Much will be said here about the shocking death of the once heroic Omar, but I want to give a shout out to the best scene of the episode - McNulty hearing the FBI's behavioral profile of the red ribbon killer. Dominic West again demonstrated that he is one of the strongest performers on the series. Often taken for granted, his work is consistently entertaining beyond what the material provides.

He makes McNulty more sympathetic than he has a right to be.

I've been really down on McNulty for most of this season but I've got to say that you're absolutely right there. Watching his reaction to the FBI giving a profile of him, having Beadie finally read him the riot act, then seeing it finally click with him about Lester's warning from season three ("The job will not save you, Jimmy") was excellent. The entire serial killer story has been a stupid mess, but the writers finally got Jimmy back on track and I'm glad to see it. I'm also glad that Kima Greggs finally called a stop to the entire serial killer stupidity.

As for the death of Omar, I think that Simon handled it in the right way...more in the vein of "Unforgiven" than "High Noon". Most of the heroic/infamous characters in history don't get to go down in a blaze of glory; they end up getting shot in the back at a card game, or ambushed on the toilet, or shot in the back of the head while buying a pack of smokes by some nobody trying to make a name for himself. I don't think there's any other way Simon could have handled it without stretching beyond suspension of disbelief...you knew that Omar simply wasn't going to be good enough to take down Marlo (his last stash house robbery absolutely reeked of desperation) and you knew that Chris and Snoop weren't in any hurry to try and finish the job (because even Snoop looked rattled about having to face Omar again). No final showdown, the problem just resolved itself by anti-climactic means that nobody saw coming. Sad to see Omar go, but very well done.

Two things. First, yes it was a fantastic episode for McNulty. The FBI profile was hilarious, starting with Kima and McNulty being totally unaware of who the director was (the guy who was bragging about being used for CSI and stuff). Then, after the perfect profile, McNulty telling Kima that they were "in the ballpark" made it one of the funniest sequences of the season.

Second, I also thought Omar's death was very well done. After all of the hinting at his being a mythological figure, he was dispatched with the same apathy and coldness that other characters have experienced. As an audience, we sat stunned at the quickness and the meaning of his death; at the same time however, McNulty and Bunk seemed hardly phased (referring to him as a "stickup boy"), and the news of his murder did not even make the paper. Vintage Wire.

I also want to note that the "some nobody trying to make a name for himself" was Kenard from season 4. He saw Omar while he was torturing the cat, and followed him from there. We won't be around to see how Kenard's story ends up, but I thought it was interesting to see how it began.

I agree, it was interesting to see Kenard's involvement...I was wondering in the last episode if he was going to play any kind of substantial role (like in Season Four) as he's been quiet since Michael gave him a beating. He still technically qualifies as a nobody...although the fact that he was trying to set fire to a cat (one of the three parts of the Homicidal Triad) indicate he'll be an up-and-comer in the game.

I was kind of surprised to see Poot Carr working at Footlocker, though. I never thought he'd get tired of what he did...guess he had more brains than he let on.

The treatment of McNulty was great this week, and there is something to be said for the way the death of Omar was handled. (The world definitely needs to think more about the Kenards it is breeding.) But Omar's demise upset me a lot, and not in the way the writers intended.

I had something like the same reaction to Omar's fate that I had to the movie "No Country for Old Men." It made me sick, not of real life and its dissatisfying endings but of the clichés of modernist fiction.

OK, OK, I get it, life is meaningless and absurd and there are no eternal values. Sheesh! Now tell me something I didn't know, or at least something I forget from time to time--something, maybe, about the sometimes surprising power of solitary individuals to make a difference in an indifferent world, especially if they rally other outcasts around them.

Omar was always solitary, in a way, but he also had and used help from his friends. He was a general with a tiny guerrilla army of women, the handicapped, and other gays. Critics kept calling him the Robin Hood of the streets, but a better metaphor was Toussaint L'Ouverture. He fought a war in which he used the prejudices of his enemies against them, taking advantage of the way they couldn't see his people, the dispossessed among the dispossessed, as a real threat.

Why didn't he recruit more of his friends to help him this time? Hell, he could even have hired Brother Mouzone, who helped him bring down Stringer Bell. A YouTube poster said of that re-teaming that it would have been "the greatest shit in the history of television."

I guess this turn of events just manifests the dreary, condescending side of liberalism that must be partly motivating production of a show like The Wire. Hardly anybody ever bothers to pays any attention to the insulted and injured of the world without thinking of them as, in the end, hopeless without "our" help. And of course "we" do owe "them" more attention and a bigger share of the benefits of society than "they" get, but sometimes what "they" need more than anything is the kind of encouragement that comes from recognition of the power "they" already have, power that human beings all share and all sometimes forget about.

Oh, well. R.I.P., Omar.

something, maybe, about the sometimes surprising power of solitary individuals to make a difference in an indifferent world

Well, one of the main points of the show is that in effect, this power does not exist. There are no heroes or villains; no single person can exercise his will and affect change on any kind of large scale. We live our lives under a crushing weight of institutionalism, and are powerless to get out from under it.

I think Omar's death rang very true to that theme, particularly its aftermath. Bunk and McNulty were curiously indifferent at best, and he received no recognition publicly. Pretty harsh treatment for the best-loved character on the show.

I know what you mean about the death being upsetting like that...Omar getting shot was one of the few times when I was watching The Wire where I just screamed out "Oh shit!!!" as it happened because it was just so unexpected (not that he died, because I was really sure that he'd end up dying, but the manner of it).

As much as I enjoyed Brother Mouzone's alliance with Omar, I just don't think that a reunion would have worked like that, though. Mouzone had respect for Omar, but when you got down to it Mouzone was still a criminal who worked for drug dealers, not against them, so their alliance was simply one of convenience against a common foe (Stringer Bell). Mouzone didn't have anything against Marlo, there was no percentage in it for him to go on a quest against Marlo, and if Mouzone had showed up it was much more likely that he'd have been hired by Marlo to kill Omar. In fact, that would have been more in keeping with the show than an alliance.

Most people like a happy ending where the heroes win the day and the people they like come out on top...but that's not what this show is about.

By the way, did anyone else find it interesting how McNulty's scam finally put him in a position to be blackmailed by that cop looking for a trip to Hilton Head? The real downside to his scam not being that "the bosses" will catch on to McNulty trying to subvert the system for "good" ends, but that other scammers in the system will catch on and use it to further milk the system. Even when you try not to play the game, the game still plays you.

UCrawford:

I agree, it was interesting to see Kenard's involvement...I was wondering in the last episode if he was going to play any kind of substantial role (like in Season Four) as he's been quiet since Michael gave him a beating. He still technically qualifies as a nobody...although the fact that he was trying to set fire to a cat (one of the three parts of the Homicidal Triad) indicate he'll be an up-and-comer in the game.

I was kind of surprised to see Poot Carr working at Footlocker, though. I never thought he'd get tired of what he did...guess he had more brains than he let on.

That was something else. As I was watching it, I couldn't get past the parallel between Kenard and Li'l Dice from Cidade de Deus. Of course, Li'l Dice went on to become Li'l Ze, the functional equivalent of Marlo, whereas Kenard will probably brag about his deeds to the wrong person and end up dead or in prison.

Kenard will probably brag about his deeds to the wrong person and end up dead or in prison.

Well, I don't really see anybody coming down on Kenard for taking out Omar. Free as he was from the restraints of institutions, Omar was also free of the protection they provide. Other than the audience (and maybe his grandmother!), nobody really cared that Omar died.

I have read on other forums speculation that Kenard would fill Omar's shoes after killing him, but I don't see that happening either. As we learned in the Omar prequel, he had shown an uncommon adherence to code and discipline at a young age. Unflinching confidence and situational awareness were with him from the beginning. We have already seen Kenard try to run game on Namond with a package, and then we saw him torturing a cat; these are both things that never would have happened with Omar.

I have read on other forums speculation that Kenard would fill Omar's shoes after killing him, but I don't see that happening either.

Agreed, Omar has pretty much always been Omar while Kenard has pretty much always been a lying, foul-mouthed, cat-burning sociopath. He may have shown some immediate remorse for killing (probably because it was his first time) but ultimately he'll get over it and I see him ending up more like Cheese than Omar.

Good points all, but I say no way Kenard makes it past 20 years of age.

Interesting observation about Omar being successful by using the disenfranchised to aid his heists. If this was intentional, i think there is some irony about him getting offed by Kenard. Omar was so distracted by his disappointment in not getting to Marlo that he did not notice that Kenard was the only kid who did NOT run when he passed by. I also think that he saw him in the store right before he got shot, as he seemed to look to his right before facing the register again. This would suggest that he saw Kenard, but did not consider him a possible threat.

The idea that the theme of The Wire is and always has been the inevitable powerlessness of individuals seems to me a screaming oversimplification. I don't think anybody would watch a show that drove home such a point, nor would such a thing be worth watching.

Instead, the fun and the fascination of the series has always been the way in which brave efforts *sometimes* lead nowhere and sometimes take you good places, bad guys *sometimes* get away and sometimes meet bad fates nobody would ever have expected, good guys sometimes get away and sometimes meet bad fates nobody ever would have expected, good guys sometimes turn out to be not so good, bad guys turn out sometimes to be not so bad (or at least not so bad as what comes after them when they get taken down), etc., etc.--the key word always being *sometimes."

The Wire is about the comic and tragic unpredictability of this screwed-up world, not its universal bleakness.

UCrawford:

I know what you mean about the death being upsetting like that...Omar getting shot was one of the few times when I was watching The Wire where I just screamed out "Oh shit!!!" as it happened because it was just so unexpected (not that he died, because I was really sure that he'd end up dying, but the manner of it).

Nope, you're not getting my point. I got upset not only with the fictional turn of events but with the writers of the fiction. They willfully scorned dramatic logic in the interest of making theater, or television, of the absurd; they used a shock device to show us the bleakness of the human condition. But writers have been shocking me this way for 50 years, now, and I'm getting a little tired of it. I think I've learned about all I have to learn from shocks like that. Free jazz, abstract expressionist painting, and dramas in which anything can happen were new and great once, but, as Dave Frishberg might put it: They had their day, now they're passé.

The idea that the theme of The Wire is and always has been the inevitable powerlessness of individuals seems to me a screaming oversimplification. I don't think anybody would watch a show that drove home such a point, nor would such a thing be worth watching.

Well, we have been watching just such a show for 5 years now. Do some Googling and read some interviews with David Simon if you are convinced that showing the nature of modern institutional dominance is not the main theme of the show.

There is room in The Wire for personal improvement or decline, I am not disputing that. I think those are the "sometimes" scenarios that you discuss in your second paragraph. However, these are examples of personal change; of evolution and reformation on a very small scale

In the face of the city's institutions, these individual triumphs and tribulations are meaningless. Bubbles can kick heroin, but that doesn't mean a damn thing to the drug trade. Prez can care about his kids and maybe even make a difference with one or two, but the education system as a whole will not change. Frank Sabotka can pour his heart and soul into his union, but that won't revitalize American industry. Bunny Colvin can create Hamsterdam, but that won't change the drug war. Stringer Bell can create the co-op, but there will always be another Marlo to ruin it all.

Like I said, find a few interviews with Simon for his perspective on this. Just like the human characters in the Greek myths could do nothing to influence the gods, so are the individuals in The Wire helpless against the tides of the city's major institutions.