February 18, 2008
I usually like The Wire...
...but the courtroom scene last night was just awful. People quibble about this season's presentation of the newsroom, and I would tend to agree that the characters there are the flattest and least interesting.
But when Clay Davis finally goes up on trial, it's just shameful (no spoilers to follow, for those who care). I've now sat through two trial advocacy courses, not taken them mind you, just watched them, and even I know that the incompetence we observed in last night's episode would get even the lowest state's attorney fired. You do not let the witness speechify like that. The witness may answer the questions put to him by the attorneys, but in general he may not pontificate, orate, or otherwise offer information which has not been asked of him. You have a bit more leeway on direct than on cross-examination, but of you wander too far from the scope of the question, opposing counsel will shut you down.
And that's not all. A politically-sensitive case like this one should take weeks. Voir dire, i.e. jury selection, will probably take a week, and it's likely that no one from West Baltimore would have been eligible to serve on the jury. The state would have presented at least a week's worth of evidence, especially considering just how long they spent gathering it, and the defense would spend almost that long rebutting it. This case, including voir dire, opening arguments for both sides, presentation of evidence, closing arguments, and jury deliberation, took one day. Completely unbelievable.
Given all of that, the verdict really isn't important. It's inherently incredible.
The Slate conversation has consisted mainly of newspaper people. They all really liked the Clay Davis soapbox, or at least they thought that this week's episode was a kind of return to form. What I wonder is if The Wire in general is just kind of ridiculous, but most of us aren't really on the inside of the subject matter depicted to know.
I'm totally comfortable with this being the case. Rather than thinking about The Wire as gritty, true stuff, can't it be Shakespearean, true stuff?
Posted by: matt at February 19, 2008 12:43 PMI would agree that the episode was, on the whole, a return to form. The scene where they cut between Daniels and Haynes were briefing their people for the day's work was particularly effective and captured some of the tension that was so rife in previous seasons but somehow lacking this time around. But I still say the courtroom scene was a fiasco. There are ways of getting that soapbox out without making the prosecutors look like fools. True, they were surprised, and that happens in litigation, but we're supposed to believe that these people, particularly Pearlman, are competent.
Posted by: ryan at February 19, 2008 1:25 PM