Forget what you've heard about the fifth and final season of The Wire, which begins tonight on HBO. Officially, what some critics have called the greatest show in the history of TV wraps up with a meditation on the evils of corporate newspaper ownership. But really, it's all about revenge.
So said David Simon, creator of the much-hailed series, who before a live audience in Baltimore last April described score-settling as his creative muse. Simon was performing in Creative Alliance's storytelling series, called The Stoop, which you can hear at www.stoopstorytelling.com. The topic that night: "My Nemesis."
Simon told the crowd he had two nemeses, John Carroll and Bill Marimow, the two most senior editors at The Sun when Simon was a reporter at the paper. (Full disclosure: Carroll and Simon were both gone from The Sun before I arrived in 2000, but Marimow hired me and treated me well.)
Simon said he watched Carroll and Marimow "single-handedly destroy" The Sun. And so, as Simon told the Stoop audience over 15 entertaining but chillingly self-aware minutes, he has spent more than a decade trying to get back at them. He made his first stab on Homicide.
"So I did, like, a little episode on The Baltimore Sun and I had a few little nasty snark lines about the white guys from Philly, but it didn't come out real well," he said, faulting actress Joan Chen's English-as-a-second-language delivery. "It was lame. It was sort of like I took my shot and it sucked. So I let it alone for a while.
"Then, you know, I get The Wire on. The Wire's going good. Well, last year, why not name a character Marimow? All right, it won't be Marimow, it'll be a police lieutenant, he'll be [a bleep] ... but I'll use the name. It'll kind of be a little kick, a kick in the ass for the guy." But the actor is aggressive-aggressive, not passive-aggressive. "He's nothing like Marimow. ... So I've used the name now, and I got nothing inside ... "
"So this year, we're actually doing The Baltimore Sun as part of the story. How can I resist? We built a whole [bleeping] sound stage in Columbia ... like down to the desks. We have the nameplates of everybody I worked with down on the desks. I mean, my fantasy for revenge is now, like, art departments are working on it. ... I mean, think about it. [Production designer] Vince Peranio is going, `Does this make you mad? Does it make you mad now?' Until I have the full nightmare, I'm not satisfied. And all right, I'm going to change the names. Lawyers say change the names. ... But definitely get an actor with the silver hair and the patrician look" to play Carroll.
