THROUGH "THE WIRE": Season 5, Episode 1

This is it, homies. The final season of The Wire. It's hard to believe an epic show in which we've invested so much time and mind-space - not to mention the place this shit holds in our hearts - is coming to an end. But quitting while you're on top is a good way to go. (Not hating, but I can think of some rappers that could learn a thing or two from these dudes for real.) The fifth and final season has to somehow top season four, which focused on Baltimore's crumbling school system, where four lovable boys navigated their way from the chaos of the corners, into a rigidly structured environment that didn't fit with anything else they knew. Arguably the best season so far, it bound together the reality of the streets with its casualties who have little choice in their fates - young black men caught up in the game and/or eaten up by the system. (It's all the same thing, after all.) It helped that the teen-characters - Michael (Tristan Wilds), Randy (Maestro Harrell), Dukie (Jermaine Crawford) and Namond (Julito McCullum) - were some of the most compelling on the show, innocent and world weary at the same time and unforgettable. So how do you follow that up? For one, the final season of the Wire doesn't seem like it will be based totally on the streets - sure, most of our favorite (still-living) characters are back, including Michael and Dukie, now both high school dropouts and corner boys for fox-clever kingpin Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector). But if episode one is any indication, this season will be more about how the street's tentacles reach seemingly removed institutions, a la the docks in season two. This time we're introduced to the inner workings of the Baltimore Sun, a daily paper where series creator David Simon worked for years. Set under the fluorescent lights of the newsroom, it's got a new cast of true-blue reporters - there's an editor-in-chief who upends the news to suit his own white viewpoint, a stoic take-no-shit City Editor (Gus Haynes, played by Clark Johnson), a young and hungry reporter who still believes in the integrity of journalism (Alma Gutierrez, played by Michelle Paress), another young and hungry journalist who's trying to use the Sun as a stepping stone to a bigger paper like the Times. It's a traditional set-up and, from a magazine-staffer's point of view, rings true to life - a fact some other journalists and reviewers have found annoying, but who my non-writer friends think is fascinating and, in true Wire form, utterly confusing to outsiders. But you gotta stay with it because, presumably, these folks are gonna start reporting on the streets - and, also presumably, that's how we'll get a glimpse of how yet another American institution deads any dealings with poor people of color. SOURCE OF THIS STORY