When I watch something as uniformly superb as Show Me a Hero, it champion to the people around me. Yet it seems to me that, due to the lack of bombastic high-concept, the show is being unsung by most audiences much like Mayor Wasicsko himself. It’s not the ratings juggernaut it should be. Perhaps, it will go down as a missed opportunity for those who initially missed and be an unearthed bijou for those who find it later in the sands of time.

Before he runs for another term in the mayoral race, Wasicsko has been honored for his philanthropic stance on the housing initiative. When he meets with an aide for support in the next election, he pontificates about he committed a “courageous” act and suddenly his prideful egomania is beginning to disturb his tenets. Like Ozymandius from Greek mythology, Wasicsko is starting to worship himself a little too intently.

The city government is stacked with white politicians but they require a member from the other side of the fence to represent their point-of-view. Bob Mayhawk (The Wire veteran Clarke Peters) is that spin-doctoring consultant. Peters’ authoritatively fastidious voice brings a wisdom when he goes door-to-door to preemptively soften the smooth transition into the neighborhood.

A rallying cry at an African-American group meeting acutely pinpoints the negative terminology that the white populace uses to demoralize their community (“Tenants” over “residents”, “low-income” equates to “low-class”, etc.). In 1991, the housing debacle might be a few years ago but it is still fresh in the long-term memories of the more ardent voters and he has been earmarked as the “face” of that ordeal.

Clearly, Nick isn’t sufficed with a subordinate post and we can feel the rancor when he holds a conference to announce that he is relinquishing from the upcoming candidacy. Once Martinelli has withdrawn, the election culminates in a cliffhanger verdict with a recount of absentee ballots. Speaking of serendipity and rolling the dice, the potential residents in the townhouses are being randomly chosen by a lottery drawing.

Of course, novelistic showrunner David Simon is shrewd enough to show that the screening process is not above being preferential and selective about who they permit. For her part, Norma doesn’t particularly grovel for special treatment because of her legally blind status. When she is accepted into the brownstones, her reluctance is quite funny. Furthermore, Paul Haggis stages it like a Hooverville game show.

As with most David-vs.-Goliath stories, there are a few triumphs. For instance, Doreen Henderson (Natalie Paul), who was a menial crack addict. Now, she has rehabilitated herself and is now an upstanding community organization leader. With this, we gain twinges of admiration for her reversal. Meanwhile, our collective ire is constantly raised when Billie Rowan (Dominique Fishback) is oblivious to the short-sighted quagmire she is in with her excuses for her delinquent boyfriend who is also the deadbeat father of her multiple children.

At a seminar, the new residents are given lessons on etiquette (a condescending demonstration on how to properly cincture trash bags). But Mayhawk is the voice-of-reason when he asks if the residents still want to move in based on his stringent guidelines. He sagaciously states it is an adjustment and difference has an existential price.

The miniseries has largely censored itself from our kneejerk reaction to the word “nigger” but when a white neighbor yells it from their car, we recoil in fear and aggravation anew. Wasicsko is not the humble civil servant he once was and his peacock showboating is causing friction with Nay (Carla Quevedo), his wife, to the point where she is unceremoniously terminated.

By its conclusion, Show Me a Hero is a proletariat, emotionally paralyzing masterstroke that is another feather in the cap of those powers behind the scenes who deemed the subject worthy of broadcasting to a wider audience of all ethnicities. The lump-in-the-throat moment is when a haughty Caucasian woman ceases her stride to introduce her poodles to an adolescent black child after months of being aloof.

Regardless of your persuasion, it was nearly impossible to watch it idly without furor, empathy and compassion. The thought-provoking questions are we’ve seen Nick inebriated on city-wide power and his own influence but was it for right purpose and who benefited from it? Paraphrasing Norma, was the defeat worth the fight?

Rating: 5 out of 5

The public’s reactions to art can be mighty extreme. The general consensus for True Detective Season 2 was that it was inferior, stupefying and overall, lacking in substance. Now we are graced with the arrival of Show Me a Hero which is bountiful with multifaceted themes, well-rounded characters and sociopolitical, ripped-from-the-headlines prevalence….and people are bemoaning that it is too leisurely. I guess you can’t win with some message boards. I, on the other hand, cherish a show like this.

As the camera revolves on a dolly around his desk, the newly minted, overburdened Mayor Wasicsko realizes that the issue of the city in contempt transcends party lines and funding. Despite this, he hasn’t lost his rhapsodic view of what Yonkers can and should be. On the porch of a house, the youngest mayor waxes idealistically about a view directly to his council office and how his future children will idolize their father.

Like The Wire and other anthology series, the focus is mostly communal and tribal. The potential residents of the 200 homes are not faceless hordes and they are also not demonized as thug stereotypes or welfare peons. Single moms sit outside of their low-income housing and they are frightened of their “upstate” environment. Maybe more scared than the WASP-y constituents who are opposing the ruling.

Although it isn’t explosive with ultraviolence from gun battles, this is just as immediate and nerve-shredding with higher stakes than usual. The city is verging on costly budget cuts (police force suspension, water and trash services, etc.) and on the whole, Yonkers will be bankrupt in a short span. It has a race-against-the-clock urgency that doesn’t require triggers or bombs.

Henry J. Spallone (Alfred Molina) proposes that Yonkers will degenerate into the “trash” that is already established in the Bronx. Molina imbues truly vitriolic bigotry in Spallone as he reconnoiters the slums with incriminating photos. His bullish behavior is a blistering indictment on the white-collar phobia of sharing and desiring a monopoly on quality living.

When Wasicsko is negotiating for an appeasement with two council members on the opposite end of the issue before a midnight deadline, Haggis captures the swaying sentiments of Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men. Politicians are classified as laughingstocks in popular culture, but the outcry of a few virtuous politicians during this period overturned that belief.

The most wrenching storyline is a former retirement-home employee who has recently been diagnosed with advancing complication due to diabetes. Her government-certified health aide are averse to traveling to her neighborhood but her son is optimistic that they will eventually uphold their responsibility. It is a bleak depiction of the “fearmongering” that Sussman denounces.

Near the conclusion of his first term, Wasicsko is already challenged by Spallone who is wielding the widespread approval rating that the housing expansion was an incorrect judgment. Since I was unaware of the outcome in the election, the show is still capable of dazzling me with the element of dramatic surprise. Like Frank in True Detective, Nick hallucinates a vision of his father in a graveyard but it is much more profound and meaningful.

Inflammatory subjects like teen pregnancies are addressed with refreshingly aboveboard veracity. Of course, they are casualties of statistics but David Simon and Haggis don’t gloss over their interior thought processes. Additionally, Show Me a Hero is a rallying call-to-arms for the “silent majority” who are being muffled by the outspoken faction.

The Fitzgerald quote that the title is based on is germane for the disillusioning sight of watching Wasicsko pack up his office after Spallone’s landslide victory. While he is no longer the mayor, his in-home remedies of caulking and light fixture repair show he still possesses a constructive backbone for public service. It’s safe to say I’m eagerly anticipating the final chapter next Sunday.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

From April to late August, HBO has been ensured a monopoly for my attention span. Game of Thrones was mandatory, ritualistic viewing but the letdown of True Detective Season 2 continues to sting. I should be pondering why this premium channel is still cajoling me back on Sundays month after month. However, with the pedigree of The Wire’s David Simon, director Paul Haggis and actor Oscar Isaacs, how could I pass up the six-hour miniseries Show Me A Hero?

Painstakingly nuanced and rich with procedural shop talk, The Wire enraptured the audience with a sweeping panorama of Baltimore’s drug trade from the bottom-feeder addicts to the mayoral office. A beeper is our preliminary signal that we’ve traveled back to the 80’s epoch and a digital distress message of 911 indicates that New York council member Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaacs) is in the eye of a typhoon.

Bruce Springsteen’s music smacks of blue-collar nostalgia and his bootstrap philanthropy is a lyrical companion piece to the low-income struggle (ex. The “Hungry Heart” montage). Two temps gossiping about the main players in district caucus is a masterful tool for introductions to Yonkers politics where left-wing and right-wing are not factors.

I wasn’t enthusiastic about Isaacs after the misogynistic mess that was Sucker Punch, but he is maturing with each role and I believe he was snubbed for A Most Violent Year. Unlike that obdurate businessman, Nick is a bit willowy and sophomoric with his 28 years of age making him an unorthodox candidate for the electoral race. The housing zoning debate is an uproar of dissent and smooth-talkers. My favorite scene is when Nick skittishly sits in silence as the other representatives breath vehement brimstone for their opposition. It’s a filibustering cacophony which resembles most sessions of Parliament where whoever is loudest is deemed the most righteous.

One salient point broached by Michael H. Sussman (Jon Bernthal) is that the NAACP should be more steadfast for the integration of a few hundred housing units but a president says that he isn’t “giving up, [he’s] just tired” from the perpetual squabble. It was a war of attrition and the African-American contingent were beginning to surrender from exhaustion.

Some might rankle that Show Me a Hero is almost too tangible and vérité but those are precisely the assets that it will be beloved for. The street beat of a grassroots campaign would be neglected by other masterminds but David Simon and journalist William F. Zorzi peruse the process for every John Q. Public-pandering fiber. It’s an inspirational sight when Nick sees blocks of hand-made endorsements strewn along the lawns of constituents in Angelo’s district.

The fact that Isaacs is excellent is not a staggering revelation but Jim Belushi channels his working-class appeal entirely into the laissez-faire braggadocio of Angelo Martinelli, the incumbent, six-term mayor. He is the undisputed favorite in the upcoming ballot-casting and it can be ascribed to his gregarious nature (his wink at Nick amidst a meeting could be construed as a backhanded insult or friendly gesture of media rivalry).

The show is bifurcated into two parts for each of its three nights. Episode 2 is already at an electrifying crossroads with the ordinance vote resulting in the city of Yonkers being fined for each week they don’t submit to the judge’s (Bob Balaban) decision. They could be bankrupt within a minuscule frame of time which adds a race-against-the-clock desperation to the proceedings. The controversial complexity is that Balaban is coercing Nick to enact a moral proviso that is beyond reproach. It also punctuates the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movement and the inheritance of doom upon being sworn into office.

If the show has a mild spot for improvement, it’s the skid-row scenes in the projects prospects where the disenfranchised must repatriate back to their native land, retire due to diabetes-precipitated blindness or be currency mules during exchanges. It should’ve tautened the focus or added more breadth to these characters because it feels like a rogues-gallery rerun of The Wire.

The same people who were fierce supporters of Nick were also the most rabid detractors of his housing initiative. Show Me A Hero is a stupendously sociological, immaculate dramatization of the executive branch and how the stressful resistance and burden of responsibility can cause ulcers from our leaders (Nick is continuously swigging Maalox for the heartburn of leadership).

Rating: 4.75 out of 5