Give Up the Crown?

It is a line uttered by the incarcerated, Baltimore drug kingpin Marlo, but it might be an adequate phrase for the creators to mull over. Only their crown is the greatest show on television. It didn’t matter that past television kingpins such as: The Sopranos, MASH, Seinfeld, and arguably many others all suffer the same fate as the drug lords of Baltimore– fading relevance over time. They wore the crown. But I feel that the WIRE’s true relevance is not yet revealed.

I have had many conversations with friends/fans of the show where I laid out my belief that the WIRE will be studied in most Universities and have come to find out, it already is. As far as the finale, many (better) critiques have been made over at THND and HH, but I will say that it does complete Simon’s vision of a literary fiction played across the television medium.

But like most great books, where you’ve invested a lot of your personal time into, the ending will almost never suffice. This isn’t to say that I’m unhappy with how the series ended, but I couldn’t help fighting off that nagging feeling that the Simon, Burns and Co. should have let this season breathe out to at least an additional episode. Too much seemed contrived in the wrapping up of several plotlines. And then it seemed to drift into an epilogue (before the final montage) of the character’s fates. And for a series that feasted on subtlety, Simon (who penned the finale to his creation) revered back to his S3 finale – wrapping up most loose ends – rushed through an extremely engaging Levy plot line, and spoon fed us a lot of the themes he and the fellow creators have been picking away at the last five years.

I understand that a city’s dysfunction is cyclical. I love the idea of completing the circle to leave us where we came in S1 episode 1, but the parallels were already in place. I didn’t need to see Dukie shoot up, Carver ascend to Lieutenant, Chris befriend Wee Bay, Michael become Omar. I’m sort of shocked that Burns and Simon didn’t co-write the finale.

Burns – who displayed his strength in his installments this season along with his phenomenal completed arc credit last season – seemed to be quietly selling his share of the WIRE investment over to Simon who has filled his datebook with many PR pressers and interviews.

While all of these conclusions of mine are pure opinion and observatory, I can’t help but wonder with Simon constantly having to explain his newspaper story arc in all of his interviews, that it didn’t convey itself well on screen. I understand the newspaper theme entirely. They were sweeping aside the very stories/people that we, as an audience, have come to care about over the years – or at least have become invested in. It’s what the Sun wasn’t covering that is the story of the WIRE. But, knowing the message doesn't mean that the arc was executed well.

In an interview with Alan Seipenwall, Simon reveals that he knew a few of these fabricating journalists the season portrays, but that no one he worked with did anything (out of fear of receiving the Alma/Gus treatment) to deter them, so this culture bred more selfish writers interested only in Pulitzers rather than a generation of reporters with integrity and journalistic skills and principles. Similar to the faulty practices that the police used, that Daniels despised, to teach its cadets.

Yet, Simon himself did nothing. He accepted a buyout. And that may be the hidden genius of the finale, as Matt Zoller Seitz points out, that Simon put the viewer (and most likely himself) in front of the mirror for this finale to answer the questions the first 59 hours raised.

For five seasons, "The Wire" has been saying, "Let's look at what's wrong with our institutions, how ossified they are, how unimaginative, how corrupt, how easily manipulated for personal gain, how paralyzed, how useless." And we sit there in the audience going, "Yes, yes, it's awful, just awful -- somebody should pay for this; somebody should do something." Then at some point we get so frustrated at the sight of talented and/or hardworking people ground down by institutions that we start to demand answers. "Why are things so bad? Why is change so difficult? Why to the same problems perpetuate themselves over and over in so many different institutions, so many social strata, so many walks of life?"

On answer to this, Simon holds up a mirror and says, "There's the problem right there. Look in the mirror, motherfucker. It's you. It's me. It's human nature. We as a species do not have the courage to take our medicine, to do the hard work that really needs to be done, to really expose corruption, stupidity and selfishness even when, especially when, doing so costs us something."

It's that last part that's really crucial. Almost every major character got tangled up in some sort of deception, or moral shortcut, in this season (or in some cases chickens from other seasons came home to roost). And their response -- even the "good" character's response -- has been, "What do I need to do, what do I need to give you, the accuser, to make this go away?" The answer is invariably, "Give me what I need to make MY problem go away."

That's the problem in a nutshell. It's not democracy. It's not the failings of the school system or city hall or the police department or the media. It's a moral failure that becomes an institutional and societal failure. Simon confronts his characters with the choice between doing the right thing and doing the expedient thing. Almost to a man and woman, they go with the expedient thing.

Things don’t change, because we – much like the characters – do what’s in our best interest. It’s almost like a bizarre reversal of Barack Obama’s campaign slogan: We are the constant that we fight against.

But with all my subjective Simon nitpicking aside, I am sincerely saddened that this era has come to a close and extremely thankful to Simon and Burns. Simon’s strongest accomplishment was knowing his vision and surrounding himself with great writers and surrendering his tapestry to their better needlework. It is a piece of art that will be revealed for years to come. I look forward to always owning all five seasons on DVD and (just like a great novel) popping them in and starting the cycle all over again. It’s all connected.