With only one episode left in the series, all the chips are coming home to roost, all the chickens are falling where they may, and the opera is very nearly over. George Pelecanos, the current dean of DC-based crime fiction (particularly since the death last week of Stephen Marlowe) wrote this one, from a treatment David Simon and he put together, and it's another episode that, while packed, allows us a little time to feel the import of these late moves, as we approach (to indulge in another cliché of the sort this show loves to mock) endgame.The biggest news in the episode is the successful execution of the arrest of most of the important players in Marlo's organization, including such de facto Marlo lieutenants as Cheese, by an operation under the direction of Lester. Lester's jubilation is tempered only by his cool as he makes a great show of confiscating Marlo's cell phone and the clock Marlo used to designate the coordinates of their meeting sites. Marlo, Chris and other up...
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Question: Considering all the useless television we are being bombarded with at this time, your silence on The Wire has been frustrating. What gives? (Spoiler alert) We've seen two great characters fall recently in Proposition Joe and Omar. I figured you would have at least had a write-up on them. Both deaths really stung, but man! The fact that Omar was taken out without being allowed a "blaze of glory shootout" makes it all the more effective. Coincidentally, he was taken out by Kenard, who we first saw in the Season 3 episode "Dead Soldiers" at a homicide scene, shouting while playing with his friends that it was his turn "to be Omar" (David Simon confirmed this). All you can say to that is wow. Write about it while you can, Matt. They won't make shows like this anymore. This avid reader is hoping you will, at least, let it all out in a long review when the finale airs.
Answer: I promise I'll be filing a tribute to The Wire between now and next Sunday's airing of the final episode,
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Question: Given the dearth of shows on the air due to the writers' strike, how possible is it that The Wire will go unheralded by Emmy voters yet again this year? This has consistently been among the finest television shows out there the last five years, and in my opinion it is the best urban drama ever. The writing, the acting (especially from the young actors; the goodbye scene between Michael and Duquan was one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen between two young actors) and the casting are all superb. When combined with what the show says about the modern American city, I will be righteously annoyed if in this year of American Gladiators and Knight Rider redux, mediocre shows like Grey's Anatomy and Boston Legal are rewarded, and this American masterpiece is not. There is no better show on TV, much less on broadcast TV, and it has been the single finest vehicle for African-American actors that I can remember. Well, I suppose my opinion is clear. What's yours?
Answer: Couldn't
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Dominic West and Wendell Pierce in The Wire by Nicole Rivelli/HBO
Are you one of those impatient sorts who like to "read ahead" and cue up your The Wire episodes before the rest of the class? If so, I have a bit of frustrating news. HBO wants you to know that the series finale, airing March 9, will not be made available via HBO On Demand the previous Monday, as has been the practice throughout the season. In other words, it all comes to an end on March 9, at 9 pm/ET — for everybody.
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Michael K. Williams in The Wire by Nicole Rivellli/HBO
Cheers to The Wire for aptly dispatching Omar (the Emmy-worthy Michael K. Williams) with a bang. The seemingly indestructible stick-up artist was suddenly gunned down by a child assassin during an otherwise mundane scene at a grocery store. It’s the kind of stunning dramatic moment that made HBO’s sprawling urban tableau TV's finest drama during its soon-to-conclude five-season run. May Omar — and The Wire — rest in peace.• Read and react to Bruce's opinions on Oscars host Jon Stewart, Saturday Night Live's return and more!• Share your own raves and rants about other shows on the Reader Cheers & Jeers discussion board.• We may feature your Cheer or Jeer on TVGuide.com or in TV Guide magazine!
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This episode, with a script by Dennis Lehane from a treatment he co-wrote, is all about exposure, and what one has to do to cover over that exposure. Omar, particularly, could tell you a thing or two about overextending one's self, and leaving one's self excessively exposed, when one of cockiest of the youngsters working Marlo's corners manages to shoot the crusader in the head, just after he raids another of the drug sales units. Suddenly snuffed out, he goes from being the scourge of the city's underworld to, in the final scene, just another corpse in the morgue, accidentally mis-tagged. But at least his hand-written list of harrassment targets, recovered from his corpse by Bunk, is passed along to the former Major Crimes investigators, to aid them in connecting the dots in the Stansfield mob.Bunk also benefits by finally signing on to McNulty's scam investigation, gaining some priority for his lab work which fingers Marlo's right-hand thug Chris as the murderer in the beating d...
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In an episode more given over to relatively leisurely setpieces than usual this season (and marking the return of scriptwriter Richard Price to the series, and a cameo by Richard Belzer as Munch, another reference back to Homicide: Life on the Streets), this one was all about the misallocation of resources. Of course, every episode of The Wire deals with that, but rarely so completely.For example, McNulty and Freamon fake up a call from their fictional serial murderer to Templeton, the reporter who is their unwitting partner in the fraud (or, more correctly, is running his own parallel fraud to theirs). This leads to both precisely the kind of unlimited funding Lester and Jimmy were hoping for in police department funds and humanpower commitment, and an embarrassment of riches (and the looming threat of close oversight scrutiny) that might hinder their real investigation...even as it allows McNulty to quietly fund and fold in the pet cases of many of his fellow homicide detectives...
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Lance Reddick and Dominic West, The Wire
Apparently playing one of TV's most challenging characters — The Wire's hard-drinking, corner-cutting Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty — wasn't challenge enough for Dominic West. "I've been dying to direct," the British actor says. "HBO, thank goodness, took a chance on me." The gamble was worth it: West's episode, "Took," in which McNulty's plot to secure funds for the police department by concocting a serial killer of homeless men spins out of control, debuts this Sunday, Feb. 17 (9 pm/ET, HBO), and it's pitch-perfect. We asked the aspiring auteur to take us through some of its more challenging scenes.
THE SCENE: Show of ForceSquad cars, helicopters and boats swarm the Seaport in search of the "killer." "I can't tell you how exciting that was! It wasn't written that there'd actually be helicopters and stuff. I asked for
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Amy Ryan and Ed Harris, Gone Baby Gone
Tony-nominated actor Amy Ryan's first love may be the theater, but she's reached a bigger audience — and gained wider acclaim, including a richly deserved Oscar nomination — for her role as the grieving mother of a child who's been kidnapped in the 2007 film Gone Baby Gone. Among numerous TV roles, she's also impressed as The Wire's "Beadie" Russell, an iron-willed Port of Baltimore police officer who was the woman to finally put a leash on notorious tomcat Jimmy McNulty — until the current season. We caught up with Ryan on the eve of the DVD release of Gone Baby Gone, which is slated for today.
TVGuide.com: You've already won a number of prestigious critics' awards for Gone Baby Gone. How has the Oscar nomination changed your life?Amy Ry
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Catastrophic success is the upshot of nearly everyone's gambits on this episode of The Wire.McNulty and Freamon's fraudulent case of serial killing of homeless men in Baltimore get ever more attention, and ever more promises of support, from the mayor on down the hierarchy...but no more actually humanpower or technological resources, leaving them slightly hobbled in their real investigation, into the activities of Marlo's gang. Lester brings his Major Crimes underling into the conspiracy, and between them they manage to determine that the real business of the gang is being conducted through cell-phone photos rather than text messages or coded conversation, but that just taunts them in not having quite what they need to put Marlo and his enforcers away. As Freamon notes, when Assitant D.A. Rhonda Pearlman drops by about the investigation of Clay Davis, his "official" work, it's remarkable what one can do when no one's looking over your shoulder...a luxury that McNulty and Freamon a...
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