The Wire: Season 5 - Second Thoughts

I’ve spent a lot of ink on this site extolling the merits of The Wire, the late HBO series from David Simon. Why spend so much time on a show that ended over two years ago? Why not just move on, dammit?! Firstly, I don’t think the passage of time necessarily negates the impact any piece of art, and that includes the medium of television. Secondly, let’s be honest, dramatic television isn’t as strong as it used to be, and may never be again if the ratings for shows like True Blood are any indicator, so what else is there to write about really? Third, I just finished my third round on this series and it continues to reveal new and important truths to me. So bear with me as I give you one more take on this brilliant show.

We’ve all heard of six o’clock and nine o’clock movies, right? The latter you watch before heading to bed, but the former you watch so you have time afterwards to discuss it. Well, The Wire is that rare breed of series that belongs in the six o’clock category. It continues to provoke debate, analysis, and controversy, particularly its final season which focused on the media.

I know some critics were pretty hard on the show for its depiction of the newsroom. The boys at Slate took turns dissing Simon’s depiction of two newsroom editors from the Baltimore Sun who seemed to be stand-ins for two real Sun editors Simon worked for and was now taking his revenge on. I won’t get into the particulars of this battle and whether Simon’s characterization was fair or not, but rather, focus on the fifth season as a whole, and whether or not it was consistent with the series’ main themes.

The first thing the fifth season did right was the Michael-Dukie story arc. I’ve never been so emotionally invested in characters as I was these kids (Beecher and Schillinger from Oz are the closest exceptions). Throughout season five we’re given hints as to what direction Michael and Dukie will head in, but aren’t fully realized until the end. Michael starts to show a somewhat independent streak, questioning Marlo’s orders and balking at committing murder. His outsider status eventually lands him into confrontation with Marlo, and in the end he has to kill Snoop in order to survive. The last episode features him with a shotgun holding up Marlo’s former bank. Dukie on the other hand shows no potential for living hard on the streets. He doesn’t have the chops for it, and efforts at finding a “real job” are blocked at every tun. Without any support system, and virtually no options, he turns to drugs. This was a brilliant, and of course heart-breaking way of showing where characters like Bubbles and Omar (whom Dukie and Michael parallel) come from. Plus, wasn’t their farewell scene in episode nine the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?

And while the Slate boys were tearing up the media storyline as one-dimensional and less interesting, I rather liked the depiction of the newspaper in decline. I didn’t really care that the two editors were one-dimensional; I think the police bosses were kind of portrayed the same way in the first season too. But what the newsroom segment of the season showed was two things – that in a declining industry like newspapers, people will do whatever it takes to make it so they can graduate to the big leagues. This is a reoccurring theme on the Wire, as characters fight for a way to the top – from the drug trade to the docks to city hall. If you don’t think this is realistic, than you can’t think the other four seasons are realistic either. But as far as consistency goes, I think the fifth season stays true to the heart of what the show was about.

I know you’re going to say McNulty and the fake homeless killings was over-the-top and absurd, but watch all ten episodes again back-to-back and you’ll see there’s a method to all that madness. Bunk pretty much sums it all up in episode one: “the bigger the lie, the more they’ll believe.” McNulty, Templeton, Carcetti – they all use a fake story in order to gain something out of it, and people buy it because they get something out of it too. The police get more resources, the newspaper gets more attention, and the politicians get an issue they can run with in the election. But while all that’s going on, the real stories get marginalized – Kima’s home invasion case, the murders of Prop Joe and Omar, the drug killings in the vacants, the failure of No Child Left Behind. These were all stories that deserved front-page headlines and proper investigations, but were all pushed to the side in favour of the more sensationalized and over-the-top bullshit. 

If The Wire was about anything, it was about showing Americans the part of their country they choose to ignore on a daily basis. Is it any wonder the series did poor ratings and had virtually no Emmy nominations? While over-the-top crime dramas like CSI and Dexter rack up all the attention? 

The fifth season wasn’t just a commentary about the media, but a reflection of The Wire’s place in American television. One thing that always bothered me about The Wire is that it never grabbed the same amount of ratings as The Sopranos, but after sitting through the series again, and the fifth season in particular, it’s clear to me that it never could.