I. Jimmy McNulty and Billy Parham
I finished watching The Wire last week and wanted to blog about it. But the shows finale left me totally uninspired. Duquan squatting in a hovel shooting junk, Michael as a stick up boy, Carcetti as Governor, Rawls as the Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, Templeton accepting a Pulitzer, Gus Hayes grinding away as a line editor, and Stan fucking Valchek shaking Nerese Cambell’s hand as he accepts the role of police commissioner.
Simon doesn’t exactly cast a shining light on the future of the city of Baltimore. But after some hashing I’ve realized those weren’t the things that bothered me most about the series. The thing that bothered me most was Jimmy McNulty. McNulty has to be the worst character in the history of television. We get to glimpse how big of a fucking asshole McNulty is in season three when he fails to woo his x wife and goes on a the bender to end all benders but I don’t think anyone could have seen where McNulty’s distain for authority would ultimately lead him.
Anyone who missed McNulty when he was walking a beat in West Baltimore during season four needs to do some serious reflection. I was not surprised when he resumed his philandering at the beginning of season five. I was surprised when Beadie stayed with him. I was surprised when he started mutilating corpses, I was surprised when he booked a copycat killer and refused bail out Baltimore by hanging the victims of his fictions serial killer on the copycat.
When Beadie took him back her forgiveness bothered me so much because McNulty is a character that I don’t understand. He has his own moral code, a code that he never veers from, which is not, in itself, a problem. The problem is the code is incomprehensible to anyone but McNulty. When people are living their life according to a code that is incomprehensible to others they become totally inaccessible to viewers.
I’ve been racking my brain for a character I hated as much as McNulty and drawing blanks. A strong alpha male fuck up that strictly followed a code only comprehensible to himself. Tom Mullen? Temporary insanity. Steve Zissou? Inaccessible only because of his arrogance. Tony Soprano? A product of his environment. Rabbit Angstrom? Selfish, but you can understand how the guy is looking out for number one. Bill Hendrickson? Cocky, misguided but his heart is in the right place.
Storytelling is a touchy business, authors published in any medium are usually very careful not to ruin a story by making it impossible to identify with the protagonist. Usually, but not always, I can think of one other example of a protagonist so fucked up he ruins an entire story.
Billy Parham from The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. Parham is the perfect example of the literature of the American West one goddamn thing at a time cowboy. In McCarthy’s Border Trilogy Parham really cares about returning his pet wolf. Then he is totally obsessed with getting his horses back. Then he needs to find his obviously dead brother.
Parham’s a really caring dude; you could almost say that he wears his heart on his sleeve. Except he doesn’t care that his parents got massacred. He’s totally negligent towards his brother while Boyd is alive; he leaves a 14-year-old girl to be rapped by a gang of Mexican outlaws. And he doesn’t really care about Cole, not enough to save Cole’s life. Parham cares less for one of the greatest characters in American Literature than he does about his captured wolf or his stupid fucking horses.
I started and stopped reading The Crossing four or five times before I finally got though the book. I kept thinking what the fuck is wrong with Parham. As far as I could tell he had no motivation for any of his actions. Nothing he did made any goddamn sense.
I don’t want to say that McCarthy and Simon are bad writers. To the contrary, I think that if anything these two men define a generation. Congratulations on the Macarthur fellowships guys. But when I can’t understand your protagonist it seriously detracts from the story. Furthermore why grant the characters reprieves? (McNulty with Beadie, Parham with a visit from an angel of mercy in the epilogue of Cities of the Plain.)
A character roundly developed to be all bad should meet a bad end. If inaccessibility makes a character logically bad than we must concede that an accessible character makes a story good. However, there are characteristics beyond virtue that lead to the creation of a compelling protagonist.
II. John Grady Cole and Gary from Teen Mom
John Grady Cole is another example of the prototypical western literature one goddamn thing at a time cowboy. So far as we can tell Cole never worked to be a cowboy but he is clearly excellent at it. He likes to be outside, likes sprawling spaces and likes working with horses. Cole seems to have been gifted with an ability to tame horses and never has to work hard at cowboying. In fact, in a topical description of Cole it is difficult to tell him apart from Parham.
So how is it that it is so easy to relate to Cole and impossible to relate to Billy Parham.
The answer is lies in Cole’s empathy; it is much easier to care about someone else when you know that they are capable of caring about others. Cole seems like a regular person he cares about his grandpa and he cares about Lacy. He cares about Blevians, Alejandra and Magdalena.
Even in Cities of the Plain when it becomes abundantly clear that Cole is a martyr, whose only wish is to die for love you feel for they guy. Cole is even empathetic towards Parham, which seems like no small task when the two are brought together in Cities of the Plain. Even if Cole doesn’t always make the wisest choices his heart is always in the right place and he garners respect from other characters in the novel and readers because he is approachable.
Characters that make a story because you empathize with them are few and far between. No such character exists in The Wire. Lester Freeman has a huge chip on his shoulder, Rolland Pryzbylewski is disqualified by his cowardice, we see that little Randy Wagstaff has turned into a tough in his cameo in season five, Bunny Colvin is a little too liberal and a little too headstrong. For me Duquan comes closest to garnering John Grady Cole respect and empathy but he ultimately chooses to destroy his own life by dropping out of school, even after he sees that no other opportunities exist for him in west Baltimore.
I felt bad when D'Angelo Barksdale died. He was a great character but he fell short of John Grady Cole stature because he was essentially a mercenary. The series begins when he murders a security guard who startles him. This would be forgivable if he had not murdered before but the show reveals that he was responsible for the death of at least two tax-payers. We see a transformation from D when he turns on his crew, but his mother, Brianna Barksdale quickly talks him out of any heroics. By not standing up for himself he both gets murdered in prison and dissolved any feelings of empathy I had for him.
Cedric Daniels was ready to quit when he was buried in the evidence room. The only reason he kept policing was because Stan Valcheck wanted to make a case against Frank Sobotka in season two. His ambition makes him difficult to like, and he’s kind of a pussy. You can tell that his wife wears the pants in their relationship even when he is divorced and shaking up with Ronnie Pearlman.
Wallace was a snitch.
Omar is the subject of a forthcoming blog.
I had to do the same difficult hashing that I did when I was searching for a character I hated as much Jimmy McNulty when I was looking for a character I liked as much as John Grady Cole. I found the character in a very unlikely place, Gary Shirley from teem mom.
Over the last three years I have seen every second of every episode of Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant. The show had never disappointed me until two weeks ago when I found myself bird dogging a couple of band nerds from Alabama. For the first time ever I found myself wondering what is so fucking great about this show?” Last weeks installment featuring two dreadlocked youngsters screaming at each other for 60 minutes restored my faith in the franchise but not before I found an answer to the million dollar question.
Gary is what so great about Teen Mom. He’s just a guy who’s in love with a girl. He’s kind of a fuck up but a lot of that has to do with an inability to express his feelings. There’s nothing wrong with that, Gary’s just a man’s man; a man’s man who is in love with a girl who happens to be a fucking psyco.
Amber’s not the prima donna daughter of a hacienda owner, or a 16 year-old epileptic prostitute but she’s close. Like Cole Gary puts up with all of Ambers flaws and loves her through (mostly) thick and (little) thin. He really cares for his daughter, his brother and his friends. Amber keeps getting more and more nuts, if any Teen Mom character is going to die in a knife fight with a Mexican pimp its gotta be Gary. Gary’s just a guy who loves a girl. Despite all his flaws he’s doing the best he can.
Great characters make for great literature and television shows, hence the success of the Border Trilogy, especially All The Pretty Horses and Teen Mom. In his Border Trilogy McCarthy gives us both sides of the coin with Billy Parham and John Grady Cole. Parham is entirely inaccessible and impossible to emphasize with; Cole is everything every man wants to be less one tragic flaw, his compassion, he loves too much.
David Simon created a great show with The Wire, but he left out a character that you could emphasize with and really root for. If The Wire had a John Grady Cole or a Gary from Teen Mom it would have been the greatest show in history. But the inaccessibility of the characters detract from the quality of the otherwise perfect show.
The Border Trilogy and Teen Mom have characters that you can identify and emphasize with, even when the make mistakes. If you are really attached to a character, who has been developed so well that you can love the character unconditionally than I find it possible to really sink my teeth into a story. When you hate a story’s protagonist because you don’t understand their motivations it makes it hard to really invest in a series because you have no one to root for. I felt disillusioned when I finished watching The Wire because I fucking hate Jimmy McNulty. I’m not saying its impossible to hate a protagonist and love a story, but after watching The Wire I know its impossible to love a story featuring a protagonist you don’t understand.
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