Recapping 'The Wire': Episode 1

Hey, this show The Wire? It is kind of cool. I think. I don’t know if you heard about it-it started on the TV back in 2002, five years before the launch of Tumblr, four years before the launch of Twitter, so I’m not sure how you would have heard about it really? Anyway, I’ve only watched one episode so far, so here are some first impressions. So: in episode one, a homicide cop named Jimmy (played by Dominic West, who is actually ENGLISH, and who has a delightfully wrinkly forehead), accidentally starts an investigation into a big-time drug lord in Baltimore.

Everyone at the police station is really mad at him for making them do more work, and they swear at him LOTS. He gets partnered up with a narcotics cop, named Shakima-and at the end of the episode, you learn she is a lesbian when she kisses her live-in girlfriend! Anyway, everybody is sort of not mad, except Jimmy, about the fact that this guy named D’Angelo Barksdale gets off on a murder rap, because of totally obvious witness intimidation. D’Angelo gets released and goes back to the streets, demoted to supervising drug sales in the lowrise projects. The thing is, he is also the nephew of the big drug lord around town!

At the end of the episode, D’Angelo sees that the one guy who did name him as a murderer at his trial got killed. There is a long camera shot of him walking away from seeing the body, during which you have lots of time to presume that he is having second thoughts about what he is doing with his life. And at what cost, and like that. And all the cops have a meeting about their investigation, and decide that it’ll only take a month to get D’Angelo’s uncle and his outfit. I bet that’s not true though, because there are 59 more episodes to go!

All told, I thought this was a better-than-okay procedural TV show kind of thing, and its upside and downside were the same: the luxurious pacing of just having people talk about stuff and also the not totally over-indicated plot notifications that you usually get on the TV. Like, that is good because it’s more like life? But it’s annoying a little too, because it’s so much easier when the TV just tells you what to think. Like on the CSI.

But we’ll see! Stay tuned for when I watch EPISODE TWO, whenever I next have an hour to kill.