Fred Klonsky’s PREA Prez Blog

It’s Sunday night and I can’t watch The Wire.

The series finale was last week.

I’ll miss McNulty and Lester and I’ve missed Omar for a couple of weeks already. I still feel shitty about Duckie.

I couldn’t watch the show last season. It focused on Baltimore schools and I didn’t like it. I’m not sure why exactly. Some scenes were so spot on I even posted the clip on my blog. Other scenes was so off they sent me running for the remote. I finally gave up.

I read a review of the series last week and the reporter didn’t like this season because it focused on reporters at the Baltimore Sun newspaper. Maybe we just  have a harder time with stuff we know a lot about when we see it on the screen or in a novel.

But I came back this year and I’m glad I did.

The central theme of The Wire from the start was that the system and the institutions that make up the system are so corrupt and so powerful that despite the best efforts of the best intentioned, of the most crafty and creative, of the most violent or subversive, the system endures. At the same time, the stories showed how the system keeps recreating the best intentioned, the crafty and creative, the violent and subversive.

I have a theory that even the best shows on TV have a three to four year life span. Most try to hang on way past their time. I quit the Sopranos two years before the show was over.

The Wire timed it right.