The Wire: Complete HBO Season 5 [DVD]

This review will NOT spoil your enjoyment, I promise!

If you've watched the first four seasons of The Wire (and there's no point watching this if you haven't) you will know by now what to expect:
a gripping storyline with a new theme which allows David Simon and his team of writers to explore their Baltimore universe from a fresh angle, exposing the goodness in the bad guys and the badness in the good guys.

Except of course, you don't know what to expect at all, because Simon and his team of writers have always been brutally realistic in bumping off very serviceable characters (by the end of Season Four, almost none of the original hoodlums were still at large) and The Wire's storylines unfold unpredictably - previous episodes managed to veer from sickening loss to heart-warming camaraderie without ever losing the various threads of plot. Season Five is no different, either in its unpredictable plotlines or its nail-biting, tear-jerking, awe-inspiring mood swings.

This time, the new theme is the media - or more specifically the Baltimore Sun newspaper, where The Wire's creator David Simon cut his teeth as a reporter. As a reporter myself, I can attest that the depiction of the paper and its staff rings absolutely true. But more significantly, the bosses of the real Baltimore Sun agreed to have the paper feature in The Wire without disguising its name, which is testament to the trust they place in The Wire's writers and to their appreciation of its verisimilitude and integrity.

There's plenty of politics in this season, and as usual most of it is decidedly dodgy: back-handers, back-stabbing and below-the-belt punches.
Barack Obama told a US television magazine that this was his favourite show, so it can't be too wide of the mark. Of course it's not just the politicians doing the politics. There's intrigue and infighting all over Baltimore. Some of those caught red-handed (or even suspected of
complicity) are dealt with summarily, while others are dealt with "the Western District way". Without giving anything away, there are moments of sweet revenge, rough justice and triumphant "gotcha!" that linger long in the memory.

If I have one complaint about this season, it was that one plotline, involving the loveable rogue McNulty and some gentlemen from the media, was allowed to run so long. It's not so much that it was unrealistic, just that I found it extremely frustrating that the situation only got more tense as time went on, while I was practically chewing the arm off the sofa in my desperation for a resolution. Still, I suspect that it is my personal experience as a journalist that drove me to the brink, not any problem with the storyline itself, because when the resolution came, it was an ecstatic and sudden and brilliant denouement that totally redeemed the situation and restored my faith. I had been squirming for weeks as I tried to guess how things might play out, but was wrong every time. The simple turned complex, the complex simple. So if you too find yourself having doubts about one or two storylines, fear not, for The Wire will come back and hit you right between the eyes as usual.

As well as McNulty, who is back centre-stage after his low-key role in Season Four, this season stays in close touch with all the old favourites, while introducing a Baltimore Sun newsroom that includes all the psychological complexity you would expect from The Wire. The season has plenty to offer admirers of those charmers Bubbles, Bunk and Omar and it finally gets under the skin of that legal lizard Maury Levy, who had previously only slithered on and off occasionally. I'd been wanting to see more of him since he first dragged blabbermouth D'Angelo out of the cells by the ear in Season One. Here he recruits a new assistant, who you may recognise...

Season Five is unusual in that it only has 10 episodes, but the final episode is a wrap-`em-all-up double-length slam dunk which will leave you slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the brilliance of it all. Unlike Season Four, which left us hanging with a virtual "to be continued...", this one ends with a resounding finale which bids a fond or fearsome farewell to each of the characters still standing after five series. Crucially for The Wire's fans (including my entire office, now frequently calling out "Five-Oh, Five-Oh", "Red tops, Red tops" and the like), this is a satisfying ending. It would have been a disaster if Simon had bungled things right at the end of the best show ever, but rest assured, he doesn't.

like the other review said i don't want to spoil anything. This final season of the wire focuses once again on the lives of the people involved in Baltimore's drug problems. As well as McNulty and co, and Marlo and his crew, we now have the news press perspective on the war on drugs as it unfolds.
Whats really makes this a great show is all the little details, like a scene you may have remembered from an earlier season, and you did not take much notice of what happened, but then you see something in this season and it all makes sense !!
There are plenty of characters from earlier seasons that show up, and in my opinion it ties everything together nicely. Its hard trying to write anything else without giving anything away !!
Just for anyone mad enough who might think of watching this without watching the first 4 seasons , don't !. Watch them in order and you will be in for some treat, i would love to be able to sit down to the wire for the first time again. So njoy the final season of the finest show on television.

And so another televisual odyssey ends. 60 episodes over five seasons and a programme which has been described as more talked about than watched (this is the problem of a series playing on satellite/cable channel FX) - although the DVD box-sets of The Wire are on the best-seller lists here at Amazon. With just 10 episodes in the final series David Simon seems to be trying to 'do more with less', a phrase used several times in the offices of The Baltimore Sun newspaper which features largely. Simon of course worked at that very newspaper for 12 years and so it seems almost obvious that he would chose to focus on the media at some point. What he shows is that interplay between media, politics and policing; the symbiotic relationship these agencies have with each other and how each in turn can be exploited by the other.

McNulty is back. His presence was missed in the last season, so it's good to have him back, but he's in a very worrying place; looking like he could skid off that road again at any time and driven by that passion which can create 'good police' but also perhaps lead him to test the boundaries of what is acceptable (and indeed legal). Carcetti, now installed as mayor, has come face to face with a huge deficit in his budget which leads to massive cutbacks for the police: no overtime and an effective end to the special crimes unit. This leads McNulty to hatch a plan that will give the papers what they want and therefore place pressure on the Mayor to provide funds for police work: a serial killer. Now, I love this programme, but this plot-line had me wrinkling my nose in discomfort. It isn't that I didn't believe it was possible, Simon shows in intricate detail how it can all be manufactured, but I just didn't believe that this would be the course any detective would take, even a true maverick like McNulty. The fact that Freamon, who has always been a moral yardstick of sorts, is part of the whole conspiracy only compounded my worry. It wasn't until the penultimate episode (which is the best of the season, possibly the series) that I began to feel it might work. Such a grand scheme allows Simon to bring so many elements of his story together, it's just crucial that having got so many balls improbably into the air we see them come crashing back down to earth.

That said, there's something about this season that doesn't quite work. It's like a programme which knows that it's coming to an end, tying up its loose ends, bringing things full circle and showing that people and events will continue in the same vein after the credits roll. It's all just slightly self-conscious.

But I don't want to dwell on that. As someone (I think it was Freamon) says, 'It's about the journey, not the destination.' And it's been a hell of a journey. I have written previously about the impact television can have when we, the viewers, make an investment in the characters. Over such a prolonged period of time (60 hours of television) we can see so much of their lives, so much development that, as when we read a novel, there is a connection there which means that even a serial murderer like Chris can arouse our sympathy even whilst beating someone to death. A junkie like Bubbles can have us hoping and praying that he can make it another clean day. A morally ambiguous anti-hero like Omar can have you wanting to put him out of his misery like a wounded pet. That is extraordinary television. To be able to put forward complex sociological arguments, economic theory, and political discourse together with street slang, profanity and poetry whilst leaving the audience concentrated on the characters is quite an achievement. Let's also not forget the other character in the piece: Baltimore. I genuinely feel that if I went there now I would know where, and more pertinently where not to go. Just as The Sopranos gave a real sense of New Jersey The Wire has shown in great detail the differences between the projects, the docks, city hall, 'Hamsterdam', the corners and the variety of people that populate them. The final episode has its heart on its sleeve as it shows what this programme has always been about: the people of Baltimore. Along the way of course it has shown us some important aspects of modern life relevant to all of us.