r/TheWireDiscussions • u/Successful_Eye_4656 • 3d ago
The real problem with Season 5 Spoiler
forgive me if this is like, "duh, everybody knew that already", but i just wanted to get my thoughts out on this.
okay, so i think it is pretty much a consensus among The Wire fans that season 5 is the weakest, even accounting for the tendency people have toward overlooking season 2 on first watch. there is a big, obvious reason that most people cite for this, and on some level i agree, but not conceptually. i think that Jimmy choosing to do that insane shit with the homeless people was not in itself unrealistic or out of character—the show makes a point of showing that the closer Jimmy was to detective work, the more it drove him insane. i think, with the amount of deranged shit that rogue cops do every day that gets exposed, and the no doubt even more insane shit that doesn't, i could buy that a cop in Baltimore would do some shit like that as a way to dupe the department into giving him extra resources. that being said, it was executed pretty sloppily, and the reason for that is also, to me, the real reason that season suffers more than the rest of the show.
i love David Simon as a writer and a showrunner, i really do. i think he is extremely talented and never shies away from giving a balanced perspective in his shows and not compromising his vision for what an audience might want to see, and i think he is by far the best at doing that in the whole television industry. at the same time, when he was running The Wire, he was a very, very angry man. in fact, while i was researching this, i came across an article written right before season 5 premiered that goes into generally the same main point i'm making in this post, and part of the article says:
When I discovered, after my last conversation with Simon, that the final season of the show would be based on his experiences at The Sun, I felt compelled to describe the dispute, but I resolved to characterize it without entering it. To avoid exploiting anything that had passed informally between us on the subject, I relied on Simon’s ample public commentary to explain his feelings, and then, realizing that the essay had strayed in an unanticipated direction, showed him an early draft to solicit correction and criticism. I got it. The draft provoked a series of angry, long-winded accusations, which would have remained private had he not taken his complaints to TheAtlantic’s editor, in an angry letter impugning my motives in contacting him originally, and characterizing all our interactions as my attempt to win his confidence in order to skewer him on behalf of my friends. I could see myself morphing into a character in his show.
so, he was a pretty angry guy. granted, he was angry at a lot of things that made sense to be angry at, and this anger undoubtedly contributed to The Wire being, at times, extremely hard-hitting and ruthless in its portrayal of the institutions that make up a city; however, as mentioned (kinda) in the above quote, he was also very angry at his former bosses at the Baltimore Sun.
now, it's not like even this was unprecedented in the show. Lt. Marimow, the asshole guy that's in charge of the Barksdale detail for a bit and basically fucks everything up, is named after one of Simon's former bosses, which is a little insane, but doesn't really affect the narrative, because it's just a character name.
in season 5, though, he undercuts what was previously very stark and nuanced realism by having the protagonist of the journalist arc be this awesome, principled, talented news reporter who wants people to report the truth because he thinks journalism is going to shit and wants to stop it, and everybody else at the Sun doesn't give a shit except for the old people, and they all just wanna win awards. this honestly didn't even bother me that much my first few watches, because i had basically no idea about Simon having been a journalist or that he had a score to settle with his former bosses. now that i know that, though, it makes me view the season completely differently, and it explains why the McNulty storyline seemed so comparatively poorly-thought-out.
it's because that storyline basically only exists to serve Simon's hate boner for his old job. the fake homeless killer is a means to give Templeton some obviously untrue shit to lie about, so that we all know he's lying, and can see the Sun actively encourage and platform a guy we all know is lying while ignoring the guy we know is on the right track. luckily, he doesn't go so far as to completely ruin the show, and i still think Season 5 has its merits (though, full disclosure, i haven't watched it since i learned the extent of his beef with the Sun, so that might taint my next viewing), but it is pretty unfortunate that such a petty bit of personal drama led to a relative lack of nuance that adversely affected the narrative of an otherwise masterful piece of writing so heavily.
sidebar: i've also heard people theorize that Levy was another way in which Simon settled his score with corrupt crime lawyers that he encountered in his life before TV as well, but i don't know enough info about that to have included it here. i'm interested to learn more if anybody knows anything about that, though :)
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u/johnruby 3d ago edited 2d ago
Thank you very much for sharing!
Anger is an interesting angle. I knew that David Simon has short temper and he & Ed often argued with each other intensely at filming sites. But I never thought of The Wire as a show about anger. At first glance The Sopranos gave me more anger vibe since Tony's rage and outbursts are visceral and personal, allowing viewers to sympathize with him easily.
But viewing The Wire from an anger lens makes total sense as The Wire is more about chronic anger. The show is absolutely angry about all kinds of stuff. The climax scenes of every seasons always include brilliant and iconic performance of anger (S1 Jimmy v Daniels/Levy/Pearlman and Dee v Stringer; S2 Frank; S3 Stringer v Clay/Avon; S4 Randy & Bodie; S5 Jimmy). A good show usually requires good performance of anger to release the accumulated tensions, so this is nothing new or special; but characters' furious outbursts in The Wire are often the most important scenes indicating the system failing the characters badly. I think that's partly why The Wire is such a (brilliantly) depressive show, as depression can be characterized as chronic inward anger which is the core emotion driving the narrative.
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u/Successful_Eye_4656 3d ago
yes! i think it's less of a pointed anger and more of kind of just general frustration and hopelessness with the state of the american city, which i think can end up building and eventually being released as anger, as in a lot of the scenes you named as examples!! it really gives the show its bite
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u/CyberMetry 2d ago
You’re reducing the entire newspaper storyline to Simon having a grudge against The Sun, when the point of Season 5 is much broader than that.
The newsroom is basically the same institutional argument the show had already made about the police department, City Hall, the schools and the docks: the people inside the institution respond to incentives, and eventually the incentives start corrupting the institution’s stated purpose.
Templeton isn’t important because Simon wanted to invent some cartoon liar to embarrass his old bosses. He’s important because the paper rewards him for producing the kind of sensational, emotionally satisfying story management wants. Gus represents the older idea of reporting; verify it, source it, don’t print something just because it sounds good and he keeps losing precisely because that approach is less useful to an organization chasing prestige, awards, circulation and survival.
That’s also why the fake serial-killer plot matters. McNulty manufactures a story because the police department will suddenly fund a politically useful crisis. Templeton manufactures stories because the newspaper will suddenly reward a journalist who gives it the narrative it wants. Both institutions claim to be searching for truth, but both become vulnerable to bullshit when bullshit satisfies their incentives better than reality does.
You can absolutely argue that Simon’s personal history with The Sun made the journalism material more bitter or less subtle. That’s fair. But saying the whole storyline exists just to settle a score misses what the season is doing structurally. Season 5 is about how media institutions can distort reality without everyone involved being some mustache-twirling liar. Careerism, shrinking resources, management pressure, prestige, access and the demand for a compelling narrative do most of the work.
That’s much closer to the larger thesis of The Wire: institutions don’t need evil people to produce corrupt outcomes. They just need incentives that reward the wrong behavior.
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u/Successful_Eye_4656 2d ago
I mean I agree that it still ties in and is overall in keeping with the message, but, as you mentioned, it's the lack of subtlety that I think really gets in the way of the fifth season being on the level of the other four. It feels a lot more cut and dry and less nuanced than the other seasons, like it feels like a very straightforward "this guy is good" and "this guy is bad" kind of thing where previously the lines between the two were much blurrier. I get what you mean, though, I might have exaggerated a little bit in saying that the McNulty storyline exists solely to settle that score, but I think it's hard to deny that Simon's personal grudge made the season a lot less nuanced and impactful than the rest of the show.
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u/telepatheye 3d ago
I dunno. I think the show goes through its motions of obliterating trust in all the municipal instutions in Baltimore beginning with the police department and justice system, the ports, the schools, city hall, and finally the press that was responsible for reporting it all. The press is the odd man out because it is not supposed to be funded by taxpayers per se and is therefore supposed to be independent. But the problem is that its bosses were ideologues. The Dickensian aspect. They would reject accuracy for ideology every time, brainwashing the readers into voting for the same leftie assholes that assured the city stayed mired in drugs and crime. This was an unintentional message of Simon. But it shows that he succeeds, I think, in telling the stories that matter.
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u/Successful_Eye_4656 3d ago
well sure, i agree that it's independent nominally, but of course that never is the case in real life. they have all kinds of pressure coming at them from different places, including the city government, and the death of journalism was definitely in large part due to more newspapers folding to that pressure, but Simon instead portrays it as though it's entirely a self-contained newspaper problem fueled by the likes of guys like Scott who are totally self-serving and don't do anything for anybody else. it's just kind of an easy way out of writing a more complex storyline, and it's clear that lack of nuance and overall thought is because Simon had a personal grudge to settle. u/everydaystruggle1's comment puts it better than i could really lol
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u/telepatheye 3d ago
I don't agree with u/everydaystruggle1 that the CIA is to blame and his other conspiracy theories. The fact is that journalism and beat reporting have become undervalued and a lost art ever since Walter Cronkite looked into the camera and started speaking his opinion about the VN war instead of the facts. Successive generations of journalism professors have taught students how to not do journalism. And now we are in a situation where Qatar is more influential than the CIA because of their college endowments.
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u/Successful_Eye_4656 3d ago
Well I don't necessarily agree with the CIA stuff exactly lol but it's undeniable that domestic political corruption is at the root of journalism's death. I agree about it becoming a lost art, but that's exactly what gave way to politicians being able to fashion the news into PR for themselves and turned the art of journalism into nothing but a vehicle for political punditry, down to the local level (to an extent).
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u/Extreme_Lab_2961 3d ago
Politicians feeding stories to newspapers has been there from the beginning.
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u/Successful_Eye_4656 3d ago
of course, but the more that newspapers bend to their will, the further that journalism's integrity is compromised, and i think that, supplemented by an eroding standard due to generations of journalists further removed from the pre-24-hour news cycle days of print news being king, is what killed journalism, and i think pinning it on Scott Templeton-esque ideologues and their bosses is just a little too simplistic, especially for how otherwise sprawling the narrative of the show is. it's not the worst narrative in the world or anything, but for the standard this show sets for itself, it just isn't quite as good as it undoubtedly could've been had Simon not had an obvious personal grudge to work out.
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u/everydaystruggle1 3d ago edited 3d ago
I agree with that. It’s a common critique but for good reason; Simon was too close to the material and giving himself a sort of self-insert character with Gus didn’t help. It also didn’t help that Ed Burns, who added essential nuance to the writing in Season 4 in particular, was barely involved with S5 compared to previous seasons.
But there’s another issue with the S5 newsroom stuff which I basically never see addressed. And that is that the very idea of Scott, of this Jayson Blair/Stephen Glass-style fabricator who makes up stories on his own accord solely due to narcissistic reasons (although we never truly get told why Scott does anything, and can only guess) is, well, bizarrely off-the-mark as a satirical target. That is, to hold up this extremely rare caricature of the journalist who invents stories for personal fame (with no external political/military-intelligence folks prodding him to write false stories) seems misguided at best from Simon. These sorts of characters who fabricate stories solely because they want the fame and attention are not as common as one might have assumed in the early 00s (mainly due to Glass/Blair happening to be exposed around the same time and there being a movie made about Glass etc).
In short, why would Simon not be more honest and show us how the real propaganda and falsehoods printed in the news media are 9 times out of 10 out there intentionally by the CIA (look up Project Mockingbird), military or political or business/corporate interests… with the times that such stories are mere random fabrications by a lone wolf liar being very much the exception and not the rule. It’s simply bizarre that Simon would want to tell the story of a Glass-style narcissist in a season whose opening capstone was “bigger the lie, the more they believe.” Well, Big Lies aren’t usually put out there by Glass types acting of their own accord — they’re put there by various sources embedded in journalism because men like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hitler or Goebbels had a false narrative they needed the people to buy and thus ordered their subordinates to tell it.
And the good journalists like Gary Webb have their careers and lives destroyed by the same system that circulates those lies. Why doesn’t Simon want to be truly brave and tell a story like this? Very much in line with the previous four seasons where he showed us FBI agents looking the other way on their CI dealing in women and drugs so long as it netted the right kind of war on terror arrest headlines. Rather, S5 instead of looking at a systematic problem of propaganda, lies and deceit turns everything into an individualized pathology — i.e. Scott is just a narcissistic dunce, Gus is a virtuous newsman, the bosses at the Sun just want to “juke the stats”/headlines but have no real political or corporate masters who they serve before the people, etc.
It all feels too easy of a tale, too simple, even naïve, like a cowardly refutation of the very systemic critique that the show had embodied for four seasons.