Friday, April 10, 2009
The Wire, Season 4: A question
I just finished Season 4, and I have a question for anyone who was watching it when it aired, back in the fall of 2006:
So, the character of Tommy Carcetti--who becomes Baltimore mayor in an upset election against the black incumbent mayor (race is a large part of the plotline)--is based on then-actual-Baltimore-mayor Martin O'Malley. In Season 4--which must have been filmed in 2005--Mayor Carcetti is forced to go beg for school system bailout funds from the unnamed Republican governor, whom Carcetti is thinking of running against in 2006--this is presumably then-governor Robert Ehrlich. So, am I to understand that in the season's penultimate episode, when Carcetti goes to see the governor in Annapolis, the security guard who speaks to Carcetti is actually played in a cameo role by Governor Ehrlich himself--who, just a few weeks before that episode would have aired on HBO, lost his re-election bid to Martin O'Malley?
How crazy is that? It's like life imitating art and shit. Were people impressed by this at the time?