Do They In Fact Own This City?

I was very excited when I heard that George Pelecanos and David Simon were creating a new show set in Baltimore. I'm a huge fan of The Wire and Pelecanos produced that show with Simon who was also one of its principal writers.

We Own This City is six episodes long and actually fairly tame for being an HBO show. Little nudity and the violence that there is, is toned down, so no need to worry if you're sensitive.

So, the show is all about a special task force in the Baltimore Police Department, the Gun Trace Task Force. They work plain clothes and are first and foremost occupied with getting guns off the street. Naturally they also haul in criminals and drugs by the bucket load. Or at least they are supposed to. The GTTF is sadly extremely corrupt. They steal, they falsify records, they arrest people they know are innocent all in order to get richer and boost their popularity with the Brass, and much more.

This is not a spoiler BTW. The show carries this on its sleeve. We Own This City isn't a normal police procedural or a whodunit. The question isn't “Are they guilty?” or “Will they be caught?”. The question is “How the hell did this happen?” and “How deep is the corruption and what can we do about it?”

There are two stories running simultaneously. One is an FBI/Internal Affairs investigation and the other is a Civil Rights investigation by the DOJ. They don't interact with each other, rather they tell different sides of the same story. Example: the FBI investigates a corrupt cop for his crimes while the DOJ investigates how his actions affects his victims and the community he is supposed to police and so on. This way you get a fuller story without confusing the narrative.

It's also worth pointing out that the show is non-linear in its timeline. It jumps back and forth a lot in order to show you the journey these cops took, particularly Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal). He starts as a pretty idealistic young officer and slowly becomes more and more crooked. It is fascinating to see his downward slide, one deed at a time. It serves as a good morality tale how one thing that isn't so bad makes another worse act easier to do, until you are neck deep and can't get out. Another brilliant detail is that Wayne doesn't see himself as villain, only a man doing a hard job no one else can do. Sure he helps himself but in his eyes he has earned it.

If this show wasn't as well written as it is, it would have been an intolerable mess of morality preaching, but it isn't. A big backdrop of the setting is the death at the hands of the police, of one Freddie Grey who is basically a nod to the real life death of George Floyd. This has enormous ramifications from the angry community, to officers who refuse to do their jobs out of fear of being accused and indicted. Baltimore was a powder keg in The Wire and it is worse now.

Speaking of The Wire there are a lot of familiar faces returning to Baltimore but in very different roles. This isn't a sequel to The Wire, spiritually or otherwise, it is a new look at some of the same problems in the same place in a different time.

So do I recommend We Own This City? Absolutely! It is extremely well done, all the actors are great and I don't have a single complaint of the technical side. The story is great and I'm going to give it a re watch soon.

That is that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!