The Wire virgin’s diary – Old school wins

(Season 3, Episodes 11-12)

I can’t believe I’m already through three seasons of this show. True, they are the shorter 12 episode cable seasons, but it still seems like I’m flying through The Wire, especially now that I’m more than half way through the whole series.

Overall, I thought that season three was good, but it definitely wasn’t my favorite of the first three. Playing favorites is a little silly, I know. I think it’s kind of like choosing a favorite book from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They all are really part of the same story, and they’re all excellent.

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this series never won any serious awards.

“Middle Ground”

Let this be a lesson to you: if it’s bad to piss of one badass, it’s probably not a great idea to piss off two of them. Stringer learned this the hard way.

It was tough to watch the relationship between Stringer and Avon completely disintegrate. Like I said in my last post, it was a battle between the new way of doing things and the old way of doing things. Clearly, both men had strong ideas about how the organization should be run, and those ideas just didn’t mesh with each other.

What is ultimately the most tragic thing about Stringer’s downfall is that he never really got to be the man that he was striving to be. By that I mean that he considered himself above the fray of the drug war; he considered himself a business man who could steer his way through the politics involved with that lifestyle. At every turn, however, he failed. He was played by Sen. Clay Davis (what a snake that guy is), which prompted him to go right back to his gangster roots, ordering a hit on the man. He couldn’t even deal with the contractors and their shifting schedules and costs during the construction of the condos. It’s going to be interesting to see how the show moves on without Bell, who was such a huge part of the first three seasons.

The poor cops just never catch a break. As soon as they have Stringer pegged, he winds up dead. In fact, the turn for the worse that seems to happen in each penultimate episode is almost becoming a bit formulaic.

“Mission Accomplished”

It’s surprising that The Wire succeeds in making Jimmy McNulty such a likable character, because if you really look at the guy he’s a womanizer, he’s arrogant, self-centered, and a glory hog. Stringer turns up dead and all he can think is that he “got him” and Stringer will never know. I’m looking forward to seeing how McNulty grows as a character in the final two seasons though, as it appears he is serious about making changes in his life: reconnecting with Beadie (I loved seeing Amy Ryan again), and reassigning himself to the western as a beat cop.

It’s hard not to feel bad for Colvin at the end of all of this. Like Frank Sabotka last season, he was just trying to do the best that he could. He thought he was doing what was right. He meant well… but at the same time, he couldn’t really have expected it to end any other way, could he?

I have a bunch of thoughts on this season as a whole. I had mentioned that this wasn’t my favorite of the three seasons. I felt like the Hamsterdam storyline was a really interesting thought experiment much more than it was a realistic portrayal of life on the street, as the previous seasons were. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but looking back I really enjoyed season two.

I’m curious about the future of Kima. She seems to slowly be turning into McNulty.

With Avon back in prison, I’m eager to see how the Barksdale organization will survive through the rest of the series. Will Brianna take over the running of the cartel? Will Marlo take over as the power player in Baltimore?

As always, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with some of my other favorite characters: Omar, Cutty, and Freamon.

Looking forward to season four!

Clacked by Bob Degon
on Feb 08, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT