I have been out of the country and had to catch up watching episodes but haven't kept up with all the Fray comentary. So forgive me if someone else has made this point.
So far, I am finding this season to be a bit over the top. However, it occurred to me last night that there is a common thread here. We are seeing a news reporter faking info in his stories to make them resonate. McNulty is now faking crimes to make something resonate. Hasn't The Wire been doing this all along? After all, who didn't have some vague awareness that people and the lives explored by this show existed in real life? But, how many of us would read newspaper/magazine articles about these topics and be touched? And yet, this fictional show has created a world where we admire characters that we would normally dismiss. Simon is making reality resonate by creating a fiction. Maybe a point is coming where we should all be conscious of our guilt in only paying attention when the story is served up to us as individual fictional characters and not when it is real. I guess the other interesting thing is that even as fiction, few people are actually watching the show. Few really care.
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