The Wire: Season 5

[poliphilo]

Warning: spoilers

Season 5 of The Wire is the weakest. I suspect that's got a lot to do with the writers being given a mere ten episodes to work with- instead of the projected thirteen. The action is leaner, the morality simpler.  There's less exploration of cultural hinterland- and we never get to know the journalists at the Sun the way we know the cornerboys, the dockers and the politicians. Nor do we get to know the Stansfield gang the way we got to to know Avon and his crew. Snoop and Chris are memorable creations- nightmare creations- but we don't see them away from the job- or have any idea who they might be when they're not being soldiers. The originality of the show in its first four seasons lay in its insistence on treating everyone in the Game- cops and robbers alike- as recognisably human; by Season 5 that's no longer the case. We're totally on the side of the cops- and Stansfield is a wholly conventional TV villain.

McNulty's scam- and the newspaper scam that parallels it- tip the scales away from quotidian grittiness and towards black comedy. That's not a bad thing, but it's a different thing. It's not what we've been used to. One strength of this final season is that it deconstructs and debunks those heroes of American folklore- the avenging gunslinger (Omar) and the maverick cop ( McNulty). The season's single greatest moment comes when Omar- who has been looking increasingly mythical- the lone figure in the long coat on the dusty street- is dropped shockingly and anti-climactically by a nobody- just as Wild Bill Hickcock was- with a single shot to the back of the head.

Most TV shows go on too long. The Wire gets out just in time. Another season of the same and it would have dwindled into a standard-issue crime drama.  

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I watched this, but I thought that one of the reasons that Stansfield was the way he was was to indicate that the game had changed. The villains WERE no longer polychromatic.

I do agree that it ended just in time--after all that newspaper stuff, Simon had nowhere to go. (His wife is an excellent mystery writer, btw.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that one of the things the show is saying is that the Game never changes- and will never want for recruits. Stansfield is ruthless, but hardly more so than Bell or Barksdale- both of whom are quite happy to kill innocent bystanders and people they merely suspect of snitching. If the earlier generation of gangsters seems more roundedly human it's because the show puts them in context- and we see them as men with family connections and lives outside the Game. Stansfield, on the other hand, is completely undeveloped. I'm inclined to think that this refusal to flesh him out had a lot to do with authorial laziness- or boredom- or, to put it a little more kindly- a refusal to go over ground that had already been covered.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Well, I disagree. I think he was undeveloped because he was a sociopath. I might have read this in an interview, too--that the underfleshing was deliberate.

[(Anonymous)]

hi, how are you both?
Can I tell you about Ian's new LJ. http://nashey1888.livejournal.com/friends
I don't know how to search on LJ (and nor does Ian) to find it so thought I'd send the address. We are total novices at blogging really. He'd like to link as a friend to your LJ etc etc and vice versa....
The book is now published and a gift copy will be winging its way up there soon, I'm sure, if you'd like one.
Jenny

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A gift copy? Yes please!

And now I'll go look for Ian's LJ......