James Hynes

(Spoilers: Don't read this if you haven't seen the last episode of The Wire.)

I'm going to miss The Wire, of course, but I haven't got much more to say about it this morning than I've already said: in Simonworld, the only redemption is personal, institutions exist chiefly to perpetuate themselves, the powerful will do whatever it takes to keep and extend their power. For all of David Simon's talk of Greek drama, though, he doesn't seem to put hubris in the driver's seat. The effects of hubris, it seems, can be mitigated by a genuine regret for one's actions, which is more Christian than Greek. Jimmy McNulty walks away more or less scot-free at the end: he started the whole series with an act of hubris (going over his bosses' heads to Judge Phelan in season one), and he ends his career as a cop by trying to make good the damage done to an innocent homeless guy whose life was damaged by McNulty's even more outrageous act of hubris in season five (faking the serial murders). His only tragedy (if it is a tragedy) is his realization that the one thing in his life that he's really good at—police work—is also the thing that makes him a lousy human being—vain, arrogant, drunken, and angry. But while he may have lost his career, it seems he gets to ride off into the sunset—ruefully, but more or lessly happily—with the sexy-geeky Beadie and her family. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. McNulty deserves his hard-won self-knowledge, and whatever peace it brings his way.

One other thing that's just occurred to me: David Simon and the other writers may be angry, bitter, and cyncical about the fate of what Simon keeps calling "the post-industrial city," but I don't think they're completely hopeless. There are moments of rough justice, even in The Wire. In a show full of wrenching deaths, I don't think any drug-killing ever made me happier than watching Slim Charles drop that blowhard Cheese Wagstaff (who, to be fair, had the best line in the episode—"There's no nostalgia in this shit"—just before he had the back of his head blown off). And while it's a tragedy that he's ended up on the street with a couple of murders to his name already, Michael has found (at least in the context of The Wire's West Baltimore) a more or less honorable niche for himself, as the new Omar. And in the only moment in the finale that brought tears to my eyes, Bubbles gets to come upstairs.

In the meantime, of course, we can all come down from our Wire addiction with the methadone of endless online debriefings, in Slate, Salon, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun. Salon also has a wonderful interview with the always entertainingly combative Mr. Simon, who manages to wax both humble and Christlike (but in a good way).

(Note: If you don't want to know what's happened in the next-to-last episodes of The Wire—say, for example, you're still working through season two on DVD—then don't read any further.)

(I'm serious, Steve. Stop right now.)

(Don't say I didn't warn you.) 

Over here at the Cultwriter Institute of David Simon Studies, we're all too blue about the death of Omar to craft a complete eulogy for him. We saw it coming, of course: Omar was made reckless in his final days by grief and by his lust for revenge, and it's possible that living the good life in the islands may have dulled his edge a bit. But it's also telling that he didn't get got by any of Marlo's seasoned and well-drilled killers, but by a member of the next generation of damaged children from the streets of West Baltimore. And it's also telling that in the end, Omar was killed, in large part, because of his sense of honor. If he hadn't come back from the Caribbean to avenge the death of Butchie, he'd be alive today. But then if he hadn't come back, then he wouldn't have been the Omar we all came to know and love.

These twin inevitabilites—that Omar would be forced to avenge his friend, and that his righteous anger would get him killed—are further evidence of Simon's debt to Greek tragedy, which he invoked when talking about the show in the New Yorker. On the other hand, there was something a little Shakespearean about the death of Snoop last night, which was a tad reminiscent of (bear with me) Henry IV, part II, in which Prince Hal, on his way to becoming Henry V, has to renounce his old mentor and drinking buddy, Falstaff. I realize I'm stretching a point here, since Hal and Falstaff never intended to kill each other, but still, Michael's killing of Snoop was a Shakespearean act of generational war, intimate ("You look good, girl") and brutal all at once. Sooner or later we all kill our teachers, even if we don't literally shoot them in the back of the head.

One more thought, preparatory, perhaps, to a full-blown eulogy for the whole series after the last episode next Sunday. Not that it was ever much of a mystery, but David Simon's politics are clearer than ever as all the plotlines are resolved and all the characters' fates are made clear. There's no doubting his liberal credentials, I suppose, but on the other hand, it's also clearer than it's ever been that he and his writers have no faith whatsoever in institutions or institutional solutions, which is a curious stance for a liberal. The only redemption in The Wire is individual and hard-won, either the result of an act of Dickensian (yeah, I know that Simon sneers at the adjective) charity, such as  Bunny Colvin saving Namond from a life on the streets (and turning him, apparently, into a National Merit Scholar), or the result of a supreme act of will. The two main examples of which, of course, are the amazing Bubbles, aka Reginald, who has bootstrapped himself up into nobility, and Cutty, who has earned a measure of nobility himself. Even McNulty cleaned up his act for a time, and though he's fallen back into his drunken, narcissistic ways, and appears to be taking a lot of folks with him, these last couple episodes have shown that he has a conscience, even if he still needs to work on his impulse control. Not to go all Aeschylus or anything, but it's all about hubris, finally. Or as Snoop might say, if she were still alive, payback's a bitch.