The George Pelecanos effect

I know what a lot of you are probably asking yourself right now. Who the hell is George Pelecanos? Well don’t worry, you can go to his IMDB page to find out. He was one of the main writers on The Wire, a show created by David Simon and Ed Burns that is considered by many (myself included) to be the greatest TV drama of all time. Pelecanos is currently working as a writer on the new show created by Simon, Treme, a terrific show about a neighborhood in post-Katrina New Orleans.

During his time on The Wire, Pelecanos was known as being the one who wrote the penultimate episode of each season. This is important in a David Simon show such as The Wire. Simon doesn’t do his shows like a lot of the commercialized ones we see. There is a slow build from the beginning of the season to the end, where the payoff doesn’t always start to come until the later episodes. Each season felt like its own movie in a way. A gradual build towards the final act.

That’s what made the Pelecanos penultimate episodes stand out so much probably. That and some pretty major and devastating things would take place in them. These are the epidoes I remember being rattled by the most (Although giving all the credit to Pelecanos isn’t 100% right. This is still Simon’s show after all.). I can still vividly remember the walk that Frank Sobotka made heading towards The Greek. Or The Wallace scene in season one, or when Stringer Bell met with the Dynamic Duo of Omar and Mouzone. I’ll stop here because it’s hard not to spoil things while listing what has been brought to us in the Pelecanos episodes. They all sure had a lot of punch and emotion to them.

The penultimate episode of The Wire that stands out to me the most still took place in Season 4. That season focused a lot on the education system in Baltimore and especially on this one group of kids. Well this episode was probably the most devastating and one of my favorites of the series. It’ll make your heart drop or even leave you in tears.

At this point of watching the show on DVD, I had been in the habit of reading an archived review of each episode by TV critic Alan Sepinwall (Always great reviews and it helped me remember the names of the new characters introduced each season). I remember once I finally recovered from that fateful episode in season 4, I headed over to Sepinwall site and read that review. The weird thing is to this day I still remember the very first line of that review: "Fuckin’ George Pelecanos."

Fast forward to this past Sunday’s episode of Treme. It was the second to last episode of the show’s first season. Now Treme is a much different show but Pelecanos was once again in charge of the penultimate episode. It wasn’t quite as devastating as something he’d do in The Wire but we’re talking about completely different things here.

This week’s Treme though still had plenty of punch and emotion, especially the stories centering around the characters of Creighton and Janette. It may seem odd considering what happens, but I found myself feeling worse for Janette this week. Maybe it has something to do with the outstanding work of Kim Dickens, a deserving Emmy nominee if I ever saw one.

Yet it didn’t even enter my mind heading into this week’s episode that this would be done by Pelecanos. I kind of forgot about him and the penultimate episode tradition. But as I sat there watching the opening credits for Treme (and listening to its awesome music) I saw it. "Written by George Pelecanos." I paused the DVR, took a deep breath, and mumbled "fuck" to myself before resuming the episode.

Fuckin George Pelecanos indeed. Still haunting me to this day.