change the pear vol. 38 22 Sep 2026

hello! this dispatch has essentially turned into Miriam’s Thoughts On The Wire. maybe normal programming will resume once it’s finished, but for now i am consumed by thoughts about it and i’m desperate to share them! also, i drafted this on the plane to london and then promptly forgot about actually posting it, so sorry about that. i’ll be back with more thoughts on that trip soon! and finally: it’s been four years of change the pear, which is insane. infinitely grateful to those of you who read it and share your own thoughts with me. thank you for being here all that time.

on repeat

• genie, girls generation. anyone want to fuck around and dive into the back catalogue of kpop’s biggest girl group with me? i saw a reel of this song with taeyon’s ad-lib and since then it’s been looping. sm entertainment you will pay for your crimes but also… thank you…
• haunted, phoebe bridgers. a song to play when you get on a plane back home!

last seen

i’m aware that this is literally the place where i come to talk about how Emotionally Affected i am by tv shows, but please believe me when i say that watching the wire season 1 was the most emotionally affected i’ve ever been by television in my life. i basically bawled my way through episodes 10, 11 and 12. but let me not get ahead of myself.

let’s start with lieutenant daniels. in my last dispatch, i questioned whether he was dirty—i should have known it would be more complex than that. this is not a show that goes in for easy divisions of good or bad, dirty or clean. over the course of the season, we watch daniels undergo a transformation. he entered the barksdale case as a good little lieutenant, ready to do burell’s bidding, already looking ahead to his appointment as major. as the case deepens and becomes more intricate; as he watches the good police work of freamon and greggs and yes, mcnulty too—he starts to change. he turns his back on the buy-and-bust strategy, instead relying on the information from the wire. he stands up to burrell, demanding more days on the wiretap. he lets his crew follow the money, knowing full well that his superiors are not going to like what they find. and when the chekhov’s gun of his dodgy financials finally goes off—daniels doesn’t care anymore. “you’d rather sit in the shit than let anyone see you pick up a shovel”. CHEF’S KISS. a pure joy to see him pull away from burrell and fight for the case with every cell of his being—fight for his crew and damn the consequences. also my god can the man enunciate!

bouncing off this to a moment right near the end that i loved. daniels discovers that carver is the mole burrell chose to get information from. it makes total, depressing sense: a young black cop, promoted to sergeant although he didn’t make the score in the exam, someone burrell can watch and keep his thumb on in future because now carv owes him something. but daniels delivers the perfect speech as parting advice. he reminds carv that he’s a leader now, that the young police will be looking to him. if he does good work, they’ll do good work. if not… well. it’s a delicious moment, one that once again alludes to daniels’ past and his regrets over that, but also indicating that (as he’s very much aware) it’s not an individual problem. it’s systemic, and corruption comes from above.

in this show, everyone has their moment. i watched the first few episodes ready to hate przybylewski with every fibre of my being—and i do still think he’s a weak cowardly asshole. but the way he absolutely shines when puzzling out the code used on the pagers; the deep diving he does into barksdale’s financials—it’s hard not to find that satisfying. when offered the chance to do better, he takes it. with very few exceptions, almost every character is given a chance like that. it gives the characters depth, makes them feel three dimensional, real, human. they have flaws, undoubtedly. most of them are not good people. but that doesn’t mean they can’t do good, or that there is not goodness to be found in there. other examples: herc apologising to bodie’s grandma, wey bey and his fish that he wants to be taken care of, santangelo telling mcnulty about rawls’ plan; the way every member of that team steps up to do the grunt work of sitting and watching the phones.

the narrative tension and plot feel absolutely organic, not manufactured in the slightest. things are set up and paced so brilliantly that you can be glued to the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens, but also not be taken out of yourself by something feeling off, or out-of-character, or unbelievable. take kima’s shooting. i said to hana before we watched that episode that i was scared someone was going to die (i thought it was going to be herc lol). then that episode we get kima’s friends asking her about her job and kima’s girlfriend being upset at kima’s evident joy in police work; we get kima promising a recently-clean bubs that she’s got him. that moment had me SURE that something was going to happen to break her promise, and yet i couldn’t make myself connect the dots that the dread i was feeling was going to be directed at kima. i still felt absolutely torn apart by her shooting. THAT’S narrative. that’s craft. that’s how to set something up and then deliver on it, shocking your audience while also being satisfying and making sense.

speaking of bubs and his attempt to get clean… i wept my way through those scenes. from how he stands up in the meeting, even though he’s not been clean a single day, to collect his one day chip, simply because the guy offering it asked: “who here wants to keep on living?” the scene where he’s in the park, watching the light in the trees, people talking, children playing. everything bright and vibrantly alive. no words, nothing needs to be said. we can simply feel it. i had such hope for him, and it’s clear that he is really trying. but nobody can do it alone, and kima’s shooting leaves bubs vulnerable. the moments where he tries to talk to mcnulty about it and mcnulty just rushes off… absolutely heart-breaking. he came so close, he really did.

i’m not sure i can really write about wallace’s storyline without actually wanting to die. he had a good heart! taking care of what seemed to be every parentless kid in the low-rises, making sure they had their juice boxes for school. and haunted by brandon’s brutal murder and his role in facilitating it, using to escape the guilt. when he went to his grandma’s house i hoped, against hope, that he was going to go free. but as he says, “this shit is me, yo”. he was always going to go back to the projects. that’s his entire world, so all-consuming that he can’t see a way to escaping it. but the tragedy is that he almost decides to take that step. he tells dee he wants to go back to school. he turns in stringer to the police for murdering brandon (side-note, when he offers daniels a red vine my entire heart broke). but it’s still not enough to prise him out of that world.

and dee helps him as much as he can, but he’s enmeshed in the game too, and he also doesn’t understand himself that once you’re in, nobody is going to let you get out. you know too much. he should have told wallace to get as far away as he could and never come back, but he doesn’t, and once wallace is back his fate is sealed. poot and bodie mercilessly execute wallace in a scene that genuinely made me think i was going to throw up from how sad it was. wallace calling to his kids until the very end. bodie shouting that wallace needs to be a man, almost as if he’s trying to convince himself. and with the firing of the gun, he ascends closer into the barksdale-stringer web.

and wallace’s brutal death, at the hands of his two closest friends, is something that almost, almost flips d’angelo. he saw wallace’s good heart (a scene that made me sob my fucking eyes out), and he wanted to protect it. but he didn’t do enough, and now wallace is dead. he gets rid of levy; goes to the county jail, refusing bond. he comes so close to nailing his uncle in exchange for starting over. i truly thought he was going to—but in the end his mother gets to him. he can’t face an existence away from everyone he’s loved. the part of him that yearns for something honest and true almost won out… but he was born into the game and now he must stay in the game. he’s not brave enough to break away fully. the shot of his mother standing over him in the visitors room while levy calls it in… gave me chills!

but there’s humour to be found in this show too. in particular: wey bey and his fucking tanks of fish, and the shot of dee thinking he’s going to be murdered but actually wey bey just needs to show him what food they need. ALSO wey bey in his police interview chowing down on a sandwich and telling them where they can find little man’s body had me absolutely screaming. completely unserious. “get me another sandwich and some tater slaw and i’ll throw another few bodies in”. SIR. but again it’s the code. he’s already done for, having been part of kima’s shooting, so he’s going to cop the years and also free up as many other people as he can from involvement. why not try to get bird off the hook if he can? you have to respect it, i’m sorry but you do!!!!

something else that made me laugh was herc and carv’s ridiculous beef with the young hoppers, particularly bodie. you are grown adults, why is your nemesis an actual teenager. the scene where they leap on bodie, not realising he’s been released from juvie, and bodie going, “if you give me a ride to my grandma’s we’ll call it even”, and herc saying, “get in the back fucknuts”. SO SILLY. also when they go to the basketball game and poot asks them what they’re doing there, and carv goes “well what are YOU guys doing here?” and bodie saying “we’re on a break!” so carv says “well we’re on a break too!” it’s almost like a friendly dust-up by the end. the irreverence of the dynamic, to me, is both a contrast to the real, nasty violence and brutality that underscores these worlds, but also a sign that these clashes between police (five-oh!) and drug dealers have become normalised. like the police are another gang trying to encroach on the projects, take back control of them, and bodie & co have got to keep them out.

if there’s one criticism i can throw at the show, it’s that we have hardly any women characters who hold their own in the narrative, who are afforded the same complexity and depth as their male counterparts. there are a few, but not enough. and dee’s mom coming into the story with like, one episode to go was jarring in the face of that. where was she the whole season?! couldn’t we get some focus on her too?

i’ve watched a lot of gritty cop shows in my time, but this one far and away outstrips anything else, because of how tight and interesting the character work is—and, further to that, how the show doesn’t insert itself to make commentary. every person has a moral code. sometimes that code shifts (daniels, d’angelo, wallace, omar), sometimes it feels morally reprehensible, but it always feels true and real to them. and the show just… presents us with it. no condemnation, no exoneration. it’s not interested in doing that. instead it calls us to bear witness to these people, in all their complex pain and hope and evil and wrongdoing and goodness.

last seen (season two)

i’m on that damn wire again…

season two of the wire turns its gaze to the ports, the dockers’ union and its polish chair, frank sobotka. in general i thought this was a weaker season than the first, mainly because our attention is split between the cast of the previous season and our new friends frank, his son ziggy and nephew nick, and their dirty dealings with ‘the greek’ and his henchman spiros vandopolous. as for our old friends: our team from last season have been split up, daniels demoted to the evidence storage room; prez back under the thumb of his domineering father-in-law; mcnulty sent to the boat patrol. avon, dee and wey bey are in jail, while stringer is trying to marshal bodie, poot et al into some sort of order, as their heroin sources dwindle and dry up.

on the dockers side: frank is being paid money to smuggle tanks out of the docks and into the warehouses of the greek and his allies, taking along nick (and then ziggy) for the ride. this arrangement is funding his foray into political campaigning, trying to get the port’s grain pier active again, to get more work for his union and its members. a noble cause but he is in bed with some very bad people, which is made clear when thirteen dead women turn up in one of the tanks that was meant to be smuggled out.

i thought frank was an interesting character, and i really enjoyed the slices of interaction we got between him and his brother (nick’s father). the divide between them is stark. nick’s father is unemployed—frank’s alludes to him “picking the wrong union”, meaning he’s also isolated in comparison to the IBS brotherhood—but he has a very strong sense of moral duty, and is horrified and shocked at the revelation of frank’s underhand dealings. by contrast, frank is the guy who makes it happen, who gives a struggling dock worker a drink for free and a stack of cash, who is the one people look to. it’s clear he mentors nick. “uncle frank with the broad shoulders,” nick’s father says, with bitterness.

of course, frank’s dabblings in crime open the door for both nick and ziggy to get swept into the dangerous world of smuggling and stealing, with disastrous consequences. we have adhd-on-steroids ziggy, who is constantly trying to be the centre of attention, doing idiotic things like buying a duck and feeding it alcohol until it dies. while nick has a girlfriend and a child, but he’s still living in his parents’ basement, struggling to make ends meet and increasingly tempted by the money uncle frank’s dirty deals bring in. “what did you think would happen, once he got a taste for it?” nick’s father says. and sure enough, nick starts out saying he’d never deal drugs, but as he gets drawn more into the web of spiros and co, doing more jobs for them, and increasingly finding it harder to settle down with his family, you can see the moment where what he’s willing to do for money changes. the actors for these two do an impeccable job, but even despite that, i honestly didn’t care that much.

on the policing side: from the first couple of episodes i was saying to hana that my family had been torn apart, and nobody was happier than me when the gang got back together!!!! that’s my fucked up family!!!!! when they all walk into the random run down place that’s their new base and prez is like heyyyy :) what took you so long :) i cheered! i love them…. sorry guys but i do….

beadie was a new addition to the team this season: a port cop turned investigator. i liked her a lot, especially the scene where she went to try and convince frank to turn himself in. but i wish we’d had more from her, some complexity that wasn’t just almost sleeping with mcnulty (on his side, though, the scene where he looks around her house and decides not to blow up this good woman’s life was a great moment). again, i don’t get the sense the wire is really careful about the depth it gives to its female characters.

in prison, avon is ruling the roost as per, sorting out a guard who’s bothering wey bey and getting himself an early parole hearing into the bargain. while dee is wasting away, dabbling in drugs, refusing to comply with his family’s repeated requests that he fall into line. stringer calling for his murder was one of the coldest things that’s happened in this whole show, i can’t lie. it happening right after dee analyses the great gatsby movingly, talking about gatsby’s sense of self and history and how those things build up…. i cried a lot. i really did think there was hope for him, that he might be able to carve out a different door and walk through it. but almost as soon as the idea lands, he’s snuffed out. i will miss him.

speaking of old friends, omar being interviewed as a witness in bird’s murder trial was absolutely spectacular. when levy accuses him of being a leech who makes money off the drug trade tearing the city apart, omar leans back in his chair and delivers the hardest line of all time, “just like you, then.” BARS!!!!!!!! levy is gagged, and bird gets locked away. very very very very satisfying to me personally.

and some other parts that made me laugh/brought joy: wey bey and his outrage at the guard destroying his fake fish tank (“he ain’t have to go there, man!”) jay landsman dragging bunk and lester for filth. (jay is a great example of how good the characterisation is in this show—we don’t spend much time at all with him, but it’s enough for us to understand him as a man of humour, smart, willing to kiss the ass of his superior but also to do good work. and who knows his team!) every scene with tweedledum and tweedlefuck (herc and carv). prez going, “how fucking good is he?!” when lester immediately recognises sobotka from the photo. another banger from lieutenant daniels: “even for a supremely fucked up police department, this takes the prize.” MWAH! the greek saying, “besides, i’m not even greek.” bodie selecting a wreath of the 221 tower for dee’s funeral.

all the things i love about this show remain true, and i did enjoy our glimpse into the docks and that side of baltimore. i think i rank it below season one because i just didn’t enjoy nick and ziggy as much and felt that, on the whole, the smugglers and friends just weren’t as likeable as the dealers from season 1. it felt unbalanced, basically. which meant that i felt extremely frustrated when, say, a dirty fbi agent leaked information to the greek that he was being watched and the investigation basically went up in smoke. it felt hard to watch because i really wanted the greek to get his comeuppance, something i didn’t really feel in season 1. onto the next!

reading

i read iris murdoch’s the sea, the sea and absolutely adored it. what a completely bonkers book. i had the time of my life reading it and many thoughts and feelings afterwards, which is basically all i want from my literature!

first of all: her prose!! her prose!!!!! i want to put her sentences in my mouth. the sea is described probably 200 different times in this 500 page novel and every time it feels fresh and so vividly evocative. same for the characters. i don't normally enjoy the genre of horrible people being awful to each other but i loved it here because these particular people feel so real and their flaws and foibles such a part of them, and despite it all there is tenderness and pity and care strewn through their relationships. that's what we call craft! also, maybe it helps that many of them are horrible GAY people and there’s a thread of repressed homosexual yearning throughout the entire book.

the premise of the book is simple: charles arrowby, giant of the london theatre scene (a brilliant director, although never successful as an actor nor as a playwright) buys a ramshackle, strange house right on the edge of the sea near a small northern village. there he intends to write his memoirs, eat insane and vaguely disgusting meals, and live in peace—or so he says. in actuality, you start to suspect that charles would be pretty bored with a quiet peaceful life, and in due course that peace is shattered by a number of visitors. but most shattering of all is the revelation that his lost first love is living in the village with her husband. accompanied by his motley crew of theatre friends/foes/ex-lovers/his cousin james, charles embarks on a rescue mission, endeavouring to free hartley from the clutches of her marriage. if this sounds crazy, it is. the number of times i put the book down and had to go, THIS IS BONKERS. and yet the confidence of the narrative carries you through the madness.

charles is one of the best unreliable narrators of all time and a sublimely talented emotional terrorist. this man is a true sociopath, and yet i found myself incredibly gripped by his narration. part of it is the absolute joy of reading between his (very biased) lines to figure out what actually went down. sometimes he reveals it later, sometimes it is revealed to us, as with his role in peregrine and rosina's divorce. peregrine's speech to him, oh my lord... but part of it is simply charles's supremely confident and urbane and self-possessed voice. and there’s a display of just enough of his soft underbelly so that we sense the vulnerability at his core. it's compelling stuff guys, what can i say.

obviously i love love LOVED james and charles’ relationship. both only children, they were raised with charles in constant antagonism to james, who had a free-spirited, beautiful, wealthy mother and all the benefits that come with money. and despite that antagonism, there is a closeness and an understanding between them, much as charles tries to resist it. the end scenes where charles is reflecting on his relationship with james and describing him as a spiritual being... wishing that he could have actually known and befriended james rather than his inferiority complex turning their relationship into a stupid meaningless competition.... james leaving everything to charles……turning up one last time to say goodbye even though charles didn't realise it at the time. fuck my actual life. who is one's first love? oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my fucking GOD!!!!!

another thing i enjoyed was how fleshed out charles’ world and history and life were, despite him not actually giving the full details of much of it. even clement, his former mistress, who we are given to understand “shaped him” and is the reason he picked that seaside village to retire to (because she was born there) barely gets a look in, and yet there is enough hinted at that we don’t really need the full story. what we get is enough. it’s masterfully done.

similarly, the novel has juuuust the right touch of the uncanny and the eerie woven through it, not so much that it begins to verge on the absurd, but enough to make us (and charles) genuinely unsettled. the fact that some of these moments have a “rational” explanation, like rosina and the mirror, but some do not, is genius imo. what is real and what is not! it gives it all this undercurrent of mysterious dread that surfaces from time to time. like, the moment where charles realises that the face he saw in the window is the same height as hartley would be if she'd hung herself from the lamp bracket. jesus christ. even typing it out is giving me the serious creeps.

also: WHAT an ending paragraph. i want to read the entire thing again. a masterpiece.

miscellaneous

a big crested pigeon nestling down on the phone line outside our new house. the wattle blooming big and bright and beautiful. two rosellas hanging out. the comforting creak of the gang gangs. a glorious wooden desk from facebook marketplace. wandering capital bazaar and looking at all the wares with amy. hana’s baking moment. the kindness and generosity of friends who travelled far and wide to help us lift heavy furniture into our new place. a rainbow over black mountain. the tiniest smallest baby joey peeking out from its mother’s pouch. a soft rug that looks like a crocodile. bee holding ziggybat like a scarf. walking on the beach with bee and chiara in the sun. sea urchins in a rock pool. ash clambering into my lap. playing keepy uppy with morgan and ash, and morgan begging to come and see our house afterwards. this stanley plumley poem. this ali shapiro poem. this tawanda mulalu poem. this robert bly poem.

thank you for being here for the last four years. time flies. take care of yourselves out there. 🍐