"The Wire" Year Five

Minor spoilers below.

The last season of "The Wire" is noticeably truncated, down to ten episodes instead of the usual twelve or thirteen. After such a showstopper of a fourth season, year five is also inevitably a step down from that former high. That's not to say that the season isn't still excellent, that the major storylines don't progress as they should, or that the show's creators don't continue to deliver great drama and great social commentary. Targeting the media, in the form of the Baltimore Sun newsroom, yielded some strong storylines that I wish would have played out even further. However, it's hard to ignore that the season's central crime story involves a gimmick similar to the creation of Hamsterdam in season three. In this instance, the Major Crimes Unit is unable to keep working the Marlo Stanfield case because of cutbacks on the police department. So Jimmy McNulty, having backslid into self-destructive behavior, cooks up a fake serial killer to get the money rolling again. Of course, the deception soon grows too big for him to handle, and threatens to spiral out of control.

The reporters and editors of the Baltimore Sun are instrumental in the spreading of the fake story. Our major POV character here is Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson) the city editor of the paper, dealing with a shrinking staff and limited resources. Young reporters Scott Templeton (Thomas McCarthy) and Alma Gutierrez (Michelle Paress) fight to land front page bylines while the management, led by Thomas Klebanow (David Constabile) and James Whiting (Sam Freed), are out of touch and too willing to let transgressions slide if it suits their interests. I expected the media storyline to be more sensationalist, but "The Wire" is more interested in establishing how the newsroom is plagued by the same problems that everyone else in the city is facing: not enough money, a leadership driven by greed and politics, and numerous systemic dysfunctions. Though I don't think that the media storyline turns out to be one of the better ones in the series, it's still a far more thoughtful portrayal of the media than I've seen in just about any other television show. You also get a sense that the show's writers are having more fun with this material, indulging in more florid language and literary allusions than usual.

However, it's the continuing storylines that I stayed more invested in, and found more rewarding. Bubbles, who I was worried would be heading for a bitter end after hitting rock bottom last season, manages to stay clean this season. His redemption is honestly a little hokier than I think was necessary, particularly his interactions with reporter Mike Fletcher (Brandon Young), but it provides a good antidote to the overwhelming cynicism that characterizes so much of the later seasons. Watching Michael and Dukie slip further into the grasp of the street is depressing, especially when it becomes clear what Michael's eventual profession is going to be. Marlo's gang has been a poor substitute for the Barksdale organization, but the show still gets me to feel for Marlo and Snoop in the end. And then there's Omar, who along with Bubbles has survived all the way to the fifth season, and feels like one of the characters who really embodies what the series is all about. Here's a hardened criminal with no remorse about what he does, yet who also operates by a code of deeply-held morals and displays great loyalty. And he's the one who ends up having a major hand in delivering justice, more so than most of the police.

The political storylines have been very solid since they were first introduced in the third season, and hit a new high point here. Carcetti's back and forth with the police department keeps him conflicted and frustrated enough to still be mildly sympathetic, even as he sells out his city more and more blatantly with each passing episode. We finally get to see the outcome of the ongoing Daniels storyline involving his potential ascension to Police Commissioner, which proves wholly satisfying to see play out. I wish I could say the same of the our protagonists in law enforcement, but the fake serial killer storyline never came off quite right. I could buy Hamsterdam as the experiment of a single misguided commander cashing in a lot of goodwill, or an unethical reporter blowing a smaller lie of McNulty's all out of proportion, but there were too many smart characters who got drawn into the mess, and kept it going, to sustain any believability. You had to essentially turn McNulty into a suicidal nutter and drag Lester Freamon down with him. Bunk, of all people, was left being the reasonable one!

But even if I wasn't thrilled with the bigger storylines of this season, it was still gratifying to be able to check in with familiar faces like Herc, Carver, Cutty, Randy, Beadie, Prez, and Colvin, if only for a minor scene here and there. I'm not clear on when the writers found out that the fifth season of "The Wire" would be the last, but they did manage to create a good sense of finality about the final episodes. At the same time, it's clear that the show could have gone on considerably longer.

I'll be back with wrap up thoughts on the series in a couple of days.
---