The serialized television series we love are seemingly destined to break our hearts. Because of the open-ended nature of U.S. television shows, series are usually destined to last for as long as they’re successful, regardless of where the story is. This would unthinkable in books or movies; we would outraged by a book that ended in the second act or a movie that was twice as long as it needed to be just because people liked it or didn’t like it. It’s very rare for a serialized TV series to avoid either being short-circuited or stretched well past its creative tipping point; in fact, many have argued that two of HBO’s greatest shows, The Sopranos and Deadwood, were overextended and incomplete, respectively. It’s a little like McNulty’s homeless murders: Once you turn the tap on, it can be an ugly business to turn it off.
So say this for The Wire: It’s about as complete a vision as you’ll ever encounter on television. You could argue that a few more episodes might have tied things together more thoroughly and deliberately—to my mind, the journalism subplot could have been handled less hastily, but I’ll get to that in a bit—but the final episode of The Wire felt like a proper ending and one with very few question marks. In that sense, it was pretty much the opposite of the (brilliant) Sopranos finale. Ending the show with a “life goes on” montage may feel like an inelegant coda, when something more particular, like the “Snotboogie” speech that opened the series, might have been more affecting. But it honors all the characters, and, better still, keeps us from puzzling in frustration over unresolved storylines and the many blind alleys that serialized shows tend to take us down. Through a lot of careful, dazzlingly Byzantine plotting, David Simon and his writers have closed the book on the greatest drama in television history, and have done it with all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted. Many shows don’t get that opportunity, so a big thanks to HBO for allowing this ratings-plagued series the chance to go out on its own terms.
I’m really not sure how best to wrap-up this supersized episode to a massive season, so let’s look at the Sun and homeless murders subplots separately, even though they’re connected:
1. The Sun. I haven’t said as much here, because I wanted to see how things would play out, but I’ve struggled with this subplot all season and the finale went out with a big sigh. The Wire has expanded its scope every season, but if you think about the journalism angle in comparison with, say, the docks in Season Two or the schools in Season Four, it looks awfully feeble. There’s no emotional resonance to it, and very little in the way of nuance in the newsroom; if you’re working for the Sun, you’re either a beleaguered old-school scribe who’s marginalized for wanting to do things right (Gus, Bill Zorzi, Roger Twigg, those ancient eagle-eyed copy editors who know the proper usage of the word “evacuated”) or fatuous, simple-minded, prize-grubbing twits who care more about getting ahead than getting the story right (Whiting, Klebanow). The rest are just cub reporters who are destined to fall into one category or another—Alma, who’s ultimately punished for casting her lot with Gus; Templeton, who lies his way to an award (and maybe that Post or Times job he so desperately covets); or Fletcher, who quietly executes the one act of journalism that speaks to what’s going on in the city.
Much has been written about Simon’s own history at the Sun, particularly his long-standing grudge against William Marimow and John Carroll, the Whiting and Klebanow types who ran the Sun during the tail end of Simon’s 12 year run at the paper. It’s pointless to note that Marimow and Carroll are both highly respected and accomplished in the journalism world, with many Pulitzers to their credit, especially given Simon’s contempt for the brand of journalism that’s focused on winning awards rather than serving the city. And it’s slightly less pointless to note that Carroll, at the end of a five-year run at top editor at the Los Angeles Times, resigned the position rather than acquiesce to the severe staff cutbacks demanded by the Tribune Company. But it’s definitely fair to say that Simon never extended these straw men the same nuance and empathy that he did any other character in the Wire’s rich history; Whiting and Klebanow are boobs, plain and simple, and guys like them are hastening the demise of the Fourth Estate.
I’m also not entirely convinced that Templeton gets off scot-free, though that’s a little more understandable given what happens in the other realms of the show. Exposing Templeton as a liar would be as damaging to the Sun as it would be to the city government or the Police Department: If they were to pull on the many loose threads that hold Templeton’s stories together, that would totally undermine weeks of potential prize-winning coverage of the homeless situation in Baltimore, and break the sacred trust that readers are supposed to have with their newspaper. And yet… are we really supposed to believe that Gus, with the mountain of evidence he has against Templeton, would be dismissed so easily. If there’s one thing that journalists of all stripes despise, it’s a fabricator (with plagiarists a close second), and it seems a bit of a stretch to expect senior editors at a major newspaper—even boobs like Whiting and Klebanow—to flat-out dismiss charges brought by a seasoned city editor against a greenhorn reporter. Yes, Templeton is their boy and he’s brought a lot of attention to a struggling paper, but it stretches credulity a bit to think that such sins would be explained away as part of Gus’ “personal” problems with Templeton.
That said, there were many good things about the Sun subplot that might be overlooked. For one, I think the show offers a window into the modern newsroom that’s more convincing than anything I can recall on TV or in the movies. All of the “more with less” problems Simon and company point out are totally legitimate: It’s a joke to believe that a paper functions more “efficiently” with fewer people, when in reality, stories are going to get missed. It’s also worth noting that the people subject to buyouts—men and women who have been around for awhile and have had their salaries grow (or “bloat,” if you will) accordingly—are usually the most valuable. It takes a long time for a Roger Twigg-type to get solid inside sources to work for stories, and even a young go-getter like Alma will have to work a long time to shore up contacts. The show also captured the demoralized tenor—and to oft-hilarious effect, the gallows humor—of the newsroom, too. And above all, Simon and company make the same point about the Fourth Estate that they do about every other institution in the city: That they’re not serving the people properly and that their mistakes (and corruption) can have a devastating ripple effect on the powerless.
2. The homeless murders. To the positive, I thought this subplot worked out brilliantly and can stand proud next to Hamsterdam as a masterpiece of outlandish tragicomic proportions. The basis for McNulty’s grand fiction was something surprising and full of ironies: Where other characters lie and regularly for personal gain, McNulty lies simply to get the resources that should already be available to a functioning police department. It’s simply unjust to allow Marlo Stanfield and his crew to go free because the city needs to pump money into a broken education system or a charade of a trial against Clay Davis. And at the beginning of “30,” we get the hilarious spectacle of Carcetti trying to comprehend what’s been done to him. It’s not just that the homeless murders were a sham, which would be embarrassing enough. It’s the reason behind the sham that’s truly humiliating, because it so clearly exposes Carcetti’s status as “the weak-ass mayor of a broke-ass city.” McNulty isn’t going the Clay Davis route and funneling the extra cash to a bank account in the Caribbean; he just wants to close a case, and moreover, make the department function in the way that many politicians have promised, but none can deliver.
I’ll cherish the many hilarious moments drummed up by the homeless murders: McNulty desecrating that first homeless man’s body as Bunk looks on in horror; the utter apathy that greets his fake serial killer when he first tries to run it past Homicide; McNulty and Templeton’s compatible fictions coming together in the Sun conference room; the FBI profile; the wealth of Bunk reaction shots; and so on… Season Five may not be the best season of The Wire—I’d follows conventional wisdom and say Four, followed by Two—but I think it may be the funniest. Some critics completely missed the absurdist tone of the homeless murders plot, which is a bit baffling when you consider that this is the series that brought us Hamsterdam. Oh well, their loss.