I thought long and hard about a discussion topic for the radio show project that is soon upon us. I wanted to wait until I had finished all of the episodes for this week to come up with my idea and I am glad I did, as I got a lot of insight from these last few episodes.

What really interests me about the Wire is not necessarily the crime drama. This show tells a story through audio, scenery and plot, but most importantly, I think it is a show that tells the story of characters in a realistic world. The setting of the Wire is cruel and filled with crime and violence, but what about the characters that make up each time? There seems to be three main “families” in the show: street drugs, dock crime and the cops. But within each family are individual people and deep characters.

David Simon characterizes his people on what they do on the job, but also on the outside. Their home lives and ways they spend their free time are just as important and revealing as what they do on the job. If this weren’t so, we would never get the glimpses into lives outside of the crime war.

I think it would be really interesting to unpack some of the major characters and how they are constructed as characters through their actions outside the “job.” For examples, Kima and Daniels hurt their significant others in order to get back into the job, while McNulty uses his own children to spy on Stringer. Even Stringer takes time to go to school.

The real characters we get are the ones that have something outside the job, but often choose the job over their outside lives. This is something I think would be rewarding to look into and discover the complexity of the characters Simon has created for us.