The Wire wraps up this weekend. A good run, and here's my parting review, unedited version. A Wrap For ‘The Wire,’ Which Closes with a Bang By Dave Shiflett March 5 – (Bloomberg) – “The Wire” ends its five- year run in a hail of gunfire, resignations, reassignments and reproach. Tony Soprano would no doubt be impressed. The finale, which airs on HBO March 9 at 9 p.m. New York time, is grand indeed, with creator David Simon putting his Baltimore-based series to bed with a powerful, poignant closer. The episode begins in city hall, where Mayor Thomas Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) finds himself in the middle of a perfect effluvia storm. It’s not that the serial killer he’s been promising to save Baltimore from has struck again. It’s far worse than that: He now knows what viewers have known all along – the “killer” was created by Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) to force the mayor to free up funds the police can use to pursue real crimials. The ruse worked perfectly: Drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector), hit man Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe) plus several associates are in jail awaiting trial. Yet this scandal could keep Carcetti from winning the governor’s mansion. We’ll miss Carcetti -- Boss Hogg without the charm – who reminded us, week in and week out, that while there’s little room for purity in urban politics there’s lots of space for scheming, oily demagogues. Fonder memories are likely for Colonel Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) and assistant state attorney Rhonda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy), whose final dispositions, in contrast to the mayor’s, drive home a regular Wire story line: the cream often doesn’t rise nearly so high as the scum. Faithful viewers will also miss McNulty and his pals over at the cop house, who sometimes did bad in order to do good. Not everyone, to be sure, was quite so ethically elastic, including detectives Shakima “Kima” Greggs (Sonja Sohn) and William “Bunk” Moreland (Wendell Pierce), the latter showing a fondness for cigars and aphorisms. He likens problems caused by creating a fake killer to going to war: “easy to get in, hell to get out.” Here’s hoping they pop up in a new show. Simon also created world-class street criminals, not all of whom make it to the final episode, including Proposition Joe (Robert F. Chew) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson), the latter succumbing to a slug to the head in the penultimate episode. Head-shot aficionados will not go away disappointed from the finale; other regulars experience sudden spikes in their cranial lead levels. Then there’s drug lord Marlo Stanfield, who kept the undertakers busy yet at times was more sympathetic than Carcetti. He experiences a chain of events few viewers will guess but which underscores another Wire message: Street criminals have much in common with the folks working in the “legitimate” economy. Simon began this season promising to focus on how journalism is responding to America’s urban crisis. His final critique is pitiless. At the Baltimore Sun, where Simon worked for 13 years, city editor Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson) is now sure that some of star reporter/suck-up Scott Templeton’s (Tom McCarthy) stories are as phony as McNulty’s serial killer. While not divulging Simon’s final blast, viewers who believe that journalism reserves its highest rewards for blowhards and weenies may be inspired to offer a standing ovation. Simon adds an ironic grace note by focusing on a quotation about newspapering by H.L Mencken prominently displayed in the Sun’s offices: “It is really the life of kings.” Simon made an orthodoxy of an old (and perhaps increasingly out-of-fashion) journalistic creed: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In that spirit he leaves viewers with a disquieting image. Near curtain’s fall a young black male – 12 years or so, wearing the standard white t-shirt and distant look – is led away in handcuffs. “The Wire” is history. The kid, Simon indicates, is the future. Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.
