I don't doubt that the business of the first episode had alot to do with the retards at HBO deciding to cut the Wire from 13 episodes to 10 for its final season but I know Simon will make it work in spite of his bosses stupidity.

As far as Jeffrey's weak defence of the Sopranos give it up man the show lost its way after 3 seasons so the claim that the Sopranos was on longer is not much of an excuse. Of course it is probably true that the Sopranos was a victim of its own massive popularity while the Wire has been able to stay on course precisely because nobody was watching. Maybe if David Simon had gotten all the money and all the ball licking from critics that David Chase received he would have turned into a hack writer as well although I doubt it.

He's gotten every bit as much ball-licking from critics as David Chase did. It's the public that hasn't grabbed on. It's too dense for them and doesn't have enough immediate gratification for our ADD-affected population.

And if seasons 4, 5 and 6 of the Sopranos is "hack" writing, I'll take more of that please. I thought they were great, even if they didn't measure up to the first three. I thought season 6, especially, was fantastic. A great final season.

Looks like overreaction to the first episode from the TV Club writers. We had to get re-aquainted with Marlo/Joe, Bubbles, Michael, and the status of the unit. The Wire just does not drop story lines like The Sopranos did. In regards to the newsroom, everyone needs to go back to their reaction in season 2 when they moved to the docks. We had no idea what was going on, but after two weeks, we were all symbolically drinking with the longshoreman waiting for jobs. We are seeing an entire new institution. Give the stories some time to work up, this is not network garbage but a show with intertwining stories and strong characters.

Yep, overreaction and writing just to write.

I think there has been a certain lack of insight in the TV Club discussion so far; Plotz and Goldberg seem more interested in criticizing the show, then putting its themes in a wider context. Both are leaning on superlatives to get their point across - the sign of a bad critic if ever there was one. Formulations like: "Simon made it utterly gripping and persuasive..." and "As for the newspaper subplot, the less said, the better." This is a barstool level of discourse, quite frankly. Must do better.

Enough with the self-reflexivity!

Actually the cutting down to 10 episodes in The Wire's final season will probably help it from falling into the mistakes of past shows that just hung on a bit too long-ending up padding final shows with cliches and "deja vu scenes". The Wire with its shortened final season will hopefully leave us wanting more. How about a feature movie Mr. Simon?

Limiting the final season of The Wire to ten episodes will likely have a negative effect on the story-lines. With so many stories to juggle, the only reason to limit the final season to ten episodes is financial. HBO made the same mistake with John from Cincinnati, a show vastly underrated by most critics. Forcing writers to short-hand important elements of multiple plots will result is less subtlety and nuance, making it less challenging, less complex.

While I’ve enjoyed the return of the best show on television (given the premature demise of the magnificent Deadwood), there are clearly serious problems that did not exist in the first four seasons. While season four occasionally gave off a mild whiff of a civics lesson, the good outweighed the problematic by a large distance. The introduction of numerous new characters and stories may sometimes have come at a cost of depth of character development, but it still rang true. The newsroom arc, on the other hand, is predictable, with flat, stereotypes and a telegraphed destination of the proceedings. Clark Johnson’s considerable talent is the saving grace of the newsroom saga, imo.

The worst misstep is the ruin of McNulty. I don’t need a heroic, utterly redeemed McNulty, but the fall he has taken to depths far below his season one antics is appalling and unbelievable. I don’t buy it and it rings false given the character’s development over the course of the first four seasons. I suppose he will end up at a meeting with Bubbles at the close of the season, filled with remorse over the depths to which he has fallen, and the treasures he pissed away.

There are other, less serious, issues I have with season five thus far, but at least we can all look forward to the demise of Marlo. Doing in Butchie and Prop Joe has assured him an early grave. In whatever ways season five fails to live up to the heights of previous seasons, we can savor the revenge of Omar and share in the disgust of Bunk over the fall of McNulty.

I think the whole thing is getting unbelievable, and even just uninvolving. Lester's approval of the McNulty fake killer nonsense was just too out of character for him, he is a thinking man's cop and this is something that only a sodden drunk could come up with.

The press issues are just not involving because they aren't engaging the issues. The reporters go out, they come back in, and they write their article. There is no real sense of any sort of expose, just an incompetent hack of a writer getting plaudits when he should be canned, and there are a lot of jobs that have that. They should be contextualizing the papers downfall with political agendas, media consolidation, and how the papers themselves feed into the ruin of the city. I think the problem is Simon's own involvement with the press doesn't let him take that step back that he needs to, to get out of the newsroom.

Simple, the drawn out term Sheee -it predates the wire and most cop or drama tv shows I am 38 and at the age of 12 here in St. Louis, Mo. I remember my older brother who is 54 now saying it just like that back then, and that had to be what about 1981-82 and growing up in a nice neighborhood l heard all ages cursing but nothing too vulgar mostly sheee-it, and this was from older adult men in the neighborhood that were business owners relaxing with a beer telling stories and such. So if these older gentlemen were using it also and they were much older than my brother say 50 back then, then I would say it is more of a relaxed playful jestering way of saying the term and mostly from the way and situations I hear it used in I think it is a way to illustrate a point when african american men are exaggerating in the telling of a story of females danger and other such things.

kporter7

And why exactly are you using this thread to comment on that? There are over a dozen "sheeeit" threads up on this forum; that is bad enough. Now we have people posting about "sheeeit" in other threads too?

I have to say that we all knew that McNulty would eventually fall. Last season he was doing great with his work and with his relationship, but he just couldn't leave the streets alone. Just like McNulty, I felt cheated when Bodie was killed. He was the only drug dealer I expected to make it to the end. So McNulty comes back and is promised to make real arrests and real cases just to end up being lied to. Enough is enough and he has a moment of pseudo clearity. I don't think that his character is far fetched. I think we've all been pushed to the point where we feel we have to do some wrong to be right. Like McNulty, I feel its all about the greater good. Him and Lester definitely crossed the line, but only to do what the city asks them as "poe-lease" to do. Take down the bad guys and help make the streets clean again. Would I have done it, no chance in hell. Would I have told the higher ups, no chance in hell. Because of what was done, real crimes were solved. The only problem is Kima never could take the easy way out. Even after being shot in Season, after Bunk tried to get her to fat finger the shooter she refused to cheat. One can't be mad at Kima for doing the "right" thing. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. I was pissed when i saw that she was gonna snitch. Right or wrong, you never go againist the family.

Maybe we'll get lucky and the Mayor will find a way to bury all of this. The fact is, the Mayor benefited just as much as McNulty did from the lie. He gained exposure and publicly took shots at the Governor on every occasion he got. It would be in his best interest not to let this leak. And as far as Levy being the one to let all the criminals out...maybe, just maybe, they get to Levy with charges on buying City Documents and he agrees to be silent to keep himself from going to jail. Not likely, but we can all hope that the God Guys finally get a win. They deserve one.

The Wire is the one and only but I must be in a Coma. Was Omar and Snoopy really gay? and if so when was that announced.?

Two scenes I keep coming back to:

McNulty kvetching to Freeman that police are being utilized to watch over the homeless. This is a bad thing. Freeman consoles McNulty with the fact that it will soon end. This is a good thing.

Then you have the newsroom discussion about the homeless coverage. The sum of it being, milk the story through the holidays if possible since it will die soon anyway.

Who are the "homeless?" What is our social responsibility to protect the most vulnerable citizens? Does that include the working poor? What is the cost of doing so?

I would like to hear more discussion of these "neo-Marxist" topics in these posts.