Quick day today, we’re almost out the door for the weekend. However, you’ve no doubt read my personal hand-wringing over the versimilitude of The Wire’s questions and themes during the final season, which wraps up on March 9 (March 3 for us on-demanders).
Occasionally Newsweek does some solid work, such as dispatching a critical and well-versed fan of The Wire to interview executive producer David Simon. (Newsweek’s corporate partner Slate, for example, dispatches snooty journalists to decry all seasons of the show. Seems to me a real journalist supremely defensive of the medium wouldn’t be writing for an elitist maxi-blog. Zing! Also, that’s me, the pot.)
Simon offers an extreme amount of insight into the final season, and delivers several accurate defenses of his season five themes. Simon’s copy typically reads like a bitter, jaded professor, but he allows vital insight into the careful crafting of the penultimate season, and nicely hints at the coalescence of all his narrative themes.
We can’t print spoilers, but suffice it to say a line at the end of Episode Eight neatly sums up everything about all five seasons. In two more weeks, it will be over, and like a book you can’t wait to finish, can’t bear to put down, and spend full nights immersing yourself, we’ll feel powerfully exhausted, deeply saddened, and somewhat vacant when it’s gone.
