"The Wire" is electric in its final season

The Wire, much like Detective James McNulty (Dominic West), is up to its old tricks again. The Wire has constantly reinvented itself, focusing on new drug crews, city politics, dock workers, failing city schools, and now in its fifth and final season a deteriorating city newspaper.

The story picks up about a year after a mayoral election and the promise of a new day, along with the uncovering of twenty-two bodies in various houses on the west side of Baltimore. The mayor has since failed to fulfill his promise, instead having to use the city’s rainy day fund to cover a fifty million dollar gap in the school system’s budget, which has the left the police force in disarray and the twenty-two homicides unsolved. But this is all just more of the same for creator David Simon’s Baltimore, which can’t catch a break.

The latest failed institution, the media, suffers from the same problems that plague every other institution in Baltimore on the show. They’re fundamentally flawed, and thus doomed from the onset. Just like the police force, the school system, and even the drug dealers, the newspaper is corrupt and addresses core problems with stop gap measures that hold the dam for a moment, but lack foresight and understanding of the real issue at hand. The police force fudges its numbers for better arrest results, the schools teach to standardized tests, the drug dealers don’t see beyond their corners, and the newspaper writes stories that are all flash and no substance in order to win awards and increase circulation. In the previous four seasons any one that has challenged the status quo has either been destroyed or given in, and city editor Gus (Clark Johnson) appears to be this year’s martyr.

Every episode of The Wire is ripe with social commentary, but it’s also entertaining. The dialogue has a nice pitter patter, which never tries to be funny or show how smart it is, but seems to succeed in both areas every time. The show is littered with compelling and likable characters that make the show enjoyable, and in many cases relatable. These are not Jerry Bruckheimer characters, or one dimensional Law & Order faces that you see for years without ever real knowing.

The Wire is probably the greatest ensemble show ever, and its only downfall is that there are so many well developed characters that don’t get enough screen time. In some episodes a favorite character may only get a few lines, or no face time at all, and that doesn’t even include the secondary characters that disappear for multiple episodes.

David Simon has developed such an intricate tapestry, and it’s amazing to watch as he pulls one string and see how the whole picture changes. Yet, even while faces change and time passes, nothing really changes in Baltimore. When it’s all said and done the cops are still making street arrests, the drug crew ranks are being constantly replenished, and The Wire is still one of the best dramas ever on television.