Wire Season 5

[Spoilers]

I’m a little worried that the final season of The Wire is going to be like Sopranos Season 6A (aside from the awful-by-any-standard dream sequence): vastly better than pretty much anything else on TV, but distinctly inferior to the standard previously established by the show. In particular, despite Clark Johnson’s very welcome presence I’m worried about the Baltimore Sun plotline whatever one agrees with the axes Simon has to grind, the resulting villains just don’t shape up to be that interesting, in the way that even the show’s most inept and venal characters usually are. As Matt says, “[e]verything in the Sun plot is being marked out like a runway. Do you think the Unscrupulous Journalist and the Douchebag Editor are going to conspire to cause the Fall of American Journalism? I think they just might!” I also agree with Kay that the opening sequence of Bubbles at the N.A. meeting was a poorly written and acted variation on an especially tired theme; it’s frustrating for precious last minutes of the show to be wasted in this way.

Still, there was a lot of great stuff in both episodes; hopefully the lesser storylines will get better.