The Wire: Final Thoughts

It was a little like watching an old friend move out of the neighborhood. Oh, you’ll try to stay in touch, but deep down, you know you’ll never see them again.

After five seasons—five superbly written, well-acted, finely crafted seasons of the best television series I’ve ever watched in my life—HBO’s The Wire aired its last program Sunday night. I must admit I got teary-eyed towards the end.

That a television show got to produce a final episode is an accomplishment in itself, in a rapidly changing television landscape where viewers have so many options and programmers compete against newer on-demand alternatives. Most network tv shows just get cancelled during summer hiatus. Then again, most network television shows follow a tired old episodic format, telling one complete story each week, beginning to end, in one hour. Few of them have been as memorable.

The Wire was allowed to end its run the way its producer David Simon intended, allowing some measure of resolution to storylines that stretched out over the entire five years. In many ways the show ended exactly the way it began, and perhaps that was the whole point of the story. People change but the circumstances stay the same, especially when no one is serious or principled enough to deal with tough issues head-on. It was about corruption, malfeasance, incompetence or indifference across the board, be it city hall, the police and criminal justice system, a labor union, the school system or the news media, all contributing factors to community decay, the rise in crime and drug activity and the loss of hope.

We came full circle in many ways. Bubbles, no Reginald, got the monkey off his back and literally climbed up the stairs to reclaim his humanity, but young Dukie, whose parents were junkies, fell through the cracks and will likely take Bubble’s old place on the streets.

Marlo got off on a technicality, but still doesn’t know how to do anything more than sell drugs. Prop Joe said he was a hard one to try to civilize. He looked a little over-dressed for that street corner. Chris joined Wee-Bey in the lifers club. Little Kennard may join them in the juvenile division.

His victim Omar may be gone but the dealers now have to fear Michael. And who was that with him? Slim Charles did what needed to be done a long time ago to Cheese and united the co-op the way Prop Joe envisioned. The Greeks hardly care so long as they move product.

Det. Sydnor will stay up on the wire after learning his lessons well from Lester, who has retired to marital and miniature toy-making bliss. Lt. Carver is rising up the chain of command and will no doubt try to do the right thing, but with new Commissioner Valchek as Mayor Nerese Campbell’s lap dog, he’ll get stonewalled for sure.

Reporter Scott Templeton got what he wanted, a prize built on lies, as did Governor Carcetti and State Police Superintendant Rawls. Judge Pearlman and attorney Daniels will now fight their battles on a new front. And life in Baltimore continues as we were first introduced to it.

The show said so many things about society but what stuck out most was how interconnected all major issues are. The drug problem exists because police and politicians are looking for easy solutions and quick media hits by going after street-level dealers. They lack both the will and the resources because no one is committed to taking a comprehensive approach to addressing the underlying factors.

When good-paying, middle class jobs disappear, like on the docks, it affects the very fabric of the community. It isn’t just Black people who were forced into a life of crime. Whites too struggled to survive. Knowing this helps explain that Black drug dealers weren’t born that way, they were made by a lack of other options. Stringer Bell could have easily been a legitimate business executive, given opportunity.

Self-serving incumbent politicians trying to hold onto their base by juking crime stats are easy prey for equally ambitious upstarts who call for change. But winning office and making real change are easier said than done.

School systems more focused on state mandated tests than educating students, are ill-equipped to assist students who come with great needs beyond academics. When school offers the only relief from an otherwise hostile home environment, but no one takes the time to care, young ones are left with few alternatives.

If an informed public is the cornerstone of democracy, and the media’s job is to inform, what happens when they miss the major stories or deliberately misinform to satisfy individual agendas? Chasing the homeless murders, they completely missed the Stanfield case.

Sixty chapters of a great novel read over five years. I hated to put it down.

Other reviews:

New York Times So Many Characters, Yet So Little Resolution
Los Angeles Times ’The Wire’
Chicago Tribune ‘The Wire’ comes full circle in its gripping finale