my favorite quote:
What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?
They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?
that's kind of cool but it doesn't really ring true to me.
on one hand, i thought one of the most interesting parts of the end of season 3 [s3 spoiler alert] was when mcnulty was clearly disappointed and upset about stringer's death... for completely selfish reasons. he sits on that windowsill in the last episode and cries that he finally "had him."
but when bodie bites the bullet, that's a different case. you get the sense that not only was jimmy upset that he was going to give over a witness "with a bow" to lester, but he was genuinely hurt and frustrated by his death.
totally.
there's no way McNulty "doesn't care" at all. I don't know what David Simon is talking about. perhaps McNulty's character developed in a way that Simon didn't anticipate when he gave this interview.
I agree that cops are often shown to "care" in a real corny way in cop dramas. but the Wire is not an example of this at all.
The way I took that quote was that McNulty only cares about himself and his job. He's not on some mission or the reformer cop. He wants to bust the guys he's after and that's about it, until he stopped drinking and hooked up with the cop from S2 that is. How many times do people say McNulty is an ass who only cares about himself and HIS case.
I think even that is off the mark though. I mean either he cares about himself or he cares about the case. If it's the latter (even a little bit) then you can't say he doesn't
care . The fact is he took concrete steps (before falling in love even) that endangered his career (i.e. going above the chain of command with the feds) but that he felt were necessary for the
case.
obviously he's no Bunny. but to say he is totally selfish I think is not accurate either.
speaking of Bunny, here's a cop that cares. a lot. and so even if Jimmy's character arguably falls outside the cop-who-cares cliche that Simon warns about, there is no doubt that Bunny is a cop who cares about things way larger than himself or his career.