A Noble Gus

The above man is Clark Johnson, a noble Johnson indeed.

Why?

Oh, come on. You don't recognize the above picture? You don't realize what show this is from? Are you honestly going to make me tell you? (sigh)

Once upon a time there was a television series called The Wire. Not to overstate this, it is the greatest television series of all time. Don't give me any crap about The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, I Love Lucy, The Price Is Right or anything. Television peaked with The Wire.

The Wire is a long form show, meaning to me that the weekly episodes did not neatly tie a bow on the events of the show. You gotta hang in there for all 15 to 10 weeks of the show to get to the bottom of it. A weekly murder was not solved due to a bucket of semen and BILLIONS of dollars spent on outrageous police supplies. Honestly, all that CSI/Bones shit? Do you have any idea what your precious tax rates would be if your police department actually had that whiz bang computer shit? I don't know, but more. A lot more, I'm sure.

The Wire traded in a realistic fictional world. A beautifully flawed collapsing realistic world that leaves nothing varnished. It has that great 1970s film appeal where the world just feels real, lived in and not so clean and perfect like all other TV programs.

And The Wire is mostly about how all aspects of our society are failing us, why they are failing us, and how they are all basically corrupt while failing us. Yeah, let's see All in the Family make that sad shit compelling.

And it is compelling. Every character feels real and born out of this sad crumbling never-ending world.

Anyway, this above man, Clark Johnson, plays a character in the final season named Gus. Gus is the an editor of the Baltimore Sun. And if there is any institution that is absolutely crucial to our existence as a society that is also monumentally failing at its duty it is newspapers, or the mainstream press. Gus is an affable decent man who wants to do the right thing (which in his case would be exposing a lying, cheating golden boy reporter) but is torn because he loves the paper and to expose what he loves, he has to bring it down (oh, Christ, the metaphoric possibilities abound!). However, ultimately, he fails to do what's right, while trying to do what's right the "right" way, or using the structure of the system in place to hopefully bring about the appropriate changes. He is then punished, his role in the paper diminished, but he's he is even a greater failure actually because not only did he fail, but he remained at this paper that will perpetuate the lie. He recognized the faults, the lying, the deceit - tried to fix it, failed - and then said fuck it, took his punishment and rolled up his idealism and went back to work quietly...all the while keeping Gus this absolutely likable, gregarious, brilliant dude, so you can easily miss exactly how much of a failure Gus really is. It's fucking brilliant; he's fucking brilliant.

I'm talking about a television show, not some novel. And I'm talking about on 10 episodes worth of a TV show, too. That's how good and deep The Wire remains.

Clark also directed four episodes of the show, including the very first show and also the final episode. Two very important parts of a show's lifetime.

All of that makes Clark a noble Johnson. He raises the esteem of all Johnsons by being an integral part of the success and complexity of The Wire.

You make me proud to share a surname with you.

Johnsodarity!