I finished watching it yesterday. I have some thoughts about the politics of it but to be honest I don’t have a leg to stand on because I know nothing about how majority black cities in America work.
On the non-political side, I really enjoyed the first two seasons. Season 2 in particular was the best one for me. Post that there was too much focus on politicking for my taste and I just wanted to it be over with. That Carcetti guy reminded me of Buttigieg and I found him really annoying. I knew he was gonna be a rat faced turncoat the moment I saw him. But I appreciated the focus on school aged male children even though it was depressing.
The ending was a bit disappointing for me because it essentially said nothing ever changes. The sobriety of it makes sense to me but it feels reductionist because it denies anyone the chance to make a tiny improvement and disregards qualitative changes.
Interested in hearing what you all think about it.
The McNulty relapse made no sense to me. It should be possible for him to cope with the return to high profile policework without “drinking and removed” but the writers willed against it.
Though it’s heart-wrenching, I wouldn’t have it any either way. The show is about how societal issues are caused by systemic failures and not by individuals. “Evil” individuals don’t cause the system to fail, they just take advantage of it and prosper. “Good” individuals can’t fix the system on their own or from within. They just replace one “evil” person with another. Ultimately, the system poisons everybody and McNulty serves as the icon of the system chewing you up, spitting you out, then chewing you up again.
It’s not a cop show. It masquerades as one. It’s actually a political show that outlines how corruption and capitalism destroys a whole city. Each season focuses on a particular level: Justice, Education, Employment, Politics, Media and all of it suffused with Poverty.
I think the tragic fate of almost everyone who tries to fix things also emphasizes that ultimately it’s all the “neutral” characters’ fault, who just stand by and watch events unfold, helping in minimal ways sometimes (and almost always are very sneaky about it), but generally just get out of the way to avoid becoming collateral damage. And if we expand this further, every such character also has the valid excuse that they are just trying to survive and support their families. They can’t afford to lose their jobs, so they can’t risk rocking the boat.
What you said is all true. My view was in respect to the realisation of impotency when trying to enact change and how one copes with that realisation. This gets into the territory of extrapolating from incomplete information. We are never told what Mrs. and Mr. McNulty were like before their marriage descended into ruin. Elena to me does not seem suspect but I never felt that her and James were compatible as a couple. Like there isn’t a throwback to the good bygone days of togetherness. The show kinda makes look like the “b*tch wife” when McNulty seems to be trying make a turnaround but she doesn’t allow him the opportunity. I don’t know whether the writers had the awareness that she doesn’t owe him the chance. But considering there are at least two other “b*tch wives” in the show (Daniels’ and Kima’s) I felt that is what they were going for.
When McNulty gets together with Beadie, which coincides with him becoming a beat cop, it can be interpreted two ways:
I feel kinda stupid for saying this but I genuinely thought it was the latter considering how Beadie is/was something like like a police (I don’t remember exactly what) and they closely worked together on a gruesome case (in season 2). Therefore speaking on a purely hypothetical level, I thought she could be a better outlet for his frustrations that “wh*ring and drinking” since she understands his plight better.
When it turns out that the former was actually true, I just feel like an idiot because I didn’t understand how nihilistic the show was until I watched the last episode.
I’m not going to make excuses for it because I don’t like it either tbh, but I think i get what they were going for. When Mcnulty was on the beat he was able to focus on the then and there and feel like he was making a difference, and so he was much happier [I know that’s definitely copaganda of a sort but I dont feel like talking about it rn], but when he’s working as a detective, he’s constantly struggling, and even when he succeeds in actually arresting suspects, he never feels like he’s making a difference and that everything is pointless, ergo the booze and removed.
I think this mightve been similar to the direction the show was going for at the end of season 4 when he goes back to detective work, but I think it would’ve been better if that was more of a general struggle he was having and dealing with rather than just “ope, he’s back to his usual stuff again.”