Well, it's over, finally. No more of The Wire ever again (and please shut up about doing a movie, McNulty, that's a terrible idea). I'm not sure exactly what I expected from the finale to weigh it against, but a few days later it's sitting well with me. It was, I think, kind of brilliant to end the show with a relatively bloodless episode, aside from Cheese (which I especially appreciated since Prop Joe has long been one of my favorite characters). One thing that people have come to expect from The Wire, particularly from the climactic season finales, is a shocking death of a major character. This time, though, they got that out of the way a couple episodes early with Omar. And the relative lack of death in the finale managed to not feel like a Sopranos-style fake-out (although they certainly tried for that a little with the goofy wake for McNulty, possibly my least favorite moment of the episode).

The episode may have seemed on the surface bereft of tragedy or shocks, but the ending montage, that showed gaping assholes like Templeton and Valchek going on to bigger and better things, was the real kind of tragedy the show best addresses. I howled with laughter at those shots, even while realizing that they were twisting the knife. Having guys like them, and Levy and Marlo and Rawls, still out there making the world a worse place, is the sickest, cruelest joke they could've left out on. But it was also nice that they let some of the more sympathetic characters get a happy ending, like Lester and Shardene settling down (perhaps the hidden implicit statement of the whole show: you can turn a ho into a housewife?). The whole transparent bit crowning Michael as the new Omar was a little too on the nose, in my opinion. And I also don't like that Kenard actually got caught for killing Omar. If anyone should still be out running around free for a truly bleak ending, it's that little psychopath.

During Season 4, I branded Omar, Marlo and Bubbles as the "three guys who always seemed to be treading on thin ice, a million reasons why tragedy should befall them eventually." But by a few weeks later, I saw the writing on the wall and correctly guessed that "in Season 5, Sherrod's death will play out as Bubbles' 'rock bottom' moment that finally forces him to clean up, although I want to give The Wire more credit than to give a shiny happy ending to its beloved junkie." As cynical as I was about that prospect at the time, the shot of Bub's sister letting him sit at the dinner table was a pretty touching moment, I have to admit.

Still, I think about Bubs and what his character means to the show's big picture statement about the war on drugs. Sure, Simon & co. admit they don't have answers for the nation's drug epidemic, just a confidence in their idea that current policy is unacceptable. But a vague embrace of old-fashioned 12 steps and facing your demons is surprisingly touchy-feely for this show, and I wish they'd shown the dark side of recovery more even if Bubbles ultimately seemed to . The Wire tells all these stories about people caught up in a system they can't control and locked into dysfunctional cycles, and somehow the drug addict is the one guy that breaks his cycle and goes on to live a better life? Anyone, especially anyone who's lived in Baltimore, can tell you that that's perhaps the most unrealistic thing the show's ever asked you to believe, even more than any elaborate fake serial killer plot.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 9:02 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.