The Wire under the lens
The five seasons of The Wire read through criminology: which theory to watch for in each, which villains from the archive appear and a question for debate. With spoilers folded away.
The Wire does not tell the story of one criminal but of a city. Each season adds another Baltimore institution — the street, the port, City Hall, the school, the press — and shows how all of them produce, tolerate or hide crime. That is why it may be the most sociological series ever made: the villains matter here, but the system that produces them matters more. This guide walks you through it season by season without spoiling anything unless you want it to.
Season 1 2002
A reluctantly assembled police unit, staffed with officers nobody wants, is tasked with investigating Avon Barksdale’s organisation, which controls the drug trade in the towers of West Baltimore. On the other side, D’Angelo, Avon’s nephew, runs a dealing spot in a courtyard of low-rise blocks.
With spoilers
Wallace, a boy from the spot who starts having doubts, is killed by his own friends, Bodie and Poot, on Stringer Bell’s orders. Omar, the stick-up man who robs the Barksdales, loses his boyfriend, Brandon, who is tortured and killed. Avon goes down with a seven-year sentence, Wee-Bey pleads guilty to a string of murders, some of them not his, and D’Angelo, who came close to cooperating, ends up accepting twenty years in silence. Stringer walks away untouched.
Watch how the trade is learned in the courtyard: D’Angelo explains the rules of the business to the boys with a chessboard, and each of them learns from whoever is closest what can be done and what must be kept quiet. This is Edwin Sutherland’s differential association: crime is learned like anything else.
To debate: Is D’Angelo a criminal, or a young man who learned the only trade within reach? And Wallace?
Season 2 2003
The series moves to Baltimore’s port. Thirteen women are found dead inside a shipping container, and the investigation leads to Frank Sobotka, the leader of a dockworkers’ union who is watching his trade disappear. Meanwhile, with Avon in prison, Stringer runs the business his own way.
With spoilers
Sobotka has been smuggling for an international network run by a man known as the Greek, to pay for the political lobbying that might save the port; he ends up murdered by his own partners. His son Ziggy ends up killing a man and goes to prison. On the Barksdale side, Stringer has D’Angelo killed in prison and staged as a suicide, without Avon knowing.
Look at the port the way Loïc Wacquant would look at a post-industrial neighbourhood: when stable work disappears, what remains is the informal economy. The dockers are not born traffickers; they are workers without work looking for the only way out left to them.
To debate: Is Sobotka a criminal or the last victim of a dying port? Can he be both?
Season 3 2004
Avon gets out of prison to find that a young dealer, Marlo Stanfield, is contesting his corners. In the police, a district commander on the verge of retirement, Bunny Colvin, tries out a radical experiment of his own to curb the violence.
With spoilers
Colvin creates zones where drug dealing is tolerated, and crime falls in the rest of the district until the experiment is discovered and the whole thing is dismantled. Stringer tries to turn the business into a legitimate company, but State Senator Clay Davis pockets his money and gives him nothing in return. Avon and Stringer end up betraying each other: Stringer dies at the hands of Omar and Brother Mouzone, and Avon goes back to prison. Marlo keeps the corners.
Compare the two ways of understanding the business. Stringer talks about product, market share and peace; Avon and Marlo talk about corners, about their name and about respect. This is Elijah Anderson’s code of the street: where the law does not protect you, reputation is the only thing that keeps you alive, and it has to be defended with violence.
To debate: Who understands the world he lives in better, Stringer or Avon?
Season 4 2006
The season goes into a West Baltimore school and follows four boys aged thirteen or fourteen, Namond, Michael, Randy and Dukie, while Marlo’s business spreads through their streets. Among the teachers is a former police officer, Prez.
With spoilers
Chris and Snoop hide their victims in abandoned houses that they then board up, and nobody looks for them until a detective, Lester Freamon, works it out. Bodie, who had started talking to the police, is killed. Randy is branded a snitch and loses everything; Michael ends up as one of Marlo’s killers; Dukie ends up working a corner. Only Namond, Wee-Bey’s son, finds a way out: Colvin takes him into his home, with his father’s permission.
Walter Miller described the concerns that organise life in poor neighbourhoods: trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate and autonomy. Look at what each of the four boys values, and what the adults around them value. Namond’s mother wants him to be as tough as his father; the school has nothing to offer in return.
To debate: Of the four boys, which one really had another option? What made it possible?
Season 5 2008
The final season turns to the newsroom of a newspaper in the middle of a wave of cuts, and to a police department without the money even to pay overtime. Marlo wants to stop depending on others and control the supply.
With spoilers
In desperation, McNulty invents a serial killer of homeless men to win resources, and at the paper a reporter is making up what he publishes too. Marlo has Proposition Joe killed and takes over his connection to the Greek. Omar comes back for revenge and is killed by a child. Clay Davis is acquitted at his trial. Marlo is brought down by a wiretap the police obtained by cheating, which is why the case is closed with a deal: Chris ends up in prison and Marlo walks free on condition that he leaves the business.
Put Clay Davis next to the boys on the corners. For five seasons the police have gone after those at the bottom; when it is the turn of the politician who steals from behind a desk, the system knows how to protect him. This is conflict theory: the law falls hardest on those with the least power.
To debate: In the end, does anything change? Who takes the place of each of those who fall?