"What kind of people stand around watching a fire?" So wonders Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson), city editor of the (fictional) Baltimore Sun, one of the many suffering institutions so carefully documented and dissected on "The Wire," HBO's merciless portrayal of the slow death of Baltimore, Md., a city dying before its time. A city that death becomes.
There is, indeed, an actual fire burning up a row house a few blocks from the Sun office, but no one on staff has thought to check it out. That's because the Sun's own house is decaying -- buyouts on the horizon, shuttered foreign bureaus, getting beaten on stories by both national press and smaller, nimbler local outlets. (The Sun, like the Los Angeles Times, is owned by Tribune Co.)
For four seasons it's been the holy mission of "Wire" co-creator David Simon to report on Baltimore's fires, put them out, and by extension, help to rebuild afterward. "The Wire" has been not only remarkable, nuanced and sensitive television, it has also served as education -- for those on the outside peering in -- and a salve, for those inside who felt they never had a voice.
It has also become a critical cause celebre, spoken of almost exclusively -- and seemingly reflexively -- in superlatives. That happens when a show is good, sure, but also when a show is foreign. It takes something shockingly new to recalibrate the old standards.
Last season consisted primarily of a grim account of the rise of Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) to the top of the Baltimore drug trade, and the failure of police to bring him down, even when they knew his team had been responsible for almost two dozen homicides.
Opening this season, about a year has passed, and the Stanfield organization is operating as slickly as ever. The police still surveil him, but they've made nary a dent in his business. What's more, he's eyeing Proposition Joe (Robert Chew), the elder figure who runs the drug co-op that keeps prices down.
By contrast, formal organizations and institutions -- the police, the city government and the news media -- are in disarray. Mayor Tommy Carcetti's (Aidan Gillen) promise to revitalize the school system has drained the city budget to the point where police vehicles can't be serviced, and the team working the Stanfield case has to be disbanded.
Regarding it all, and warily at that, is the Sun, the real version at which Simon spent 13 years covering criminals and those who hoped to catch them.
