The Wire’s 4th Season: An Essay in Casting

EW have repeatedly dubbed HBO’s series The Wire “The Best Drama on Television”, citing its recently concluded fourth season as the pinnacle of the Baltimore crime drama’s excellence. EW’s a mixed bag for me; I got a free subscription somehow a couple years ago, and have been receiving it ever since, pro bono. Their “Must List” is usually reliable, their film criticism far from academic but often accurate, and Stephen King’s pieces are usually entertaining, but their coverage of music has always struck me as superficial and problematic. In this instance, with regards to David Simon and Edward Burns’ ridiculously intelligent and transporting crime drama, I agree 110%.

Fantastic acting to me is capable of creating suspension of disbelief that extends outside of the viewing experience and persists indefinitely. Amadeus and Million Dollar Baby are two of my favorite films because, even with repeated viewing, I’m still unable to picture a camera filming the events, a director instructing actors, or a screenplay dictating lines. Every last element of artifice is completely transparent due to superb performances of genuine material. “Suspension of disbelief” is a phrase more commonly uttered when describing chincy special effects or an improbable feat or course of action (the infamous bus leap in Speed), but to me writing and acting, conducted by competent direction, has infinitely more capability to suspend doubt.

The Wire does just that, but unlike most examples I can think of, it does it on a larger, multi-threaded scale, across an entire season, with a large cast that is so consistently authentic and intelligent and believable and warm and brutal and real that I’d have to cite it as the single best example of casting I’ve ever witnessed, on television or on film. The direct creative credit for creating the best season of television drama ever goes to the actors, writers, and directors. However, whereas I could hypothetically envision screenplays coming together, a gritty, raw, and emotive aesthetic being maintained across episodic boundaries, and a few well-chosen actors and actresses executing the material, I would never have imagined that this many talented men, women, boys, and girls could be pulled together and truly coexist in a fictional world. My problem with the late Roger Altman’s work was that he always seemed to favor large casts of A-list actors over large casts of actors that could harmonize and produce an A-list film, regardless of their name recognition. The Wire stars no one that I knew before watching The Wire; after this fourth season, I want to see every last one of them in whatever they move on to once either their roles or the entire show has concluded. I can’t think of anything else that’s had that effect on me that’s had nearly as large a cast. For that reason, I think HBO should make a documentary about the casting process for the fourth season, and it should be mandatory viewing for all members of the CSA; this is the barometer against which anything else I watch will be judged.