Jay Landsman (English)

Who is Jay Landsman? We wonder at the outset. What strange transformation has occurred in his physique and mind to become as he is? And what God has put him on earth to turn him on the opposite of what he should be?

For when we are likely to take a look, we see that all the edges that have not been rounded by the system, are shown still fascinating when they come from his voice. And do not sound out of place and time when they already should be.

What is this fascinating voice that is given to decadence? Is he some roman poet singing the last days of his city before the arrival of the barbarians? Is he perhaps, the one responsible for opening the gates to the invaders or maybe the anonymous causing the withstand of the onslaught so we do not let our guard down to what comes against us?

His physical consumed by vices is shown to us continuously since the beginning. But what we are not shown is the reason why he deceives us, why he gives so little of himself in the view of the upcoming disaster, and more importantly, why he plays to be sane or go along with his superiors when he knows that others are the ones who are right.

He also recognizes reason, but he is sane enough to use it. In a city like Baltimore, sanity is not going hand in hand with it. And being a hero has nothing to do with doing the job right or being in the good side.

Jay Landsman is a man who shows us the defects attached to the links of virtues in a same chain. A character of brightness spots, and shadows especially, but neither enough to be day or night. He is something more, something that shows us to be different, unclassifiable, even for the big police files on the west side of town.

We don’t need to find out what he always chews and eats, to try to know what he is made of. To trace the shadow and place it inside his figure and not outside of it. The shadow is not projected outside, but inside of him, like a canyon in a deep valley of Mars. And that's his deception or his secret, just because we will never know if the river at the bottom of the canyon carries a great flow or hardly carries water. We will never know if he is thirsty of triumphs or saves it all in a large dry well.

Because Sergeant Landsman is not dull, he never has been, just mediocre. And he is this several times, and almost always for the same reason. Like a house of mirrors, which repeats its faults and excesses when presented.

He is the prisoner who has not been tied. One whose hands have been left free because he’s been convinced that his place is supplied by the system. And he isn’t a traitor for this. Nor would he be if he acted against it. The Baltimore system accepts he who wants to perpetuate it and he who wishes to change it, equally. Makes no distinction, because the system will defeat them both, but in different ways.

The obese police officer keeps all the tricks learned and reveals its magic when death touches close to home. With the attempted murder of Officer Greggs we finally see real detective work from Landsman. The bureaucracy has not stunned him completely and he feels in the street as in his home’s courtyard.

Has with his fallen comrades the right words he wasn’t able to tell, better said, not meant to be told at the right time. He is generous to remember every important detail and decorate every insignificant other one and do it important, one last time.

In his words, the virtues and weaknesses are the work of the same material and compound the same body of work that needs to be appreciated. A magnificent work that is exposed.

Jay Landsman for all its faults, is also a magnificent work that is exposed. Maybe he, broken as he is, is the best of all the works done by God.