Over the last decade-and-some of Golden Age TV, few have cast as intimidating a shadow as Mr. David Simon. The former Baltimore Sun reporter has shepherded an essential but underrated Iraq War miniseries; a poignant but flighty post-Katrina drama; and, arguably, the best production in the medium’s history, a sweeping account of the systemic perils pervading urban America. His work is prescient, immediate – he uses his verified authorial stamp to confront crises with journalistic verve.
Simon is an effective realist, managing direct lines of communication through character and story. Equally, he is an immensely skilled dramatist. His compassion tames his pessimism; his empathy clarifies his anger. Loglines of his shows and miniseries, not to mention countless reviews pleading readers to stick with it, hint at a writer who educates and illuminates more than he entertains. While that might be true, it certainly doesn’t give Simon enough credit. He employs gritty realism to get vital ideas across, but his methods are (almost) always engrossing.
In the new HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, Simon presents his least commercial premise yet – debates over public housing – before constructing six stirring hours of historical fiction. Adapted from Lisa Belkin’s eponymous nonfiction book, Hero takes the action back to the late ‘80s, when a federal judge ruled that 200 units of affordable housing were required to be built in the predominantly-white section of East Yonkers, NY. Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac) is the story’s main player, a young politician who skyrocketed to mayor by campaigning against the initiative, only to find that embracing it was the only way to govern.
As is his nature, Simon focuses on the policy and the arguments surrounding it. Call it a demonstration of his clout – he fought tooth and nail to turn the third season of The Wire into an exploration of local politics, while recent domestic and international policies provided the foundation for subsequent projects Treme and Generation Kill. Here, though, it’s the dramatic engine, a tall order that he miraculously pulls off along with William F. Zorzi, another Sun alum and co-writer of every episode, and Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who brings an aesthetic to Show Me a Hero that’s more refined than the typical Simon production.
Show Me a Hero understands politics as it is most purely defined: “Of, for, or relating to citizens.” Simon voraciously digs into the nuance of policy debate, and there remains the wide-ranging wisdom on race and class that made The Wire so indelible. But Hero dramatizes policy with more depth, shifting within and without the halls of Yonkers’ governing elite to elucidate what it means, precisely, to enact a progressive agenda. Alongside Waciscko’s rocky political career, we peer into the lives of four single women who live in the projects on the other side of town: Doreen (a superb Natalie Paul), a young widow who develops a drug addiction; Norma (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), an elderly nurse going blind; Billie (Dominique Fishback), a prickly teenager who falls for a criminal; and Alma (Ilfenesh Hadera), an immigrant from the Dominican Republic struggling to keep her family afloat.
In the series’ first half, these smaller-scale stories can’t quite click into place, progressing dutifully and intermittently. But they also compliment and enliven the political processes in surprising ways, eventually building to form the production’s crux. You see Norma, her disability rendered that much more difficult by her surroundings; Doreen, turning back to the life her parents thrust her out of; Billie, pregnant and tasked with building a family with limited resources; and Alma, who sends her children away, unable to provide and fearing for their safety. When housing theorist Oscar Newman (Peter Riegert) describes to Judge Sands (a typically great Bob Balaban) his “defensible space theory” – which claims that people, when they can call a private home their own, will fiercely protect their space – not only do you get it, but through characters like Doreen and Alma you feel its value and its impact. Suddenly, the policy becomes personal; its purpose and effects are real, rather than theoretical. And thus, a wonky debate over housing regulations evolves into a powerful dramatic idea: the right to a home.
This is central to Show Me a Hero, as political and humanistic narratives consciously converge. Waciscko’s career trajectory is the backdrop: he runs a campaign against the housing initiative, promising to “appeal the court” – soon proved to be an impossible task – as appeasement for the many angry white Yonkers voters who are resistant to change. He wins on that issue, becoming the country’s youngest mayor at 28.
But Nick Wasicsko, as Simon protagonists tend to be, is rigidly political – he’s not idealistic, only responding to voters. This is key. The series’ earliest episodes are propulsively involving, with anti-housing residents loudly clamoring in the chambers, fearful and unsure. Haggis’ rendering of the crowds, as their pleas and screams roar and echo, is viscerally authentic. He hovers over them, capturing their collective intensity and juxtaposing their anger with the helpless, near-indifferent politicians fielding their questions. It’s enormously effective direction, and more importantly, it’s crucial to the story’s success. Early on, there’s talk of redistricting and pandering – Winona Ryder plays a moderate councilwoman who’s voted out due to gerrymandering – and the volatile atmosphere urges you to contend with these political minefields on more pragmatic terms. Wasicsko is young, and he uses constituents' misplaced rage to his advantage; later, an extreme right-wing figure (played deliciously by Alfred Molina) condenses it into a Tea Party-like movement. It’s a beast that Wasicsko helped to create, and just as he’s learned how to govern and prioritize, the beast takes him down.
Show Me a Hero hones in on our own ability to limit the function of government; the rise and fall of Wasicsko speaks intriguingly, and cynically, to our current culture of gridlock and partisanship. But there’s a sneaky optimism to Simon and Zorzi’s scripts as well. They grapple with the possibilities of change on both systemic and individualistic scales. Consider the journey of Mary Dorman (Catherine Keener), an East Yonkers resident vehemently opposed to the affordable housing project. Politicians give her assurances that they quickly walk back. She’s compelled to change upon the realization that her government has slid into an inalterable realm of empty promises.
Mary, Hero’s most central supporting character, is placed alongside Wasicsko, a man she felt betrayed her but who similarly evolves in thought. Their imperfections are the very heart of Simon’s intent here, as he’s exploring a viciously won but ultimately fatal political battle in which there were no true heroes or villains. It’s all in the performances. Isaac is brilliantly expressive here, inhabiting Waciscko with quiet vulnerability and the suave of a great politician. Even in the densest of political conversations, he’s connective and true, and he continuously spins abstract ideas in clear, resonant directions. Keener is handed a character of far fewer words, and also of utmost relatability. She plays into Mary’s emotions fully, somehow making her prejudice almost beside the point. It’s a remarkably intelligent and affecting performance, with so much communicated in a glance or a smile. Hero occasionally pits Mary and Nick against one another, whether on a brief phone-call or in a nighttime pass-by. Between the performances and what these characters stand for, there’s always so much there – a reminder of Simon’s chief interest in people, and how they relate to bigger ideas.
All through Show Me a Hero, the stakes are visualized. Montages set to Springsteen cut the action periodically, establishing a musical and tonal identity that seeps into stories of political procedure and personal hardship. Most emphatically, Simon situates an intimately American idea – what it means to own and have a home – in an aggressively complex exploration of political process and systemic change. This is not Simon’s best work – it’s relatively muted, and early episodes are disjointed – but it may be his most intellectually challenging. His final message is more thematically varied than what he typically opts for, as although the political culture in Show Me a Hero emerges as corrosive and intractable – Waciscko’s fate bluntly, tragically reflects this – within it we see pivotal evolutions in policy and in people. There may be no heroes or villains here, but there is David Simon: our time’s eminent documenter of tragedy, hope and their forever uneasy co-existence.
Grade: A-