Well, we are two episodes in to THE WIRE's final season (ten episodes total) and this season appears to be shaping up as the the weakest. However, that being said, I still think its the best thing on television...

The season's opening moment, with Bunk and fellow homicide detectives hooking a suspect to a Polygraph Machine – which is really just a Xerox machine – was a great nod to an incident reported in David Simon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR OF KILLING IN THE STREETS (required reading for anyone as obsessed with the show as I am).

I do like that McNulty appears to have really gone over the deep end by the second episode of the season - I believe he'll crash and burn before the fifth episode. Of course, he has been a walking disaster since the first season...

Any thoughts or comments on this season?

I disagree about the "weakest" thing, each new season of THE WIRE tends to start slowly, as they establish new characters, settings, and storylines.

And, without going into spoiler territory, the first seven episodes (of 10) are available on the internet, so you'd better remove your shoes, because this season will blow your socks off!

I'm one DVD into the previous season, and I have no HBO, so I won't be catching up until Season 5 is out on DVD. I have to say though that The Wire is flat-out the best TV I've ever seen, period. It really fulfills the promise of long-form storytelling which has always been possible with TV but also always been abused by shows over the years. That it is also a political show which takes a stand makes it all the more remarkable. I try to turn as many people onto the show as I can, not just because it's good, but because what it says seldom gets said on TV, and is worthy of serious consideration.

So far, so good this season, with one exception - the newspaper storyline. Putting aside all the mishegoss about David Simon and the axes he's grinding with the Sun, I'm having a couple of problems with the plot. The main one is that the lead editor, the David Simon proxy played by Clark Johnson (whom I love from Homicide) is just impossibly good. One of the things I love about the Wire is the balanced perspective on the characters - McNulty is fundamentally good, but he's a cheating alcoholic asshole, Rawls is a jerk but actually good at his job in some respects, etc. Clark Johnson appears to have joined Freamon in the rare ranks of the Wire's deified characters "Who Can Do No Wrong." It's kind of lame and, along with the obvious "young white guy bad, young latina girl" good thing that I think was handled much less clumsily with the Herc/Carver teamup, is making me dislike the storyline. That said, I've only seen the first two episodes so far and willing to give it a chance.

And I loved Avon's needling Marlo with the phony "how you doin'" and West Side stuff. Cracked me up.

SPECULATION SPOILERS
I like the journalism angle. It seems an appropriate angle after last season's focus on the schools, and hopefully it'll tie-in to Daniels appointment to Chief and give us some much needed background information about whether Carcetti is really helping the schools by pulling out money from law enforcement.....though he better watch out for for what Clay Davis might stir up.
I'm waiting for Clark Johnson's character to get put in the moral crisis of a story he's destined for.....and Tom McCarthy's character is, obviously, going to make something up and get in big f-ing trouble for it.
I don't know what to think about McNulty (is Amy Ryan coming back or not?). Freamon agreeing to his ideas kind of surprised me this week. Though, I guess somebody has to something to get some proper Police going on somehow....
Let's all pray for Bubbles (and Steve Earle helping him out).

I like the idea of the journalism focus, just not sure yet how well it's panning out.

If they were to do a sixth season (which I understand they are not), I thought they should focus on the court's and the law. An obvious transition, and they've already got characters in place - Ronnie, Bond, Peter Gerety's Judge, Levy, the US atty, etc. Focus on Clay Davis trial and Marlo, maybe have Michael arrested if he survives.

SPOILERS FOR THE JAN 27 EPISODE

Aw man, I loved Prop Joe. You could really see that one coming though. I wonder what will happen to Slim Charles though. I like that character. Love to see him work with Omar to take out Marlo, but that probably wouldn't make much sense.

The journalism angle so far is on the obvious side and not as revealing or magnetic as some other storylines. The newsroom scenes remind me of regular TV shows. That said it's fits in well plot wise and does not detract, I am just not sure what it really brings to the table. So far, anyways.....

I watched the 5th episode On Demand and the ending was extremely intense.
Anyone else watching these On Demand? I like this method, I can see the new show 'early', whenever it works for me. It's kind of nice to not be tethered to the 9 pm Sunday slot. Curious how HBO has only done this with THE WIRE ( this season and last ).

BIG SPOILERs FOR EP 5

Who knew Omar could fly?
And the biting serial killer plan backfiring was not something I anticipated.
I fear bad things for McNulty, he is playing with fire and it's hard to see his plan working out for the best.

The WIRE is just as good as TV gets. Pretty sure I am dumping HBO ( switching to Showtime mostlikely ) in 5 weeks when this run concludes, but they have had an amazing run starting with OZ and ending with THE WIRE.

The journalism angle seems necessary for the serial killer plot, which as you say is going in some unexpected directions.

And for those who've complained that Gus is too purely heroic and noble for this show, he's not the first major character to have entirely idealistic motives. Bunny Colvin, for instance, was pretty clearly an honorable and tragic hero. And it's not like either Templeton or the douchebag editor is any more of a one-dimensional asshole that, say, the black cop who was regularly harassing the kids last season.

Several journalists I know have commented that the Baltimore Sun stuff captures the feel of a real newspaper better than any show they've seen about reporters, including LOU GRANT. I would like to see these scenes play out more as ensemble mini-dramas than "The Gus Show" (the other old hands in the newsroom are great, especially the bearded grammarian fat guy, and could stand some more screen time), but I'm finding them pretty compelling.

One thing the show captures particularly well, that I've not seen anybody else comment on, is the rhetorical style by which corrupt African-American politicians like Clay Davis operate. Don't get me wrong; I don't think that black political corruption is more common than the white variety, but the memes are different, particularly when it comes playing the race card and appeals to the community, and Senator Davis would be a familiar figure right here in Greensboro (he actually reminds me quite a bit of local pol Melvin "Skip" Alston). THE WIRE gives more varied and interesting roles to African-American performers than anything else on TV and Simon is obviously liberal (I don't know about Burns), but his show doesn't exactly bend over to be "Politically Correct" (a term I hate using, as all too often it's an opprobrium favored by braying barstool conservatives who think they're being free speech iconoclasts by telling fag and nigger jokes).

SPOILER FOR EPISODE 5

SPOILER

SPOILER

So, what's the significance of the fax-machine like tone on the wire tap? Is Marlo using the cell the Greek gave him to send text messages to a fax machine (or something similar)? Or is that what you hear when you listen to an incoming text message? Since I don't text, I wouldn't know.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON TWO

I think and I may be misremembering - the significance of the tone is that it is one that Freamon has heard before: that's the sound heard in the second season when they had the wire up on Vondas and and had all of those cyrillic messages (Russian? Ukranian?) from Vondas to others within the Greek's organization...

I think it was Freamon having a sense of deja vu...

As much as I love the show I find the serial killer subplot to be seriously stretching credibilty, and Omar's activites also defy ( my ) belief.
One thing the show never made me do before was think "Is that feasible in the real world?", and it's happened a couple times this season. That said, I am looking forward to the final 4.

To Mr. McDowell:

Next time you want to make a point with the politically incorrect speech,could you please use dashes to blip out the offending words you choose to use? Thank you very much.


I have a question about another show to anyone---THE SHIELD---that I've gotten hooked on recently---it comes on late at night only on the weekends on WXYZ Channel 7 in Detroit as reruns from 2002-2003. AT first I couldn't stand the sometime shaky-cam approach to the show, and I thought it looked cheap as heck, but over the past couple of months I've actually gotten into the exciting storylines about a bunch of corrupt cops on the force and how they manage to cover their tracks/clash with their superiors over how to handle cases. Michael Chiklis (formerly of THE COMMISH) is truly something else is as Vic Mackey,the leader of the corrupt squad, who's never met someone he couldn't bribe, beat up,threaten,or entrap to get what he wants or do what he feels he needs to do. I remember when it first came out it got just as much critical hype and ink as THE WIRE (which I've only gotten to see when I visit my stepdad's place---he's got cable,I don't---and he and my sister are hooked on the show,also) but it seems to have been forgotten as THE WIRE superseded it in popularity--at least that's the impression I've gotten. Is it even still going to be on the air in the future ( i.e., after the writer's strike) and is it still worth watching? I do remember catching an episode or two last year with Anthony Anderson (a fave of mine) as a shrewd criminal and Forest Whitaker as a detective who's determined to bring Mackey down, no matter how long it takes.

On Demand has these 3 prequels on currently, one is Prop Joe, another Omar ( both feature these characters as children ) and a Bunk / McNulty one set in 2000 ( showing how they met, discovered they share an alcohol problem, and bonded ).
Does anyone know if these will be made into shows? or a series ? The prequel previews are only 2-3 mins each. What does HBO have in mind...WIRE spin-off?
Honestly, after seeing them it seems like a VERY bad idea to me.

The three prequel/shorts premiered at hbo.com back in December as part of the hype/build-up of this season's premiere: The Chronicles.

As for THE SHIELD, I am not a fan of the show. I believe that it is a more popular show than THE WIRE (maybe not critically, but it certainly has done better as far as attracting viewers). THE SHIELD seems to be written and produced like most cop shows with the caveat that the cops on this show are dirty. Too me it is just as formulaic as NYPD BLUE and LAW & ORDER, but not quite as formulaic as the CSI franchise. (By the way, I liked THE COMMISH a lot back in the early nineties).

I don't think they compare well at all, one is a cop show (THE SHIELD) and one presents the decline of a modern American city through the interactions of the police, the drug dealers, the drug users, the labor unions, the students in the inner city educational system, the politicians, and (in this season) the print media. THE WIRE draws from a much bigger palette than any television show or motion picture has ever attempted before.

* * *

It was interesting to see Pablo Schreiber and some of the other longshoremen from the second season in a brief cameo last night.

I've got to stick up for THE SHIELD, though, granted, it is a completely different kind of show. I agree that THE WIRE is much more than a police procedural:
THE WIRE is like reading a a great novel on the television....

However, THE SHIELD is not a typical, formulaic cop show either. It may be more melodramatic, but that's not necessarily less valid a way to go.
Don't get fooled by the flashy action raids and constant close-up hand-held, full frame compositions. If you watch it long enough (and, like THE WIRE, you HAVE to watch it in serial order), you get rolled up in its complexity. The story is continual, overlapping and increasingly complex; Unlike CSI, L&O, and the myriad of formulaic police shows, it doesn't have a 'new crime to solve in 60 minutes' every week.

Both THE WIRE and THE SHIELD refuse to dumb down their plot lines; their writers expect their viewers to pay attention and REMEMBER.
I appreciate that HBO and FX respect that.


AND BACK ON TOPIC:

"What just happened?"

"Whatever it was, they don't teach it in law school" !!!

Having had the opportunity to see the final season in advance, I've been waiting for people to catch up. No one has any comments on the series finale of THE WIRE?

And, BTW, THE SHIELD is grade-A television. Not in the same league as THE WIRE (nothing is), but is every bit as compelling -- just in a different way.

David Simon has a few comments, Mike!:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-simon/...-s_b_91926.html

Cheers,
Alex.

I think the show would have done better to have ended with the fourth season - I cannot see where the fifth season was necessary at all or even partially fufilled the driving reason that Simon & Co. continued for one more season: to critique the media.

Did the THE WIRE say anything about the media (the only media it focused on was daily print media) that really provoked any thought from its viewers? Not to my eyes - I cannot believe that Simon & Co did not even hint at the true damaged goods of American media: television news (local, cable, and national).

My biggest complaint on the fifth season as a whole was the pacing: several storylines felt rushed and haphazard in execution. The biggest offender in this regard was the Clay Davis trial - the episode in which his trial unfolded made it all seem to have happened in one day. Of course, the illegal wire on Marlo and his arrest also seemed rushed.

I like McNulty as a character - but the Irish Wake sendoff he received by his fellow officers strained believability (no worse than the "faked" serial killer nor the city and police administration's reaction to the truth of the serial killer). McNulty was and always will be the (capital) Asshole. THE WIRE spent nearly four seasons (McNulty all but disappeared from the fourth season) showing us how much other cops hated McNulty - this was a character that should have faded away or went down in drunken blaze of glory. Instead he metaphorically rode the shoulders of his fellow officers in a celebratory cloud of hot air.

THE WIRE is probably not the best show ever to have aired on television. The cinematography was mediocre. The actors were all good and it defintely one the best ensemble cast ever - of course this ensemble has about 60 regular characters. The writing really captured the argot of the street and the police station.

In my opinion, where the THE WIRE truly excelled was in creating thought provoking television. It explored tough issues (in a nutshell: the decline of American civilization) from many sides and never said "this opinion is the right one."

I found nothing provocative about this last season.


The only way I can justify this season is as some sort of metaphor. McNulty's fake serial killer got funding for the case he really wanted to investigate. This could (real stretch here) parallel the false evidence of WMD in Iraq providing the necessary impetus to invade an oil rich country...

I have to side with Scott Tobias at the A.V. Club in his defense of the serial killer storyline, which I think ranks up there with Hamsterdam as one of the best and most audacious things The Wire ever did. I think the last four episodes of the fifth season were amonst the strongest in the history of the series, and if Simon's finale wasn't up to what Price, Lehane and Pelicanos wrote to lead up to it, it was a fine send-off. Like Tobias, I differentiate the serial killer story arch from the Baltimore Sun one, which I agree didn't work as well, although I do think those journalists who claim that fabrication isn't a major problem and that fabricators always get caught are either fooling themselves or trying to fool us, and that Simon has a point when he says that budget cutbacks and declining standards will only make it even more like to happen. But yes, I agree that Scott was an uninteresting villain (that he was two-dimensional ultimately doesn't matter as much as the fact he was dull), as were his bosses.

Here's what Tobias has to say.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/75660

For my part, not only would I fake the deaths of homeless men, but I might be tempted to strangle them and bite them myself if would ensure that there was one hour of TV this good every week from now on. Well, okay, not really, but I'd be tempted.