In the lead up to the 5th season of The Wire, I've been hyping up the official soundtrack so much that I almost kinda lost sight of the fact that, oh yeah, the last 10 episodes of the series where about to air, too. I wrote a few long posts here about the 4th season, so I want to get back into that habit for season 5, starting with the first three episodes (the 3rd is airing on Sunday but it already On Demand, and I'll basically be talking about episodes up through whatever is most recently On Demand, but not later episodes that are already being torrented, so there's your mild spoiler warning).

I've always thought that The Wire's ability to expand its topical scope, and its cast, with each season has been one of its greatest strengths, but I'm also starting to realize it's also its greatest weaknesses. Sure, there have ben some great additions in the last 4 seasons, but if you get down to it, probably 90% of the best and most important characters to the series have been there since the first year (maybe that's just my favorites, though, your mileage may vary). And although the Baltimore Sun storyline is slowly showing more promise than it did in the season premiere, it still has little chance of measuring up to season 4's adolescents, or season 2's dockworkers, as an indispensible expansion of the cast. Still, Clark Johnson is so good that it's kind of amazing The Wire has had him working behind the scenes since the beginning and waited this long to put him on camera, maybe better than I remember him on Homicide (although it's been a while). Plus, I'll give the Sun stuff time because, though I've never worked in hard news at a daily paper, I am, to an extent, a member of the Baltimore print media, so I'm interested to see where they go with this. And all the "Dickensian" this and "Dickensian" that in episode 3 made me feel like the show was ribbing all the critics who've called the show that (or maybe just poking fun at themselves?).

Once again, The Wire is feeling ripped from the headlines without really even trying, opening with a budget crisis in the police department robbing cops of valuable overtime just as the same exact thing is playing out in actual current Baltimore events. That probably happens often enough around here that Simon & Co. don't exactly need a crystal ball to be depicting it at the right time, though. It's kind of interesting how Jimmy's fake serial killer is turning out to be this season's big Hamsterdam-style scheme, maybe. I like these hypothetical flights of fancy The Wire indulges in form time to time, stuff that (probably) hasn't really happened but explores real events to a logical extreme. Also hilarious to see McNulty fucking a broad over the hood of a car in the Sonar parking lot, or talking to a reporter in Cafe Isis around the corner from my office, but I kinda feel like Dominic West's fake American accent has gotten worse this season, possibly because he's had to play drunk and slur his speech even more than usual. And it's a shame all they've done with Beadie so far is show her sullenly waiting up for McNulty, considering that Amy Ryan is currently getting Oscar buzz and her Wire character always felt like it could've used more fleshing out.

I was a little excited to see Herc still in the frame and getting involved in the plot again working for the shady lawyer dude Levy, partly because I like the character, and partly because I read once that apparently Domenick Lombardozzi is the only actor who'd appeared in every episode of The Wire, at least up through the fourth season. But he wasn't in the two episodes that followed, which means it's now official that there's no one character that's been in every episode, which probably suits the nature of the show more anyway. I hope they do come back to him more later, though.

Anyway, so far I'm not convinced this season is on par with the last 2, but I'm still way on board and on the edge of my seat to see where it goes. Too many good moments that I've already forgotten, but I loved the Orioles opening day apathy, and hearing Pork Chop's voice when someone was listening to 92Q (which was especially nice since in season 4 Snoop and Chris referenced the hosts of the Big Phat Morning Show right before Chop joined the show). Still, nothing in the episodes themselves so far has given me chills like the words "a new day is not dawning" in that teaser promo, because I think it's the perfect way to sum up the show's philosophy, and also gets to a horrible but true-feeling sentiment about what it really feels like in Baltimore. It's a city constantly betting on the future, speculating on what'll happen if the inner harbor economy improves, if crime goes down, if the music scene blows up, whatever. And good things are happening all the time, little by little, but it's a hard place to be optimistic. I'm personally hopeful for the future, but I'm also a little sad that that future won't have The Wire around to tell its stories, too.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 12:03 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.