as does the story they chose to tell. The Wire wasnt made by tv producers/writers. The writers room was populated by career journalists and novelists who worked in consultation with the very people the show is about. The script is a product of years of research and interviews with Baltimore police and the communities they influence; kids in public schools, bureaucrats on staff for public office, dockworkers, journalists, sex workers, incarcerated peoples, drug dealers and drug addicts. Those who live and work in the deteriorating public institutions of Baltimore, and those whose real lives are shaped by them, have their fingerprints all over the final product we see on screen. As a result, what you see is much closer to the material reality of their conditions than one can expect from your usual piece of network copaganda.
In an act of sheer poetry, it is actually because of these unique production conditions—of a once-in-generation loophole in the media system surrounding its creation—that the wire is maybe the only show to genuinely, meaningfully point fingers at the system itself. It is anomalous work of popular American cinema that fully endorses a materialist political view—that the problems of America itself are systemic and governed by material conditions rather than by the morality of individuals.
Normal shows are shackled by audience expectations and the pressure to succeed financially, and the ideas permeating their scripts are a product of that context. Even at their most rebellious and counter-cultural moments, TV show runners and screenwriters are compelled to uphold the rhetoric of the american dream and the political idealism underpinning it. Sometimes subtly, sometimes loudly, all mass media is ideologically self-propagating. A production ecosystem that continually puts out content harmful to its own interests is inherently doomed. In this sense, the Wire is this incredible exception in that it reveals truths harmful to the very financial system funding its creation. Namely, it is a show that is not interested in conveying the same tired narratives of rugged individualism, self-sacrifice, and good vs evil that so many other shows, even at their most rebellious and counter-culture, are ultimately compelled to uphold by an instinct for self-preservation. Where other shows might frame these ideas through a critical lens that appears challenging at first glance, the system self-selects for those narratives whose entertainment/financial value trumps their potential for political agitation, and as such, those that manage to get produced are the ones who frame these issues in ways that do not fundamentally run counter to the interests of those at the top. Since these false promises do not accurately reflect reality, the writers eventually run out of substantive content to paint over, and are forced to cash in their chips. This is where most shows eventually fall off, selling off artistic body parts for capital.
In this regard, and as a product of its unique position within the entertainment-production-complex, the Wire stands more or less alone as the only American tv show truly free to speak truth to power, and to have the writing staff to articulate that truth so skillfully. That it was not so tightly shackled by audience expectations or the pressure to succeed financially allowed it to reflect material reality without corporate oversight intervening. It does not pull punches, and it is not interested in giving the audience the neat, uplifting happily-ever-afters that boost Nielsen ratings. Rather, it accurately and truthfully lays out the ills of the American experiment that other shows normally must couch in many layers of toothless political idealism. It is a show about how systems fail despite good people inhabiting them, and how capitalist profit motives permeate and destroy every institution and every life those institutions touch. It is show where heroes fail to beat a game rigged against them, and villains are revealed to be villainous not by inherent malevolence, but by conformity.
Throughout its run, it does not “fall off” the way most shows do. If anything, with every season, every episode, it doggedly marches closer and closer to profound truths about American life at a macro scale. Some would say the final season is the “worst” of its run, but I doubt anyone would argue this is because season 5 showcases an actual dip in quality, or sells out to fan service to any degree. It still maintains the highest possible quality of storytelling and cinema throughout. Season 5 is its weakest because the clock began to run out on HBO’s ability to continue fostering that unique productive ecosystem, one allowing for a show that made no money and that nobody watched to stay on air. Unlike most shows faced with that scenario, the Wire doesn’t rush to tie up loose ends, instead opting to leave them as thought-provoking questions that linger on with the viewer past the final episode. Season 5 is the “worst” season because it’s clear that the show still had a great deal of stories left to tell; of truths left to shed light on, and you leave it feeling like you’re getting cut off in the middle of something rather than leaving at the end. Even the worst season of this show is still easily one of the most masterful seasons of television to have ever graced the screen.
So in sum, don’t stop watching the wire. Watch it all the way through. It gets better and better as it goes along. You won’t be disappointed by the influence of money upon the show because, other than the fact that there are only 5 seasons of it, that influence simply does not bear upon the wire in the same way it does for every other tv show ever made. It’s truly a one-of-one production.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of how the show was made, there’s two very good books that detail the history of the production of the Wire, and how it compares to other shows at that time: All the Pieces Matter by Jonathan Abrams and Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution by Brett Martin. I have a degree in film and wrote a couple papers about the Wire for school, and these were two of my main sources for those efforts. Likewise, if you’re interested in the understanding the role entertainment and media play in the maintenance of American class antagonisms, I recommend Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti.
Keep watching!! If you let it, the show can radically change the way you look at the world around you (speaking from experience).
TLDR: The Wire is able to genuinely critique the system in a uniquely incisive way because the show itself was produced under equally unique circumstances within the entertainment system. These same circumstances guard it from dropping off or jumping the shark the way so many other products of mass media under capitalism do.