The
underrated HBO cop drama The
Wire (Sundays at 10pm) is back for its second season this
month , bringing with it what has been one of
the best lesbian characters on television, Det. Shakima "Kima"
Greggs (played by Sonja Sohn).
Last
season, as one of the lead detectives in a coalition of cops
trying to fight a drug war in Baltimore, Greggs was shot and almost
killed in an undercover operation gone awry, and her overzealous
heterosexual partner Det. Jimmy McNulty (played by Dominic West)
struggled with overwhelming feelings of guilt and sorrow over
endangering her life. Greggs' relationship with Mcnulty is one
of the more interesting ones on the show--not exactly friends,
they nonetheless respect each other and, in some ways, "get"
each other better than their lovers' do.
Kima's
girlfriend Cheryl (played by Melanie Nicholls-King) is not nearly
so understanding of Kima's willingness to put her life on the
line for her job. Cheryl's worry that Kima will be hurt or killed
in the line of duty is a constant source of tension between the
two. But when Cheryl's worst fears come true at the end of the
season, Kima finally gives in and promises to take a desk job
when she goes back to work.
The
second season opener picks up a few months later when
Greggs is finally back at work, working a paper-pushing desk job
that she hates because "I made a promise." Already you
can see Kima and Cheryl headed for a confrontation at some point
in the season, as Kima's longing to be back on the streets grows
harder and harder to ignore. "If you were a guy," another
cop tells her in the first episode of the second season, "your
friends would buy you a beer and let you know you're fucking whipped...pussy-whipped
within an inch of your life."
In
a rarity for television, the relationship between Cheryl and Kima
actually gets more screen-time than almost every other personal
relationship on the series, even though its was only featured
in five of last season's thirteen episodes, and then only for
a few minutes each time. But this is appropriate in the context
of the series overall, because The Wire is principally
about the cops' professional lives, and only delves into their
personal lives when they effect their work.
But
this season, in a disturbing wrinkle, it appears the
writers may have decided to reduce Cheryl and Kima's relationship
to the Lesbian-Pregnancy storyline:
in a conversation during the last few moments of the second season
opener, Cheryl and Kima discuss the fact that Cheryl is trying
to get pregnant as yet another reason Cheryl wants Kima to stay
out of harm's way.
This
Lesbian-Pregancy plot might seem unique if you look at the show
in a vacuum, but in the larger context of television overall,
it's boring and repetitive since virtually every other adult lesbian
couple on television has gone through the same storyline. It will
be a tragedy if Kima and Cheryl's relationship--which so far has
been intriguing, realistic, and multi-faceted--is reduced to the
same stereotypical pregnancy storyline that has ruined so many
other good lesbian couples on television (such as the lesbians
on ER, Queer
as Folk, Friends, and NYPD Blue).
If
the writers are trying to increase the dramatic tension over Kima's
decision to start working the street again, there are other ways
to accomplish this, such as having Cheryl face a life-threatening
illness, or have an affair, or just plain threaten to leave Kima
if she doesn't choose their relationship over her work. Any of
these events would achieve the same result of forcing Kima to
make a choice or reach a compromise with Cheryl, without resorting
to stereotypes and boring storylines.
Kima
also appears to have been oddly feminized this season.
Last season, she was a no-frills, leaning-towards-butch
lesbian in jeans and a t-shirt, even when she was off-duty;
the only time you saw her in traditional feminine garb was when
she was undercover as somebody's girlfriend. This season, she's
suddenly wearing a tailored suit and lipstick and carrying a purse.
Huh?
One
of the refreshing things about Detective Greggs is that she doesn't
fall into the same lipstick lesbian-category that most lesbian
characters on television do; to suddenly morph Kima into this
role is not only sexist and inconsistent, but erodes some of the
attributes that make her character so unique in the first place.
Perhaps
this new look is just a result of Greggs working in an office
now, instead of on the street, but how many female cops wear suits
and lipstick to the office? Some do, certainly, and there's nothing
wrong with that--but Greggs has never been that type. In fact,
everything we've seen about her until now points to the opposite.
In fact, Sonja Sohn even mentioned in an interview last season
that she was happy her character was "not some really glamorous
lipstick-type lesbian."
Throughout
the first season, Greggs served as a moral center for
the series, one of the only cops in the group not willing to lie,
cheat, and steal to promote herself or to help the case. In one
moving scene shortly after Greggs had awoken in the hospital,
another cop tried to convince her to identify a particular thug
as one of her shooters even though she hadn't been able to see
him very well, but Greggs refused to lie even to help convict
her own shooter. Unapologetic, she told the other cop "sometime's
things just got to play hard."
The
writers of The Wire should follow their own script and
realize that rather than taking the easy way and falling back
on boring stereotypes, letting Kima and her relationship with
Cheryl "play hard" is the right thing to do, too--and
makes for far more interesting television.
