THE WIRE: SEASON FIVE – david simon – 9.0 / 10

During the first four seasons of The Wire there were two ways in which one could appreciate the show. On the surface there was a highly entertaining, deceptively realistic, often heartbreaking depiction of a collection of fully realized characters within an urban milieu that was unparalleled in the history of television. Underneath that there was a subtext that had something to say about the cause and nature of many of the problems facing our modern society. That The Wire functioned so well whether or not you delved into the Iraq War parallel of season three or thought much about the systemic dysfunction of institutions is what makes the series one of the all time greats. It works equally well as a treatise on modern life in America or simply as a damn fine piece of entertainment.

In season five, however, it becomes a little harder for the viewer to ignore the subtextual points that David Simon and Co. are making. Perhaps this is because the fifth season focuses a lot of its attention (and screen time) on the Baltimore Sun newspaper where, not coincidentally, David Simon worked for twenty years before moving into television. I imagine it was difficult for him to remain objective and evenhanded when dealing with that particular profession considering how displeased he was with the way the industry had changed since he first started working as a reporter. But whatever the reason, the parts of the show featuring the newsroom are often the most strident and heavy handed, featuring some of the more one dimensional characters the series has so far created. (Though it should be noted that even these characters (Templeton, Klebanow, Whiting and the rest) are still more fully fleshed out than most characters on any other show you’d care to name.) It’s very difficult for the audience to enjoy the newsroom scenes without occasionally thinking about what Simon was trying to say about the death of the newspapers and the impact this was having on both the newsroom and the culture in general.

That said, trying too hard to make your point is a very minor failure, maybe even an admirable one. It only stands out like it does because this show had previously been so masterful in submerging what it was trying to say underneath all the surface stuff. Even still, that doesn’t change the fact that what goes on in the newsroom is still pretty interesting. Though in the end it turns out to be one more in the long line of institutions depicted on The Wire as systemically dysfunctional, I found the peculiarities of how the newspapers are screwed up fairly entertaining.

The other major plotline of season five is the fake serial killer Detective McNulty manufactures in order to get the city, basically insolvent because of a school system $54 million in debt, to start paying for police overtime (or, as the cops say repeatedly, ‘real police work’). Though this storyline is, perhaps, a little over the top, the thorny issues it raises are worth the tradeoff. For instance, McNulty, the hero of the first three seasons, was always the one person who refused to play by the rules and was all the more effective because of it, occasionally even achieving something that looked like victory (a rarity on The Wire). He was the one character most viewers identified with and rooted for. But now here he is in season five manufacturing a serial killer to get the money flowing again. More than just simply a question of the ends justifying the means, this storyline raises questions about McNulty as a person and the viewer for rooting for him.

At no point during the entire fake serial killer fiasco do the writers ever let McNulty (or the viewers who might be rooting for him to get away with it) off the hook. Scene after scene shows the unintended collateral damage he’s caused. Whether it’s Kima Greggs interviewing the parents of one of the serial killer’s ‘victims’ or the two dead homeless men strangled by a copycat killer, there’s no way to see what McNulty has done as heroic. And yet, in the end, the people responsible for at least twenty-two murders are brought to justice because of McNulty’s fictional killer. So does that balance the scales? And if it does, does that justify further flouting of the law as long as the goals are admirable and the person going outside the law is righteous enough? Who should get to make that call?

These questions are further addressed in the primary story at the Sun newspaper where Scott Templeton fabricates much of his reportage and is eventually rewarded for it with a Pulitzer. Here is a man doing more or less the same thing as McNulty, going outside the rules to serve his own interests in the pursuance of his goals. And like McNulty, Templeton leaves a trail of collateral damage that negatively impacts many of those around him.

Obviously most viewers will be firmly opposed to what Templeton is doing and probably even openly rooting for the guy to get caught, punished and kicked off the paper. But many of these same viewers are also rooting for McNulty to get away with what he’s done. We can make all the distinctions we want about the relative virtues of each of these characters’ motivations (i.e. brazen self interest vs. self interest in service of a greater good) but cheering one on while rooting against the other is a contradiction that’s impossible to resolve. If you’re comfortable with allowing a man like McNulty to manufacture a serial killer in order to go after a mass murderer, then you can make no argument against allowing a man like Templeton to circumvent the rules for his own gain. If you condemn the one, you must condemn the other. And thus you also allow the killers of twenty two people to walk free.

In the end both Templeton and McNulty’s farces are allowed to stand because the institutions that these men serve cannot afford the blow to their credibility that revealing the truth would entail. And so The Wire, always obsessed with the dysfunction of institutions, ends with two great institutional victories (drugs on the table and a Pulitzer Prize) earned through a complete disregard for everything the institutions are supposed to stand for.

On top of that the writers have layered a parallel between these two stories and the run-up to the Iraq War when our government falsified intelligence in order to get the country behind a war it might not otherwise have pursued. Bunk Mooreland raises this connection explicitly in the penultimate episode when he says to McNulty, ‘It’s like war. Easy to get in, not so easy to get out.’ In the first scene of the season, Bunk has another line with great resonance on this topic: ‘The bigger the lie, the more they believe.’ In comparison to the lies told to us by our government concerning Iraq, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction that supposedly posed a clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens, McNulty making up a serial killer and Templeton fudging a few stories seems incredibly minor.

By drawing this parallel so explicitly, Simon is cutting off potential criticism of the season’s storylines before they begin. To anyone who might look at McNulty kicking debris around at a crime scene then biting a dead body with a set of false teeth and think it was all too over the top and unbelievable, Simon seeks to remind them that our country is fighting a war where thousands of men and women have lost their lives because the people who were supposed to value the public trust they’d been given didn’t. To anyone who might look at Templeton wantonly fabricating quotes, people and eventually whole stories and think this sort of thing can’t really be going on undetected at our newspapers, Simon reminds them that before 2003 no one would have believed our government would tell outright lies to its people during the State of Union. The bigger the lie, the more they believe indeed.

There is also a none too subtle jab at the press, by now more or less universally acknowledged to have fallen down on the job in the lead-up to the war. Perhaps if they hadn’t been chasing prizes or trying to figure out how to ‘do more with less’ after the latest round of buyouts had decimated the staff, the newspapers might have actually investigated some of these false claims the administration was making. Just like, on the show, they might have realized what the death of someone as important to the citizens of Baltimore as Omar or Proposition Joe really meant and would have given them more than half a paragraph buried deep in the back of the paper.

But there’s no one person to blame because it’s not the individuals who are the problem. They are merely the product of the institutions they serve (as Deputy Commissioner for Operations Daniels often asserts). On just about any other show out there and certainly on every one of the dozen or so procedural law enforcement shows that litter the airwaves, it’s always the individual that’s the root of all evil. Once the good guys catch this person or people and put them in prison, order is restored and good triumphs. Victories, in the form of arrests or convictions, are conclusive and meaningful. Not so on The Wire. There the institution is the root of the problem. The individuals matter little. Putting one person or group of people in prison, firing one person or electing another has no real impact on the underlying institution and therefore no hope of having any real effect on the fundamental cause of the problem. One person, no matter how high minded or determined, has no chance, at least in the world of The Wire, of changing the system. Instead that person either becomes changed by the system or is driven out of it.

That’s not to say that the characters on The Wire aren’t fascinating in and of themselves. Their individual personalities and stories are incredibly compelling. But the final ten minutes of season five, and hence of the series itself, clearly shows that, in the view of Simon and Co. at least, the institutions aren’t changed by the people. It’s the other way around. Michael Lee bursts into Vinsen’s rim shop, shotgun blazing, becoming, in the process, the new Omar. Sydnor bitches to Judge Phelan about the bosses in the hopes that the judge will get some traction for his case, becoming, in effect, the new McNulty. Dukie ties off a vein in a darkened alley and cooks up a shot, becoming the new Bubbles. And so on and so on. The faces change but the system doesn’t.

It’s an incredibly cynical worldview but also one for which David Simon and his writers make a very convincing case. It’s sad to think that the Baltimore introduced in the first episode of season one is fundamentally the same Baltimore in the last episode of season five despite the best efforts of many dedicated men and women hoping to make it otherwise. But that sadness is tempered with enough happy endings for the individual characters that it feels just about right. In a world where it’s impossible to change what fundamentally ails the cities of America, it’s nice to know that at least the people we’ve come to know and love over sixty long hours of television ended up better than when they started. It’s the smallest of victories, of course, but it’s also the only kind we were ever going to get. And as much as we might have wished it otherwise, this has to be good enough.

THE WIRE: SEASON FOUR – david simon – 9.7 / 10

As great as The Wire unquestionably is, the tone and aesthetics of the show sometimes work to keep the audience at arm’s length. By foregoing most of the standard tools of the television trade that make wringing tears or goosebumps out of the viewer much easier, The Wire has-- by design-- always had an uphill battle when it comes to drawing emotion out of its audience. The show doesn’t use music to heighten the mood. It doesn’t use close-ups to foster audience identification with the characters. It doesn’t use handheld camerawork to heighten the action sequences. It doesn’t use long-winded monologues or dramatic speeches to pontificate on a particular subject or make a point. Basically, The Wire doesn’t use any of the standard tricks of the trade that make forging an emotional connection with the viewer easy. They have to work for it. And because of that, the show cannot hide any of its flaws. If a performance is flat or an action scene boring, it can’t be hid with quick edits or crash zooms or the perfect musical choice.

But that’s what makes The Wire a singular artistic achievement. (That’s also probably why it takes the average viewer three or four episodes to really understand what the show is trying to do.) Without all the bells and whistles hiding their faults, just about any other show would, if they were to take the same approach as The Wire, immediately reveal their artistic shortcomings. That The Wire is able to maintain such a high level of both quality and entertainment value without having to resort to these tricks is remarkable and leads to perhaps the most enjoyable television viewing experience out there.

But often that enjoyment is somewhat intellectual, more an enjoyment for the head rather than the heart. Although it’s impressive, even admirable that the show doesn’t have to trick its audience into getting emotionally involved, this approach can put the audience at a bit of remove. For instance, many viewers love characters like Stringer Bell, Bodie Broadus and Omar Little more than perhaps any other characters they’ve seen on television. But unlike on other shows, when these characters meet their tragic ends, The Wire doesn’t play up the moment with slow motion or sad music. The moment isn’t drawn out, giving the audience time to process their death and grieve for it. On The Wire death comes as it does in real life, quickly and randomly. So even though the loss of Bodie or Stringer might sting more than the death of almost any other character on any other show, they are mourned in a different way. There are no tears shed as a somber tune plays on the soundtrack, no lingering tracking shots over the dead body, no goosebumps raised as another character recites a heartfelt homily over their grave.

If I had to guess, I would say that David Simon and Co. chose to do it this way because giving the audience a chance to cry also gives them a chance to get it out of their system. They weep for a few minutes and then forget it ever happened. But done without all the tricks, the loss of these characters lingers, much the way a real life tragedy might.

And make no mistake, the fourth season of The Wire is a tragedy. Primarily concerned with the Baltimore city public school system and the people that make it (not) run, season four introduces the audience, for the first time, to major characters who are just barely in their teens. And by the end of the season, as the stories of Randy Wagstaff, Duquan Weems and Michael Lee begin to draw to a heartbreaking close, The Wire doesn’t pull any punches. The audience can see where these characters are going to end up but is powerless to stop it. There's nothing more tragic, especially when kids are involved, than to know that something horrible is coming and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Widely hailed as the best season of the show, season four is, I believe, so revered because it’s impossible to forget. The stories of these four kids linger, festering in the back of your mind, popping into your thoughts at random. They have the sort of gut punch emotional power not usually seen on television (not as fiction anyway). And yet these stories are told with The Wire’s trademark realism, making them that much more tragic because of their believability. Any show that can so deeply engage both the head and the heart is a truly remarkable achievement.

THE WIRE: SEASON THREE - david simon - 9.9 / 10

Over the course of its first two seasons The Wire became increasingly concerned with the politics of its fictional but very realistic Baltimore. In season one the politics in question were those of the police department and its draconian adherence to chain of command at the cost of operational efficiency. The second season, while continuing to deal with the politics of the CID division of the BPD, moved to the ports and focused on the criminal lengths to which people in this city felt it necessary to go in order to have their voices heard. Continuing this trend, the third season finds much of its intrigue in the offices of the mayor, the commissioner and various city and state officials.

The creators of The Wire have, with each new season, expanded the size and scope of their fictional Baltimore. And in each new sphere of interest on which they turn their lens, they find people who behave very much like those they've shown in earlier seasons. In season two, for example, they showed how similar the poor and despondent white people of the docks were to the poor and despondent black people of the projects (whom they had already shown in season one to be operating on the same basic, flawed principles as the police who hunt them). Now, in season three, we find the city council, mayoral staff and police commissioner operating in the same underhanded way as all those we've seen in earlier seasons. Further, and this is where the scope of The Wire really begins to pay dividends, the people in each of these supposedly separate and insulated areas turn out to be much more tightly linked than we might suspect. Money, it seems, is the great uniter. And, as Lester Freamon says, when you start following the money, you never know who'll get caught up in the net.

In the first season, the Deputy for Operations (commissioner in the third season) Ervin Burrell, when told that Lt. Daniels's unit was looking into the Barksdales' money, advised strongly against it, going so far as to order the return of $20,000 discovered in the possession of a state senator's driver. Daniels and his unit are shut down early enough in their investigation that they never get to see where that money would have taken them. But in its third season, The Wire shows us the interlocking web of political payouts and backdoor deals that makes the city of Baltimore go 'round. And, as a result, we also see why it's all but impossible for any individual (or even an individual unit like Daniels's MCU) to do anything about it. The corruption is systemic, flowing back and forth between all levels of the city. When corruption is the status quo, reform is all but impossible.

Season three of The Wire directly addresses the futility of reform from its opening scene wherein Mayor Royce detonates the project towers (the location of the worst drug dealing in the city) and announces that sweeping changes will be made in the area. The rest of the season charts the occasionally horrific unintended consequences of this sweeping reform. Before the high-rises came down, the Barksdale crew and Prop Joe's crew were splitting the drug trade in the six towers. Everyone in town knew who owned the towers and no one messed with them. After the towers came down, it was open season on Baltimore's drug corners. Everyone had to fight for new real estate, re-establish themselves in a new part of town. As a result, crews began to war and bodies began to fall. The mayor had promised sweeping changes that would make everyone safer. What he got instead was more murders and an increased visibility for the drug trade.

The demolition of the housing project towers deliberately echoes the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. That event, as horrific and traumatic as it was, was also the perfect opportunity to call for radical change and sweeping reform. But serious reform is an almost impossible task to manage and, perhaps more relevantly, one that is also politically dangerous. Better to make stirring speeches about reform and then go about living life as we always had. As a result almost nothing about the way most Americans live their lives was changed because of 9/11. So too in The Wire's Baltimore. Change, despite Mayor Royce's declarations to the contrary, is just a watchword.

Although nothing much changed for most Americans after 9/11, the leaders of this country used that event to start a couple of wars. One of them was probably justified and maybe even overdue. The other had a tenuous connection at best and can probably be attributed mostly to pride and a false belief in the power and indomitable strength of our more perfect union. Similarly, in the streets of Baltimore, where Barksdale's crew is now forced to compete with all the 'off brand niggas', a war is brewing. And like George W. Bush, who used turbulent times as an excuse for a vainglorious military enterprise, Avon Barksdale chooses to fight for territory rather than take the more prudent course of action suggested by some in his organization (namely Stringer Bell). Rather than appear weak, Barksdale chooses a preemptive strike that is initially successful but soon reveals an opposition much more deeply entrenched than ever imagined (sound familiar?). And it becomes the downfall of the Barksdales' reign much as Bush's Iraq fiasco is proving to be the downfall of his Presidency.

The entire third season of The Wire is, in essence, an extended metaphor for America's misadventures in the Middle East. Take, for instance, the way the Barksdale crew attempts to use the death of Stringer Bell at the hands of Omar and Brother Mouzone to their advantage by blaming the hit on Marlo's crew. Avon and his war time consiglieri Slim Charles know Marlo had nothing to do with Stringer's death in the same way that Bush and Cheney knew that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. But because it's an idea they could use to further their goals, both Avon and Bush allow their supporters to believe the lie. As Slim Charles says, 'We fight on the lie.'

The irony and maybe the genius of this metaphor is that for the characters in The Wire, events on the world stage are more or less irrelevant. In episode ten, when asked by his political consultant paramour whom he voted for in the 2004 Presidential election, Detective Jimmy McNulty says he didn't see much point in choosing between them. On the streets he polices, he doesn't see much interest one way or the other from the federal government and he sees no indication that this might be changing any time soon. To him, and indeed to most of the characters on this show, which well-bred white man becomes the leader of the nation is more or less irrelevant. Of course, had the characters of The Wire been paying attention to the drama and intrigue surrounding the White House the last five years, they would have seen an exact reflection of the same drama that has engulfed their lives.

Each season of The Wire extends the show's reach into different areas of Baltimore. And by the end of each new season, the audience is shown that not only are the people who inhabit each of these areas more or less the same regardless of their financial or political worth, but they are also much more closely connected than even they realize. Their problems are human problems and they don't change just because you wear a badge or hold elected office. The hubris that leads a President to choose preemptive war over sanctions is the same pride that leads the head of a drug dealing crew to choose to fight for corners rather than make the best of what he has. And because of the growing body count and seeming intractability of the war he created needlessly, George W. Bush finds himself politically isolated and exposed. And thus, for Barksdale, the bodies that fall in his war bring the unwelcome attentions of the police that eventually leads to his downfall at their hands. The story's the same no matter whom it's about or what color their skin is. I suppose it's a variation on that old standby there's more that unites us then separates us but damned if it isn't the most genius iteration of that theme that I've ever seen.

THE WIRE: SEASON TWO – david simon 8.6 / 10

The central theme of The Wire, the only one that remains consistent across all five seasons, is that of the dysfunction of institutions. No matter how big or small, legal or illegal, all institutions on The Wire are screwed up. The reasons for this are many and varied and are explored in great detail from many different angles. But in the end it almost always comes down to the simple fact that institutions are comprised of (often self-interested) individuals.

These people put themselves and their goals ahead of those of the institutions they ostensibly serve. Some do this because they think they know what’s best (e.g. Detective Jimmy McNulty who constantly goes outside the chain of command because it will serve his case, no matter the effect on the rest of the department). Some do it because they want to get theirs and they don’t care who that screws in the process (e.g. most everyone on The Wire but principally Bill Rawls who couldn’t care less what real world consequences come of his actions as long as his ass is covered). Some do it because they’re just plain incompetent or disinterested, having chosen to serve this particular institution out of necessity, circumstance or just plain boredom (e.g. any number of both dealers and police but particularly D’Angelo Barksdale and Roland Pryzbylewski). But whatever their motivations, the fact that these individuals do not have the interests of the institution foremost in their minds all but guarantees that the institution will be dysfunctional to one degree or another.

Much like the character flaws that make individuals more likeable, it is often these dysfunctions that make an institution appealing. There are countless scenes, for instance, where the dealers and their hangers on talk about ‘the game’ and its various rules. But the rules are constantly in flux because it’s a system defined by individuals and therefore always subject to change. Any system or institution is evolving from one day to the next, never staying the same. It exists in a dialectical relationship between the ideals of the institution, what it was meant to do when it was begun, and the needs and desires of the individuals that populate it.

Because the needs of the people and the goals of the institutions never completely align, it is impossible for anyone in the world of The Wire (and, from the show’s creators’ viewpoint, anyone in the real world as well) to achieve a complete victory. To get what he or she wants, that person will have to subvert to some degree the goals of the institution that they serve. And for the institution to achieve its goals, the desires of most of its members would have to be disregarded. As such, almost every ‘victory’ on The Wire is a hollow one and comes at a cost. This is even spelled out various times throughout the series. Freamon, for instance, tells McNulty near the end of season three that 'the job won’t fill [him] up, won’t make [him] whole' because the goals of the job and the goals of McNulty will never line up perfectly enough to leave them both fulfilled.

This, of course, can be frustrating for the audience. Television viewers have become accustomed to clean victories, especially on police shows. I watched nearly every one of NYPD Blue’s twelve seasons and despite being set in a city where the clearance rate for homicides hovers around fifty percent, I can only remember a handful of episodes in which the detectives didn’t get their man. Thus when, at the end of season two of The Wire, none of the various groups achieve what they had been seeking, it’s very easy for the viewer to be disappointed.

I mean, maybe it would be possible to live with the stevedores’ union being busted up and their dreams of a return to a living wage on the docks being dashed. Maybe it would be possible to live with the death of D’Angelo Barksdale and the disarray into which the Barksdale crew falls. Maybe it would even be possible to live with the detail letting The Greek slip through their fingers because he had made friends with Homeland Security. But all of those things together is hard to stomach. Especially considering the ways in which the various institutions snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, often through little more than incredibly bad luck and poor timing.

But if you look a little closer (which might as well be The Wire’s unwritten tagline), it becomes apparent that those who achieve success in the second season are those whose individual goals and desires line up almost exactly with those of the institution they serve.

The Greeks, for instance, have no lives outside of what they do for money. The two highest up in the organization, Spiros and The Greek, seem to spend every waking moment either at that rundown diner or at some sort of meeting. They have no personal lives to speak of, even laughing at the thought of having significant others. In short, their goals and the goals of the institution they run are almost identical. The only place that they do not line up exactly is in Spiros’s fondness for Nick Sobotka. And even this tiny display of human feeling very nearly results in the whole organization’s ruin.

An individual and an organization only ever have completely mutual goals when the individual gives up everything that makes his life worth living, everything that makes him human. Since there are very few individuals willing to give up that much of their lives in service to an organization (and certainly not enough to populate an organization of a decent size), we are left with a world full of corrupt and dysfunctional institutions. For David Simon and Co. it can be no other way. And denying it by having the protagonists of the show achieve victory would, to them, be a lie. And it certainly wouldn’t be the kind of show they want to make.

That said, none of this, no matter how clever, intricate or intellectually rewarding, changes the fact that having the season resolve itself in a not entirely satisfying manner leaves the viewer wanting. It may make the point better to have it all end this way; but the visceral charge of seeing Avon Barksdale’s crew in prison jumpsuits at the end of season one, for instance, is somewhat lacking here. The show is just a little too cerebral for it’s own good in season two. That’s a criticism that rarely gets leveled at a television show and in a perverted way that makes me love The Wire that much more. Plus, the writers manage to find ways, during the next three seasons, to satisfy both head and heart. So if it took them this tiny misstep to figure it out, who am I to complain?

THE WIRE: SEASON ONE – david simon – 9.5 / 10

Discussing individual episodes of The Wire as self-contained stories is as useless as talking about individual chapters of a novel as if they were separate stories. Thus, although The Wire is absolutely brilliant, it’s possible to view it as a complete failure as a television show since it is nearly impossible to enjoy in one-hour segments one night a week. But viewed on DVD, when the chapters (episodes) can be seen at any pace the viewer chooses, The Wire becomes something altogether different. It becomes one thirteen-hour masterpiece the likes of which I had previously thought television incapable of producing.

The first season of The Wire is an astonishingly assured piece of work. Every scene and plot development, every interaction is so convincing in its realism (credit here goes to the outstanding performances as well as the skilled writing and directing) that the story sweeps the viewer up in a way that almost no show before it has ever done. It’s so immersive that it almost defeats criticism altogether. And more than that, this is one television show in which, like in an auteurist work of cinema, every camera angle and word of dialogue means something and is rich in subtext. Unlike every other television show that values plot above all else, The Wire takes the time to set its scenes in places of symbolic importance and has its characters talk about things that obliquely reference the main themes being developed over the course of the season.

Take for instance the scenes in which Detectives Bunk Moreland and Jimmy McNulty drink near the train tracks. In the western genre the coming of the railroad to the unspoiled western prairie meant the death of the outlaw way of life and the coming of the industrial revolution. The railroad is destined to bring order and lawfulness to an uncivilized land (or at least a different, more refined sense of corruption). The appearance of a railroad quite literally means that the people here are at a crossroads and it hints that how they deal with this impending change is how they will be defined as people. In the same way, when McNulty is drinking at the train tracks he finds himself on the edge of a precipice, at a crossroads (usually, of course, it’s his own self-destructive nature that’s brought him to this point but nonetheless, here he is). Thus McNulty is like a western lawman, defined by the way in which he handles himself during the current crisis.

Additionally, the subplot involving Omar stealing from the Barksdales has distinct echoes of the western outlaw. It’s shot in a way that evokes the classic John Ford and Sergio Leone westerns. Couple that with the railroad and the overriding theme of the season starts to emerge, i.e. the coming revolution. Nobody is naïve enough to believe that the impending changes actually herald any real progress. But they will be changes nonetheless and whether the characters evolve and change with the world around them will primarily determine whether they continue to be a part of the police force (in McNulty’s case) or continue to live (in Omar’s case). Both are faced with the defining crisis of their careers or lives and must face it on their own like the gunslingers who meet in the street at noon to enact the climactic duel.

Obviously this idea of the police and drug dealers as heroic duelists is a bit overblown and melodramatic. And David Simon and his writing staff know this. But to the characters, to McNulty and Omar, this 'game' of theirs really does feel like the stuff of legend. They are the gods in their own myths. And if the viewer is to be fully integrated into this world, they must live it as the characters live it, complete with the unsustainable belief that what they're doing actually means something, that the revolution is coming and that it will change things. The reality that everyone involved knows deep down in the backs of their minds (and which is occasionally spoken aloud but never listened to) is that nothing can change the game as long as the rules remain the same (i.e. drugs remain illegal). But such thoughts would make it impossible to play the game and are therefore ignored or suppressed with alcohol or other controlled substances.

Thus it comes as an even greater blow when, at the end of the season, Lt. Daniels’s detail is denied a decisive victory over the Barksdales by the bureaucratic incompetence and careerism of the police force. And initially on first viewing this development left such a bad taste in my mouth that it tainted my enjoyment of the whole season. I knew that in reality this was the most likely outcome. I knew also that even if the detail was completely successful then other drug dealing crews would swoop in to take the Barksdales’ place. But so firmly was I invested in this titanic struggle between McNulty and Avon that I couldn’t bear that it ended in a draw.

It’s now become clear to me, however, that this is the true genius of The Wire. Its characters may believe that they are gods fighting a mythological war, and we the viewers might ourselves get so caught up in the story that we believe it too, but the reality that stands just outside these self-deluded people never forgets. And just when it seems that these mighty warriors have bent reality to their will, they have the rug pulled out from under them and they (and we) realize just how small and unimportant what they’ve invested themselves in really is.

This is, quite understandably, a crushing blow. And not one a television viewer is used to receiving. Thus the season, on first viewing, came off as disappointing. But I’ve come to realize just how much more valuable it is to hew closely to reality when the temptation to make it all end well must have been so overwhelming. The people behind this show must have been far more in love with their characters than I ever could be. And if they had the nerve to still remain true to how this would really be in the actual Baltimore, how then can I complain? Besides, having something end satisfactorily and having it end the way I want it to are not mutually exclusive options. It doesn’t have to all work out in order for the audience to be satisfied. Just like in every other aspect of the show, you can’t view the ending like you would that of any other show. It demands more from you and gives you much much more in return. And it somehow manages to get better each time you watch it.