Letters to the Editor
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bodie
A good essay that still does not really capture the power and compassion of this show...a show that is, without any doubt at all, the best thing produced for television in the history of the medium.
This is entertainment for adults, and there is none of that elsewhere on television.
I've been a devoted follower of the show since season two, and I have to say it was very difficult to watch Bodie go to his doom..and that is the brilliance of this thing. Bodie was no saint. But even he, like Omar, had a code. Loyalty to his friends (the very thing that got him into the life, probably) in particular.. and loyalty to a certain kind of honor. He followed that code, and now he's gone.
A more melancholy example of the futility of our "war on drugs" is hard to imagine. It is a war that should never have been fought, and it has chewed up, what? three generations now? More?
and while Bodie is simply a drug dealer, and his death unremarkable to anyone who didn't know anything else it, to me it was like losing a friend I saw from time to time, who I worried about. I am very bummed-out this morning, not only about this character, and those kids who are doomed too (although Randy may survive, the kid he was is dead as Bodie), but that I have to wait another year for the final season..
and after that, unless Simon and his crew go on to some other thing, I probably won't be watching television anymore. After The Wire, nothing measures up. Not even close.