A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

All good things...

The end is near for The Wire, which just finished filming what will be it's final season:

It was early still -- about 10 p.m. on Friday -- and somewhere in Columbia, David Simon was giving a tour of the sights: There, he said, pointing, was the Baltimore mayor's office. Over there? The city's Western District police headquarters, and there, that little closet of a room, "that can be the visiting room at Jessup." Pause. "Or the jail. Depends. We just redecorate."

As he stood on a platform, taking in his world, it was hard to ignore the irony: For the past two years, a good chunk of "The Wire," the HBO show that critics have praised for the grittiness of its inner-city vérité, has been filmed in an anonymous soundstage in the burbs -- a soundstage that reportedly will be turned into a massive Wegmans Food Market.

After five seasons, and this final episode, they would be done.

"It's time," said Clarke Peters, who plays Detective Lester Freamon, "to pull the plug on 'The Wire.' "
[...]
Simon, who once covered cops for the Baltimore Sun, always knew that "The Wire" would end at exactly this point. From the beginning when the show debuted in 2002, he saw it as a visual novel, with each season a distinct chapter exploring an aspect of inner-city life: The first season examined the drug trade; the second focused on Baltimore's longshoremen; the third grappled with politics and the notion of reform; the fourth dug into education and the lives of the city's children. This season, which begins airing Jan. 6, explores the media, featuring a morally challenged reporter played by Tom McCarthy, who wrote and directed the indie film "The Station Agent."

"The Wire" has always struggled in the ratings; last season it averaged 1.6 million viewers per episode. But it's always enjoyed the admiration of critics, who praised it as being the "most authentic epic ever on television." Notwithstanding the giant soundstage, a good 50 percent of the show was shot on location in Baltimore, with real-life characters frequently sprinkled in with the fictional ones. Like former drug kingpin Melvin Williams, whom co-producer and writer Ed Burns, an ex-Baltimore cop, once arrested in a big takedown. Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, who did time as a teenager for killing a 16-year-old girl, made her acting debut last season, playing an assassin. Even Robert Ehrlich, when he was Maryland governor, made a cameo -- as a state trooper in the governor's office last season.

I'm resigned to the fact that more people don't watch the show, though it's annoying as hell. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to shell out $15 a month for HBO, but I suspect it wouldn't matter where the show aired. You could put The Wire up against reruns of Dancing with the Stars, According to Jim, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, and Two and a Half Men, and it would come in 5th every time. People don't necessarily like having to remember characters and plot details from earlier seasons, or - heaven forfend - paying attention to a TV show, because, well, people are apparently really stupid.

Said Wendell Pierce, who plays Detective William "Bunk" Moreland: "He told us from day one, 'It's a novel.' He had the novel in his head, and he wouldn't share with us."

It wasn't until last year that Simon told his cast that this season would be the last.

"If you get five years out of a TV show," Pierce said with a shrug, "that's pretty successful. I'm proud of it. . . . We showed the possibility of television used as an art.

"There are people who come up to me and say, 'I hate the show.' I accept that. They're still engaged. If at the end of an hour of watching 'The Wire,' if you don't feel bad, you should."

And then there's that.

It's not that long an article, go read it. And if you still haven't checked the show out, seasons 1-3 are available on Netflix and Amazon. And there's plenty of time to get caught up before the fifth season starts up in February.