Season 5 discussion

[B]

Two things

1. Is the look Dukie has on his face when Michael tells him he doesn't remember the piss balloons and the ice cream truck the single best moment of acting in the run of this show? Because if it isn't, it's close.

2. How awesome is it that after 3 seasons Marlo finally stops mumbling and speaks up, and he sounds like Kermit the Frog?

[Jon]

Yeah, everything about Dukie is most heartbreaking part of the show, in large part because we completely saw this coming. That element is pretty consistent within this show: you see things coming, and you can pretty much figure out how things are going to turn out. There are very, very few sudden unexpected twists. Everything makes sense, and it's painful.

Did you finish the season yet? I'll be safe, assume you haven't, and not discuss anything in the final episode.

- I love how the show focuses 100% of its energy in bringing a city to life, examining the nature of institutions and how people interact with them, and doing a dozen other things that no other TV show is doing, and still comes up with another 20% and spends it on beating every other cop/detective drama at its own game. In Season 1 we observed, in great detail, how the police and the drug trade were relentlessly trying to outsmart each other through increasingly clever and sophisticated means. That sort of mystery-solving fun, which is a billion times more challenging and interesting than that of CSI or Law & Order or whatever else, was present in every season, but it returned in rare form in Season 5. It was enormously fun to watch Lester, McNulty and Sydnor slowly piece together and try to decrypt the Stanfield crew's awesomely sophisticated code. See, I LOVE that sort of detective shit when it's actually interesting, but outside of The Wire it almost never is.

- What did you think about the newspaper angle? I thought Clark Johnson was fucking awesome and I liked some of the dialogue that concerned what journalism is and isn't, but I feel that this angle in general is the only major misstep throughout the entire course of a show that has routinely, and without a significant slant, portrayed every angle of every side of every situation. Pete said once that the newspaper brass may as well have been wearing evil mustaches and capes. They're self-serving, detestable jerks, and that's that. It's disappointing. I still enjoyed the newspaper stuff, but if it lived up to the standards of the show it would have been five times better.

- McNulty's plan to invent a serial killer also broke away from the show. I could believe that a major would legalize drugs in safe zones, and more to the point, Colvin's actions in Season 3 gave us a lot to think about. But what about the serial killer? What is there to take away from this? Is there anything we can learn? Not really. This plot was more about the characters than anything else. But I can't count it as a misstep, because I legitimately enjoyed it, and this season brought up plenty of other interesting things to think about.

- Omar's jump from the balcony was based on something that actually happened. The difference: Omar jumped from the fourth floor, and the real-life inspiration jumped from the sixth floor. Fucking ridiculous.

[David]

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 DON'T READ THIS

I have mixed feelings on season five. Some story lines work so well that they reach the heights I set up for The Wire but some things just feel out of place in a show so grounded in reality. I'd let a lot of my problems with season five slide if they happened on a lesser show but you know.

I'll say that I think McNulty's creation of a serial killer felt just out of bounds for McNulty's do anything to get the perp mentality. Staging the murder of the first person was still in line with McNulty's obsession. Somewhere between that moment and Lester teaming up, it crossed a line for me. Lester in particular felt too far because, despite having the same obsessive streak that McNulty has, he was willing to work things legitimately to get accomplish it. On the other hand, I like seeing Lester stop being super human and fuck up big time. The resolution of this brings things back but it feels too out there to be on this show.

The newspaper angle is truly a beautiful thing. Maybe it was taking all those newswriting and journalism classes in college but Clark Johnson felt really good to me. He felt a bit too moral (or, more correctly, not having a grey area at all for a major-ish character) for lack of a better word but I think there almost needed to be that balance against Scott Templeton.

Dukie's change is just so hard to watch. Like Jon said, you can see it coming but oh man, just please please please don't happen.

[Andy]

Yeah, I think you guys hit the nail on the head for me. I haven't really been able to figure out what was so different in season 5 from all the others that made it seem...not as good, but I think that the comparatively shallow nature of the newspaper characters and the illegitimate feeling of the staged murders in a show that usually is more about the big picture of every day in Baltimore than the once in a lifetime massive level fuck ups of a couple of characters. The only counterpoint to this I can think of is Colvin's Hamsterdam, and I think that happened so gradually and naturally that it couldn't have bothered me. Meanwhile McNulty is just suddenly acting on an impulse. It just didn't feel as natural. Bunk was the only one in that plotline that didn't feel like suddenly he was a caricature of himself (McNulty) or someone going entirely against every standard set for himself in the previous 4 seasons (Freamon).

Needs to be verbalized though that I still love this fucking show, including this season.

[CH]

Hi everyone, I guess in a word, I am new to the boards, but I've been following forever. I joined just to further discuss The Wire.

Spoilers i guess if you havent seen all of season 5 yet

Season 5 is such a mix for me, because although I find the behavior of McNulty and Freamon to be terrible, I can certainly understand where they are coming from. Freamon came across as so beaten down as a result of the 13 years (and 4 months) of the Pawn Shop Unit, and all the red tape and crap the Major Crimes Unit had to go through that when he discovered what McNulty was doing that it made it okay in his mind.

The look that Jimmy had in the closing montage was excellent. Although Simon didn't come out and say that McNulty was happier or relieved to be off of Homicide or the MCU, you could certainly see it in his face.

Ultimately, there were so many stories that I would want to talk about in regards to Season 5. This would be including the evolution of Michael into the new Omar, which was hiding in plain sight the whole time. They show Michael to have a similar code to Omar in the way he did not see the point in going after people who didnt deserve it, such as June Bug. It finally clicked for me that Michael was indeed the new Omar was in the way that he cased out Snoop and saw that he was going to be lured into a trap. When he had the shotgun and capped Vinson's knee, my smile was huge.

Ultimately, my favorite juxtaposition from the entire series took place in episode 9 as well. Marlo, Cheese, Chris and Monk are in jail when Monk lets slip that Omar was calling out Marlo. Marlo unleashes into a tirade that finishes with "My name IS my name!" You compare that to the season 2 finale when Spiros tells The Greek, "My name is not my name." and that call back is just so fantastic. Simon expresses so beautifully that the Greeks are a much more invicible and invisible entity compared to Marlo's crew. Marlo so desperately wanted his rep, and the Greeks just wanted their money. Pure capitalism at it's finest. So genius.

thanks for havin me aboard.

[Hirsby]

Marlo's rant also shows that Omar's seemingly dumb strategy of simply walking around Baltimore and calling out Marlo was, in fact, genius, since there's nothing Marlo cared about more than his rep. Omar would've probably brought Marlo down had it not been for his leg injury and Canard.

Chuck Klosterman made a good comment about the newspaper storyline and I think I agree with it, as someone who's dabbled in journalism himself. Klosterman felt the power of The Wire was the overall sense that 'this is what things are really like' and that he was really an inside look into the world of drug-dealing, public schools, local politics, the docks, etc. But when the show turned to a topic that Klosterman himself actually knew something about (journalism), he suddenly noticed several little flaws and inaccuracies, and it made him wonder if similar flaws existed in the previous storylines.

Overall, I'd agree with S5 being the weakest Wire campaign just because the newspaper story didn't end up bringing much to the table. That said, the 'weakest' Wire season is still one of the better seasons of any show ever.