The moment it was announced that the Baltimore Sun would factor into the final season of The Wire, it should have been obvious that the series would end with an episode called “-30-”. In addition to being the slug used inside the business to mark the end of a news article (Wikipedia tells us it’s an Arabic-numeral conversion of “XXX”, which was used to signify the end of telegrams during the Civil War), it’s also the name of a 1959 film directed by and starring Jack Webb that I’ve never seen but which, according to one of my journalism-school instructors (a very Gus Haynes-like guy, come to think of it) is a bottomless trove of sentimental clichés about the newspaper trade--and a film that reporters love to watch in large groups mock the bejeezus out of when they’re all liquored up.
Some people, I dare say, will claim that The Wire’s final episode offers as unrealistic a picture of the news biz as Webb’s movie, and I’ll admit that basically none of the Sun action worked for me at all. That being the case, I was relieved and pleasantly surprised that the Sun played a relatively small role in the episode when both the title and the opening quote (from the paper's most celebrated alumnus, speaking about his profession) invoke the world of journalism. For the most part, “-30-” is devoted to resolving the story of McNulty’s fake serial killer and to the business of steering the characters toward the rest of their lives, and it succeeds admirably at both.
It didn’t occur to me until my second time through the episode, but one of the main reasons why “-30-” works so well is its narrow focus: With most of the Omar/Marlo/Snoop/Chris plot business out of the way, the satirical tone that David Simon has been aiming for all season in McNulty’s plot came across more clearly than ever before. I’m really glad: Several weeks ago, I predicted that McNulty would more or less skate as a matter of bureaucratic necessity, but the seemingly-universal consensus that the story could only end with McNulty going to jail had left me worried that the ending I predicted would be one it’d be hard for Simon to sell to the audience. Clearing the decks accomplishes this, in addition to giving the whole episode a welcome sense of cohesion by ensuring that what’s left of the Marlo plot is more tightly connected to the other stories than everything involving his gang has been thus far this season. Indeed, the only stuff that really feels extraneous are the scenes featuring Bubbles, Michael and Dukie, which, while very fine, largely revisit the territory covered in last week’s episode and make many of the same points, often less elegantly. While I liked the relaxed pace of “-30-”, there’s little doubt that it could easily have been converted into a regular-length episode without losing much of its substance.The episode gets rolling with one of Aiden Gillien’s funniest-ever scenes—which, given the number of spectacular tantrums we’ve seen Carcetti pitch since he’s been on the show, is saying a lot. Between episodes, Rawls, Norman Wilson and Mike Steintorf were apparently clued in to the truth by Daniels and Pearlman, sparing us a bunch of potentially repetitive scenes and increasing the impact of Carcetti’s reaction by cutting right to it. The scene is only slightly marred by a detour into the dreaded land of the Overclose (something that happens three or four times in the episode) when Wilson observes that McNulty was doing the same thing that Carcetti’s team was by using the homeless issue to (hopefully) vault him to Annapolis. Like Rawls, intriguingly, Wilson seems convinced that the scam was all about the OT and not about putting away Marlo.
Be that as it may, Carcetti having posed for the cameras with the drugs and money seized last week is, more than anything, what motivates the cover-up: Having nothing come of the bust would not only keep Carcetti from becoming governor but it would make him a national laughing stock to boot (at least that’s how it seems as the episode begins—ultimately, the bust basically does go up in smoke and Carcetti emerges just fine).
Daniels knows that McNulty and Freamon are good police, but despite his years of experience with them, he’s not at all inclined to cut them slack over the scam. It seems pretty clear this is because the scam genuinely offends his sense of decency. Pearlman, however, is only really incensed when it becomes clear how much she stands to lose if the truth comes out. When she crosses paths with Lester, however, she doesn’t have the chance to blow her stack at him before he lets her know that Gary DiPasquale has copped to being the courthouse rat. I thought DiPasquale surrendered to Lester a little too easily, which—like the lack of other plausible suspects who could have been behind the leak—made this aspect of the plot feel a little undercooked.The cover-up finally clicks into place when Steintorf and Rawls have a conversation setting up what Wilson calls a “road to Damascus” moment for Rawls. I’m sure I can’t be the only Wire fan who thought Steintorf would prevail by letting Rawls he’s seen him in gay bars; indeed, we see Rawls checking out a woman at the beginning of their conversation, presumably as a knee-jerk ass-covering maneuver. Instead, Steintorf offers to broker Rawls’ appointment as the head of Maryland’s state police if he’ll play along. Since Rawls is no dummy, he swiftly agrees—doing so not only ensures his future but also guarantees that Daniels, and not he, will take the fall if everything goes south.
I couldn’t help being amused by Dukie’s encounter with Marcia Donnelly, the assistant principal of his old school, since I had something similar happen to me in high school—as a kid, you don’t realize just how many students people like her deal with, so it’s easy to assume you’ll be recognized when you go back to your old school, and it can be confusing and disappointing when you’re not. While she doesn’t recognize Dukie, that’s not a problem when Prez makes his farewell appearance. To my surprise, I had a muted, mixed response to seeing him—it’s hard to tell if he’s become a good teacher since season four, or if he’s just turned into someone who knows how the system works and has resigned himself to it. If the latter is the case, he’s not so jaded that he’s unwilling to give Dukie the money he asks for.
I was dearly hoping that Dukie would sign up for the GED course for real, and hugely disappointed when he didn’t. I might not have responded that way on my first viewing had I been watching the episode on a bigger TV—the set I watched it on made it hard to see the wear and tear on his face. After Prez drops him off and his boss, amazed at Dukie’s success, observes that “teacher must love your black ass”, I of course knew Dukie was doomed (he withholds $150, but it’s pretty frakking obvious that money ain’t going toward the course). By the way, I hope Simon’s excessive symbolism w/r/t Dukie’s new employer and companion is a coincidence or accident: Not only is he a junkman, but he owns a goddamn horse!
When Templeton makes his attempt at extending the serial killer’s run, setting up the confrontation in which McNulty cops to being the one who called him, Matt and I (we watched the episode together) both found ourselves wondering if the episode was going to into a realm of satire even darker than we thought possible by having McNulty frame the reporter for the non-murders. Certainly, that would completely cement the Alan Sepinwall school of thought about McNulty having crossed into bad guy territory when he shanghaied the homeless man to Richmond. Personally, I would have been delighted if Simon had gone there—it would have given Templeton his just desserts (in a manner, granted, that would be grossly disproportionate to his sins), and it would have been a huge display of creative balls. When it first occurred to me that McNulty might escape unpunished because everyone above him has so much to lose, I envisioned the level of satire being ratched up to the Network level, and having McNulty railroad Templeton would have fit with that perfectly. Instead, it’s the copycat killer who gets framed—though not really, since he did kill two people. Although McNulty has their blood on his hands (assuming they wouldn’t have died if the hoax wasn’t in effect), the resolution is a bit on the tidy side—and, unfortunately, it allows for the heavy-handed final resolution of the Sun plot.
Almost everything about the end of the Sun story left me dubious and frustrated. As we discussed the episode afterwards, Matt said that Gus getting punished for his accusations against Templeton is the kind of thing that happens in the real world all the time. Presumably he wasn’t fired because his union would have raised a stink; still, demoting him to the copy desk seems like a punishment better suited to the military or to high school than to the professional world. Obviously, Gus’s claims would instantly be proven true if a powerful figure outside the paper who’d been burned was willing to step forward. Conveniently, Daniels and McNulty have both been forced to resign at this point (and the city official who came off as being smarter than he is thanks to Templeton certainly wouldn’t dis him), so apart from the homeless veteran, the only people with reason to suspect Templeton all work at the paper.
What this means, then, is that every single person we’ve met who’s on Gus’ side and who has doubts about Templeton—including the Metro, Regional Affairs and State editors, who are all at least Gus’ equal on the masthead and some of whom may be above him on the food chain—every single one of them is a wuss who’s so scared of losing his or her job that they’re willing to let Gus take the fall. This isn’t an implausible scenario, but it does conflict with the established characterizations of a number of Sun characters, most notably Regional Affairs editor Rebecca Corbett. In my decade-plus as a professional journalist, I’ve seen a lot of people compromise their principles in order to stay employed, but never have I seen so many people compromise so much. At the risk of seeming terminally naïve, I have to ask if things are really that much worse in the newspaper world than they are in the magazine biz (and now that I’ve raised the question, I’m sure more than one person will provide evidence in the comments below that yes, things are that bad). The story obviously ended the way it did because of the point that Simon (pictured above in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him Hitchcock-style cameo this episode) wanted to make. Surely, after the episode is over, Alma’s going to write her way out of Carroll County, Gus will triumphantly reclaim his old job, and Whiting, Klebanow and Templeton will all have to make like Janet Cooke and return their prizes…right? My desperate longing for that to be so just proves how good Simon is at creating believable characters of a sort you don’t often see on TV; much of that believability is based on observations Simon could only make if he was the kind of reporter whose excellence this season sentimentalizes.
A one-hour cut of “-30-” probably wouldn’t have room for as many Maury Levy scenes, and I really wish we’d gotten more of him throughout the series after seeing him prove his smarts by deducing what’s wrong with the case against Marlo. While he’s fundamentally a scumbag and we’ve seen him salivating over the billable hours he can rack up when his clients do dumb things, he’s a straight shooter insofar as we’ve never seen him proactively rip off his clients. When he takes Marlo to meet the room full of power brokers, I initially assumed he was going to do Marlo what Clay Davis did to Stringer Bell, but his conduct in the scene left me convinced that he was legitimately trying to help Marlo invest his money. Levy doesn’t need to rip off Marlo: As he points out to Herc, having gotten Marlo off the hook is going to guarantee him more new business than he can handle, and there’s never going to be a shortage of dealers in Baltimore—as Cheese points out to Slim Charles et al., it’s the kind of town where anyone who sells drugs and doesn’t have $900,000 lying around basically has to be a complete idiot (and was it just me or was Cheese's final exit, in the middle of a pretentious speech, reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson's death scene in Deep Blue Sea?).
Of the scenes wrapping up plots that were already basically wrapped up last week, Marlo’s coda was the only one that felt both interesting and necessary. After learning in "Late Editions" that Omar was calling him out, he felt a burning need to assert his alpha-dog bona fides, and while he’s surely relieved to have skated, being forced out of the game is a very bitter pill for him to swallow. At that cocktail party with Levy, he’s uncomfortable as hell and can instantly see it’s a world he’ll never belong to. When he goes onto the street looking for a fight and confronts the corner boys trading stories about Omar (his death has now been mythologized to the level of the gunfight at the OK Corral), he’s further emasculated when they dismiss him as a pussy because he’s wearing a suit. When Marlo asks “Do you know who I am?”, it’s clear that nothing is more important to him than responding to Omar’s use of his name, even though Omar’s out of the picture. When Chris shot Prop Joe a few weeks ago, Matt observed that the look on Marlo’s face was akin to a kid torturing an animal who thinking “that’s interesting—I didn’t think it’d react that way”, and when Marlo sustains a bloody arm wound and shows no sign of pain, he reacts similarly—as if he’s thinking “that’s interesting—I didn’t think it’d feel like this.” (On the subject of Omar’s death, even as the myth of his theatrical demise grows, we see detective Michael Crutchfield taking Kenard into custody for the shooting. Obviously Kenard is too young to serve serious time, but the case is nonetheless officially closed and the ID of Omar’s killer is a matter of public record, at least unless Kenard’s age causes the file to be sealed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to speculate that people on the street would dismiss the truth as a conspiracy theory if they heard it).
Much of the last 20 minutes was unapologetic fan service, which in this case was by no means a bad thing. McNulty isn’t as original or complex a character as Omar, D’Angelo Barksdale and other creations of Simon’s, but thanks to Dominic West’s charisma, he’s become one of the most memorable and engaging characters in the history of the medium, and Jay Landsman’s speech at the “wake” is a wonderful tribute to him, one which truly captures everything that makes McNulty the rogue we love. The wake revealed that with 30 years on the force, Lester ‘s going to get his pension, while McNulty, with just 13 years under his belt, has no such luck. I’ve assumed Lester to presently be in his mid-50s (Clarke Peters will shortly turn 56), and his tenure together with his age bolster my belief that he’s a college graduate, which I suspect would have been rare for any rookie cop in the mid-'70s regardless of race. Dominic West is 39 this year, and if that’s McNulty’s age too, I think it’s safe to assume that after high school, he might have spent time in the military and then fucked around for a few years before joining the force. If he continued his education past high school, I’m inclined to believe he either got a two-year community college degree or went to a less-than-great four-year school and dropped out.
The long concluding sequence veered into oversell territory again with Michael’s stick up scene, though that may be excusable since his transformation into the “new Omar” was less telegraphed than Dukie’s metamorphosis into the Bubbles of his generation. Still, something about it seemed almost comic-booky, as if Omar’s mantle was something that gets passed around like the superhero IDs that get passed from one generation to the next in the DC Universe (I’ve long since lost track of how many DC heroes have used the name Starman, for instance), which seems ever so slightly to make Omar seem less unique. Similarly, Dukie’s shooting-up scene in the montage retroactively stole some power from his heartbreaking final exchange with Michael last week. 
Bubbles’ final scenes also felt a little redundant after his stunning turn at the NA podium last week, but upon further reflection they do offer some substance—it was moving to see him sit down at the dinner table with his sister and niece after all the shit his sis has made him eat, and we also got a better sense of his physical transformation. Andre Royo looks fantastic with the short ‘fro he sports here, and his body language also vividly expresses how far Bubs has come. I also really liked his last scene with Walon, in which they contemplate the quote from Kafka, a writer neither of them has actually read. And while I’m sure there must be an example from an earlier season that’s slipping my mind, I almost wonder if the scene was the first time that we’ve actually seen someone chowing down on a crab on this set-in-Maryland series.
Throughout the montage it was hard not to be reminded of the end of Season Three, when Simon took a shot at wrapping things up so as to provide closure in the event of a premature cancellation. Apart from the examples cited above, Simon is about as generous with the happy endings as he was then: Carcetti becomes governor, Rawls gets to lead the state police, Lester gets to enjoy a peaceful retirement with Shardene (who I was thrilled to see again), McNulty appears to settle down with Beadie, Ricardo Hendrix and Slim Charles take over the connect (and presumably revert to a business model akin to the New Day Co-Op), Pearlman rises to the bench, Nerese Campbell becomes mayor...and, best of all, Stan Valcek becomes the commissioner of police. The sequence also features the return of Wee-Bay, who appears to hit it off famously in prison with Chris, the member of Marlo's organization who takes the hardest blow (by the way, earlier in the episode there’s a bit of a continuity error with Chris’s previous bust—Levy says it happened in 2004, which would put it during season three, not Season Four).
The sequence reprises Blind Boys of Alabama's cover of Tom Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole" that played under the opening credits of Season One. It’s interesting to think about the song in the context of this final montage as opposed to the series’ traditionally downbeat credits sequences. I’ve been a big Waits fan since high school and purchased Franks Wild Years (the album that introduced “Way Down in the Hole”) the week it was released in 1987, less than a month before I first left home for college. Even so, I never got around to properly figuring out the story behind the song cycle (billed on the album as “un operachi romantico in two acts”), which originated as a Steppenwolf Theater production directed by Gary Sinise that ran in Chicago and off-Broadway in New York in the summer of 1986.
It turns out that “Way Down in the Hole” was an outtake from the play, a song that never found its way into the musical-theater piece and got shoehorned onto the album. In the program book for the concert tour which followed the release of the album (the tour more or less documented in Big Time), Waits offered the flimsiest context for the song: “Checkerboard Lounge gospel. Here, Frank has thrown in with a berserk evangelist.” At the amazingly thorough website The Tom Waits Library, the annotated lyrics to each song are accompanied by a list of known covers. Most of the songs on Franks Wild Years can claim five or six recorded covers; “Way Down in the Hole” has 22 and counting.It’s not hard to see why it’s been so enduring: The fearsome energy of Waits’ original studio version lets it work for secular listeners as a slam-bang snapshot of a world on the brink, the particulars of the words reach out to an entirely different audience. The lyrics—unvarnished Pentecostal propaganda, an appeal to embrace Jesus or suffer the consequences, to live clean or else—have an appeal that crosses racial and class boundaries. Many of the covers listed are by Christian artists, a large portion of them African-American.
The Wire’s cultural mash-ups have been both surprising and convincing (what other show would devise circumstances in which a bunch of black men would sing the Pogues?), and the series’ bona fides with African-American viewers have probably done a lot to turn the Waits song into a gospel standard. The imagery that accompanies it here, however, is much different from what we usually get in the show's opening credits. Superficially, the montage can be read as saying “…and so life goes on for the characters you’ve been following over five seasons.” But when images of happiness—Lester and Shardene’s domestic bliss, for example—are cheek by jowl with Herc’s further descent into corruption and Carcetti’s ascent on the basis of untold lies, the lyrics’ of Waits song lend the montage a different cast. It becomes more like the one that ended The Sopranos’ second season, which intercut scenes of seedy porn stores and street corner addicts with Tony’s lavish graduation bash for Meadow. We may like knowing that Lester went unpunished and Daniels and Pearlman’s relationship survived the scandal and that their careers continued to flourish; as characters, they are more sympathetic than not, and therefore, to an extent, our surrogates, the people we root for. But you know what? Like Carcetti, Rawls and everyone else, they paid heed to temptation and failed to walk the straight and narrow track (to paraphrase the lyrics), so they’re all going to hell (Bubbles, of course, earns a bye as the only one who actually follows the advice of the lyrics). The sequence flirts with self-indulgence until the very end, when it shifts gears from scenes of Wire characters to shots of average Baltimore people living their daily lives. It’s one of the few times in the series when Baltimore comes across as a thriving organism rather than a dying one, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I found it rather exhilarating. As the episode ended, I told Matt that I was sure the haters would compare the last half hour to The Return of the King and say that Simon, like Peter Jackson, served up a few endings too many (for the record, I’ve always defended Jackson on this count). Only when I took a break for a grocery run in the middle of writing this column did it occur to me that McNulty’s final line (“Let’s go home”) is not far off from the very last line of The Lord of the Rings both on page and onscreen, delivered by Sam Gamgee (“Well, I’m back”). The 150 miles from Baltimore to Richmond are a hell of a lot less than the trek from the Shire to Mordor, and McNulty, unlike Sam, has one last leg of the journey in front of him as The Wire ends. Still, those shots of ordinary people at the end of the long montage represent one of the few times on the series when Baltimore is presented as a place that someone could legitimately miss and could honestly look forward to seeing again. That, more than the muckraking and social commentary, could be the one thing about The Wire that tells us the most about who David Simon really is.
As of the end of the preceding paragraph, this column was scraping up against the 3500-word mark, and there are still plenty of observations about the episode that I haven’t gotten around to making yet. So as not to exhaust the patience of my readers—and so that I don’t stay up all night writing another 3500 words—I’m going to bring this to a close. I’d like to thank everyone who’s been reading my recaps all season, especially those who’ve taken part in the discussions in the blog comments here. In addition to calling me out on errors I have no excuse for, you have provided endless food for thought. Your lively comments also forced me to make sure I brought my "A" game every time I sat down at the keyboard and made me feel like a schmuck when I didn’t. I’d also like to thank Keith Uhlich for the peerless technical assistance he’s provided on all my recapping endeavors at The House Next Door, as well as the people at HBO who have done so much to make my job and my recapping duties a hell of a lot easier than they might be otherwise. It should also go without saying that I’d like to thank David Simon, Richard Price, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and everyone else who’s written an episode of The Wire for creating such a brilliant piece of collaborative art. Last, but most certainly not least, I’d like to thank Matt for inviting me to write weekly columns about a landmark show's final season.
Andrew Johnston is the television critic for Time Out New York. Recaps of The Wire, The Sopranos and many other series are collected in the sidebar of this site's main page. To read Andrew Dignan's detailed analysis of the opening credits sequences of Seasons One through Four, click here. To read a transcript of Andrew, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall debating the relative merits of The Wire, The Sopranos and Deadwood, click here.
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138 comments:
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
A great column about the best show I have ever watched and most likely will ever watch. I have enjoyed reading your recaps each week and am now feeling a little depressed and deflated that it is ending.
Beautiful indeed--both the saga itself and the coverage of it.
I think this was Simon's not-so-subtle response to the non-endings of HBO's other two great sagas, with one ending unfinished ("Deadwood") and the other so purposefully vague it could only have been done so specifically to tweak the audience ("The Sopranos"). Here, Simon's clearly saying "Okay, you want endings? Here ya go!"
I think everything worked out exactly as it was meant to. Sydnor, for example, learned much from both McNulty and Freamon, combining the former's devil-may-care hell-bent po-lice determination with the latter's smooth methodology and snappy dress sense. Michael inherits the role of Omar because, as I said over at "Heaven and Here," the game needs outlaws just as much as it needs institutions. Omar is a legend now, having eclipsed Marlo in death where he failed to in life, and Michael's own legend will, in turn, grow and eclipse Omar's, even as he, too, will likely die a brutal death months or years down the road.
Dukie, tragically, becomes the new Bubbles, filling the role of the junkie scrabbling to make it from day to day (and yes, the junkman on the horse was a bit too much even for "The Wire," whose hands can sometimes be as heavy as Ali in his prime). Templeton is cast in stone forever as the self-promoting "preppy cocksucker," who coasts to success on his bed of lies as easily as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, or Donald Rumsfeld. He was, even more than Whiting or Klebanow, such a bald-faced cartoon of avarice at the end that I thought he'd walk out of that meeting with McNulty with a dark stain on his khakis. Alma's and Gus' fates were equally predictable, but you could tell by Gus' satisfied smile at watching his protege (the reporter who worked with Bubbles--I forget his name) work the Metro floor that he knows it all isn't lost yet. And who didn't let out a howl of derisive glee upon seeing Stan freakin' Valchek himself finally make Commissioner? Frank Sobotka's rolling in his grave.
The story ended much more optimistically than you'd expect--I was convinced we'd see McNulty in chains right alongside Wee-Bay and Chris in jail--but I think Simon's point wasn't to rub our faces in the grime and dirt that is these failed institutions, but simply to drive home that they move on, with or without you, and you have to find a way to make a life of meaning even when you're no longer part of the institution. That, I suspect, was one reason for Cheese Wagstaff's long-ass speech followed by his quick execution at the hands of Slim Charles---no room for nostalgia in the game, indeed. Another sly bit of parody by Simon towards "Deadwood," "The Sopranos," "Dexter," and even the preachier moments of his own show.
Everyone, in the end, became what they were going to be--what they were meant to be--based on the decisions they made with the choices they had. And that's Simon's lesson here--the lack of choices combined with a desire to perpetuate the system prevents real, true, change.
I came in about halfway through Season 2 and didn't really get into the show until Season 3, so it's been an awesome four-years-and-change run for me, and reading the masterful work on this blog and a few others has enhanced the experience all the more. Thank you all for the wonderful work, and I can't wait to see how big the comment thread is gonna be for this entry!
I think that D'Angelo had some crab cakes midway through season one. His mother brought them down to the housing projects. I was also struck by the "ordinary people sequences" in the closing montage. Perhaps, because they appear to occur in "daylight" Baltimore looks brighter and more alive than the Wire which more often seemed to do its business in poorly lit places. There were so many allusions to previous events and previous characters that at times they did seem a little heavy-handed. Most telling and not explicitly alluded to was the shutting down of Bunny's experiment in season 3. (Colvin's appearance in episode 59 may have been just that.) In that case, sweeping it under the rug, but holding onto the evidence provided the new generation of city officials a leg-up and leverage. Wow, I'm already missing The Wire.
Here here to what everyone above said!
By the way, "everyone else" (in the last paragraph) = Ed Burns!
Picking up on Martin's comments, I would say the show ended comically, with a light touch, but by no means optimistically. Nothing's improved-- that's what gets shown with all these characters filling the shoes of their predecessors-- and the whole system moves along on the wave of a massive lie. Optimistic? No sir.
Very well said about the actual Baltimoreans in the montage, by the way. Great point.
I forgot to write earlier: Bubbles really earned that sit-down dinner. I was glad it was included.
I can't begin to say how embarrassed I am about failing to list Ed Burns alongside the other Wire writers I thanked. Obviously he was vital to making the show what it was. My head is hanging in shame to the nth degree. I could argue that extenuating circumstances played a role in my oversight, but that would just be lame...
My initial two cents, with more pennies to be dropped in the coming days:
First, I agree about all the instances of "overclosing" that you mentioned (Sars coined that, and man is it useful). There were a lot of points in this finale when Simon seemed to be chewing our food for us -- making connections we hopefully should have made ourselves without his prompting. The biggest example of that for me is the bit where Michael literally becomes the new Omar (did he have to use a shotgun?). I think his destiny as another Omar was apparent the last time we saw him, when he was walking away, figuratively and literally, from the straight world and the crooked world alike, unable to be fully a part of either, sort of like a gangsta cousin of Ethan Edwards from "The Searchers." It was just too much, too excessive, to see him doing exactly what Omar did in more or less the same way.
But all this stuff also falls under the heading of "the sort of thing series finales often do." It's rather miraculous that Simon managed to tie up so many loose ends without making anything seem too neatly tied off, if you know what I mean.
The saving grace of all this closure is the way that Simon prevents us from feeling too good about anything or getting to complacent about anything by implicating the viewer in the series' portrait of corruption. It was pretty brilliant, in retrospect, to parallel McNulty and Templeton all through the season, because for most of the show's run, we were predisposed to think of McNulty as the "good" one, the guy who at least has a defensible rationale for the scam he's pulling. Then as the collateral damage piles up it gets harder and harder to root for him. I agree that having a copycat killer to pin the other murders on is too convenient and easy -- but the simplicity and ease of this twist is complicated by the fact that it is, after all, a copycat killer, one that presumably might not have killed if McNulty hadn't planted the notion in his head by concocting the serial killer nonsense in the first place! Like parents always say, it's fun till someone puts an eye out; we can get a lurid, nihilistic kick out of McNulty's what-the-hell shenanigans, but Simon makes us pay for it by ending the series with McNulty, the closest thing to a wish-fullfillment audience surrogate, with blood on his hands, literally, really and truly -- two people died in large part because of his ruse. Yet he's not really punished so much as given a fairly graceful exit from an institution that he probably couldn't have lasted in anyway.
And Templeton wins the Pulitzer! That shot of him accepting his plaque has been cracking me up ever since I saw it. It's wantonly hilarious and perfect. And to those who say it's unbelievable -- or that McNulty and Freamon's being let off with a slap on the wrist is unbelievable, or that all the negotiations/compromises/dilution of values that take place in this finale are unbelievable, or too cynical, or too whatever, I'd respond, "Look over the last seven years of U.S. foreign policy and get back to me."
This is where the Season Five as America-post-9/11 analogy really takes root in a way that very few people have really explicated yet. Simon tips his hand early in the season with the line, "The bigger the lie, the more they believe." But Simon's not saying, in this season, that people believe outrageous, retrospectively obvious falsehoods because those falsehoods confirm their prejudices, or because they're stupid (though both scenarios might be factors). Mostly they decide to believe because if they don't get behind the lie they have to accept the consequences of being a party to it and have a black mark on their professional or personal records for as long as anyone cares to remember. Nobody wants that -- not even fundamentally decent people. Add to that the tit-for-tat factor - everybody has skeletons in the closet, and when you call somebody on their dirty secret, you risk having that person threaten to call you on yours -- and it's easy to see how lies get covered up by people who aren't inherently vicious or mendacious or sociopathic or what have you. Lies get covered up because if they aren't covered up -- if they're dragged into the sunlight, evaluated and confronted with some sort of punitive or reformative counter-action -- society, or at least an institution, grinds to a halt until the matter can be settled, and a lot of people, some hacks, some genuinely talented, get ground down, kicked in the ass, packed away for a few years. People love to say that actions should have consequences, but they suddenly stop repeating that statement when it's their ass on the line.
The brilliance of this season -- particularly the last two episodes, which excuse a hell of a lot of missteps, miscalculations and instances of overclosing -- is the way that it stings the viewer. It's like what my English teacher used to call, "a poem that turns on the reader." For five seasons, "The Wire" has been saying, "Let's look at what's wrong with our institutions, how ossified they are, how unimaginative, how corrupt, how easily manipulated for personal gain, how paralyzed, how useless." And we sit there in the audience going, "Yes, yes, it's awful, just awful -- somebody should pay for this; somebody should do something." Then at some point we get so frustrated at the sight of talented and/or hardworking people ground down by institutions that we start to demand answers. "Why are things so bad? Why is change so difficult? Why to the same problems perpetuate themselves over and over in so many different institutions, so many social strata, so many walks of life?"
On answer to this, Simon holds up a mirror and says, "There's the problem right there. Look in the mirror, motherfucker. It's you. It's me. It's human nature. We as a species do not have the courage to take our medicine, to do the hard work that really needs to be done, to really expose corruption, stupidity and selfishness even when, especially when, doing so costs us something."
It's that last part that's really crucial. Almost every major character got tangled up in some sort of deception, or moral shortcut, in this season (or in some cases chickens from other seasons came home to roost). And their response -- even the "good" character's reponse -- has been, "What do I need to do, what do I need to give you, the accuser, to make this go away?" The answer is invariably, "Give me what I need to make MY problem go away."
That's the problem in a nutshell. It's not democracy. It's not the failings of the school system or city hall or the police department or the media. It's a moral failure that becomes an institutional and societal failure. Simon confronts his characters with the choice between doing the right thing and doing the expedient thing. Almost to a man and woman, they go with the expedient thing.
Who would have thought that "The Wire" would end on a note so similar to that of Season Six of "The Sopranos"? It's "Kennedy and Heidi writ large.
Also: I loved how the finale was basically broken into two pieces, separated by that music-free montage of long shots of various Baltimore neighborhoods. It was sort of like an alternative credits sequence without the credits; it also subtly reasserted the fact that the show is about Baltimore more so than any one character. And on top of all that, it was unexpected -- absolutely the most lyrical, even poetic sequence of shots in the entire run of the series; almost like something "The Sopranos" might have done, but much more arresting because it was so stylistically out of character for "The Wire."
Great review. You might want to commit a small edit:
The sequence also features the return of Wee-Bay, who appears to hit it off famously in prison with Chris, the member of Omar’s organization who takes the hardest blow.
Also: Can't believe I failed to link to this earlier, but you must read Alan Sepinwall's exhaustive, probably definitive exit interview with David Simon.
David: Thanks, I just fixed that.
It's hilarious that you would publish a comment catching that error at virtually the exact moment that I published a link to Alan Sepinwall's interview with Simon -- because in that interview, Alan notes that Marlo and Omar L. are anagrams, and that's probably the reason why he keeps accidentally interchanging them when he writes about the show.
A nice summing up, Andrew. (BTW & FWIW, we learn in S1 that Lester had been in the military and in S3 that Jimmy had one year of college under his belt before he had to drop out to marry and support his pregnant girlfriend, Elena.)
A nice full-circle finale with Clark Johnson directing (he did the very first ep of the series) and a reprise of Blind Boys' version of Down in the Hole (the opening theme of S1) for the very last montage.
Now that the greatest series ever made is over I have no reason to continue my subscription to HBO (except maybe to see Ed Burns's upcoming mini-series Generation Kill). The Wire, Deadwood, The Sopranos...will television ever be this good again?
I went into Blogger to fix it, only to find that Matt must have beat me to the punch. To paraphrase what that city commissioner said about Templeton, thanks for making me look smarter than I am!
A good but not great effort by Simon. Once again too much of the newspaper storyline and not enough of Dukie and Michael. All the scenes with Daniels, Rawls and Carcetti were fantastic. I thought Dominic West was fantastic in this episode, finally realizing how the consequences of his actions effect others. I loved when Bunk, at the scene of the copycat murder victim told McNulty "you light a match and everyone get's burned". This was the exact same thing Freamon told McNulty in Season 3 and it gave me chills down my spine.
Things I really disliked:
The Michael as Omar scene was over the top and took me out of the whole show. Mike doing the Omar "sneer" and a jokey one-liner was just absurd. 93 minutes for the finale and this is all we get of Michael.
I am still not sure I am buying Marlo selling his connect to go legit. You would think certain people would wonder why he is out of jail so easily while everyone else went down (the Greeks?). His concession to leave the life was way out of character. The parallel to Stringer was cheesy. I think his final scene was meant to tell us that he will return to the game.
I would have liked to see some more anger from McNulty and Freamon that Marlo just walked after dropping (at least) 22 bodies.
I am also a little disgusted my Kima (although this is really not a fault with the show). I guess she stopped caring about the family that Marlo had killed.
The Syndor as McNulty scene was also horrible. Dukie as Bubbles was heartbreaking but a little to sudden. Too much of the cycle continues cheesiness from Simon. I expected better.
Overall, a good episode (not as brilliant as Chase's Sopranos finale). The fake wake was fantastic and moving. This may have been Daniels best episode ever. A nice wrap up.
Regarding the post-9/11 America angle, Bunk made it explicit again in this week's episode. "It's like a war, isn't it? Easy to get in, hard to get out."
By the way, that wasn't a sixth version of "Way Down in the Hole," I don't think. It was the version of the first season once more, by the Blind Boys of Alabama. (I'd just watched all the credit sequences again as part of this post, and I'm pretty sure it's the same.)
KcM: Thanks -- you're right, and I just changed that.
Yep, that was definitely this 1st season theme music. Also, the sequence with the "people of baltimore" is footage taken from past year's montages, mostly season 2.
Also, as for the Marlo/Omar anagram issue, I always thought back to season 2 when Omar is having the conversation with the court office doing the crossword puzzle, and he says something about Mars being the God of War (aka Aries). OMAR and MARlo both love to fucking fight and be in war (both are the shows biggest warriors for sure), so I think that's what that is about.
"when Marlo takes a bullet in his arm and shows no sign of pain, he reacts similarly—as if he’s thinking “that’s interesting—I didn’t think it’d feel like this.”"
Nit pick: Marlo was cut by a knife, its the first thing the camera cuts to after showing the cut/blood.
MARlo, MARla, oMAR L.
MARimow? Simon's obsessed!
OPE
POE (home)
Simon can no longer sit back and allow the Marimows of the world to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids!
Well-deserved praises will be everywhere, so let me begin w/ my biggest gripe: closure. It's just way too neat. Given the open-endedness of the other season finales this came as a surprise and slight disappointment. Two moments in particular didn't work: Michael's last appearance at the rim shop and Dukie's in the closing montage (otherwise fantastic). Ending both their respective storylines with Episode 9's final shot would've been perfect. I've appreciated parallels drawn between characters with similar existential/personal/political circumstances, but I've never been a fan of the "X is the new Y" conclusions people have been overly fond of making. Even if Y is a junkie, and X is clearly on his way to being one, the assertion that X WILL BE Y as opposed to X will simply be another junkie is too pedestrian. The theme of the 'vicious cycle' (how perfect is the montage song choice) is usually delivered nicely - Marlo's not so much the "new Avon" as he is another gangster to whom the crown has been passed. Carcetti's not the "new Royce" as he is just another snake of a politician, etc etc. So you can guess that Michael's hooded appearance with a shotgun completely took me out of the moment. It screamed "Michael's the new Omar" - down to the fashion sense and weapon of choice (one could argue that dark clothing and big gun is necessary in that "line of work" but that's beyond the writers' clear intentions for the scene). If Mike had any gun other than a sawed-off, the scene would've settled better methinks. It would have signified Omar-esque thieving terrors are in the making rather than "Mike's the new Omar", which is too trite a statement.
The "Dukie's the next Bubbles" scene is not as emphatically drawn, but still felt unnecessary. Everyone knew it was downhill from the moment he decided to shack up with the fiends. Seeing him going through the motion of shooting up diminishes the impact of implying this bright kid is going to end up a junkie.
This leads into the single most triumphant moment in the series' entire run: Bubbles ascension from the basement to the upstairs. When you consider the thick and thin of Bubbles' life and what it took to be able to walk through that door and sit down for dinner with his sister, have you ever wanted to shout and cheer more loudly?
Other highlights? There are too many to list. The collage of Baltimore in the middle of the episode - the one that ends with the sun setting by the docks - is sublime. The same goes for the closing moments of the montage and that last shot/final line, reminders of who the main character of The Wire really is. From "Let's go home" alone, Emmy's should abound.
For every Bubs-ascends-the-stairs moment, there're five downers. Valchek as the commissioner, Narese as the Mayor, Carcetti as the governor, Rawls as the police superattendant. Jesus how's that for depressing.
Another one for 'vicious circle' theme done right: Bunk and Kima's latest murder occurs by the same statues Gant was killed at the end of The Wire's very first episode.
Quote of the episode: "I can't make shit up can I?" - McNulty
That's it for now, until I double-back on the writeup + everyone's comments. Between here and Alan's blog, I imagine the discussion will last for weeks.
Somebody has to mention it:
Rawls - "The back-channel is the way to go"
HA!
David Zurawik, critic of The Baltimore Sun, says the finale was a cop-out, that Season Five was disappointing, and that the newspaper stuff was largely to blame.
When Levy referenced the 2004 bust he was talking about Munk, not Chris.
I enjoyed the use of the security camera shot when Daniels and McNulty shared the uncomfortable silence in the elevator. I think this was a tip of the hat to the very first Wire episode which also employed the use of security camera footage. I believe Simon even commented on that episode that it was the only time they employed that technique and Clark Johnson obviously decided to reuse it (as he directed both the first and last episodes).
Onion A/V Club interview with Simon -- less thorough than Alan's, but what isn't?
Yup yup, kcm. Just the full version of the song Bubs sings.
What? It's not Andre Royo? Are you suuuuuure? Haha.
As for crabs, I clearly remember McNulty and Bunk and greasy/wet paper bag sheets in The Box with food McNulty brought from the docks in season 2. Whether or not that is crab, I cannot recall, but they did feast that night. They feasted like kings (and vikings and pilgrims and romans and hawaiians).
My review's up at Thoughts on Stuff, and it's either the longest, or close to the longest post I've done to date. Lot of stuff to discuss.
As a finale, I did find it satisfying, there were a lot of great moments, and one thing I didn't mention in my review, but should have is just how much better the show looks on its regular broadcast than On Demand. I'd watched all the others early and they look like shit next to the HD signal.
What I found frustrating in the episode was the lack of big emotional beats. The essential tragedy of the episode was the fact that no one decides to stand up and do the right thing, the whole thing is about people making concessions to find a place they can live with. But, there wasn't the coiled emotion underlying moments like Bodie smashing the police car, or Carver in his car in 'Final Grades.' I love those moments, where the weight of everything pushes the characters into a box and leaves them unable to act.
Here, the emotions were less visceral and the tragedy is more intellectual. Most of the characters are doing good at the end, but Daniels and Rhonda in particular are all living a lie, they sacrificed the chance to make Baltimore better, to fight for that better world, so that they can have happy personal lives.
That feeling actually made me much more sympathetic to what McNulty and Lester did. They were not willing to just back down like everyone does here, they found a way to fight Marlo, even if it meant putting themselves on the line. I'm glad that McNulty made it out okay, and even though the scheme had disastrous consequences, it also did achieve its end and cripple Marlo.
My biggest issue with the finale was the sudden, out of nowhere appearance of actual murders, and the perfect fall guy for the homeless killer thing. It was so perfectly timed, it feels like something out of a Templeton story. I understand why they had it happen, so we didn't end the show with this prolonged homeless investigation hanging, but still, it felt like a bit of a deus ex machina, and Simon calling that an allusion to Greek drama wouldn't absolve it of the laziness.
Still, the good far outweighed the bad, and I'm happy with the way things wen tout.
Very well done, but a note on Gus falling on his sword.
You took to task the idea that the rest of the newsroom on Gus' side would have to be completely yellowbellied. I assumed that Gus assured all who cared about him that he knew the risks and wasn't going to let anyone else take a hit.
Anyways. Just wanted to chime in on that.
Again, well said.
So the theme of the fifth season was pretty much like the third: no matter how hard individuals try to push against the constraints imposed on them by their institutions, the institutions always win. You can either be a Burrell, play along with the rules of the game, and get promoted for your mediocrity, or you can be a Bunny Colvin and get your entire career and pension ripped from your hands because you refused to bend. I think there's a certain irony in that while it was a happy ending for most of the individual characters, it's a sad ending for the city of Baltimore. Exactly nothing has changed for the city. In the end, everyone of the good guys either played along with the "big lie" or gave up on changing.
I thought it was a bit heavy-handed how so many of the newer characters evolved into the roles of older characters. Let's go through all of these evolutions:
Michael -> new Omar
I'm sorry, but I just don't believe it. Yeah, in the 9th episode, he showed some Omar-like cunning by checking out beforehand the scene where Snoop was going to do him in. But the general vibe that I got from the end of the 4th through most of the 5th season as to why Michael could never really be a good drug soldier was that he wasn't "thug" enough. He'd blanch at using physical violence. He didn't care so much for keeping his name up in the street. He seemed scared when other characters put guns in his face.
In other words, I think he'd make a terrible stick-up man and wouldn't last nearly as long as Omar. If anything, if Michael could have stuck it out longer on the lower rungs, he would have been an effective Stringer Bell/Prop Joe type.
Dukie -> new Bubbles (or Sherrod)
That one shot in the final montage of Dukie shooting up made me stand up and swear. God damn was that depressing. I actually thought it was necessary, though, since I still had a shred of hope for him at the end of episode 9. He grew up in that sort of environment so I thought there was a slim possibility that if he were to able to survive that long without touching drugs, he'd be able to make it just a little bit further. In the end, once I saw his shifty eyes and the marks on his face during his meeting with Prez (who, by the way, looks like he's made major improvements at being a teacher), I knew he was an addict.
Sydnor -> new McNulty
Sydnor developed as a police officer this season and the episode ends with him chatting with Judge Phelan, stirring shit up like McNulty did way back in the beginning of the first season. But while Sydnor has become good PO-lice, I would have like to have seen him also develop a bit more of a McNutty-ish rebellious side. I imagine if this season were 12-13 episodes long, there would have been a scene where Sydnor drunkenly crashes his car into a fire hydrant and then stumbles into a diner and picks up the waitress.
Carver -> new Daniels
As we saw earlier in the season, when he wrote up that cop with the bad haircut who harassed that school teacher, Carver is the new well-disciplined, refuses-to-sweep-incompetence-under-the-rug lieutenant. Also, wasn't that one piece of dirty news that Daniels was always being blackmailed with regarding skimming some drug money from a crime scene back in the day? And didn't Carver (back when he was an idiot in the first couple of seasons) and Herc once get into a world of trouble because of stealing drug money from a crime scene?
Marlo -> new Stringer Bell
I can't imagine Marlo hacking it. He has a fraction of the business acumen or desire of being considered legit that Stringer Bell had. I would have almost thought it better if Marlo had gotten shot when he revisted that drug corner.
Daniels -> almost became the new Burrell
Burrell was always portrayed as a political hack but with the pressure being brought down on Daniels to juke the stats at the end of the final episode, you could imagine that perhaps Burrell was one day like Daniels but instead of resigning almost right away, Burrell spent years trying to push back.
First, thanks to The Wire creators, producers, actors, etc.
Secondly, thanks to this blog. I found it late (episode 58), but enjoyed reading back over the posts.
So much can be said about this series, this season, this episode, much of which has or will be said better by others. But a quick comment on Michael as Omar:
I don't see it as a mantle that passes as much as an unavoidable role that is filled when someone with the intelligence, morality, and integrity of someone like Omar or Michael is incapable of leaving the street. Mike has seen the game on all levels, as a little hopper, running corners, upper management, running a crew, everything, and he doesn't like it. But he doesn't really know (or doesn't want to, or doesn't think he can) how to get out of it. What's left?
As a run-n-rip, he isn't going to be hurting anyone that doesn't deserve it or see it as part of the Game. He lives an independent (albeit with allies) life free from a lot of the baggage of the game (and of course with some all its own). It supports the need for street cred and rep, which is the main standard of success for those living in that world on the streets.
If Omar lived, I don't see him and Michael teaming up, but they'd be respectable to each other. I don't think that Mike became the next Omar as much as he and Omar lived a life in the game, but out the game.
Re the recurring train symbolism that seems to have baffled Sepinwall:
I suspect the closing-montage song from S3 contains a possible clue: Fast Train (running off the rails...going nowhere fast).
Also note that a train appears or is heard during fateful meetings (Omar & Brother Mouzone in the alley as a train whistles) or at fatal meetings (Stringer is shot dead, and through the window we see the top of a train fly past a B&B Enterprises sign as String shuffles off his mortal coil). During Jimmy & Bunk's drinking bouts by the train tracks, Jimmmy sometimes played chicken while pissing towards an oncoming train and stepping out the way just in time (esp. in S1 when he announced he was really "gonna do this case").
The movie Fresh, an obvious influence on S4, had Fresh (a.k.a. Michael) seeing the train a symbol of escape from the hellhole he was living in.
And of course Tolstoy, who died in a train station, liked to link trains with death--literally in the case of Anna K. (Fuck Dickensian. The Wire is Tolstoyan!)
So...I think trains on The Wire represent...Evacuation...of bodies from the city, of souls from bodies. And, as we were reminded twice this season, a pantsload of crap, which is what most "symbols" turn out to be in the end.
wayne: "Burrell was always portrayed as a political hack but with the pressure being brought down on Daniels to juke the stats at the end of the final episode, you could imagine that perhaps Burrell was one day like Daniels but instead of resigning almost right away, Burrell spent years trying to push back."
I dunno -- that seems to give Burrell too much credit. There might have been an idealist there at one time, but he never struck me as much of a stand-in-front-of-the-tank sort of guy, or even a fifth columnist sabotaging the machine in secret; much of his actions (if I recall correctly) pivoted on the question, "If I go along with plan X, will I keep my job?"
hng: "The movie Fresh, an obvious influence on S4, had Fresh (a.k.a. Michael) seeing the train a symbol of escape from the hellhole he was living in."
Are you sure? It's been a long time since I saw it, but I seem to remember that the organizing metaphor of "Fresh" was chess (likewise in the early corner subplots of "The Wire").
However, Spike Lee's version of Richard Price's "Clockers," which came out a year after "Fresh," had a young drug dealer protagonist, Strike, who was obsessed with trains (though i am pretty sure this was an embellishment that was not in Price's book). And it ended with Strike leaving the city in a long, almost abstract montage of train travel -- one of the loveliest sequences Lee has directed.
I don't know that Prez has become a better teacher, so much as become what the system demands of a teacher. In season four, we saw him coming up with different stuff, like the dice game, and rebelling against the state standard tests. But, this Prez sounded like he'd lost some of that compassion and replaced it with a tough exterior. It's hard to tell from one scene, but to me, it felt like he was better at managing the kids, but also ingrained in the system in a way he wasn't last year.
If we're to take the scene where he's told there'll always be another Dukie as the turning point, the scene where he lets Dukie walk over to the junkman instead of trying to help him is the ultimate release of responsibility. He knows he can't save all the kids, so why even try?
Oh, one other bit I forgot to mention: In continuing with the ever-present theme of the destructive effects of institutions on idividuals, we, in the last episode, that Perleman steps across the line and commits a crime. She'd been pristine to that point but when she blackmails Levy to get the deal, she's corrupted. Of course she isn't going to be creaping around with dentures looking for dead hobos any time soon, but just the same.
Beautiful.
Regarding the trains, this was posted by a commenter named Algernon under Alan's Simon interview, and it's the best argument I've heard yet.
"On the train tracks, Orion7 from TWOP says:
'I thought that the trains could be standing in for the gods and the institutions, too. You can't stop them, you can't alter their path. You either have to grab on and go with them, or get the hell out of the way, because if they run you down they'll never look back.'"
Personally, I take a more-tolerant-than-usual approach to the closure the final episode provided for all the various characters. Sure, sometimes it was redundant or conversely rushed and incomplete. But hey, what are ya gonna do when time's up? There is one 11th hour feature of the last show that I regard as unacceptable, however, and it is to this that I now turn.
The plot device of the mentally challenged copy-cat killer is indeed a device, which is to say that it is horribly contrived. What is worse, it is lame not just as a dramatic mechanism but also conceptually, politically incorrect if you will. Just as Rawls would have McNulty pin all the "other" murders on the guy because - hey, what difference does it make? - the writers of The Wire pin an actual murder on the guy according to the same immoral standard. The guy is so low-functioning, his reality principle is so wrecked or maybe never was there in the first place, we're supposed to let it slide. Wrong. The writers are dramatically no better than Rawls is legally, and both are offensive ethically. The fact that McNulty feels remorseful that his prank resulted in an actual murder, that he subsequently stands up to Rawls, draws the line too little and too late but nonetheless refuses to assign his fake crimes on an innocent fellow, and that he closes the show by taking the street person he abducted out of town back to Baltimore, by taking the homeless man "home" (in itself a very worthwhile irony that gives the last nod to the city as a whole)- none of this makes up for the cheapness of the plot device and the crassness of it for basic humanitarian thinking. I am disappointed that after five seasons of excellent story-boarding and dialogue informed by an obviously well-developed social consciousness, The Wire resorted to such shit.
Having registered this critique (and I would appreciate any feedback on this; am I out to lunch?), I want to disagree with Andrew Johnston about the conclusion of the Bubbles story-line. This is one of the redundancies according to Andrew. While I might suggest that seeing Reginald sit down for supper with his sister does indeed go beyond seeing him in the previous episode speak to his support group, my focus is instead on the meaning of Bubbles story for another character. Gus. The continuation of Bubbles' story in the final program was less for the sake of Bubbles and more for the sake of Gus. The featured appearance of Bubbles in the newspaper by Gus' protege is the antithesis of Scott getting the Pulitzer Prize. Mike Fletcher's article makes it a matter of public record that Bubbles is going to make it and this civic endorsement is the Fifth Estate as benefactor to the society in general, a little flicker of righteous flame, a testament to Gus and his principles. (How he managed to keep his job while Alma did not might not prove credible under serious scrutiny, so let's move on.)
The last contribution I wish to make at this time pertains to the possible meaning of Marlo's concluding scene. I believe Andrew's interpretation of this scene is correct but I wish to elaborate on an aspect made explicit in the text that he neglected. I have in mind the fact that Levy was in the process of introducing Marlo to the same real estate developer scam artist that Clay Davis introduced to Stringer Bell - putting Marlo at the exact same crossroads. This crossroads, has to do with what I take to be the central social contradiction throughout the entire five seasons of The Wire; u-huh, the class demarcation between robbers with six-guns and robbers with fountain pens. Marlo's future is unclear to me. As convincing as I find Andrew's explanation of Marlo's behavior in the end, there is at the same time ambiguity with respect to his potential. All I know is that Stringer took economics classes at community college. He self-consciously wanted to move from the gun to the pen and was prepared to sell out Avon in order to make this move. He was objectively in a better position to succeed in a suit compared to Marlo. On the subjective side, it does appear that Marlo has no ambition to kill with ink unleashed from a vest pocket, yet he is being told by Levy and the cops and the whole system that he has no other option. But look at him. He barely eats with cutlery at all, never mind sorting out the salad fork from the fucking dessert fork. I don't know what he wants to do, but I have a pretty good idea what he can and cannot do, and hey - look what happened to Stringer. Or more symbolically, look WHERE it happened to him. Omar and Brother Mouzone took him out. But Levy and his cohorts put him there, in every sense of the term.
Then - Ben
"Are you sure? It's been a long time since I saw it, but I seem to remember that the organizing metaphor of "Fresh" was chess"
It was. But Fresh would also hang out at the train tracks and have train fantasies about escaping the shithole he was trapped in. (Also, Michael Fresh and Michael Lee both schemed to save a sibling from sexual abuse, so I think there's definitely some influence going on.)
Clockers works, too.
What are you still doing up, Matt? Isn't it way past your bedtime?
"'I thought that the trains could be standing in for the gods and the institutions, too. You can't stop them, you can't alter their path. You either have to grab on and go with them, or get the hell out of the way, because if they run you down they'll never look back.'"
Works for me, too. Fits in nicely with Jimmy's game of chicken.
But I still like the "pantsload of crap" theory.
Man, I dunno. Seeing Gus fall on his sword to protect everyone else and only Alma having any sense to back him up really hit home with me as someone working at a newspaper and unable to say a whole lot more because, yes, I want to keep my job. I've seen that happen so, so many times in the past three years I've been at a corporate paper and I NEVER saw it happen in the years before at independently-owned papers.
There's a temptation to completely write off the Sun storyline, and, yes, there are too many white hats and black hats, but the central sense of desperation from everyone that works there is absolutely pitch-perfect. It's a venerable American industry that is absolutely falling apart at the seams, trying to hold it together long enough to have a rebound when e-readers and the like become mass-market products. There are a lot of papers out here (SoCal) that are pretty much just empty reprints of wire copy, staffed by skeleton crews designed to just keep the damn thing alive so ad revenue can float into corporate coffers. Then there are a lot of people trying to do good journalism and running into road blocks at every turn. I've been unable to write intelligently about the Sun storyline because I identify with it a little TOO much. I suspect in three or four years, I'll have some perspective.
there has been TONS of crab eating throughout the run of this show.
Regarding David Zurawik:
That article is hilariously emblematic of how much of a herd of lemmings the modern media is. The moment Simon turned his critical eye on the modern newsroom, the Sun--which had lavished praise on "The Wire"--suddenly declared it a failure.
Witness as well how commenters at Matthew Yglesias' blog, the Prospect, Slate, Salon, etc. have all accurately detected a shift in tone of coverage to the decidedly negative, and how much of this is connected to the enemies of Simon (Carroll and Marimow) still having friends in the industry. These guys all want to keep their jobs, after all, so they're just doing what their bosses tell them to.
Another great reason why Sepinwall, this crew over here, and H&H won the race for best analysis of "The Wire"--you critiqued the show on the merits and flaws, not how it affected your universe.
anybody got a source for walon's kafka quote? i couldn't quite make it all out, but i heard i liked.
An ending as satisfying as Six Feet Under's - just the right amount of closure without too much sentimentality. It was like an extended version of the S2 closing montage, which basically reminded us that regardless of what just happened everything is still the same. Plus ça change, etc.
I can't believe it's over. What the hell am I going to watch now? Rock of Love?
Ami--
Well, for five weeks you'll have John Adams, which is pretty terrific stuff by any standard.
Benjamin:
You took to task the idea that the rest of the newsroom on Gus' side would have to be completely yellowbellied. I assumed that Gus assured all who cared about him that he knew the risks and wasn't going to let anyone else take a hit.
That fits with Gus's characterization to a degree, but remember--he's not going after Templeton for personal glory or because of some vendetta. He's doing it because he cares about the paper's institutional integrity, and it's pretty clear he's not the only one who gives a shit about the Sun's good name and overall reputation. If other people there share his belief in the paper--and we've seen evidence of it--you'd think at least one would step up for the good of the institution even if Gus wanted to be the only one at risk of taking a fall.
It was mentioned above but Bunk and Jimmy were indeed eating crab in the box while Jimmy was still on the boat during Season 2. I vividly remember Bunk asking Jimmy if he was going to eat the "crab gut."
I also believe the the entire major crimes unit was having a crab lunch during Season 3 when Daniels was redirecting there investigation away from Stringer Bell to Kintell Williams.
thanks to Anonymous 5:18 AM for pointing out the numerous instances of crab eating. One that came to mind for me, and I can't cite the scene/episode/season, is a few characters at a waterside restaurant tearing into a mess of crabs. And as to the
Simon cameo (along with his wife, Laura Lippman, who has been in a few episodes this season), in season two, episode ten or eleven, there's a scene where Sobotka is coming out of the union office. There are a bunch of reporters waiting, one of whom is Simon, notebook in hand. I thought the Wire team manage to handle the conclusion of the highwire act they have been presenting this season admirably well. There's a balance, a continuity, a sense of torches being passed, for better or worse. Almost a little too pat, with its equivalences, but fitting. The scenes of Baltimore, first the long sequence of just the city itself, and then the sequence of its residents, serve as parentheses to the montage showing us what happens to the characters about whom we have come to care so much over the past six or seven years. David Simon and crew have done something unprecedented - taken a long, close look at an American city and its institutions, albeit from a fictional perspective. I want to thank all of them for that, as well as those of you who comment here and elsewhere who have helped enrich my perspective on the show.
Thank you for these 'Wire' recaps for each episode. I finally began watching the show this season and so, these- besides just being good- helped me figure some stuff out.
-Is it a stretch to connect Marlo's knife-wound to the end of 'Killing of a Chinese Bookie'???
-I really enjoyed the shots of Baltimore montages, especially as someone from Baltimore. I felt they were something of an antidote or response to many's misinterpretation of the show/Baltimore as horrible and hopeless. The point being, a CRIME show is going to focus on the negatives but the ending montage captured being in Baltimore quite well: a mix of postive and negative, uplifting/sad. etc. Also, the mid-show montage was very strange, almost avant-garde; I'm still trying to figure it out.
-Fuck David Zurawik. As a Sun reader for most of my reading life, Zurawik's TV columns have always bothered me and he taught at Goucher while I was there. While hardly Templeton or Whiting, he was rather smug to students and often wasn't around because he was on local NPR shows or something else more important...His NPR show is with African-American Sheri Parks and has the feeling not that uncomfortably different from the Levy/Marlow conversations...
Thanks,
brandon
The ending can be picked apart here and there, overclosing and what all else, but seen in the context of the entire series, for me--odd bits of business and all--it was just fine. Along with everything else Simon is concerning this brilliant series, he is a story teller, and he brought his story, and many of its sub stories, to resolution. I agree witht he insight that in his ending is a rebuke of the complete cop out at the end of The Sopranos, with its pretentious meta putting on the of the audience.
Here is a tremendous discussion of the The Wire aired only after its penultimate episode, where diavlogger Suderman has some exceptionally incisive over arching things to say about the the show and episode 59.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/9215?in=00:20:42&out=00:29:18
And for what they are worth, here are my comments on that discussion:
"I agree with an above comment that this was a fresh and illuminating exploration of the The Wire, especially the comments coming from Suderman. I agree with almost everything he said about The Wire and liked the way he folded details into an overarching thematic account of The Show. Two exceptions to this, though:
1. The demythologizing, which is defintely underway, particularly with Omar even more than Prop Joe, and also in the scenes of Barksdale in jail, just another con, did not seem to be happening as such with Marlo in his fury in the jail cell. There have been plenty of scenes in Season 5 qualifying Marlo: his insistence on cash before P. Joe schools him about the benefits of doing your laundry; his being so out of place off shore trying to make deposits; his unfamiliarity with cell phones and the like when being schooled by Vondas. He is a terrifying, ominous, dangerous shark in a constricted Baltimore urban sea. But in jail, in his fury, he is a magnificent presence, entirely compelling, bursting out of his shell of sociopathic cool. At the same time, though, it is all as nothing, street punks going macho on us over tragically delusional notions of self importance. So in the scene the build up and the take down are simultaneous;
2. I can see the case for how the show asserts a libertarian vision that is appealing to libertarian conservatives. But I suggest that that view overthinks The Wire, and amounts to the assertion that anytime in the arts indviduals can endure, prevail or even triumph by virtue of their fortitude, contingencies that break their way--Namond, personal growth, however, a libertarian vision is at hand. In the case of Namond, thriving in a good, slightly upper middle class home, with caring, devoted, virtual parents, going to what looks a good school, it is taking a village to raise a child, in a synergy of individual effort and implicitly functioning institutions.
A smaller dissent is from Klein's idea that Omar's quest after Marlo is quixotic. Actually not: Omar was playing it right. Had Omar's call outs reached Marlo's ears, he would have, presumably, succeeded in luring Marlo into the streets where the playing field, to be trite, would have been more even as between Marlo and Omar. Chris was wise, almost Stringer Bell-like, in keeping the call outs from Marlo's ears, which, when thought about, also works to undercut the force of Marlo's mightily affecting fury in the jail cell.
I loved Suderman's comments about the reporter in Simon at tension with the idelologue in Simon and I liked the comments of Klein, with which I agree and had noted myself, how, as "the game is always the game", new wine is being poured into the old bottles of patterns of social pathology and typology.
I say The Wire is the best dramatic series ever aired on television and is high art.
brandon: " Is it a stretch to connect Marlo's knife-wound to the end of 'Killing of a Chinese Bookie'???"
Considering the breadth of the writers' influences, I wouldn't be too surprised.
Interesting note: In the Onion A/V club interview linked to in the comments thread, David Simon says that he and the writing staff wanted Omars death to be like "...a moment like "The Shootist" or the buried moment in the gunfight at the end of "Wild Bunch.""
Regular House commenter Hayden Childs specifically predicted a "Wild Bunch" death -- Omar the badass killed by a child -- very early in the season. Good looking out, Hayden!
Thanks, Matt! When someone films The House Next Door Comments on The Wire: The Movie, I hope to be played by the reanimated corpse of Edmond O'Brien.
I'm still processing my thoughts on the finale, so no substance here, sorry.
Is it a stretch to connect Marlo's knife-wound to the end of 'Killing of a Chinese Bookie'???
In one of Simon's very recent interviews (they're all blending together in my head so I can't remember which one), he said that Marlo's final scene was influenced by the final scene of The Gambler. I haven't seen the film, so I can't speak as to how they're connected.
It sounds like I'm in short company, but I ate up the scene with Michael as the 'new Omar.' To me, Michael has always been presented to us as a thinker, calculating every move.
Sure it was easy to make obvious comparisons to Omar/Michael, but the beauty of the scene was that Michael had little experience seeing a healthy Omar at work. So to see Michael bearing not only a physical resemblance, but a verbal swagger, brought a smile to my face.
A tip of the hat as well to Tristan Wilds. Because while he uncorked one in the banker's leg, I read a great deal of trepedation in his face.
During the mid-show montage of Baltimore, I said outloud...'Weiiirrrd' because it seemed so foreign to the show's format. My first thought was to 'buckle up' as I readjusted in my seat, preparing for Marlo & Cheese to hit the streets again. But when the next scene was Daniels moving into his new office, I figured the montage was meant as an indication that several days had passed (numerous sunsets and sunrises.) Too simplistic?
Crip: I definitely think the montage was intended to signal the advancement of time. I tend to think it was more than a few days, though.
"Let's go home"
There is a school of thought that says ALL stories are actually the same one story in some guise--and that one story is The Odyssey.
Maybe they're right.
Thanks for the answers about 'Killing of a Chinese Bookie' and well, it being connected to 'The Gambler' s even better and once I read it. 'The Gambler' is well-worth checking out, Toback-scripted, Karel Reisz-directed 70s tough-guy movie..and yeah, the scene is very similar...the suit, outside, overhead lighting, the seedy area, a vague act of self-destruction...
I guess this has been answered (most explicitly by Todd in this thread), but I'm still having trouble accepting that when an editor in Gus's position (sorry, don't know the titles of the different levels of editors) goes to his boss with evidence that one of their writers is fraudulent, that it's his job that's in danger, not the fabricator's. Isn't it part of an editor's job to make sure that his reporters are actually reporting?
Clearly I'm naive and ignorant, but to me it seems like such a risk for the bosses to try to silence the whistle blower. What happens if the truth does come out later as so often happens? Isn't that going to reflect horribly on any paper that obviously ignored incriminating evidence? Are the bosses that shortsighted? Can the "Templetons" really get away with it forever?
But then I think of those horrific stories about sociopathic doctors who get away with murder (literally) in one hospital after another because, rather than risk self-incrimination, they shuffle the doctor off to another hospital where he continues his spree. And the poor nurse or intern who's made the complaint gets punished, harassed or ignored. I suppose if it can happen when lives are literally at stake, it can happen at a newspaper.
Nomi,
I think the problem with Gus as whistleblower, is that he only knows about fabrications that are on the periphery of the homeless serial killer story (padding the facts with the homeless vet) or have nothing to do with it (making up the "stab-in-the-back" quote about Daniels). He didn't know what we know, that Templeton fabricated the call and that the whole serial killer story was contrived on the police side.
Consequently, he has no magic bullet to kill the Pulitzer, just things that could potentially tarnish it. Faced with the option of a career-making Pulitzer vs. peripheral doubts from an editor, I can see the management taking the position that they did. In fact, I think the decision of the Sun's management to sweep the reality of what Templeton did under the rug was a much less surprising/morally reprehensible act than what Carcetti/Rawls did upon confronting real facts about the complete fabrication of the entire serial killer episode.
Of course "the bigger the lie. . ."
First I will add my praise for the best show on TV, it's been a great ride.
I will add my voice to crips that Michael's succession to Omar felt right, not forced. His stickup did not come out of the blue. Michael had already shown the same kind of ill ease at 'unnecessary' violence (the killing of the family for dissing Marlo) as Omar had for those not in the game (wonderfully spelled out in the prequel scene available on demand showing the young Omar making the stick-up kids return the workingman's money). That was his only available role, knowing he was fated to live in the streets but not willing to turn into the kind of unquestioning muscle that Snoop and others like her practiced.
A lot of the quibbles seem to come down to what would have been satisfying (Omar shoots it out with Marlo eg) vs what in the end was the overall theme, the intractability of corrupt institutions. We cheer for Bubbles making it up those stairs but find the shot of Dukie shooting up and Michael's shot gun too pat or redundant?
All I know is they will all be missed.
New York magazine's Vulture Blog has a shot-by-shot breakdown of the final "Wire" montage. Not much critical insight here, but the screencaps are nice.
The main problem with the newspaper plot denoument (aside from the broader problems) was its predictability - it's been obvious for a while that it was Gus who was going to take the fall, not Templeton. So when it happened, it was disappointing/dull. Simon still hates Marimow, check.
I don't know that it's unrealistic. Or rather, too unrealistic. Is the other big lie - having a bunch of high city officials in three separate bureaucracies (Mayor's office, Police, State's Attorney's office) seamlessly cover up not one but two major police scandals, serendipitously aided by a mentally addled copycat killer - any more likely?
It all fit together really well, and everybody's a** was covered. But in the real world, could such a perfect conspiracy really hold together?
On the newspaper front, it was unrealistic that Gus's accusations are dismissed out of hand. In today's media environment, Romenesko, etc., editors of major metropolitan dailies know even small ethical transgressions can become a national scandal. I guess this is implied - Gus comments that you can lose a Pulitzer as easily as win one, so we can imagine Templeton (who gets more audacious as the season goes on) will one day get caught - maybe when he's working at the Washington Post.
So anyway, I thought both the newspaper ending and the police/city ending really strained credibility. That would have been a problem in earlier seasons, but given the semi-comic tone this year, I thought it was OK. What's sad is that they don't strain it all that much!
I definitely don't think the Bubbles stuff was redundant, because we saw him coming to terms with one last problem: allowing himself to be good, to be portrayed heroically in the Sun piece (remember back when his AIDS test came up negative and he thought there must be some mistake?) It was the final piece of the puzzle that is the redemption of Reginald Cousins.
There is another similarity with The Gambler, not just in look or tone. It's not merely self-destruction, it's the main character having escaped what most would regard an awful fate, and for whatever reason - perhaps with Marlo, he's even deader now - they throw themselves into a moment of real danger.
The Gambler's moment was more superficially random - involving a pimp and a whore - but yes, in mood and look and maybe also intent, they are very similar.
Great analysis as always AJ. A couple quick things:
-Bunk and McNutty were eating crab and drinking MGDs in the 'box' sometime during season 2.
-There isn't an incontinuity in Partlow's rap sheet, Levy is I believe referencing Monk with the 2004 charge.
I think part of the Gus situation is also that he just wasn't part of the management culture at the paper - his use of profanity, his constant questioning during news meetings, etc. You can imagine even those who supported him rolling their eyes every once in a while. What seemed old school (calling to a young female reporter to "get your ass over here") would be viewed as unprofessional in most newsrooms today, more ammunition to use on someone who didn't fit in with the current structure. My guess is Gus was in their gunsights long before the Templeton situation ever came up. And he knew it.
Wally: "What seemed old school (calling to a young female reporter to "get your ass over here") would be viewed as unprofessional in most newsrooms today, more ammunition to use on someone who didn't fit in with the current structure."
Definitely. Coming up in newspapers in the '90s -- which I suspect will be viewed as the last gasp of print journalism before it was absorbed by that amorphous creature known as "the media" -- I sensed a definite cultural divide between Gen X/Gen Y newcomers and the old school guys (and gals) who came up in the '60s and '70s and early '80s -- when the culture was a bit closer to (if not exactly the same as) the culture of newspapers mid-century, when it was still considered a trade more than a holy calling, and was often practiced by people with little or no college education, a lot of street smarts, and a skeptical/profane attitude that was learned from studying other reporters rather than studying movies about reporters.
I've been reading recaps on other sites that bitch, bitch, bitch about the unreality of the wrapping-up in this finale -- particularly the idea that city hall, the police department and the newspaper would all bury scandals so quickly and decisively, without evident fear of exposure.
Dunno what else to say except that it's a comedy, guys. "The Wire" has always had an absurdist streak, but it was more pronounced this season, from the very start. This season was the least perfect of the five, but I have very little problem with the decision to switch-up the tone and go for something less realistic, more satirical -- deflating the self-righteous balloon that has borne the series aloft throughout much of its run.
The shot of Templeton accepting his Pulitzer is the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a long time. It's not just an amusing gag, it's got teeth. It's ridiculous and rude -- the sort of thing that would make an editor or publisher want to to throw a remote at the screen. I love it.
(Andrew: Thanks for another excellent recap. Well done, all season.)
"It's a comedy, guys." I don't get the joke, then. I'm all for black humor, and this show has done it better than most for five seasons, but I didn't get the feeling this was being played for laughs -- can you explain the reasoning there? I like how the final episode pointed up the tendency of many viewers, myself included, to look at McNutty and Templeton and be disappointed in McNutty (because we like him and believe in him), while thinking Templeton is a loathsome little fucknuts for pulling...basically the same shit. But that wasn't reading "hilarious" to me.
"indeed, we see Rawls checking out a woman at the beginning of their conversation, presumably as a knee-jerk ass-covering maneuver"
Steintorf glanced at her too; I assumed they were just waiting for her to pass so they could converse privately. Didn't seem like a chick check.
"That one shot in the final montage of Dukie shooting up made me stand up and swear."
It made me roll my eyes; that particular denouement, and Michael's, felt unearned to me. The show got a shorter episode order than usual, and I'm glad they provided narrative closure even if it felt pat in spots, but I got the hint from Dukie's scene with Prez. I didn't need to see an actual anvil...er, needle going into his arm, because the actors got it across in the first sequence. The way Dukie's face falls, knowing he just shined Prez on, after Prez goes to get his car? Done. No need to overclose.
All that said, I liked the ep and I'll miss this show like family.
The shot of Templeton accepting his Pulitzer is the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a long time. It's not just an amusing gag, it's got teeth. It's ridiculous and rude -- the sort of thing that would make an editor or publisher want to to throw a remote at the screen. I love it.
I agree completely. One thing I find strange is that many people who are simply disgusted at Templeton winning the Pulitzer found Valchek becoming commissioner to be hilarious. How can you love one but hate another? It's the exact same joke being done twice. I was half expecting them to show Clay Davis winning the lottery by the end of the montage.
"overclose"
whatever.
nitpick. nitpick. nitpick...
MZS: I concur about the Templeton Pulitzer - nasty as hell, and we all cheered loudly to see it. But we should throw in a reminder: according to Simon, the Sun editors did submit the work of a known fabricator for Pulitzer consideration. And Simon himself did say to his editor at one point, 'You might win a Pulitzer. You might have to give it back.' (Maybe misquoted, sorry!)
The gag's got teeth, not least because it very nearly happened.
My long, angry thoughts on the finale are here; they sum up as 'Journalists and wannabes, if you're complaining about the "reality" of the newsroom stuff, go fuck yourselves: you're missing the point, and part of the problem.'
The gag's got teeth, not least because it very nearly happened.
Just because it happened doesn't mean it's fun to watch. I don't care about the 'reality' of the newsroom stuff any more than I care about the reality of the police stuff, it's up to the show to sell us on what's believable. I can believe Valchek becoming commissioner because it's a gag set up by five years of stories about the city and its constant failure to put the right people in power.
But, when the show makes such an issue of Scott's purple prose and lack of subtlety, it's hard to believe that he'd wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that seems more at home in the New York Post. Maybe the implicit comment is that the Pulitzer itself is corrupt, but why does that matter to me? I think Simon made a mistake by getting so wrapped up in the politics of the Pulitzer and journalistic awards, and focused less on how this journalism lets down the community.
What the show has done a great job of throughout is showing how all the different 'estates' of the show affect each other, never better dramatized than in the huge confluence of events that led to Randy winding up in the group home. Here, the newspaper story had minimal impact on the other goings on, it generally existed in its own little world. You could cut out every single scene at the newspaper office and still get the point that the media focuses on serial killers while ignoring the real problems.
I think the online dialogue about that section of the plot has been so wrapped up in this is it real, is it Simon's grudge line of questioning, people don't even acknowledge that the story doesn't really work on a dramatic or emotional level. I don't think it's a disaster, but it's easily the weakest storyline in the show's whole run. I do think there was a potentially great story in there, but it just wasn't pulled off as well as it could be.
superb writeup. thank you.
"Dominic West is 39 this year, and if that’s McNulty’s age too, I think it’s safe to assume that after high school, he might have spent time in the military and then fucked around for a few years before joining the force. If he continued his education past high school, I’m inclined to believe he either got a two-year community college degree or went to a less-than-great four-year school and dropped out."
When McNulty was trying to romance Theresa D'Agostino by taking her out to dinner one night he told her that he went to Loyola, but had to drop out after one year because his girlfriend got pregnant. D'Agostino was not impressed.
Worth reading: Excerpts from excellent David Simon's remarks and answers to questions at the 1998 Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association's Annual Conference. Originally published that year the Bay Weekly Online, it's an fascinating glimpse into his mindset soon after leaving The Sun but before he became ensconced in series TV.
Journalists, like anybody, think that the rest of us are more interested in their particular inside baseball than most of us are. They do go on about it, though.
Also, Wax Banks, easy on the "wannabes." We all want to be something.
Did we ever find out what happened to Theresa D'Agostino?
House contributor Wallace Stroby offers a reading list for Wire fans suffering withdrawal symptoms.
Peripheral comment: I don't think Rawls is gay. I think he told us what he was in McNulty's briefing: somebody who was all for a little kinky shit every now and then. He probably swings both ways, as it were.
The show has trained me, I think, to look for significance where there might not be any. For instance, as I watched the scene in which Bunk and Kima are last shown together investigating a shooting, I was almost convinced the victim was Dukie. The opening of the scene seeemd to indicate a school (I still had high hopes for him) and the body seemed to be wearing his clothes from a previous scene.
So much has been offered regarding the finale and many of my thoughts have already been articulated so eloquently, that I'll simply offer up thanks to Andrew J. for his catalytic write-ups and to MSZ for his many links or "testers" for us WIRE junkies.
When this show started, there weren't communities like this one, so I would just watch and re-watch and wait for anyone to begin a discussion about the show and then vomit analysis all over them. I think this blog is a much better release than overwhelming and possibly scaring off friends and co-workers with a stalker's like knowledge of a television program. While watching the WIRE was very much a solitary act for me - much like reading - discussing it shouldn't.
So thanks Andrew (from comments), hng, hayden, and the rest of THND.
As for the finale. It's all been connected.
One thing I find strange is that many people who are simply disgusted at Templeton winning the Pulitzer found Valchek becoming commissioner to be hilarious.How can you love one but hate another? It's the exact same joke being done twice.
Well, Templeton's someone we only met this season, and he's pretty bereft of sympathetic qualities. Valcek, while equally unethical and incompetent, is a really charismatic, engaging and funny character, and one we've barely seen this season. Even though he probably would be a disaster as Baltimore's commissioner, it's hard not to be amused at his promotion if you're a longtime fan (especially because the actor has so much fun hamming it up for the news cameras--and, by extension, for Wire fans--at the press conference).
"I think this blog is a much better release than overwhelming and possibly scaring off friends and co-workers with a stalker's like knowledge of a television program. While watching the WIRE was very much a solitary act for me - much like reading - discussing it shouldn't."
Damn it, McCann, your post almost made me spray my morning coffee on the monitor. Thanks.
the junkman with the horse is an arabber -- a not entirely uncommon thing in Baltimore.
David Simon's farewell letter to Wire viewers.
The Guardian newspaper asked a group of celebrities to keep a diary for one week in September, 2007. Dominic West, one of the participants, just happened to be on the set of The Wire during the series' final four days of shooting.
My favorite line from this episode, from Gus: "I remember clean."
First and foremost, thanks to this forum for offering me a chance to indulge my obsessive devotion to the most affecting, brilliant 61 hours of art I've ever been witness to. Many great points will and have been made, and I doubt I can add a great deal of substance but I would like to make two points. First, the closing montage contrast between Bubs and Dook hurt me emotionally in a way no medium has before. The needle Dookie stuck in his arm stabbed me in the heart, and was a true moment of dedication to a theme that began with a photocopied 10 dollar bill years ago. Say what you will, but that was one of the most important scenes in TV History on a show full of them.
Now, stepping down from my soapbox, I would like to see if I can get some feedback on the parallels between Marlo and Daniels. I may have missed this in the thread, but they seem to be on antithetical versions of the same path. From the restraint inherent in the actors portrayal to the brief moment in which their bald heads bore the crown they seem very similar, any thoughts?
Re: David Simon's farewell letter to Wire viewers.
I will be excoriated for saying so--and so be it--but I just read David Simon's most eloquent, thoughtful but misconceived farewell letter. He seems not fully to understand his own masterpiece. If The Wire was intended, finally, as an exhortation to do something, if it functions as exhortation, that is incidental to it as a work of art. Art is neither propaganda nor exhortation. The Wire is a self contained and autonomous universe--separate from, while overlapping, the real world. Art is a mirror to, and a lamp on, reality, which is to say, it reflects and illumines the real world as it reconceives it--which is what, brilliantly, The Wire does. Where there is exhortation, propaganda and didacticism, there is less art. The Wire, ultimately, does not belong to David Simon. It belongs to the world at large; and the world at large may understand it better than he does. And so it transcends whatever Simon thought he was doing by way of exhortation, and for that we can be thankful.
(No death threats please: finally, as well, who really cares how many times people ate crab and all the other trivia that sometimes populates these comments?)
I have never seen the word "exhortation" used so many times in a single paragraph.
I saw nothing wrong with Simon's letter. He said the chief goal of the show was to shed light on issues that are facing society. I'm pretty sure most of us have known that from the start.
I felt so good when Slim took down Cheese!
After Joe was popped and Slim turned down the chance to work for Marlo, I was hoping in some way he would come back to avenge him, but i expected (hoped) it to be teaming up with Omar to take out Marlo.
But Slim was smart. Even though he said at the last co-op meeting that "He wasn't a CEO-type," he was all along. All he had to do was wait for a power vaccuum, which came when Marlo went down.
Then with his take down of Cheese, it was the last of the Marlo crew.
And now Slim is Co-King. And at least there is now once again a vestige of the "old-school code" that Prop Joe lived by and allowed the co-op to thrive for all those years.
Slim, just watch your back for the next Kenard!
Too much exhortation: guilty as charged.
On the other hand, and only for example:
1. "This year, our drama asked its last thematic question: Why, if there is any truth to anything presented in The Wire over the last four seasons, does that truth go unaddressed by our political culture, by most of our mass media, and by our society in general."
2. "We are a culture without the will to seriously examine our own problems. We eschew that which is complex, contradictory or confusing. As a culture, we seek simple solutions. We enjoy being provoked and titillated, but resist the rigorous, painstaking examination of issues that might, in the end, bring us to the point of recognizing our problems, which is the essential first step to solving any of them."
3. "But nothing happens unless the shit is stirred. That, for us, was job one."
Itzik Basman: "The Wire, ultimately, does not belong to David Simon. It belongs to the world at large; and the world at large may understand it better than he does. And so it transcends whatever Simon thought he was doing by way of exhortation, and for that we can be thankful."
I agree completely. I respect Simon's wish that The Wire would spur people to action (and I'm sure it will, though not in exactly the way he might wish -- most likely on an internal, intangible level).
But you're right that art, once produced, becomes independent of the artist -- and that the art often contains meanings that the artist did not consciously intend, and might have flaws or virtues that the artist never considered.
This is a bitter pill for some to swallow. Last fall, we had a lively thread here about the re-release of Blade Runner that centered on the question of whether the film's hero was an android himself, and we got comments from some clearly irritated viewers who said the thread was pointless because the director Ridley Scott himself said in interviews that the hero was an android (as if that settles the matter -- and as if contrary impulses on the part of his collaborators couldn't have muddied the director's goals!).
I think the show's argument against the drug war as-is can be seen by anyone who watches it with an open mind and attentive eyes and ears. Ditto the other points Simon made in his farewell letter.
But that's not all that it's about. I realize Simon himself already knows that, but I fear that by tying the show so closely to anti-drug-war arguments, he's inadvertently limiting the scope of his achievements. And in general, it's not a good idea for artists to set the terms by which their work is interpreted. As a critic, whenever I open a press kit that contains a "Director's Statement," I roll my eyes and think, "Was there no one in the director's circle with enough influence to persuade him not to write this?"
Matt Zoller Seitz:
Thanks for your supple, subtle and thoughtful comment.
I wanted to bring up a legal point which is probably misplaced in a forum aimed more at sussing out the hidden meanings and parallels in the show. But please forgive my wandering mind, and if we have a criminal lawyer in the house (which I most certainly am not), I would love to have some feedback on this.
It struck me as a legal blunder for Rhonda Pearlman to walk into Maury Levy's office with a tape recording instead of an arrest warrant. I realize that one theme of the episode (and the show) was: nothing is sacred from the game, everything is on the table for barter, etc, and that scene was a part of the theme. But the recording not only had Levy bribing a public official, but specifically paying for information related to the Stanfield case.
That would, I think, be enough to tie Levy to the drug conspiracy as a participant, not as counsel. There would be a high legal bar for a warrant for Levy's arrest as part of the drug conspiracy, but the recorded phonecall is enough for probable cause for a warrant to search Levy's office (assuming that's where DePasquale reached him) for further court documents. (Furthermore, maybe DePasquale writes an affidavit that he delivered documents personally to Levy in his office.) If any further court docs found are related to Stanfield's organization, that strengthens the case for Levy as conspirator rather than counsel. And certainly if such a search were to uncover money-laundering documents for Stanfield (and those are admissible under the warrant for the ill-gotten court stuff from DePasquale), I would say the case against Levy as conspirator is water-tight. Would a judge ever approve a search warrant for a defense attorney's office, even with evidence like the recorded phone call?
So Pearlman walks into Levy's office with a warrant to arrest Levy as a conspirator in the drug-murder-money laundering-whatever Stanfield case. Then the event where Herc gave Carver Marlo's cell number becomes the act of a confidential informant on the conspiracy. (I would say this could be done by compelling Herc, even if Herc doesn't acquiesce to play it that way. He's certainly a potential hostile witness, and whatever Herc wants to do, Carver and/or Freamon could be plausible in saying innocently "we got this from a C/I; don't look at me.")
So the source of the number is legit. Now the question of the wiretap. Here Levy's status is a matter of concern, because even as a defendant he could participate in his own defense by going after the authorizing documents for the tap. Lo and behold, there aren't any, and if he can get his hands on the docs for the serial killer wiretap the case against Stanfield based on the wire is seriously weak (as the episode dealt with). But Levy is exposed out the wazoo as a member of the drug conspiracy, and here's where some bartering might play in. In exchange for separating Levy from anything related to drugs or violent crime or even the organization's money (giving up a lot, but not as much as Pearlman did give up), Levy is his own defendant and has nothing to do with the Stanfield defense, either as co-defendant or counsel. In that capacity, he would not be in a position to question the wiretap's legality. Could Pearlman prevent him from even informally advising Stanfield's (new) counsel about weaknesses in the prosecution? Maybe that would be obstruction of justice if he did since he is also a part of the conspiracy being defended?
In any case, I hope you'll forgive this rumination. I've loved reading these Wire rundowns. And I want to shout out to the show also because I loved that in one of Levy's final scenes, he invites Herc over, saying "Yvette made brisket." That's exactly what he says the first time we see him, when McNulty has D'Angelo in for the witness murder and Levy is called away from Shabbat dinner. Nice going!
marshall,
The main priority from city hall on down was to keep news of the fake serial killer under wraps. If Rhonda had charged him, Levy would go down, of course. But he'd make sure his lawyers (and I'm sure he could get really good ones) would do some digging (because Levy knows there's something deeply fishy about the case against Marlo) and they'd eventually find out that that Marlo's cell-phone number was on the warrant for the serial killer case. And of course Levy and his lawyers would wonder what the fuck THAT was all about, do some more digging, and quite possibly find out that there was no serial killer. Which is what Carcetti, the DA's office, and the police brass want to avoid at all costs. So, Rhonda blackmails Levy instead of arresting and charging him. It was easier for everyone that way.
Marshall:
I’m a lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer, and I’m a Canadian. But I wonder whether it was a blunder.
Pearlman’s problem was that she had a case based on illegal evidence, an illegal tap, and a fraudulently obtained tap at that. Her foremost duty as an officer of the court would have been not go forward with a case based on that fraud but rather to seek to prosecute those complicit in the fraud.
That for reasons personal to her, for reasons generally political and for reasons systemic, she was not going to do.
Similarly knowing of Levy’s criminal obtaining of the sealed court records, her duty was to disclose same to her superiors and the local bar association and recommend him for prosecution and disbarment too.
But because she was not going to do the first, levering Levy, a very smart and very corrupt lawyer, was a corrupt solution to her problem. An arrest warrant would have to be based on something, and therefore getting it means going partially public with what she knew. That would countermand her corrupt strategy.
Her only hope, her strategic imperative, is to in effect “buy off” Levy. The extent of the mutual corruption involved between her and Levy is measured by them trading views on what incarceration each would get for their plangent criminality. And even if Levy were indicted as a co-conspirator, he would have advised his own defence lawyer about the state’s problems with the illegal tap and the state would have been no further ahead.
The tape was a threat to Levy she could use for leverage short of kamikaziing herself, her case and the political structure around her in Baltimore by going public.
Levy as it rurns out outfought, outhought and outtoughed her, and got Stanfield off in a career making case for him. Pearlman saved public face for everyone, and became a judge (btw, if she’s still with living with Daniels, no way he can plead a case before her). Herc gets to savour the delights of brisket and to become one of the meshpocha.
Corruption holds sway; life goes on; some make out better than others; and “the game" variously played "is the game.”
What the show has done a great job of throughout is showing how all the different 'estates' of the show affect each other, never better dramatized than in the huge confluence of events that led to Randy winding up in the group home. Here, the newspaper story had minimal impact on the other goings on, it generally existed in its own little world.
Patrick, I think you've missed the point. The media has an affect at every level, be it street, school, police, whatever - it's lack of presence is what makes everything continue.
It's not Carcetti who gives a shit about the serial killer - it's the media. If they did actual coverage on proper events, perhaps the real issues might be dealt with.
the media's insularity is the issue - and the narcisstic way journalists have reacted to this effectively proves this.
I think in this season they did something vital - they gave absence a dramatic impetus.
PS - Havent seen this commented, apologies if obvious - Dozerman and Truck are the new Herc and Carv
PPS - what happened to Theresa D'Agostino?
Ratings for the finale are in: it drew 1.1 million viewers, 1.8 if you count the 11 p.m. replay (which Nielsen doesn't, but HBO wished they did). In comparison, the finale of "The Sopranos" drew 11.9 million viewers -- broadcast network numbers.
Also, where was Simon while the finale premiered on HBO? Watching a Pogues concert.
One thought on Marshall's post about a legal point from the finale, that being a "legal blunder" on Rhonda's part to "walk into Maury Levy's office with a tape recording instead of an arrest warrant."
The guess here is that she knew she could only use the recording for leverage because in Maryland it is illegal to tape a phone conversation without the other party's consent. Yes, the recording had Levy bribing a public official, but I'm pretty sure Levy had no idea he was being recorded. In fact, I think Lester alludes to that when he gives Pearlman the tape, describing it as a "one-party consent call" or something like that.
The one party being the busted Gary DiPasquale, I assume. This may be too simplistic a reading on the situation, but as a journalist in Baltimore I'm familiar with the law.
Love this forum, it's really elevated my enjoyment of the season and the show. You all are like mishpacha now.
FWIW, a libertarian mag's sympathetic take on Simon's critique of the media:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125401.html
It bothered me that the real serial killer...Marlo got off. Sure he's not the boss anymore but there's no justice, he's not in jail or dead. Maybe the justice is that he's the Mike Tyson or Idi Amin of Baltimore. An ignorant thug who blows through his money, lashes out in violence as he did on the corner....but ends up as a loser... a has been... with no respect or money.
blackirish: I've heard a similar take advanced with regard to Tony Soprano (assuming you didn't think that the final sequence of the final episode meant he got killed, which I emphatically don't). It's some small consolation, I guess, but only to the viewer -- not to any of the civilians Marlo's treachery affected.
Of course, part of what makes shows like "The Wire" stand apart is that they don't feel it necessary to punish every bad guy or vindicate every good guy. In that sense, despite their many inventions and embellishments, they're a bit more like life than the typical TV show.
The "Reason" piece (linked to above) is essential reading for anyone who is tempted to dismiss the newspaper plot as unesssential, undramatic or shoehorned-in. The writer uses arguments with evidence to show -- obliquely and subtly -- how the newsroom plot is the umbrella narrative of the entire season. It shows viewers how the stories depicted on "The Wire" that seem so original and fresh to many critics would seem old hat if local papers did a better, deeper, broader job of covering the metropolitan areas they purport to serve.
The distinction between "impact" stories and actual daily journalism ("More with Less," as that episode title says) is a critical one.
The piece is not lopsided, though.
Quote: "This isn't intended as a nostalgic argument for bygone days. In some ways American journalism is better than it has ever been: There are more outlets to choose from, more ways to start an outlet of your own, more eyes monitoring the outlets' output for errors, omissions, and lies. The larger mediasphere has grown more open to outside voices, even if specific channels like The Sun have grown more insular and removed. For many topics, though not nearly enough, this means not just more commentary but more actual reporting."
But there is still no substitute for a daily local news outlet that's dedicated to covering a wide array of neighborhoods, people and beats, in a prismatic selection of styles, treating shoe-leather reporting as the foundation for everything else.
Simon has said many times (though not in these exact words) that a series like "The Wire" would be neither interesting nor necessary if the media cared to cover local news (particularly in working class and poor neighborhoods) as a matter of course, when there isn't a fire or a killing. This article makes Simon's argument for him, more clearly than he's managed to do thus far.
"the media's insularity is the issue - and the narcisstic way journalists have reacted to this effectively proves this.
I think in this season they did something vital - they gave absence a dramatic impetus."
I think that way of looking at the storyline makes clear its significance as a piece of social criticism, and I think it works within the context of The Wire as exhortation for social change. I think the media's eager buy in to the made up serial killer is a perfect companion to the buildup to Iraq and the media's continued failure to really investigate things.
However, I'm watching this show for the characters and their story, and I think the newspaper storyline doesn't work from a dramatic point of view. Saying we spent the whole time focusing on Scott to show that the press ignores the real issues is like having Herc be the main focus of the police storyline, to spend almost all the time on him and his schemes and then call it an indictment of the police force. Yes, the force would be indicted, but is this a story you'd want to watch? Does it have the wonderful conflict of McNulty's struggle to get an investigation going, or Colvin's attempt to clean up the community with Hamsterdam? I don't think it would. Herc works as one piece of a larger institution, just like Scott potentially could. But, with him as by far the most prominent character in the story, it's just not particularly interesting to watch.
"...Simon has said many times (though not in these exact words) that a series like "The Wire" would be neither interesting nor necessary if the media cared to cover local news (particularly in working class and poor neighborhoods) as a matter of course, when there isn't a fire or a killing. This article makes Simon's argument for him, more clearly than he's managed to do thus far..."
Isn't this to confuse life with art? I don't see the connection between better local reporting and coverage and that lessening the impact of The Wire. This goes back some to what we talked about before. The Wire does what it does because it so excellently makes fictions--in the best sense of that term--makes universality out of densely wrought and poignant particularity. Ezra Pound said "Literature is news that stays news". But what is a more steadfast image for what is passed than old newspapers?
As an ammendum to that, I'll say that when Simon did show a journalist actually trying to do good, with the Fletcher and Bubbles plot, it's by far the most dramatically interesting piece of that newspaper storyline. I also really enjoyed the scenes early in the season, with Alma struggling to get her stories covered, I think focusing on her story would have a lot of potential, showing her attempt to get the truth across, and the subsequent denial by the bosses to focus on Scott's thing. From that perspective, we still get all the comment on the absence of real substance in the paper, but also have a character we can invest in and emotionally engage with to guide us through. That would make her getting bumped out to Caroll County genuinely sad instead of having me thinking, oh yeah, she's still on the show.
Here is an interesting aside, it seems right out of "The Wire"....Cops ...schools...gangs and the press. Currently in Chicago there is a vicious gang war on the Southside. A number of folks have been killed. In today's Chicago Sun-Times here is a quote...
"Security was heavy as school let out. Dozens of officers were outside. Security guards, anti-gang activists and ministers helped direct student foot traffic.
"Y'all didn't do s---,'' a girl said in the direction of the police nearby. "Why the f--- you out here now?"
Schools spokesman Michael Vaughn said, "We had extra security there last week" and officials are reviewing security procedures"
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/835457,CST-NWS-crane11.article
Still, something about it seemed almost comic-booky, as if Omar’s mantle was something that gets passed around like the superhero IDs that get passed from one generation to the next in the DC Universe
Holy Batman! Are we in Metropolis now? That scene was right out of Smallville. I expected Clark Kent and Green Arrow to appear next to Michael the shotgun-toting Jedi Knight. Though he did look more like a sneering Sith Lord under that black hoodie. Is this the new Urban Justice League? What a bizarrely fantastical moment! Comic-booky, indeed. Ayo, there’s a new superhero in town, ya feel me!
Lord Michael, go forth and rescue Duquan Weems from the purgatory of the junkie stables. May the force be with you.
Two questions:
Dominic West said in his one-week diary that Matt linked that the actors were really drinking at the "wake" in the final episode. He's not for real, is he???
(I do believe his figure of 949 for the number of speaking roles on the show. Crazy.)
My other question is about Daniels. Do you feel that, by leaving the force, he acted with integrity? force?
That last "force?" is not supposed to be there. Oops.
"My other question is about Daniels. Do you feel that, by leaving the force, he acted with integrity?"
Maybe not as much integrity as he might have demonstrated if he'd exposed the whole rotten mess at the risk of martyring himself professionally for all time -- but compared to the behavior of many of his bosses, colleagues and subordinates, he's Mahatma Friggin' Gandhi.
MZS: Maybe not as much integrity as he might have demonstrated if he'd exposed the whole rotten mess at the risk of martyring himself professionally for all time -- but compared to the behavior of many of his bosses, colleagues and subordinates, he's Mahatma Friggin' Gandhi.
I agree.
"at the risk of martyring himself professionally for all time"
I think he was much more worried about hurting Rhonda's and Marla's careers. If it hadn't been for that, I think he would have blown the whistle and taken the consequences.
That's true, but the desire to protect loved ones' jobs and reputations, however understandable, pales beside his obligation to expose evil and/or stupid shenanigans that affected the entire city.
"anyone who is tempted to dismiss the newspaper plot as unesssential, undramatic or shoehorned-in"
Unessential or shoe-horned-in? No, I wouldn't go that far. Undramatic? Yeah, pretty much.
So, Matt, is the newspaper storyline supposed to be drama or is it supposed to be satirical farce? We keep switching from one defense to the other, depending on what charges are being made.
"the desire to protect loved ones' jobs and reputations, however understandable, pales beside his obligation to expose evil and/or stupid shenanigans that affected the entire city."
True, but it wasn't professional martyrdom he seemed to fear. He seemed okay with that.
hng: "True, but it wasn't professional martyrdom he seemed to fear. He seemed okay with that."
Point taken.
hng: "So, Matt, is the newspaper storyline supposed to be drama or is it supposed to be satirical farce?"
That question suggests that the two modes are incompatible. I don't think they are -- as Stanley Kubrick repeatedly demonstrated.
Which isn't to say the newspaper stuff, or this entire season, is anywhere near the weight class of Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," a part-absurdist, part-wrenchingly dramatic film that Simon has name-checked more than once.
Whether one likes or doesn't like the newspaper plot -- and whether one buys or doesn't buy Simon's defense of this season as a metafictional commentary on Seasons One through Four -- seems to depend largely on whether you think the execution matched Simon's vision of what newspapers can and should do, and the reasons why they fail to do it. It's the whole absent presence thing -- the newspaper gets hung up on "high impact" pursuits, from chasing a Pulitzer prize to trying to chase down a fabricator within its ranks, and it fails to notice the more mundane but important drama taking place all over the city.
We still haven't really gotten into the whole idea of the big lie that people want to hear because it's more exciting than the small truth. That touches everything from the media's increasing disinterest in old fashioned, local, shoe-leather reporting to the successful selling of an Iraq invasion as a useful response to terrorism. It also happens to be a good deal more abstract than anything Simon dealt with in seasons past, which might be a big part of the reason that there's been such reluctance, even among fans, to accept it as a story that's integral to "The Wire," even though its main participants are eerily disconnected from a lot of what happens outside of the newspaper.
If you want to keep this line of argument going, I'll continue to bat it back and forth with you, but now I have to go to bed.
But first, a quote from Simon, from Alan's interview:
"The main theme is not the fabulist and what he is perpetrating. That's the overt plot. The main theme is that, with the exception of the bookends -- at the beginning, the excellent effort at adversarial journalism that begins the piece in episode one and the genuine piece of narrative journalism that concludes it, with Bubbles -- it's a newspaper that is so eviscerated, so worn, so devoid of veterans, so consumed by the wrong things, and so denied the ability to replenish itself that it singularly misses every single story in the season.
What I'm loving, it makes me warm all over, is that a lot of the obsession of journalists in the evaluating -- I think (Brian) Lowry mentioned it, you mentioned, a couple of others mentioned it as being fundamental to the story -- (isn't that theme) but whether Whiting is as big an asshole as Valchek, 'Is Gus more of a hero than Colvin?,' 'Do they have to put suspenders on that guy?,”' 'I can't believe any editor would say that,' 'Why would Alma drive all the way over there?' I'm loving it. It's this onanistic, self-obsessed world of journalism -- which is the problem. In their heart of hearts, the guys who are running my newspaper and a lot of newspapers, they now cede the territory, the moral and essential territory, of whether we're asserting for our society, our city, our community."
Just in case I didn't make myself clear: I agree completely with Simon's critique of the news industry.
"That question suggests that the two modes are incompatible. I don't think they are -- as Stanley Kubrick repeatedly demonstrated."
I don't think they're necessarily incompatible. But it's damned difficult to fuse them successfully, and in my humble opinion Season Five didn't quite pull it off.
Sorry for keeping you up.
Great wrap-up, Andrew.
That Reason article and the above comments, at least those related to the exigencies of modern media, orbit a dark mass of an issue that cannot be readily defined, even though its distorting effects are apparent to whomever is looking. It's particularly frustrating because we can't be sure how it will all shake out; the abdication of the journalistic duty to communicate useful information has all the properties of a pusher's solicitous contempt for the narcotized. Journalists recognize the sell-out, and they hate it. But they're on the sauce too, and the race to the bottom continues.
And if you think that's melodramatic, I urge you to watch this MIT talk with David Milch. The whole thing is impressive, but if you really want a white-knuckled indictment of the media, fast forward to 1:07:50. I'm not even sure he's right; in fact I'm pretty confident he's guilty of a measure of reductionism.
Still, I'm not sure he's wrong, either. And neither are you. And that's what makes this such a problem. Our minds aren't built to comprehend this kind of thing: instead of what we're used to -- a clear cause followed by ripples of consequence which spread out into chaotic, finely woven patterns that fade at the margins -- we have this shadowy hunch, a discomfiting intuition shrouded in darkness and unverifiable, whose effects are clearly discernible only in the microcosmos. As one backtracks from the finely-grained to the monstrous nothing in the middle, the effects become more disjointed, more arguable and uncertain, until our conversation becomes so saturated with induction that we can't be sure we're not just seeing things.
However, regardless of whether you agree with this or not, I believe it's inarguable that a core problem is the inability of our culture, and its surrogate mirror the media, to subscribe to a unitary context (a centripetal, explanatory narrative) that can be used to anchor all the irrational goodness and awfulness we see around us. And without a transcendent narrative with which to comprehend all our various strivings and miseries, I'm afraid that one morning we'll all wake up, having seen the deepest dark the night before, the sun will be shining, and we'll all sport Tommy Lee Jones' face at the end of NCFOM.
Maybe not, sure. But also maybe.
Matt: That's true, but the desire to protect loved ones' jobs and reputations, however understandable, pales beside his obligation to expose evil and/or stupid shenanigans that affected the entire city.
It is in our natures -- the goodness of our natures -- to protect our loved ones before others. No one would survive without this need, this instinct. I do not believe it is a moral failing, but a necessity.
The exceptions, those who are sometimes (rightfully) called martyrs, are necessary as well. They are, however, I think, often a different breed, a different breed in that they are able to set aside personal attachments in the service of societal needs.
It is unreasonable, even antithetical, to expect the bulk of us to be able to forsake family and loved ones for a perceived or even actual larger good. Most of use more-good-than-bad human beings must forever attempt some kind of impossible balance between the two.
Interesting, though, that the other group among us able to forsake those they are supposed to love, are people capable of committing evil.
Nomi: Martyrs are a different breed, definitely. And to build on your last observation, it seems to me that the ration of bad guys to martyrs is so lopsided that the majority in the middle -- the ones who understandably put the safety or comfort of loved ones above the greater societal good -- can't help but feel helpless sometimes.
If there's one thing we always knew about Daniels, it's that, like Colvin, he's loyal to his people and will sacrifice himself before he betrays them. See how he stood up for Prez, gave Carver a second chance, pulled McNulty off the boat, etc. etc. etc. (In a way, he exemplifies Aristotle's ideal of the noble man who doesn't fawn over his superiors and treats his subordinates with respect.) It's also clear that he feels deeply indebted to his former wife and is chivalrous in the extreme towards Rhonda.
So, while Daniels might fail Kant's morality test, I think Aristotle might approve of him.
hng:
nice reading of Daniels
Thanks. Someone had to speak up for him.
It would be extremely interesting if the implication is that Fat Face Rick is actually running the co-op (with Slim as his #2) - because this also implies that: 1) the current Mayor of Baltimore has had business dealings with the primary heroin dealer in Baltimore; and 2) that she succeeded in becoming Mayor *despite* the public knowledge of these business deals via coverage in the Sun.
Talk about ignoring the important stories.
I also appreciate the study in contrasts that went un-realized by cutting out the Randy/Cheese subplot from S5. Cheese had only survived and thrived in the game due to the generousity - and (over)indulgence - of his uncle Joe , who had only assisted and put up with his nephew (who he pointedly did not trust or find responsible) because Cheese was his "sister's boy". That's how much Joe, the old schooler, respected blood ties.
Whereas we know how his nephew repaid Joe's family loyalty, and Cheese himself doesn't support or even acknowledge *his own* son Randy's existence. This is how low and ruthless the new order is. And he has doomed Randy in the process, not that Cheese cared.
That's why we cheered when he went down, decrying the old ways and nostalgia.
(I like to comfort myself in thinking that wise Joe had his estate protected, and that the small "legitimate" fortune that would have been left to Cheese will now be inherited by Randy. With his unexpected windfall, Randy gets out of the home, buys a unicorn, and rides in to Dukie's rescue.
Okay, might need further development.
jerry:
also a nice post; man, there is more to be learned about this show, almost every time someone says what's on his or her mind.
It's a little late, but let me plug this Dissent magazine article, which I think adds a needed criticism of the Wire's critique of American society.
In Simon's world, virtually no level of social organization larger than the individual can function. The two strong exceptions I could point to are the AA meeting and Bunny's adoption of Namon -- the first a completely voluntary organization that bolsters individuals' choices, the second a voluntary reimagining of an otherwise--within the Wire--dysfunctional and irrelevant institution, the nuclear family.
The authors point out that collective action is never addressed on The Wire, and that in Baltimore during the same time as the show is set, working-class and inner-city people pursued collective action successfully: to pass a minimum-wage law, to win a janitors' union contract, and to win the construction of affordable housing.
The article is hokey when it expresses disappointment in The Wire, but it's valuable to point out that the show missed collective action entirely. There is individual action and bureaucratic action. But the show -- which at least Simon poses as a totalizing critique of American institutions and the possibility for change -- leaves out an important argument about social change.
(The labor union plot comes closest to a collective-action setting, but for Simon, labor is industrial, dying, and the province of white ethnics. That's an appropriate critique of a huge swath of American industry, but it ignores the energized service worker unions. Not coincidentally, their leadership is disproportionately female and Latino when compared to the rest of the labor movement, or to the milieu of The Wire.)
Nice critique, wrongshore. Thanks.
A little digression from the theme to point out something I do not think was mentioned yet.
I believe the Micheal as Omar parallel was set up in Season 4. Here my thinking.
In one of the earliest episodes, maybe the first, Dukie gets beat by the terrace boys. Michael initially suggests guns, more of a Chris, Snoop type response. Of course, Randy's piss balloon plan takes the day. Later, when the boys decide to take revenge against Walker, this time Michael's plan is used. It is well thought out, sort of flashes and bold. Even at the time, I thought Omar would be proud.
In the same scene, and maybe foreshadowing, Mike spots and takes the ring like Omar did when he robbed Marlo. He also pulls down the bandanna covering his face. While Walker doesn't see him, he is almost willing to let Walker know who did this, figuring he would be too embarrassed to come after him. The transition is complete when he is willing to show his face in his final scene. It seems like he wants to be able to trade on his name.
Just my thoughts on it.
Jerry: I like to comfort myself in thinking that wise Joe had his estate protected, and that the small "legitimate" fortune that would have been left to Cheese will now be inherited by Randy. With his unexpected windfall, Randy gets out of the home, buys a unicorn, and rides in to Dukie's rescue.
Okay, might need further development.
Needs no further development. This is now the official ending. In my sad mind.
First, let's say that we know now what people in Shakespeare's time were thinking:
How can this dramatic masterpiece (art) so entertaining for the masses (commerce)?
and
How is it possible to tie together these rich plots, fully developed characters and breathtaking dialogue?
Clearly, we've seen genius at work, and we're all better for it.
But let's be honest. The Wire jumped the shark the second McNulty decided to create a serial killer. This was a sad example of allowing story serving satire (of the media) as opposed to social commentary serving story (like the Season 4 public education theme).
I'm a public school educator. For educators in the inner city, watching Season 4 was like an out-of-body experience, a sort of ecstatic combination of wonder and therapy. It was more real than reality itself, which made it surreal and wildly enjoyable.
At the end of the day, Season 5 was not real in the important ways. Sure, the newsroom patter and courtroom dealings were "authentic" and "gritty" and had the trappings of The Wire we love. But the driving story with its ridiculous subplots, ratcheted up by tall tales of fake police work, bogus overtime and lies across the board, felt like a disingenuous satire of the very art we've loved.
Yes, there were parts of the season that were breathtaking. And Shakespeare's worst plays had some captivating scenes, his awful sonnets some clever verses. Yes, the finale was a love letter to us, and to Baltimore. But in an industry where entertainment falls apart in the final act, it is a shame that the Wire is one more show to choose commerce over art in its final curtain call.
Jason
Jason, I just want to say I really enjoyed this season. Every season not only focusses on different themes, it portrays old stories from a different perspective, with a different agenda. As a former after school and arts teacher in Baltimore, season 4 was the best thing I'd ever seen. Leaving the job because I felt the system was too broken and having the kids ask about me dissapointed, was heart-breaking. That season captured that tragedy even more so. That doesn't mean season 5 wasn't brilliant. The Wire was always intended to be a microcosm of America itself. How far have we all gone on an outrageous lie for the past 5 years?
...The Wire was always intended to be a microcosm of America itself. ...
Diasagree: it's about the "other America" as in the book by Michael Harrington.
According to David Simon from various interviews, The Wire is about the decline of the American empire, while portraying the "other America."
Well, I had not noticed too much focus on how the other than the Harrington other America-- which is to say the middle class, the upper middle class, the reasonably well off and the more than reasonably well off--is doing. So if Simon thinks that he portrayed the decline of the American empire, I guess I missed those episodes: I only saw episodes 1 through 60.
Re: Symbolism of the train tracks.
I like the idea raised already about the train moving down the tracks being inevitable and unable to be stopped. However, I think it is also possible that the reference is to the B&O Railroad (known to all who play Monopoly). B&O basically made Baltimore a shipping hub and for a long time was the economic force behind the city. The decline of the railroads and the failure of that institution would be the first institutional failure for Baltimore. The theme is, as we all know, the central point behind the series.
If my memory serves me correctly, we rarely, if ever, see the tracks in light - always dark like they're closed. Also, almost never see trains on the tracks, couple of instances of it only I think. Sort of symbolizing the decline/failure of the railroads.
Anyone agree?
This is a really late comment but some of the later comments regarding Daniels, his self-preservation vs martyrdom, and the women in his life, as well as Prop Joe/Cheese/Randy prompted me to comment on what I think is perhaps a missed component of the show. We all know that in Simon's world, institutions are corrupting and destructive. However, FAMILY is not treated as such. Family is redemptive, mostly because Family doesn't ask or demand of people (at least, functioning family doesn't); Family inspires people to act in others' interests, for one's own interest.
This isn't entirely consistent (McNulty fails his families, for example), but throughout the series Family is seen in a positive light. Family often loses out to other orgs (re: Sobotka), but Family is key.
Without family, you got nothing. This is also very close to that near-universal thread of all drama: the power of love.
Without family, you got nothing. This is also very close to that near-universal thread of all drama: the power of love.
I agree that family and love are redemptive and uplifting. Beadie and Elena's pleas to McNulty about what constitutes "life" were very profound. It represents the only salvation. In the end, Daniels, Freamon and McNulty chose their families. They realized that love is more important than the game. McNulty and Freamon forgave Kima's snitching. Her friendship meant more to them.
The only reason Namond was "saved" is because his father Weebay loved him and Bunny accepted him into his own family.
This is also the reason that I can never get behind the twisted concept that Michael is the new Omar. It strikes me as backwards considering the evolution of his character, especially that last disturbing scene with Dukie where he confesses that he lost his memory.
Omar always chose love and family. Despite the dangers, he still had his Grandmother, Butchie, Anthony, Brandon, Dante, Renaldo, Kimmy, Tosha, his friendship with his old schoolmate Bunk. Throughout this series, Omar cared for his loved ones and kept them close. He either worked with them or made an effort to spend time with them (took his Grandmother to church). It was a reflection of his kindness and goodness. He was a big-hearted and sentimental gangster.
Avon also valued family. He loved Brianna. He was devoted to his older brother in the coma and visited the hospital. He couldn't bring himself to hurt D'Angelo. That's why Stringer carried it for him. Avon loved Stringer too.
Even Chris Partlow loves his family and spends time with them. Monk has two baby mamas to support.
Then we have Marlo and Michael. Two isolated entities with no family, no friends, no past, no memories, no nostalgia, no sentiment, no love. Just a dark hole of emptiness.
Marlo is a cold hardened distant loner without anyone in his life to love. We don't know how Marlo became a soul-less shell of a person. His backstory is a mystery. However it's chilling to watch Michael sever all his relationships: his mother, Cutty, Namond, Randy, Bug, Dukie and turn into a person with no memory of his past. That is both depressing and frightening.
Michael eliminated many people from his life whom he considered "weak". While he sacrificed himself in order for Bug to survive, his choice really took his brother away from him. Michael had to cut himself off from Bug. He turned into a person who is unfit to care for his little brother.
Dukie - not Michael - became Bug's primary caretaker and nurturer. Dukie loved Bug like family. He cared for Bug like nobody ever cared for him. While we saw Dukie and Bug spending time together and having conversations, the only time Michael spoke to his brother was before leaving him. Even then, there was no physical contact and Bug was told not to cry. In contrast, Dukie hugged Bug and wept. That speaks volumes.
The loss of family devastated Dukie. Caring for Bug gave his life purpose. He is alone and lonely. Dukie clings to an older junkie & his horse out of desperation. Unlike Michael, Dukie needs people in his life.
Dukie also needs the drugs to pacify the pain. He feels too deeply. In contrast, Michael feels nothing. The game has left him numb and devoid of emotion.
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