The Wire/Homicide:Life on the street

[CovenantJr]

Alright, that's it. The Wire complete.

As a whole series, it has a weird on-off structure. Season 1 is good, the classic; 2 sets up 3; 4 sets up 5. Hmmm.

Season 5 was a weird one, but at least it was kind of closer to 1 and 3 than I feared it might be.

Spoiler

The cyclical nature of Baltimore, with Sydnor becoming the new McNulty, Michael becoming the new Omar and Duquan becoming the new Bubbles was all a bit cheesy and blatant, but it worked well enough I think.

I was disappointed we just got that one token appearance from Avon. Everyone who's been a target since Barksdale in the first season has just felt like a pretender to me.

All in all, I can't help feeling season 3 wrapped things up better. I don't regret watching the rest, but it did kind of go out with a 'meh' when it could have gone with a bang if it had stopped after season 3.

Also,

Spoiler

Omar died?! I honestly felt he was the one character in The Wire who might live forever. It did cross my mind that he might be bumped off, but I kind of thought they wouldn't dare. All credit to the writers for making the deaths in this series so unexpected and sudden. Prop Joe, Omar, the annoying bint Snoop, even small fry Cheese at the end. I didn't see them coming.

[dlbpharmd]

I recently bought used copies of Season 1 and 3. I'm going to pretend the other seasons don't exist.

[CovenantJr]

There are various things that won't make sense without season 2 though. That's where we see the start of the Stringer/Avon rivalry.

I've realised that what bothered me about season 5 was how much it was TV.

Spoiler

Look back to season 1. Pretty much every character was equal parts good and bad, and sometimes largely good people made bad decisions, and largely bad people made good decisions. More often than not, though, there wasn't a right or wrong to any of it. Also, remember how one of Barksdale's goons (maybe Weebay, I forget) was respected and held in awe because he'd killed three people? By the time we hit season 4 we have Chris Partlow killing 20+ people that we know of. Similarly, in a gun fight in the street in season 1 (maybe season 2), no one can hit anything, and a kid in a nearby house catches a stray bullet. These people haven't been trained; they're just teenagers with weapons.

As we get into seasons 4 and 5, The Wire loses most of this. It gets caught up in the big stuff - Carcetti running for/becoming mayor, cuffing Clay Davis, etc. Suddenly everyone on the street can shoot like a pro, there's no collateral damage, and everything works out neatly (if not well) in the end. The Wire built itself on being as real as possible; by the time it finished, it had become just TV.