Attorney General Eric Holder has something to say to the creators of HBO's Baltimore crime drama "The Wire": Bring it back.
Holder gushed about the show, which went off the air after its fifth season in 2008, as he spoke alongside several of the show's cast members Tuesday at the Justice Department. "Having looked at those clips again, I'm reminded how great that series was," he said. "I want to speak directly to Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon, do another season of 'The Wire.' ... I want another season, or a movie," he implored, hoping his instructions would make their way back to creators Ed Burns and David Simon. "I have a lot of power," he chuckled.
Holder and other government officials are touting the show because of how accurately it depicts the plight of kids who are exposed to the use, manufacture or trafficking of drugs in their homes. Last year, DOJ established an intra-agency task force to help these children, who often become victims of violence.
National Drug Control Policy czar Gil Kerlikowske (after asking the actors to sign his boxed sets of the series, naturally) explained that episodes of the show are used to educate people, including lawmakers, on these sensitive issues.
While actor Jim True-Frost, who played the cop-turned-schoolteacher character Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, showed some of the relevant clips, including one in which he discovers that one of his student's parents sold the child's clothes for drugs.
"The kid has been taught not to feel. It's not just living in the environment, he can't express or share or trust enough to seek help," True-Frost explained. "It's amazing writing and it's beautifully shot, but as everybody in here knows, it's the real deal."
True-Frost was joined by fellow cast members Wendell Pierce and Sonja Sohn. For Sohn, who now leads a Baltimore-based program for underserved youth called ReWired for Change, the show's themes hit very close to home. Not only is she active in the issue now, she has lived through it. "I was afraid to reach out because I was scared my babies would be taken away from me," she said. "I was a drug-using mother."
