david robertsJust watched the last two episodes of the last season of The Wire w/ the 19yo (who's been watching it for the first time). Holy shit. I'd forgotten. That show deserves every single bit of the critical praise heaped on it.
The way that final season wraps up all the threads from the previous seasons ... every character has their arc & gets their resolution. Every theme is drawn out & underlined, but it's all showing, no telling. Genuinely amazing feat of writing.
The one exception is that the journalism stuff in season 5 is a little heavy-handed, a little too much telling over showing. But I had built that up in my memory as "the bad season" & holy shit that's wrong -- it's so, so good.
The one thing that occurred to me this time through is that Marlo's resolution was echoed later in the finale of The Shield.
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@drvolts okay. It's time for me to finally watch it.
Jarvis Slacks@drvolts The worst season was season 2. There was just no way they could save that season.
Paul Chillman@drvolts I just watched it not too long ago, and I agree about the journalism angle. The big problem narratively is that they were only following the action of other characters, and often incorrectly at that.
Malraux@drvolts to me, one of the big themes of the wire was how even as the people involved in these big issues change, the underlying events have a power all their own. So the finale really closes the loop with showing how the next groups dealers, cops, and users were all going to continue the cycle.