The Wire: Season 5 Episode 1

January 6 will bring the first episode of the final season of HBO’s “The Wire.” If you have HBO OnDemand on Comcast, it’s there already, and I’ll talk a bit about this episode later. First some words on “The Wire” in general.

“The Wire” ending will represent a new era in television: the end of the “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” era. Gone are “The Sopranos”, “Deadwood”, and “Six Feet Under”, all of which defined HBO as the place to see cutting edge, quality television. What’s left on HBO is the almost unwatchable “Entourage”, “The Flight of The Conchords”, which if you’ve seen one episode you’ve seen them all, and the over-the-top and not terribly good “Big Love”. With the failure of “John From Cincinnati” and “Tell Me You Love Me” HBO is in serious trouble. But “The Wire” represents not just the fading of HBO: it represents the end of the (yes, I really think so) greatest televised drama in history.

“The Sopranos” and “Deadwood” were amazing Shakespearean dramas about violent men and the inner workings of their minds. “The Wire” is Greek tragedy, a huge revolving cast of characters doomed not by their own actions but by the institutions in which they work and live.

David Simon, creator of “The Wire” has delivered something that is far closer to a 60 or so chapter novel, The Great American Novel even, than episodic television. Simon asked a lot of the viewers, and a lot of what he asked was not easy to anyone weaned on typical episodic television. What started as a cop show refused to deliver the crime/investigation/resolution structure of other cop shows. He asked that we understand that the cops are not heroes and the drug kingpins are not villains. He told us that the bureaucracy pertaining to one is the same as that relates to the other–keep your stats up, don’t be too idealistic, and do what the bosses tell you, and you’ll go far.

At the beginning of Season 2 Simon started with a pro-labor story of Baltimore dock workers. Season 3 brought a corrupt mayor and a mayoral hopeful, and a new drug war, and Season 4 introduced the Baltimore public school system to the mix. There have been at least, I would guess, 100 characters in “The Wire” who have been significant, characters who regular viewers would recognize on sight.

Simon did not worry about who was supposed to be a main character. Jimmy McNulty was, if anyone, the protagonist of Season 1. In Season 4 we barely see him, and only briefly at that. McNulty is complexity defined. If there’s a true natural detective, someone born for the job with the ability to do brilliant detective work as second nature, it’s McNulty. But he’s a mess. His drinking and philandering led to the dissolution of his first marriage and have left him broke to child support payments going to children he rarely sees. He’s typically right, having terrific instincts as a cop, but he’s an unbearable asshole, arguing with anyone who dares to disagree with him. He routinely upsets the apple cart in the police department, arguing with his commanding officers like a spoiled child when he does not get his way. He is wholly incapable of understanding the inner-office politics of the department, insisting that his opinion is the right opinion. At the end of Season 3, he decides he’s done drinking and he’s done with detective work: he’s going to walk a beat as a uniformed officer in the Western District, and he’s going to commit himself to a new start with a new woman. We hardly see him in Season 4, but here he is at the top of Season 5, back in the detective game, tracking kingpin Marlo Stanfield with the rest of the Major Crimes division. And here he is, back to falling over drunk, cheating on the new girlfriend, calling her to tell her he’s working late when he’s off for an affair. McNulty’s biggest roadblock to happiness is McNulty, but Simon will not let those around McNulty off the hook completely: he’s created McNulty to always be right, and to punish himself when those around him don’t agree with him.

In fact, if there is a primary character in “The Wire,” it is the city of Baltimore. Simon clearly loves his city, and clearly loves and hates many of its denizens. Season 5 brings us the staff of The Baltimore Sun, the local newspaper, and returns most of the characters from the previous seasons. By its end, we will have glimpses into the city’s rich, poor, cops, criminals, politicians, media, educators, students, religious leaders, courtrooms, lawyers, prosecutors, strip club owners, grandmothers, children, elderly, straight, gay, stevedores, labor leaders, and smugglers. All the above give us the most complete big-city environment outside of the stateless Springfield of “The Simpsons.” While Homer et al reside in an animated environment, in which the creators have free will to draw the city as big or small as they desire, Simon uses real actors in real locations to deliver something just as big, without Baltimore coming across as real life and not larger-than-life.

It’s Simon’s ambition to paint such a large picture, and his ability to make that ambition reality, that ultimately puts “The Wire” so far above other television. Baltimore is the US. Baltimore and the US both have problems with crooked politicians, drugs, crime, labor and more. And a lot of those problems can be directly traced to the institutions we create, and how the shortcomings and failures of those institutions are informing the decline of American culture. It’s Simon’s daring to portray those opinions, especially during the Bush years, that make “The Wire” so daring, and so spot-on.

It’s obvious on first viewing of the first episode of the new season that there’s going to be a big conflict between the reporters at the Sun and City Hall. Naresse Campbell, President of the City Council, has completed a deal with a drug dealer via the city. The city buys the dealer’s strip club for $1.2 million and sells him a nicer property for $200,000. The Sun gets wind of it and runs the story. Naresse says it’s important for city development. The Sun points out that this dealer gave $40,000 to her campaign, and that many other donors, using the strip club’s address, gave thousands more. This is the springboard for Season 5.

Add to that (spoiler coming) that the Major Crimes unit is disbanded save for two detectives. Freamon and Sydnor will remain, but not to chase drug dealers and killers, but to chase State Senator Clay Davis, one of the sleaziest characters in TV history. The States Attorney, newly elected, wants to nail Davis, and in an atmosphere of city budget cutbacks, the mayor is still more than willing to spend the money to go after Davis. So it would look like Season 5 will be a lot like Season 2: the cops will still chase the drug dealers, but in the background, while a larger battle wages. That will be the three-way battle between the prosecutors, the politicians and the newspaper.

In a recent HBO half-hour special on HBO, someone–I forget who–said that the season will be about “how far you can go on a lie.” From the first episode I can’t tell who the big liar–or liars–will be, but I have a few guesses. I’m going with Naresse, McNulty, and the red headed guy at The Sun whose name I didn’t catch.

However it ends, whoever is telling the lies, it won’t be cut and dried. Simon is too great a storyteller to let us go on believing that the liars are bad guys, the truth-tellers good. There are 12 more hours left in a complex, rich novel of a TV series, and I’m looking forward to every minute.