"The Wire," or "You Wanna Know How I Got These Emotional Scars?"
First of all. I want to take this opportunity to formally express my profound and abiding disappointment toward Amazon Prime's Episode Synopsis, which completely spoiled the premise of this entire episode for me. "In this episode, Dr. Bashir helps Garak deal with a brain implant that he's addicted to." Way to give away the entire episode, Amazon. I hope that in the utopian alternate future of Roddenberry's Stark Trek, the cryogenically preserved body of Jeff Bezos is summarily ejected into space in the trunk of a Tesla.
Anyway.
The Wire is an outstanding episode that makes me want to quit coffee.
I really wish I could have a once-a-week lunch routine with somebody. That sounds like the kind of soul-enriching, Tuesdays with Morrie experience that could turn into a Lifetime special on the value of friendship and the importance of cherishing every moment as if it were your last, or something. Bashir and Garak have lunch in the Promenade once a week, and frankly I can't imagine a more unlikely duo to break bread together. I've always admired Julian Bashir for his brazen confidence and extraverted charm, and Garak seems to delight so much in his own enigmatic mystique and wry, trickster-like persona.
But I also haven't seen much of either character. Bashir has, until now, lived comfortably in the margins of DS9, popping his head in whenever Sisko needs an expert medical opinion or Jadzia looks lonely. Likewise, Garak has always just existed, too enigmatic and strange to have a story arc of his own, conveniently available whenever a Cardassian of dubious loyalty needs to steal the scene with an aphorism about tailoring and a well-placed wink.
Because Garak and Bashir are both (at least until now) secondary characters, I didn't have high expectations for this episode. A weekly lunch-date goes sour when Garak turns tetchy and impatient. Something's obviously wrong with him. He's evidently in pain but refuses to let Bashir take him to the infirmary. The situation worsens over the next few days; Garak seeks out increasingly desperate ways to blunt his pain, first with alcohol, then with more alcohol, and finally through self-medication (which is a gentle way of saying he drugs himself up with enough opiates to knock out a large animal.)
I never imagined I'd see Garak in pain. It's so strange, so unlike his character, and yet I found myself liking him all the more because I could see the vulnerability and suffering under his grinning, Cheshire mask. Garak was always the image of self-control; careless instead of stoic, playful instead of grim, but clearly enjoying himself in any situation. The sight of a grimacing, snarling, hateful Garak is shocking, and deeply humanizing.
We learn that Garak has a brain implant that renders him immune to pain. This implant was ostensibly designed to make Garan invincible against any form of torture by flooding his synapses with endorphins as a reaction to physical pain. Over the last two years, the stress and agony of living in exile from Cardassia forced Garak to find relief in his implant. He becomes addicted. The implant malfunctions, and the withdrawal that follows is pure agony.
On paper, The Wire is an episode about substance abuse, withdrawal, suffering, and escapism. Bashir is treating a drug addict and Garak is showing all the signs of violent and painful withdrawal. But what makes this episode so brilliant is its use of an unreliable narrator. Garak is a liar by trade; I can't ever take what he says at face value. I never know when he's telling the truth. I never know when he's fabricating a story.
And yet, I want to point out that Garak's sincerity is never in question. He is very much a Cardassian in pain, which is to say, he is a Cardassian suffering from withdrawal from Cardassia. Cardassia itself is a drug. It is a system of dependence. Cardassians are culturally and psychologically inculcated into a system whereby their entire sense of self-worth, their identity, their very reality, becomes inextricably intertwined with Cardassia itself. To be Cardassian is to submit to the cause of serving Cardassia. Exile from the homeland is exile from the object of one's deepest desires.
It was only a few episodes ago that Garak talked about how much he loved Cardassia. Love is a strange thing, and his love of his homeland leads him to act in strange ways. In the Persian interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Satan suffers in hell because of his distance from God, the object of his obsessive love. Cardassia is a toxic relationship, and to be Cardassian is to spend your life in love with something that will never love you back. Garak's entire sense of self, his whole identity, is so closely intertwined with being Cardassian that his exile onto DS9 is the worst form of torture imaginable.
And that's why this episode is lingering with me. Did Garak's implant malfunction at all, or was it designed to fail? Was the implant designed to punish Garak, by giving him a source of relief from his own psychological and existential suffering, thereby prolonging that suffering? As long as Garak had that implant, he could never truly be free of his own pain, because he never had to confront it. All he had to do was run away into the warm, endorphin-laced embrace of his brain implant.
My favorite scene in this episode is a dissolving montage of the loyal Dr. Bashir spending sleepless hours watching over his patient and his friend. I loved Bashir's sheer, brazen stubbornness in this episode. He refuses to give up on Garak, and he also refuses to put up with Garak's nonsense. It is a matter of professional pride that keeps him from giving up on the medical problem of Garak's addiction, but it is a matter of friendship that keeps Bashir fighting on Garak's behalf. Bashir is the hero Garak needs in this episode, and it is delightful and wonderful seeing him step into a hero's role.
I cannot overstate how much I loved watching that moment where Garak wakes up, wild-eyed in horrible sobriety, as clear-headed and sharp as he's ever been in two years, shouting a litany of his sins out at Bashir. Garak has obviously suffered at the hands of Cardassia. He has done something that caused him to be exiled, but the story of his exile is inconsistent. Once he's a heartless Gul who murders Cardassian civilians in order to kill Bajoran runaways; in another, he's a soft-hearted traitor who takes pity on Bajoran children; in a third, he's a scared agent of the Obsidian Order who loses an elaborate game of espionage and finds himself exiled as a result.
Garak's story is obviously a lie, but the lies surround and imply a truth. Like a black hole that implies its presence by the absence of light, the truth of Garak's past is implied by the incongruities of his lies. His lies surround the truth; the shape of the truth is bordered by lies.
I have a theory. The stories Garak tells Bashir about his own past are his own version of the Cardassian book, The Never Ending Sacrifice. Garak says the repeating epic is the finest form of Cardassian literature; in a way, Garak's own stories are a repeating epic--consistent in every way but for the facts. Every story Garak tells Bashir is a story about separation from Cardassia. There are many ways to tell the same story; all of them are true.
Even the lies? asks Bashir. Especially the lies, says Garak.
This is my favorite episode of DS9 so far. I'm even willing to forgive the poorly casted Enabran Tain. "The Wire" is one of those episodes that reveals something new with multiple viewings.
======
Best Bashir Moment: Julian Bashir swiping out Garak's bottle of liquor behind his back is some smooth sleight-of-hand. As much as I love Dr. Crusher, Bashir has one thing Crusher doesn't have. He's a little too slick than any doctor has a right to be.
Weirdest Character: Enabran Tain is so bizarrely miscast it actually took me out of the episode. Is this guy the leader of the Obsidian Order, or is he a guy trying to sell me discount furniture on the Shopping Network at 3 AM? Seriously, what is with Tain's folksy, down-south charm? This guy's the ex-leader of the most feared spy network in the galaxy, and he comes off like Uncle Louie chilling in his bathrobe after knocking back three beers and an enchilada at a family cookout.
No comments:
Post a Comment