This is one of what may—knock on wood—be a series of posts where I try to apply a "close reading" approach to particular topics in what is, in my opinion, the subtlest season of The Wire. You know what subtle means?
This post is about Nick, his dad Louis, and how their relationship fits into the dynamics of the Sobotka family. Along the way, I’ll try to say something about what all of this has to do with the role of family in The Wire.
scenes
2.04: hard cases || you ever miss it, pop?
Nick’s mother Joan sends Nick to Dolores’s bar to tell his father to come home for dinner. Lou sits alone with a newspaper and a notebook, betting hypothetical money on horses.
Lou has devised a betting system that works on paper, but he refrains from trying it out with real money. Contrast this with the scene in 2.03 where Aimee is cutting Nick’s hair, which opens with a shot of Nick playing a scratch-off lotto ticket:
Unlike his father, Nick is playing with real money, real stakes, and the odds are against him. The outcome is predetermined, he just finds out which result h got. There's no system, but there is a hope that he’ll be lucky, just once. A little bit of luck could relieve some of the tension between his dual obligations: to his family and to Aimee and Ashley. His chances of success are slim, but they aren't zero.
note: the subtitles are slightly wrong here, they should read "Just once?"
The money wagered and won is Nick’s "inheritance". That $7,000 wouldn't be much anyhow, had Lou spent the past 25 years playing for real. But he wasn't. After 25 real years of betting hypothetical money, he's still right where he started. Nothing ventured, nothing gained? Sure. Nothing lost, either.
Lou seems to spend his days like this, sitting alone with his newspaper and notebook. Nick doesn’t seem to actually be interested in horse betting, but his offer is an attempt to connect with his dad on terms his dad might be open to. He's willing to put in all of the effort to maintain a connection between them, if his dad is willing to open up a little, just once. Alas, no such luck. Too tempting.
It's clear from the fact that Lou keeps track of what ships are in and where that he does care about his son, but he cares from a distance. Nick spends most of this scene trying to reach across that distance, to no avail. The Cape Spruance being in brings Lou close enough for a moment of connection, but it's short-lived.
There's hardly a better illustration of the distance between them than this: Nick unloading ships his father helped build 20+ years ago, and his attempt to make lighthearted conversation about it. They might as well be living in different worlds. Nick lives in the "real" world—real stakes, real consequences—because he has a place in it: as a stevedore, on the docks, in IBS Local 47. Lou was a part of that world and had a place in it until the dry-dock closed, approximately 20-25 years ago. Past a certain age, there's no point in trying to start over—you take your modest pension, and retire early with less material comfort than you hoped you'd have in retirement. Lou is resigned to (or accepts, depending on how you read it) this state of affairs: he's outside of the world his son lives in and has been for a long time. Nick is 26, so this has been the case for most of his life. And I think it shows: Nick tries somewhat desperately to connect, but he expects nothing, basically. It seems that's what he usually gets.
The Cape Spruance still floats 30 years (approx.) after the dry-dock where Lou double-hulled her closed. That's just the problem. Properly maintained, ships remain in service for absurdly long periods of time. Shipbuilders, if they're doing their jobs right, put themselves at risk of obsolescence if demand declines, because the ships they built still float. As they should. Maybe Nick knows this, maybe not. But he's just trying to make (lighthearted) conversation. Lou doesn't seem to pick up on the intention.
Nick is a little hurt by his dad's humorless reply; he tries to connect another way. Again, Lou responds to what Nick says, but not what he means. In so doing, he rejects his son, even if he doesn't mean to. But Nick expects nothing, so he says nothing.
Later in this episode, Aimee tells Nick that "if there isn't enough work, then [he] could do something else". This is evidently a conversation they've had many times before, since Aimee brings it up (albeit implicitly) in 2.03 while cutting Nick's hair, so it's not a far stretch to suggest it's on Nick's mind. Trying to get by 5 or 6 days a month, how could it not be? But what else could he do? He's a stevedore. He's a Sobotka. This is all he knows; there seems to be no other place for him in the world. Even if he found something else, could he leave the waterfront behind? Wouldn't he miss it? Even though Lou keeps track of what ships are in and could probably infer how little work Nick is getting from that information alone, he doesn't recognize or answer the questions his son can't (or won't) ask.
His response is unhelpful, to say the least. For those still living in the real world, whether or not missing what used to be does any good, even if it ain't never gonna be what it was, is beside the point. You don't miss something because missing it does any good. You miss it because you're alive and have to live without it; there's very little choice in the matter.
2.08: duck and cover || whatever i got comes straight.
This scene helps to explain why Lou refrains from testing out his system for real. A man must have a code, right? Well, here we get a sense of the code Lou lives by: "[w]hatever I got comes straight".
Lou never tries his system out for real because any money from that would be crooked, dishonest. Money isn't just money. Money obtained by means other than work—payroll, taxes-benefits-and-dues-paying work—is ill-begotten, dirty. Where it comes from and how it was attained matters.
As far as I can tell, Lou knows how Frank gets the kind of money needed to grease the chair of the port advisory board—it's certainly not coming from dues. He doesn't hold this against his younger brother, though. He just doesn't want to benefit from it personally. Lou knows the money is how Frank is trying to preserve a (relatively) honest future, to ensure something like an honest living for Ziggy, yes, but also for Nick. Frank has to make decisions Lou doesn't have to—and doesn't want to have to—make. His position is unenviable and necessary in equal measure.
From this scene, I get the impression that Lou trusts Frank to give Nick some kind of future because he can't do so himself. Frank and Nick live in the same world: the real world. Frank has a place in it; Lou doesn't. He can only afford his own moral rectitude because he no longer has any place there. But someone's going to have to make choices that matter; someone's going to carry that weight. Here, that person is Frank.
2.11: bad dreams || it's gone.
It's not for nothing that 2.01 is titled "Ebb Tide": a revealing is underway when the season begins and continues until 2.04, when we reach low tide. The flood that followed submerged acts that might have been unthinkable in the past; at high tide it seemed they might stay submerged forever. But 2.10 makes it clear that the tide is ebbing; the revealing begins. When Nick comes home from Prissy's, it's well underway.
Nick understands almost immediately that the house was raided. He goes down into the basement to find Lou already there. Nick goes no further than "his" part of the basement, with Lou on the other side where the money and gelcaps were stashed. They both know what the ebbing of the tide revealed, so Lou only tells Nick what he doesn't already know: "They say you need to come in. They said the warrant is at Southeastern Police District." Lou himself isn't telling Nick to turn himself in. He's just passing on a message from the police. But it's up to Nick to decide what to do. The next time we see Nick is his meeting with Spiros in Patterson Park. (I'm not getting into that here since it's for a future post, but recall what Nick tells Frank in 2.08: "You called Spiros though, right? Spiros'll know what to do.")
2.11: bad dreams || if it's broke, give it to my uncle. he can fix it.
We're still a long way from low tide when Lou meets with Frank again.
Much like in 2.08, insights about Lou's conversation with Nick emerge from what he says to Frank. The feelings conspicuously absent before show up here in full force. Something is revealed to both of them.
Frank learns about the heroin but he doesn't want to believe it. Lou learns that Frank knew Nick was involved in stealing off the docks and let it slide. There's an element of betrayal here: it would be one thing if it happened without Frank's knowledge. But he knew, and he let it happen, without considering where it all might lead. Frank trusted that Nick knew better, but on what grounds? Was there any evidence that Nick knew better, or that knowing better would have been enough to keep him from what he did? Not really, no.
It's not about the cans or "keeping what we had". It's about something else, something specific: taking care of Nick. Frank's ambitions to preserve a future for the Sobotkas on the waterfront, noble as they were, don't excuse his abdication of the duty Lou trusted him to fulfill. This scene parallels the one in 2.10, when Nick tells Frank that Ziggy killed Double G.
Here, even if Frank didn't know, he's responsible because he should have known. But the absurdity of having Nick take care of his cousin is present here, too, in Lou trusting his younger brother to take care of Nick. That's his son. Where was he?
Lou's remark, "If it's broke, give it to my uncle. He can fix it." signals that Lou trusted his younger brother to keep an eye on his son and to be the kind of father Lou couldn't be a long time ago. Nick, in turn, grew up believing that his uncle was the one who would know what to do. Lou sees now that Nick's faith in Frank, much like his own, was misplaced. But it's too late for him, or anyone else, to do anything about it.
Of course, there are things neither of them know about. Some things stay submerged even at low tide. Lou doesn't know, and doesn't find out, that Frank got Nick involved with the Greeks in the first place; Frank doesn't know (or doesn't want to know, in spite of an abundance of evidence) how extensive that involvement became.
2.12: port in a storm || let's go.
We're nearing low tide, but there's a little bit left to be revealed. This time, Lou is the one who goes out looking for Nick.
As in 2.04, everything that was temporarily submerged before lays out in the open. No more hiding. Nick didn't turn himself in. Lou has no way of knowing why his son didn't go to the Southeastern, and Nick doesn't say. Nick doesn't know what happened under the Key Bridge or why, only how it ended. Apparently, Spiros couldn't be trusted to tell Nick what to do this time.
Karen Thorson, in her commentary on this episode, summarized this scene far better than I ever could:
This is the moment when Nick’s going to be vengeful, decides he wants revenge, and within 2 minutes of this scene, he turns over and becomes like the little boy who needs his father to tell him what to do.
Finally, his father does. But it's too little, too late. Lou can't fix this for Nick, and Frank isn't there to try to fix it on Lou's behalf anymore. Time to face the music.
2.12: port in a storm || he's gonna cooperate in whatever way he can.
Low tide at last. Lou turns Nick over to the police.
Is this what Nick wants? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In all likelihood, he doesn't know what he wants beyond his desire to know what to do. It turns out that what Nick needs to do is what Frank was going to do.
Here is a choice that matters, a choice in the real world. Someone has to make it; Lou makes it for his son. Nick is going to cooperate.
Sobotka was the target, right? The police get a Sobotka, no doubt. They get the only one they can have. After this, Nick is on his own. What he wants is irrelevant, because resignation is the only option he has left.
the sobotkas
At the end of 2.12, the Sobotka family lies shattered, broken by the same misguided hopes, the same mistakes. Lou trusted Frank in the way Frank trusted Nick. Both fathers did the wrong thing by giving their sons up, but they did it for the right reasons: they couldn't tell their sons what to do because they themselves didn't know. The game is indeed rigged. It's true that one can't lose if one doesn't play, but their sons had no choice but to play. They were born into it.
Neither Frank nor Lou are able to be angry with their sons outright, because the failure lies with them. Neither Nick nor Ziggy can be angry with their fathers because their fathers aren't the ones that raised them, not really. Nick’s anger with his father comes out in his confrontations with Frank (in the opening to 2.04 and in 2.10: "[y]ou're his father"); Ziggy’s comes out in his resentment toward Nick which simmers until it boils over in 2.09, culminating in 2.10, when Ziggy kills Double G.
Ziggy and Nick both only get to connect with their fathers when things have gone wrong—eventually, so irreparably wrong that their fathers-by-proxy couldn’t fix it—by which point the deeds are done and the consequences are rolling in.
family
It’s notable that we see very little of fathers and sons in The Wire—aside from Nick and Lou, the only other father-son relationships we see in comparable detail are those between Frank and Ziggy, and later, between Wee Bey and Namond. (There’s McNulty and his sons, too, but Jimmy is an outlier and should not have been counted.) In this respect, Nick’s relationship with his father is a rare insight into why the familial relations we see tend to be between nephews and uncles.
Service to institutions ties family, irreparably and inseparably, to those institutions. Under those circumstances, family becomes a structuring force within institutions—a force which cannot and does not exist without them. It’s not for nothing that the two families we see the most of are the Barksdales and the Sobotkas—both decimated by the institutions they serve.
David Simon’s commentary on 3.12, “Mission Accomplished”, lays it out in plain English:
“[Avon] had always preached family, and yet, like everything else, family was sacrificed to the institution.”
In this sense, Season 2 is a kind of foreshadowing to the collapse of the Barksdale family in Season 3. The family can no longer survive without the institution. For the Sobotkas, the institution is the International Brotherhood of Stevedores, Local 1514 and Local 47 both. For the Barksdales, it’s the game, i.e., the drug trade.
The insights we get from Brianna in 1.13 are instructive, too—she speaks to the consequences of family being subordinated to the institution:
“You like for him to step up, take all the weight, and let you walk? 'Cause he will. You know he will. But if he gotta go away, that mean you got to step up and fill his shoes. You ready for that?
[…]
Now if you want to get even with him, you can. But you hurt him, the whole family. All of us. Me and Trina and the cousins. And Donette, too. And your baby. Your own baby boy. This right here is part of the game, Dee. And without the game, this whole family would be down in the fuckin' terrace, livin' off scraps. Shit, we probably wouldn't even be a family. Start over, huh? How the fuck you gonna start over without your peoples, without your own child, even? You ain't got family, what the hell you got?”
As it turns out, even when there's no family left, service to the institution remains. D'Angelo dies before he learns this, but Nick survives to find that, family or no family, there's no starting over.
—After 25 years, I'm still ahead almost… $7,000.
—Pop, you really oughta let me take you up to Pimlico when it opens. Try your system out for real.
—Too tempting.
—Just once?
