The Wire

OK, we are seven episodes into the current season of The Wire. Let's discuss a little and see what's in store for the last three....
***SPOILERS AFTER THE LINK. BE AWARE***
And now my unfiltered thoughts...

1) I gotta say, the whole McNulty/Lester Serial Killer scheme is starting to drag on a bit too much for my taste. I get what is going on and I get that they are in way too deep, but that particular story line just is not appealling to me. I thought it was a neet idea initially, but now I want it to all kind of go away. Obviously it cannot just disappear because there is too much vested in that right now, but I find the whole subplot to be by far the weakest that the show has put out there.

And one more point, if this serial killer is really getting as much national press as they say it is, how long before somebody in the homeless shelter in Richmond IDs the photo of the supposed victim as the crazy guy that got randomly dropped off at their shelter a day or so before the picture surfaced? Doesn't seem like that should be happening pretty soon? Richmond is only about 110 miles down 95 from Baltimore so it's not like he dropped the guy in Florida or something.

2) I'm also not feeling the newsroom subplot. It just seems way too agenda and vendetta driven. You hate the media and you think journalism is being ruined by business interests and what not, we get it David Simon. Something tells me that the plot line would be a lot more appealling if it was not so obvious that he had an axe to grind with the business and the state of the profession now. It's not like journalisism is the only old school profession that is being compromised by new technology and a new marketplace and as a result is forcing out old workers for younger, cheaper, less expensive ones to cut costs.

3) And with all that said, I still think that this season has been great because lucky for us the "bad" subplots are still pretty good by regular standards, and the the street storylines have probably been the best of the series so far.

4) Cheese is going down hard right?

5) Somehow, some way I think Brother Mouzzone shows up and helps Omar bring down Marlo.

6) I think Slim Charles will ultimately play a part in Marlo's downfall. You can definitely see dissension in the ranks there.

7) Another thing I did not buy was the utter incompetency of the DAs office in the Clay Davis trial. It just seems like they could have crushed his "Robin Hood" defense if they really wanted to and I did not buy the incompetence there. Didn't they know that Clay was a charismatic guy who would resort to such tactics to win over a West Baltimore jury?

8) The 7th episode of the season was by far the worst episode I'd say ever. However, I have come to grips with the fact that it was a necessary evil and they needed it to show the tipping point in the serial killer plot line and to rid them of the Clay Davis plot line for the rest of the season. Now hopefully we will get nothing but old school The Wire with cops vs. the street and the street vs. the street. Hopefully there will be plenty of staking out, chasing, and good old fashioned Omar shop-wrecking to go around. He's gotta avenge Butchie and Prop Joe in grand fashion right?

9) Are Lester's actions this season supposed to answer the question from the first season of what he did to get himself stuck in the pawn shop unit for nine years?

10) One saving grace of the 7th episode...the scene with Omar popping up on Michael and his crew on the corner. Wow.

11) I gotta say the most intense scene of the season came in I think the third episode when Marlo went to the island to get his money square and then they cut to Omar on an island - with nothing in the filming indicating whether or not it was the same island or different - and you saw a group of people coming up on Omar and a look of distress in Omar's face knowing that something was up. At that point I really thought that he was a goner and that his people down there were turning on him and about to off him because Marlo somehow reached out. Turns out they were relaying the news on Butchie. Quite a scene though. It kind of reminded me of the scene from the last season of The Sopranos when Tony and Paulie were in Florida and they went out fishing and the whole time you did not know whether or not Tony was going to kill him. Part you thought it was inevitable, but then the other part of you was saying, "no way, it won't happen". That's how I felt with this Omar scene.

12) Friend of RBB, Matt Burke and I have been emailing extensively about this season and we both felt wholeheartedly that if Omar had died in the episode which aired On Demand the day after the Super Bowl things in our lives would have gotten ugly quick. All day that Monday I looked forward to the episode as something that would cheer me up at the end of the day and if Omar had hobbled out of the apartment and gotten clipped by Chris or Snoop I most likely would have gone into a Ron Burgundy like tailspin.

13) Speak of the devil, I have TNT on in the background now and they are playing Law & Order (surprise, surprise) and who else is on there but the actor that plays Scott Templeton.

14) I kinda like Bunk as the voice of reason for everything this season. It just seems right.

15) Fearless predictions for the last three episodes...Daniels "past" which has been brought up off and on since season 1 finally comes back to nail him, McNulty and Lester both get royally fucked, Bunk catches Chris via the DNA evidence from the beatdown on Michael's daddy, Snoop gets lit up hard by Omar or Omar fucks her thinking that she is a he, Slim Charles reaches out to Omar, Cheese gets ruthlessly murdered, Michael gets killed in crossfire leaving Dukie to care for Bug, Prez reappears and does something clutch, Marlo employs the Greeks' muscle to attack Omar, Chris rolls on both Marlo and the Greeks and they are both taken down before Omar can get to Marlo, and those are all of them.

We shall see, let's enjoy these last episodes though because right now I'm not really sure what to make of a TV world without The Wire or The Sopranos. Next stop is Dexter and the rest of Six Feet Under via Netflix for me.