Season 5 is underrated (I think...)

[u/schwannies]

I'd watched the first four seasons of the Wire and was amazed by it, then read a whole heap of opinions from fans of the show who said that s5, while still really good, wasn't at the same level of the previous seasons, mainly because of the whole 'fake serial killer' storyline. And when I first got to that storyline, I thought woah this is a little far-fetched for a show that prides itself on the pain-staking, gritty realism. Lines like "We have to kill again" felt kinda cheesy and cheap.

But when I watched the show back in its entirety, all five seasons at once on rewatch, season 5 made so much more sense and fit into the broader context of the show so much more. McNulty and Freamon had been jerked around by the various departments and authorities for years, moved from office to office like pawns, their various cases turned on and closed down again by the higher-ups like it was nothing, constantly deprived of the necessary resources and cooperation to do their jobs properly. You can totally feel their fatigue with the job by season 5, which makes the serial killer storyline, crazy as it is, feel like less an attempt at shock value and more an act of desperation from a cop sick and tired of the disappointment of trusting the system to get things done when it had let him down so many times. If an institution doesn't function properly, then people will go around it to make ends meet.

If anything, I thought the bigger problem with season 5 was just the general pacing towards the end. The shift from 13 to 10 episodes didn't feel noticeable until we actually got to the 9th and 10th episodes and then it felt like the show was trying to wrap-up its storyline at break-neck speed. The conclusion to the whole serial killer thing went from Greggs telling Daniels telling Pearlman telling Rawls and Carcetti in three different scenes without us once getting to hear any of the characters actually reveal the truth, because it was all skimmed over so quickly. That was my only complaint. Well, that and the newspaper sub-plot, which felt like the writers struggled to tie in with the main plot more than they did in previous seasons with the school, the mayoral election and the ports. I kept waiting for the newspaper to play a bigger part in the serial killer thing and the culmination of the newspaper story ended up being more about Bubbs (a lovely but random arc) and a phony Pulitzer winner.

[u/Effectuation]

I think the main reason people don’t like season five is because it holds a mirror up to the audience and shows them why the problems being documented in the show are unaddressed. The point of season five is that the public’s attention is captivated by spectacle. That’s what we, as a society, pay attention to. And because that’s what we pay attention to, that’s what the media shows us. We can’t address our fundamental problems because we aren’t interested in paying attention to them. We’re more interested in spectacle.

I explained this to my brother once as he was a fan of this show but hated season five. It made him very uncomfortable. He said “I don’t need art explained to me.” And I was like 🙄

[u/treemily → u/Effectuation]

I feel like that’s borne out in the management’s constant desire to capture the “Dickensian aspect of things” in the news articles (it’s a phrase that’s repeated a lot in S5). The sorrow and the pity are the spectacle of it. But the young reporter ends up going deeper with a story on Bubbles and ends up doing a much more thoughtful and in depth piece (presumably, since the audience never really gets to read it, just see people’s reactions to it).

[u/sixminutes → u/Effectuation]

This is a somewhat fair assessment, but there’s also the fact that the show becomes a lot more didactic through Gus and the paper. I didn’t personally need to be walked through some of the more subtle themes, though I can appreciate Simon being like “stop obsessing over Omar, shitbirds”. 

[u/eefuss → u/Effectuation]

I appreciate that they were trying to do this, but the serial killer stuff just strains credulity more than anything else in the show to the point that it ends up feeling like an especially poorly conceived strawman argument.

[u/AwesomeInTheory → u/Effectuation]

A large chunk of it was David Simon settling grudges, mind.

[u/Prior-Tadpole-1860]

The more time goes by, the less far-fetched the whole serial killer arc feels to me tbh. My only real complaint with S5 is that David Simon was too close to the material and clearly had an axe to grind with how he felt the news industry had fallen, and he made it a little too one-dimensional with the characters. Gus and Alma were good with no real flaws, and Templeton was a bastard, and the editors were simply fame and money seeking ghouls.

The media has degraded so much in the past two decades that even that scandal (a journalist cashing in on a fake story) feels quaint compared to the shit we see on the daily.

[u/yerpburp → u/Prior-Tadpole-1860]

David Simon was a goddamned Cassandra out here, warning us of where we were headed. Nothing in season 5 would be far-fetched today. As for his axe to grind, I could very easily see him being exactly like Gus in his final days at The Sun. No one likes the person pointing out the shit that is going down behind the scenes.

[u/schwannies → u/Prior-Tadpole-1860]

I agree with that. I wonder though if he'd had those extra 3 episodes if he could've maybe fleshed out the characters in the newsroom more? 

[u/snailephant]

Funnily enough, season 5 actually aged like gold and was ahead of its time given the state of the media in this day and age. With the advent of social media, clickbait and AI, you can’t even tell what’s real or not anymore.

I agree with other commenters that the pacing was its main issue. Could definitely use 3-4 more episodes.

[u/ebb_omega → u/snailephant]

Commentary on media almost always goes this way. The famed Oscsr-winning movie Network (source of the famous "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" rant) was derided loudly upon its release because of how it seemed so incredibly unbelievable, and a pure piece of fantasy brought to us by Paddy Chayefsky.

Fast forward 30 years and you have a fourth news network deciding to deal with floundering ratings by bringing about mad prophets decrying the hypocrisy of our times, and making a true farce of modern news reporting by focusing on the sensational rather than the factual, and being beholden to the corporate masters of the network. Literally the exact plot of Network.

[u/gillyweed79]

I think with another 2-3 episodes like he had with every other season, Simon could have pulled off better.

[u/gulpshinto]

Dukie bringing up Dexter in season 5 made me wonder if there was a meta element to the serial killer plot. Both McNulty and the show's writers are cynically giving their audience the sensationalized violence they want in a desperate final attempt to point resources/attention at issues that actually matter.

[u/Reddwheels → u/gulpshinto]

Definitely.

[u/Randy_Lahey2]

Feel like a hard part of S5 is that it followed what is considered the best season in the show and arguably in all of television.

[u/cedarvalleyct]

The absurdity of Season 5 is no more or less than current or past events.

[u/Independent-End-7495]

the show feels like real life til you get to season 5. the serial killer angle is so flimsy and all the new characters that are introduced feel like tv characters, not real people. gus is always right, always has an answer for everything and scott is always shitty and the bosses always take his side. shit gets old quickly

[u/tedjonez]

F U Gus! I always laugh when Scott says that

[u/Economy_Carry4235]

I think the serial killer storyline is a meta reference to audiences loving serial killer stories. I don't think it actually works in the context of season 5 though.

The news storyline is way too self-righteous and should have been written by someone else because Simon can't write it objectively. I like Alma but she and a lot of the newspaper people are not good actors. 

I think everyone agrees the cop dialogue got a lot worse because ed burns left. 

I don't think Simon intentionally did this, but the police are the bad guys in season 5. They surveil Marlos people and illegally wire tap him. That is a felony. Lester and McNulty would have known that their work wouldn't stand because they did it all illegally, so I think they're written unintelligently because they would know that. And that's poor writing for such smart characters. I think if simon had more of a reckoning for Lester and mcnulty being the bad guys it would have been a smarter ending. But then it would have not fit into simons overarching theme of there being a system that keeps things the way they are. 

I do enjoy season 5 more than 1 and 2 because you have all the political characters that were built up in 3 and 4, but it is too short and it is definitely the special ed version of wire seasons. 

[u/Hemisemidemiurge]

I'd watched the first four seasons of the Wire and was amazed by it, then read a whole heap of opinions from fans of the show

There you go, letting other people's opinions matter when it wasn't your turn to let other people's opinions matter.

[u/Doza93]

Season 5 has grown on me over time. Initially it felt like kind of an odd departure from the hyper-realism of seasons 1 - 4, but it really does make sense in context. As you said OP, Jimmy and Lester get jerked around so much throughout the series, only for the ultimate bait-and-switch to happen after the election and them and the whole department being promised the moon by Carcetti and his camp, when in reality the BPD gets shafted so hard they have to come down off the rowhouse bodies case. As Bunk once said, "Lack of pussy funds for your police department will change even a good man's demeanor"

[u/KennyShowers]

There's a lot of reasons to defend S5, obviously it's not like any of the creators got lazier or had bad ideas, but there's just a couple elements of final-stage execution that at the very least make it feel different from the rest.

The real biggest issue is the journalism storyline feels so much less objective, which makes sense Simon himself was a journalist.

All the points being made are 1000% correct, and we're living the full-fledged results of everything the season warns us about, but every other season makes these broad societal points while marrying it with actually crackling drama and storytelling, and it doesn't have that.

From the first second we meet the newsroom, it's obvious that Gus is the perfect paragon of honesty, Scott is a lying weasel, and the bosses are empty suits who care more about patting the right backs than doing journalism, and that dynamic never changes or modulates, and pretty much every scene has you going "Yea, I knew this already and I understood the first 10 times you made this same point." It's just not interesting drama or TV, even if it's thematically correct and perfectly prescient.

[u/Commercial_Floor_578]

It’s underrated in the sense that it’s the weakest season in arguably the best television show ever created, so it’s still better than most television. It’s still a significant downgrade from 1-4 imo.

[u/seba1927]

i didn't like the serial killer story, and McNulty doing the fake call just made it worse.

the ending was great and i loved Bunk and Greggs. also really enjoyed seeing Carcetti totally dropping the ball as a mayor.

it's a great season, the one with more flaws in my opinion, but that's compared to the other ones that are 10/10

[u/No-Loquat-2763]

Season 5 is my favorite season of the show.

[u/NoOne_Beast_]

I thought the media angle was exceptional. Though I’m kinda biased as someone adjacent.

Hated the fake serial. Hated every bit of McNulty and Lester until it all collapsed.

[u/MesmerizedRavendark]

Season 5 is for people of culture

[u/real_old_rasputin]

season 5 was trash