Alright. You have now forced me to sign up to the fray just so that I can beg you, BEG you, to stop navel gazing about the reality of the newsroom scenes. I don't understand why it is assumed that the wire is a perfect mirror in every other business it reflects, but that it gets the newsroom so wrong. Newsflash, newsmen: it got the political campaign stuff wrong too. So wrong that as a former campaign hack it made me cringe. I winced. It was corny and silly, but the show went on, and it redeemed itself for that error.

In the last post, Goldberg complained that, among other crimes, the faux Sun has in its employ, "a reporter who is doing something no fabricator, to the best of my knowledge, has ever done." Well, of course! It's fiction! It's a s-t-o-r-y. Go with it. Please. Give the show a chance to redeem itself through the larger plot, and lose the newsroom microanalysis. I beg you.

I second this. Like I have posted before, just because we never saw the minutiae of being a cop (Carver writing run sheets) or being a teacher (Prez developing a lesson plan) or dealing drugs (Stringer keeping his books straight) does not mean we didn't learn valuable lessons about those activities. This is a TV show, trying both to entertain and to deliver a message; why would this goal necessitate the depiction of every last boring detail? I'm sure "All the President's Men" didn't line up perfectly with the experiences of most journalists at the time; did this keep it from becoming a classic?

I third. While I normally enjoy Plotz's writing, I am sick of the moaning about the Sun story. The worst part of it is that in Post 29 Goldberg complains that Plotz is not talking about the Sun story enough. I would like to believe he was being ironic but I doubt it.

I...fourth? Anyway. Yes, the constant whining about how "unrealistic" the newspaper scenes are (and Omar's escape as well) in Season 5 is really getting on my nerves. It's quite obvious that this column is going to end up deciding that the Wire Season 5 is the worst season of the show, blah blah. It's so transparent that when the media finally woke up to how good the Wire was (season 4), and there was a massive, mostly online circle jerk about the greatness of the show, that a backlash was inevitable. It's a perfect media cycle. The Wire is just a fictional show, something that can never get all the minutiae of ANY profession 100% perfect. Let it go, guys. PLEASE.

I, uhh, fifth.

Following season 4 of The Wire is like playing rock music for a crowd that just finished watching Led Zeppelin. Good luck.

I think another reason season 5 is having trouble gaining traction is that many fans came to the party late, and ended up catching the first three or four seasons on DVD (or bit torrent downloads, haha). Watching a season of this show over the course of a week or two on DVD gives a much better perspective of the flow and development of the storyline than does watching one episode per week over ten weeks.

For those of you who have not enjoyed season 5 as much as the previous years, I would suggest either Tivo-ing each week, or downloading the episodes once the season has finished (downloading can't be that bad if you are an actual subscriber, right?). Then, watch them all like you would a DVD, over the course of a few days, or a couple weeks at the most. My guess is that season 5 will seem much more cohesive and enjoyable.