While David Simon has never been shy about talking about his work or giving interviews, this is by far the most comprehensive and interesting one I’ve read to date. Obviously, a lot of it has to do with the fact that with the series over at the time of it’s publication, he had a lot less to hide when discussing storylines and plot developments, making this essential reading for any Wire fan.

Spoilers below and in the link above.

I was talking more about more stories with these particular characters. There’s clearly, at least based on the last names and the bios on the HBO website, a connection between Randy and Cheese (NOTE: the bios essentially state that Cheese is Randy’s dad, a fact Simon would publicly confirm a few days after we spoke), and that’s something you never really got into on the show.

Actually, that is something that we were going to play a little bit of that and reference that in season five if we had had a little bit more room. But ultimately it would have been incremental. It would not have added to the overall theme or to either of those characterizations of Cheese or Randy. It would not have resolved in any unique way that would have revealed anything more about the character than we otherwise revealed. It would have just been more story and more scenes. So at a certain point, on a practical basis, you have to ask what you’re accomplishing if you go further.

Did we lay other groundwork? We did. We could have cannibalized Rawls’ moment in the gay bar and advanced that moment, but I’m not sure we would have created any more theme, and on some level it was very satisfying just to grant the notion of a closeted gay man’s sexuality a moment on screen and then move on. There was something very compelling and real about just acknowledging that but not making it into grist for a storyline that didn’t add anything to our portrayal of Rawls. We were always laying pipe that could be picked up later. It doesn’t mean that you should pick it up.

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