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The Wire comes to a brilliant conclusion.

Series finales are always cursed with high expectations. Fans of any show luckily enough to meet its natural conclusion can attest to this. Sure, there have been some great ones, but for every Newhart there are dozens of Seinfelds (unless you subscribe to the theory that the Seinfeld conclusions was more of a post-modernist joke, but for the sake of this discussion let’s say it wasn’t). The Wire, the greatest dramatic series in television history, whose finale aired Sunday night, was note perfect from the first frame to the last. More after the jump…

I watched the episode on complimentary HBO from the mostly comfortable bed of a downtown Nashville hotel. I had a huge grin on my face for the entire 90 minutes. It was just so perfect. Perfect in tone. Perfect in execution. The pieces all fell into place just as they should — just as they were supposed to fall. Characters in The Wire are slaves to the systems in which they work, and as expected the systems always won. Granted, there were characters that made it out better than others, but each and every member of that society got the fate that was destined. This isn’t to say it wasn’t surprising as there were enough unexpected turns to keep me on the edge of my seat — perhaps more entertaining, though, was seeing the direction everything was heading and then being able to shake your head and scream at the television, “Of course! Of course Levy and Marlo walk free. Of course someone has to fall on their sword. Of course it’s all about the perception of the lie.”

The Wire doesn’t deliver visceral climaxes for its viewers. Instead we tend to take away the small championships of individual characters to keep us from jumping out the window with complete and utter despair. And while this, the last episode, was no different there were two moments so blisteringly charged with “Hell, yes!” audience sentiment they absolutely need to be noted. The first and most obvious was McNulty’s dressing down of Scott at the police precinct. We knew Templeton was going to get away scott-free (and leave a wake of careers in his path) but thank God we at least had that one moment of personal justice. The speech was packed with all of the self-righteousness we’ve come to expect from McNulty and directed not at some poor sap chained to the system, but to a character wholly worthy of his scorn.

The second moment wasn’t nearly as big, but had graver consequences. That would be Slim Charles taking out Cheese. The scene was more or less played for laughs as the rest of the drug-collective lamented the lack of Cheese’s financial contribution, but for us watching at home it was the perfect piece of retribution for a character who has too-long been more bark than bite. Plus, body or no, Cheese was a man “without a code,” a stark difference to our beloved Omar. Which then leads us to…

The begats.

That first hour of the 90-minute finale was your typical season wrap-up. One of the reasons why The Wire is so consistently good is because the nature and complexity of the stories demands the pacing to be exquisitely tight. Thus in an arcs finale there isn’t a lot of room for things to take a turn one way or another — it’s a show based on consistency of expectation. But because we were given that chunk of extra time, the creators were able to give us a proper epilogue where we get to see not only where each of our characters ends up, but who they become. In the world of The Wire, nothing changes. It can’t. We’ve created a system without hope, where the only successes come on a strictly personal level and where all good is supplemented with an endless stream of bad. And so Sydnor becomes McNulty. Dukie becomes Bubbles. Michael becomes Omar. Carver becomes a Lieutenant. Valchek becomes commissioner (!!!). Marlo becomes Stringer Bell. The last one is interesting. Marlo, moments after leaving a swanky high-rise party with investors who will inevitably attempt to bleed him dry, goes back to the corner to show the people what he has become. They don’t recognize him, and not because of his fancy suit (which doesn’t blend in so well among the throw-back jerseys and extra-long white Ts). They don’t know what he means when he says, “Do you know who I am?” because they’ve never even seen him. As a kingpin he is so far removed from the street (and thus able to walk on those trafficking charges) he might as well be the emperor of Siam. A gun is pulled, but being from the streets he comes out more or less unscathed. Though that cut on his arm shows him something he or any of us won’t soon forget: you can’t go back.

“Larry, let’s go home.”

Tags: Finale, HBO, The Wire

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under HBO, The Wire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.