TVSquad

While gearing up for The Wire's fourth season finale this Sunday, I checked out Slate's long interview with David Simon. He's the Baltimore resident and former journalist who created the HBO series. Lots of good nuggets about the show, which Simon compares to a "66 hour movie." That's good news, as the show has done 50 episodes over its first four seasons, so evidently the fifth and final season will be super-sized to 16 episodes.

Writer David Mills had an idea for a sixth season, according to the interview, that could have focused on east Baltimore's growing Hispanic population. However, Simon felt that doing that would have required a couple years of research into that community to do it justice, and decided to stick with his original five year plan. The Wire is meticulously researched.

Simon also talked about the differences between his show and most of what is on television. He "respects the storytelling" of The Sopranos and Deadwood, but for the most part, he stays away from other television series as influences. He's not interested in doing the kind of show that requires building up a hero main character, or the easy closure of neatly wrapped-up criminal cases.

Unless the interview just happened to catch Simon on a bad day, he is no optimist. Frankly, he doesn't feel that today's pressing social problems can be solved with our social institutions, and he says that The Wire is "about how our lives are worth less and less every day." For me as a viewer, The Wire is about how every life has value and dignity. Whether society honors that value is another question. The Wire always attempts to portray multi-dimensional characters; Simon hints we will even see other sides of Marlo's character next season. For Simon, the real evil is in the situations: government bureaucracy, the drug trade, a failing school system. In the series, these institutions function like Greek gods in myth, always vexing humankind. A revealing interview with a unique television voice.