David Simon is a busy man. He talks to anyone who will listen ? entertainment reporters, television critics, even Air America?s Al Franken ? about the upcoming fourth season of his HBO series “The Wire,” which premieres Sept. 10 in the cable network?s coveted Sunday 10 p.m. time slot.
Simon is looking ahead, doing all he can to ensure HBO greenlights what would be the show?s fifth and final season.
He thinks it has a chance if “The Wire” maintains its modest but loyal viewership and near-unanimous critical acclaim, and if fans buy enough of the newly-released third season DVDs.
“But at this point, HBO knows it doesn?t have a breakout hit on its hands,” Simon told me.
Simon?s open eagerness to court the press is one reason our scheduled 40-minute phone chat went 30 minutes long.
His passion about the problems of America?s urban underclass ? and for Baltimore in particular ? is another, stronger reason.
“?The Wire? is about human beings meaning less and less,” Simon said.
The series consistently shows how institutions like local government, police, unions, social service agencies and even well-organized drug gangs ignore individual needs and punish individual initiative.
The new season focuses on schools. Former policeman Roland Pryzbylewski is a math teacher at the West Baltimore middle school attended by the four boys at the heart of this season?s storyline.
The story of “Mr. Prezbo” (the name given to him by students) is based on that of Simon?s writing partner Ed Burns, who taught for seven years after serving as an infantryman in Vietnam and a homicide detective in Baltimore.
“I like to joke, though it?s not really a joke, that he?s been formed in the crucible of losing wars,” Simon said.
“No Corner Left Behind” is the slogan on the posters advertising season four. Sluggisheducation bureaucracy and what Simon calls “the flummery of test scores” are criticized, but the story targets more than just education policies like No Child Left Behind.
“A lot of damage had been done by what they had seen in the street and by how dysfunctional their families were,” Simon said of the teens he and Burns have encountered.
Simon blames the rise of the global economy for destroying well-paying union jobs.
He blames the drug culture that has filled the void left by those jobs for destroying families and communities needed for schools to work.
He blames the “war on drugs” for making the problem worse.
“The drugs have won in places like Baltimore,” Simon said.
“How can you claim that the drugs on the table mean anything if the potency of the drugs is better than ever and if the price is cheaper than ever?”
Simon regards former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke as a “prophet without honor” for advocating drug decriminalization.
Even though his show diagnoses societal ills more realistically that any American television show ever has, Simon declines to offer ? and does not expect ? solutions, especially political ones.
“The point of what we tried to say in this season is not who should win the 2006 gubernatorial election in Maryland,” Simon said.
“I don?t think either one of them [Gov. Robert Ehrlich or Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley] ought to be accepting kudos for the performance of the school system and neither one of them should be avoiding blame.”
“I see this thing being trivialized and the actual problem not being addressed, because that?s what politics does,” Simon said.
“[My role is] to come to the campfire with the best story that also happens to be what I believe to be an approximation of truth,” Simon said.
“If it ends there, it ends there.”
Let?s hope Simon?s public relations push pays off and that the remarkable, heartbreaking fourth season isn?t the end of “The Wire.”
Next Friday, Aaron reviews “The Wire?s” fourth season. He can be reached at [email protected]
