R.I.P The Wire, 2002-2008

It's over.

I don't want to get too sad, so instead I'll focus my energies on assessing the series finale. If you haven't seen it, don't read further.

The Wire series finale was an 8.5 on a scale of 1-to-10. Look, I'm a huge Sopranos fan, but The Wire's series finale annihilated the Sopranos', which was some trumped-up, overthought-out, wanna-be artistic crap. Don't Stop Believing and fade to black? Shiiiiiiit. That was some bullshit.

The Wire's series finale avoided the typical traps of a series finale. It stayed with the things that made it a cult success. It didn't struggle to wrap things up into some comfortable, tidy little story. It didn't try too hard and attempt to leave you with some false, grandiose, generalistic meaning. And most important, it stayed realistic.

Although the finale left you with a glimmer of hope, it also nailed the one thing that's absolutely true about life. Shit don't change. Shit reinvents itself. Shit presents itself in different forms. But ultimately, especially in inner-cities where the problems are too big to be solved by idiotic, quick-fix plans, we find that shit only reincarnates.

In the finale, characters evolved, but they were quickly replaced. Dukie became Bubbles. Michael became Omar, which to be honest was a fascinating surprise -- though once I thought about it, it made total sense. Michael was cold-hearted, but honorable and likable. Same as Omar. Anyway, I don't want to get off point...Marlo became Avon -- too much of a gangsta to ever merge into the real business world. Chris was Wee-Bey. Carcetti became Royce. Greggs and Bunk became the new McNulty and Freamon, although likely with much more sense.

That's why the series ended with McNulty watching the skyline by the freeway. It's a revolving problem attached to a revolving door.

Anyway, some other thoughts on Episode 60:

- Lester was right. Rhonda Pearlman did screw up the leverage with Levy. No way should Marlo have walked away clean. She had Levy by the gonads when she found out he was behind feeding Prop Joe the grand jury information.

- Herc should have been shot. I was praying Marlo would connect him to everything. Other Wire fans can help me out with this: Did Marlo ever realize Herc was the same cop who was sweating him about the police camera in Season 4? When Herc gave up Marlo's cell phone to Carver, he didn't do it out of a sense of morality. He did it because Marlo stealing the camera eventually got him fired. Herc went out like a real bitch. He deserved a hot one.

- I'm glad Daniels kept his integrity. I would have been extremely disappointed if he would have swallowed the company line and kept cooking the crime stats. Truthfully, I thought he was going to go along to get along since the running theme with The Wire is same shit, different day. But I should have expected him to do what he did.

- Despite wanting to see that lil' bastard reporter fry, I must admit it played out exactly like it would have in the real world. This is a world where assholes reign and those with common sense and decency are punished. If you look at the Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke situations, it took some time before their fabrications were uncovered. Now in those cases, they were punished and (some) editors fell as a result. Still, I don't think it was an accident that the two minorities who spoke up about Templeton were busted down.

- Method Man is my boo, but damn I'm glad Slim Charles killed him. That scene actually made me chuckle. Cheese thought he was all big and bad. He was about to get knee-deep into some gangsta soliloquoy, and Slim was like, damn all that talking. Besides, it would have been a travesty if Cheese's sellout ass wound up as a major player in the drug game, considering the way he sold out Prop Joe.

- Nice reappearance by Prez. I held out hope that Dukie wasn't going to become a 'head. Prez knew the real,. He knew when he gave Dukie the money, their relationship was officially over.

- How sweet was it to see Michael become the new Omar? It never occurred to me until he robbed Marlo how much he had in common with the real Omar. As Snoop said in Episode 59, Michael was never "one of them." He did dirt, but he had a sense of justice about it. He didn't like to see people get what they didn't deserve. He wasn't a company guy. And it really pissed Michael off that Marlo was so quick to believe he was the snitch. We don't have to ask what becomes of Marlo because Michael should take care of that.

The Michael wrinkle alone made the finale brilliant. For a series finale to mean something, it has to tie up enough loose ends (i.e., the end of McNulty and Freamon as murder police), but tantalize your imagination enough to continue the conversation. We'll smile thinking of Michael picking up where they left off. Some people will say the Sopranos finale did this, but I call bull. Sure, you can guess whether Tony died eventually, but that fade to black was simply awful. It felt like just another episode.

However, I do have one bit of good news for Wire fans. I read on the HBO site that Dominic West, the dude that plays McNulty, is trying to convince David Simon and crew to do a movie.

I'm going to bed with a smile.