The Wire, Season 5, Episode 2 Review

McNulty Finally Loses It

Grade: B+/B

The final season of the greatest TV show ever continues, though not quite with the same kick as the last episode. But I’ll take an okay episode of “The Wire” over just about any other episode of anything.

Things continue to progress towards inevitable doom. Marlo, realizing that the police are no longer watching him, decides to cry havoc and let slip his dogs of war. He resolves to exact revenge on his real and perceived slights to his organization and person. The two scenes of Marlo’s crew carrying out his will go from bleakly funny to chilling. The portrayal of Michael, the young-up-comer being groomed by Marlo’s right-hand man Chris Partlow, is particularly well done. Michael’s slow realization of the stupidity of Marlo’s motives and the futility of his actions is powerful.

And while his crew does the dirty work, Marlo tries to visit good ol’ Sergei of Season 2, currently locked up in prison for the rest of his life, in hopes of dealing directly with the Greeks and cutting out the rest of the Co-Op. He gets surprised by let another blast from his past, who’s wiling to help Marlo out, but at a good cost. And once he gets past that obstacle, Marlo’s greeting to Sergei when he does manage to meet him face-to-face is priceless.

Even as Marlo continues to maneuver, neither McNulty nor Freamon are ready to give up on the case, looking for ways to someone, anyone, to take it seriously. Their difficulties, plus the increasing inability for anyone in the Baltimore PD to do any sort of basic police work weigh heavy on McNulty. The visual of Jimmy having to take the bus to get to a crime scene is a good touch. The hopelessness eventually culminates in McNulty going COMPLETELY off the rails, which has been a long time coming.

While these plot lines are handled as well as ever, some of the facets of the series seem a little lackluster. The Bubbles storyline has its moments, but it has built up much traction. I’m betting this one will turn around, and that Bubs will be one of the few characters to earn some measure of redemption by the end of the show. If for no other reason than he hit rock-bottom last season.

The newspaper storyline also misfired this episode. Particularly, I can’t buy that in 2007/2008, there are is any managing editor of a major metropolitan newspaper that is as clueless as the one for this fictional incarnation of The Baltimore Sun. I can understand his logic for “narrowing the focus” on the public school series/expose (writing a story on how all of society is to blame for student’s low-test scores has become cliché in itself). However, no managing editor would green-light putting a story on the front page of the paper when they don’t have a name or a picture of the subject of the story, especially in the aftermath of Jason Blair and USA Today fiascos

Another problem is that there are now so many characters that advancing the stories of nearly all of them any given week gets increasingly difficult. They’ve got four seasons of characters whose arcs David Simon and company are trying to bring to their logical conclusions. Now, by wedging in another dozen or so reporters/editors into ten episodes, all requiring their own screen-time, the stretch-marks are starting to show.