Tonight The Wire wraps up what has probably been its finest season. Unfortunately the episode will also be the series finale as the show ends its five season run on HBO.At first glance, The Wire may have appeared to be a gritty cop show set in Baltimore. But for people who stuck with it, the series was a work of art. Each season was essentially one big story arc; taken as a whole, the same can be said of the entire series.
This year especially has been nothing short of a masterpiece. Faced with massive budget shortfalls, the city of Baltimore subjects its police department to massive budget cutbacks. Desperate to finally put away the group of bad guys around which mush of the series has revolved, Detective Jimmy McNulty concocts an audacious plan to get the manpower he needs: He begins manipulating evidence and "creates" a serial killer. He then tips off the media that someone's preying on the city's homeless.
The resulting public pressure forces the mayor to give more money to the police. As the lead detective on the serial killer case, it's up to McNulty to decide who gets the sudden influx of overtime money. He's able to reconstitute his old team, but soon other detectives begin coming to him as well. He just tells them to bill the overtime to his case.
In a great scene, McNulty and another officer meet with some FBI profilers to try and get a better idea of just who this serial killer may be. The lead profiler proceeds to describe a white male in his '40s, with a string of failed relationships in his past, prone to fits of binge drinking, who has problems with authority figures, etc. McNulty gets a strange look on his face as it dawns on him that the FBI guy is doing a pretty decent job of describing him!
McNulty's downfall, however, may come tonight. He has gradually revealed to more and more of his coworkers that there is no actuall serial killer. At the end of last week's episode one of them went to her superiors with information on what McNulty had been doing.
Playing out against all this has been a story involving the Baltimore Sun. Like virtually every newspaper in the country, the Sun has been increasingly trying to do more with less as another round of buyouts eliminates many of the paper's most senior writers. Meanwhile, it's becoming increasingly obvious that one of their reporters has been embellishing his stories with fictitious characters and quotes. Further complicating matters, he happens to be the same reporter that McNulty has periodically talked to while posing as the serial killer.
The bad guys have also been a fascinating bunch. A fan favorite has been Omar Little. Though capable of being as ruthless and violent as any of them, Omar is also guided by a strange sense of morality: He targets only other dealers, stealing their money and drug stashes. His name had become legendary--and feared--among the corner dealers he often targeted. He would sometimes walk down the middle of the street in his black trenchcoat with a shotgun hidden under it while whistling some tune or another. It had gotten to the point where the dealers would just hand over the money without even bothering to put up a fight.
Alas, the reality of his dangerous lifestyle caught up to Omar two weeks ago. While in a store buying a pack of Newports (in a box) a little kid walks up behind him and shoots him in the back of the head.
Just goes to show that smoking really can kill you.
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