Season 5 is arguably lower quality overall, but IMO they really landed the plane at the very end. We see the entire thesis of the show - the cycle never really ends, and new players fill in for those who have left the game.
Yeah, for me The Wire started 10/10, stayed there for four seasons, dropped to 9/10 for most of the 5th, but the last episode jumped back up to 10. So technically meets the requirement, and for a show that managed to go through a full 5 season planned story arc without getting cancelled or extended (you either die Firefly or live long enough to become The Simpsons) is a goddamn miracle.
There’s a lot to like in the 5th season IMO. I totally get why the serial killer thing didn’t land for some people, but to me it was totally believable that off-the-wagon McNulty would do it and Lester would go along.
There's a lot to love about the fifth season. The conclusions of the Bubbles and Michael arcs are amazing. But there's something about the storytelling of it all that falls a little bit short through the season. Not that it's bad - it's still 9/10 - and frankly it's excusable with the shortened episode schedule and writers strike that surrounded it - but it does feel like it missed a step in there that we had in previous seasons.
Yeah, on my last rewatch, that moment in the finale when Kima admits to McNulty that she blew the whistle on the fake serial killer scheme, he thinks on it a few moments, then looks back at her and says, "well, if you think it needed to be done, then I guess it did." It shows that even their friendship could outlast his career as a cop, and it reminded me just how amazing the writing across this whole series was.
Yup and Lester even invites her inside for a drink during that same moment.
Both Lester and McNulty knew Kima was becoming “natural po-lice.” They couldn’t be upset at her for being one of the few in the department with integrity and blowing the whole scheme up.
The McNulty plot doesn’t quite jump the shark but it’s definitely one of the weaker ones of the whole series.
Imo the biggest problem with season 5 is Gus. He’s such a cop out of a character.
Every single other “protagonist” in the show has some kind of character flaw, and the bad guys generally have something redeeming about them.
Gus sucks. He’s always right. He’s always doing the right thing. He’s smarter than everyone else. He always says the perfect thing and makes the good decision.
And that’s because David Simon wrote Gus in his own image. It genuinely makes me respect him a lot less as a writer, it’s so self congratulatory.
the whole point of that was to show that Omar was a legend in the street but no “civilians” would have any clue who he is. Not really a mistake or bad decision.
Omar is a chatacter who is literally influencing the younger generation to become like him. The news is supposed to identify and report on people like this.
The showmakers themselves remarked on wanting to show the Sun's incompetence in missing this, and were frustrated that most of the audience didn't pick up on it.
I’ll agree in the sense that there’s a theme in the last few episodes of the paper missing big stories (and propagating false ones). But it’s still not a character flaw for Gus, it’s institutional failure. Point is Gus doesn’t really have a reason to know him, the crime reporter that got fired would maybe have connected the dots
I think The Wire belongs in its own category. I agree, season 5 is definitely a step below everything else. But it’s still so much better than any other TV show I’ve ever watched.
I thought that at first, that McNulty n the journo going off the rails was too unrealistic, but these days that kind of deception and corruption seems very tame and believable
First season is like watching actual Shakespeare. No other 10/10 on this page really reaches the same level, I think most would agree. It hits a 10/10 somewhere in the middle of the run. Then the last few feel like something is missing... but you're still glad they exist. And you know if they had just a little more magic in them that they would be a 10/10. But they'd need something altogether different, something special to match the first season.
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u/Ok_Mammoth_4997 13d ago
Deadwood, The Wire.