David Simon is back in Baltimore, and he's angry. I mean, he's always quite angry, but things have changed and this anger has solidified into a stone cold fury. We Own This City is a rebuke of systemic corruption in the city and the nature of contemporary politics. In artistic opposition to the bluntness of the discourse, this series is dense and labyrinthine. We twist backwards and forwards in time. We chase leads here and there. It doesn't want you to get a clear simple cop show narrative out of the complex mess that got the city where it is. Bernthal's hypnotically brash Jenkins is a brilliant central character, his arrogance and self mythologizing cuts through everything. Having him played by the Punisher is perfect casting. Nice to see Wire actors back again and Wunmi Mosaku's increasingly disillusioned civil rights lawyer is fantastically understated.
Simon's work always sits in the uncanny valley between hard truths and watchable fiction but with City this line has never been more blurred. The opaque nature of it all is quite jarring. I've seen viewers pining for the days of Fuzzy Dunlop and Hamsterdam, but we're in a far darker place here. These aren't ciphers, but real people. These aren't embellished events, they really happened. This is reality, and it can be a cold place.
