You Gotta Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole

“I’m too fucking simple-minded for that. I just wanted to see something new every day and write a story with it.”

-Clark Johnson as “Gus Haynes” in the series finale of HBO’s THE WIRE.

When people ask me about the robbery back in January, they always seem to want to know what was going through my mind as I was being told to lie face down on the floor. Did my life flash before my eyes? Did I make peace with God? Did I fear for my life? The answer to all those questions is no. No, I didn’t think of anything, didn’t feel anything. By the time I was on the floor, I had conceded the situation was well out of my hands. So I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best, knowing that I had followed policy every step of the way. There was very little room leftover in my headspace for anything else.

I can tell you what I was thinking in the seconds right before the robbery occurred, though. As I stood up in the office counting that last cash register, I kept thinking, “Just a few more minutes and I can go home, get something to eat, and watch the latest episode of THE WIRE.” That’s it right there. That’s everything that was in my head before I looked down at the sales floor and saw my cashier with a gun above her head. I was thinking about how much I had come to love the show since it was brought into the shadow of THE SOPRANOS in 2002 and how I was going miss it since it is/was the only show that really had something to say anymore. I had invested all my interest and attention to it over the span of four seasons and was looking forward to seeing how the producers planned to wrap the fifth season up. It was what I always reserved Sunday nights for. I would watch the latest episode as it aired, then fire up the “On Demand” service and catch the next episode a week early. For a while there, it was a way of life for me.

After the robbery, it was hard getting back into the show. The gunplay and realistic violence didn’t do much to help with the anxiety I was having. But I kept watching anyway; kept firing up that “On Demand”. Little by little, I started getting that old Sunday night rhythm back. When I found myself freaking out on my weekends, I would often tell myself at least there was a new episode of THE WIRE waiting for me. And since I’ve seen every episode at least five or six times, I could always go back and watch the ones I hadn’t been focusing on around the time of the robbery. The show never got old for me, so I had no problem going back for seconds on any episode. It was my one true compulsive tick. My one security blanket. And now it’s gone. The show ended on March 9th for good and now I’m reduced to watching the JOHN ADAMS mini series in its place. It’s just not the same.

THE WIRE was an oddity among television series. It was a cop show that depicted actual police work as nothing more than a monotonous grind. It was fiction, but its creators and fans never considered it as “entertainment”. The lines between the good guys and bad guys were always being redrawn, and a rotating cast of 75 main characters came and went as the stories dictated. The creators of the show never gave into audience demand, be it over a certain character or storyline. They wrote about issues that were important to them and asked that you pay attention to every little detail and every piece of dialog. Because, after all, “all the pieces fit”. It was never and easy show meant for the causal viewer, which is probably why it never really got noticed until its acclaimed fourth season. Even THE SOPRANOS proved to be more accessible in the end. Despite the fact that THE WIRE was superbly written and acted, it failed to get the numbers and the awards of HBO’s other shows. And yet, HBO kept it on the roster for five seasons. The fact it stayed alive that long is a miracle. For a while, there was some talk of it ending after just the third season, which would have been unsatisfying to all of us Wireheads, to say the least.

The “success” of the show really rests on the shoulders of three people:
David Simon, Ed Burns, and Robert F. Colesberry. David Simon was an ex Baltimore Sun Reporter who wrote the non-fiction book, HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS. Later, he would write and produce episodes of the T.V. show based on the book. He was THE WIRE’s soul and voice. The above quote from “Gus Haynes” is probably something he said about The Baltimore sun before he left the paper in disgust after they offered him a buyout.

Ed Burns was a retired police detective turned teacher who Simon asked to help guide him through the mean streets of west Baltimore for his next book, THE CORNER, which detailed one year in the lives of the people who lived in the vicinity of a single drug corner. Without Burns, those people would have always regarded Simon with guarded skepticism. In the end, they wound up gaining the trust of every dope fiend on the block and wrote a book that should be required reading in schools today. When it came time for Simon to develop the book into an award winning HBO mini series, Simon and Burns teamed up once again, this time as producers.

Robert F. Colesberry, on the other hand, was a well known film and television producer who was just starting to get his feet wet as a director when he died from complications following heart surgery in-between seasons two and three of THE WIRE. He had a recurring role in the show as “Ray Cole”, who was often portrayed as a bumbling, but good-hearted cop. The series finale ended with a dedication to him at the very end of the credits.

Together, those three people created a show where the city of Baltimore was the lead character and everybody else played second. The story started off using the drug trade as a springboard to bigger and better things, often showing how legal enterprise and local politics kept the city under a constant wave of crime. In the fifth season, the creators decided to put the media’s dubious practices under a microscope by pushing a morally corrupt reporter to the forefront of the storyline. This was always the way of Simon, Burns, and Colesberry. They never told the same story twice. In fact, they completely gutted the series for its second season, taking the action of the streets and pushing it to the docks where they dealt with the white union guys and the death of the American Dream. Somehow, though, they managed to piece it all together. You still had people from the second season popping up in the fifth. You were forced to look at it as a whole. It was a sixty-episode novel on television. That’s the only way to describe it.

So why, if it was so good, did it go unnoticed by viewers? I’ll refer you to this quote from Simon himself off the HBO website:

“I would urge everyone to get hold of Andrew Hacker’s “Two Nations,” a thin but telling book that gently examines the cultural presumptions of white folk and lays bare the sociopolitical and racial chasm in this country. A notable fact from that book: Studies show that most whites want some black representation in their neighborhoods and schools – we want our children to experience a certain degree of multiculturalism, we want to regard ourselves as racially progressive, we want a handful of black friends and neighbors and playmates. White neighborhoods do not bristle when the black population is lessthan seven percent or so, but if home sales to black buyers increase and the percentage of black representation in a neighborhood reaches say, fifteen percent, white flight ensues. We are not racists, for the most part, but we want to be progressive in small, modest increments.”

I can tell you honestly, from my perspective, there’s some truth to what he said there when asked if the show was “too black” to get better ratings among viewers. When the show first premiered in 2002 to little fanfare, I was one of those people who did not want to watch another portrayal of gang bangers in urban America. Not because I felt I was being was being racist, mind you. But because I felt nobody had anything new to say about the subject. Nobody in rap music was politicizing the issues like NWA or Public Enemy had in the late 80s/early 90s. All that anger had been satiated by jewelry, cars, and women. All we’re left with from those days now is FlAVOR OF LOVE. Urban environment? Hell, you can pop TRUE CRIME or GRAND THEFT AUTO into your Playstation 2 and experience it that way without even leaving your own home. And these days, even if your entire neighborhood is entirely white, you till have groups of kids adopting the slang off of MTV and BET. To me, the whole conversation just seemed hollow. So I passed on THE WIRE for the first twelve out of thirteen episodes. Then, much like how I discovered E.R. in its first season, I caught an episode that just blew me away. It was a revelatory hour that made me backtrack all the way to the beginning and then start preaching to everybody about it. The ironic thing about that, though, was the fact none of my African American co-workers had seen the show, either. So over the years, I got them involved, too. And the discussions we have about the show always come around to the same sticking point. Race isn’t the problem so much as the structure of power in America is fucked. We all agree, no matter what our backgrounds, that the deck is stacked against working slobs like us. For us, the show is a uniting factor, not a dividing one. And now it’s gone, probably to be replaced by a series that won’t cast half as much weight. There go my Sunday nights.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if you missed this show for whatever reason, try giving it a shot on DVD or “On Demand”. It will make you question everything you see, watch, or read. I promise. But above and beyond that, THE WIRE was a great television series, better than even THE SOPRANOS. And I’ll miss having fresh episodes to pour over. I really will. It was an important show to me and I can only hope to write something half as engaging some day. It was/is the show that I’m now going to hold all other shows by. It was that good…

The start of it all, the series’ first few moments. Detective Jimmy McNulty ponders the fate of “Snot Boogie”.

“The Bunk” chides professional stick-up boy Omar Little. A great example of the show’s excellent writing and acting. One of my favorite scenes.

The show wasn’t without its lighter moments. A favorite scene of mine from season two. Bunk and Lester Freamon question a container ship full of foreign crew members.

“Way Down In The Hole” (theme song from THE WIRE)
by Tom Waits

~

When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he’s gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole

He’s got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don’t have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand
we’ll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

All the angels sing about Jesus’ mighty sword
and they’ll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord
don’t pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole