A full page advertisement in The New York Times for the final
episode of “The Wire” shows a brick wall of what I assume is a row
house in that city of row houses, Baltimore. Slightly to the right
and almost in the middle of the page are the letters R.I.P scrawled
on the building. Rest in Peace. It is a fitting symbol for the end
of the over-praised, yet often-remarkable series.
After 60 highly charged episodes over five seasons about the police,
labor, politics, schools and the press, David Simon’s story about
life and its many corruptions in the mostly underbelly of a dying
Baltimore ended with a 90 minute show Sunday night, March 9, 2008.
In some ways, it was time for it to end. The first three years were
superb. For me it started to fall apart in season four when “The
Wire” concentrated on education. Mostly weak, I found it a chore to
watch because I did not need the creators of “The Wire” to regale me
with tales of a failed inner city school system. I found it hard to
keep caring about the characters, most of whom were regulars I had
come to know from previous seasons.
I had hopes for the fifth season when Simon decided to turn his
glare on the press. Yet, that too, was something of a failure
because of the stereotypes on the newspaper, mainly the lying
reporter on the make and the executives who, for the sake of fame,
turned from the truth. The “ripped from the headlines” story telling
didn’t help. The third theme in this final season was the continued
corruption of the young mayor and his staff. I kept saying to
myself, give me a break. Further, I really got tired of watching a
story where there was almost nothing redeeming about any of the
characters and their messed-up lives. Sadly, the parallel story of
the faked serial killer perpetrated by a detective bent on solving
an unrelated series of murders that had been shunted aside for
budgetary reasons had almost no truth and really tried my ability to
believe.
In the same way that detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) tied red
ribbons around the wrists of dead homeless to create the illusion of
a serial killer, David Simon at the end of “The Wire” offered us,
his viewers, his own red ribbon by trying manfully to tie a similar
red ribbon neatly on how at least some of the lives we came to love
and hate turned out. Only it didn’t work. The ending had too much of
a cartoon feel to it. It was too glib, thus too neat.
Go to “The Wire” Web site at
http://www.hbo.com/thewire/cast and take a hard look at the all
the actors who appeared over the last five seasons. There is no way
that the creators of the series could have given us even a glimpse
of where their lives went. I did not expect that. However, I did
expect something of a better resolution than seeing McNulty standing
outside his car on a bridge over Baltimore staring at the city below
as a device for us to see how Simon resolved the lives of some
participants in the final series.
I have a theory that I call The Three David’s of HBO. It seems to be
an HBO pattern in how series end, or at least the one’s I watch when
producers have the name David. I have no problem with ambiguity in
art. Life is less than perfect, so art, high and low, need not be
perfect. We know how David Chase ended “The Sopranos.” Hazy at best,
annoying to say the least, and sadly inconclusive. “The Sopranos”
ended with a whimper instead of a bang and for that disappointment
followed. We know that David Milch was apparently never allowed to
end “Deadwood.” It simply petered away; disappeared without any
resolution, fell off a cliff into the land of no resolution. It is
as if “Deadwood” never existed. Too bad. HBO buried that series
without fanfare.
With “The Wire” the producers worked very hard to wrap up as much as
they could as neatly as possible. Only it rang false. We see the
former police commissioner practicing law in a courtroom presided
over by a judge, his girlfriend, the former Assistant State’s
Attorney. We observe former detectives settling in to the life of
civilians, or not. We see the corrupt, ambitious mayor as the new
governor paying off his corrupt police commissioner with a new job
in his administration. We watch one of the more sympathetic
youngsters getting ready to shoot up. We see a former drug lord told
to stay off the street but unable to free himself from the life as
he gets cut with a knife on a corner where drug dealers operate. We
watch as the lying reporter wins what I assume is the Pulitzer Prize
for his faked series on the homeless. In a sweet grace note Bubbles,
now clean of drugs, sits down to dinner with his sister and her son.
All well and good, but it was not enough. Perhaps the cast was too
big, too sprawling. Perhaps David Simon and his talented staff of
writers and directors, including those wonderful actors, had too
much to deal with to ever effect an end to the many strands of the
story. Instead, he simply ended the series. No matter what David
Simon says, we will probably never know his real motivation. Was it
fatigue? We may never know.
Remember that newspaper ad? It had it exactly right. R.I.P. Rest in
peace. .................................................................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002.
