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The Wire 5x10 Series Finale (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-25 12:01:01
Imported:
2026-06
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John Collins

Watching in real time with my friends, starting from when he killed the security guard, then from what he did to Randy and killing Joe, we were all begging to see Marlo get popped or locked up for life and were beyond pissed when neither happened. Took me a long time to realize Marlo would’ve preferred either of those outcomes over his ultimate fate: out of the game, no muscle, isn’t needed by anyone now that he sold the Greek connect, in a room he doesn’t wanna be in full of people looking to take his money like they did Stringer, remembered only by those who think he was too afraid to step to a gay man hobbling around Baltimore on a crutch calling him weak. Real Twilight Zone shit right there.

John Collins

Watched the whole series a couple times now, it’s great and there’s always something new to pick up on rewatch but it loses some of its zip over time knowing what’s going to happen and all. Watching again with y’all reminded me of watching every Sunday with my friends back in the day, so thanks for that, really enjoyed it and appreciate y’all’s hard work

C Perry

For what the title means, "-30-" is used by newspaper journalists to indicate the end of a story or article that is ready for editing. Usually used when writing on deadline and you are sending little pieces of the story at a time to get it in to your editor. So that is the appropriate title for the final episode of a show where you have many different pieces that all add up to a bigger story. As the man Lester Freeman said, "...all the pieces matter."

ShaneSpear

So I'm at work and haven't had a chance to listen to your analysis yet, but I have been chomping at the bit about something Formal said way back in 4x2. His first real opinion of Michael was that he "had a code" and I was like bro no way is he this good. I might have more to comment later, but that blew my mind a few months back. You two are just the goddamn goats - looking forward to seeing Fargo for the first time.

Aaron M

Could they be showing Sydnor is the new McNulty ? … that looked similar to season 1 starting off with McNulty jumping chain of command talking to that judge

John Collins

After Cheese gives up Butchie to Marlo, Joe prepares to skip town. Before he does he tells Slim he suspects Cheese too, but won’t move on him until he’s absolutely sure. He instructs Slim to watch Cheese while he’s gone, reasoning that if Cheese has money from turning in Butchie he’ll show it off before long and then they’ll know. In the finale, Cheese volunteers to put up 900K to buy into the connection, and they all question where he got that kind of money. I always thought Slim killed him a minute later simply “for Joe” as he said, but the added detail of Slim following Joe’s instructions by waiting for Cheese to show extra money escaped me for a long while. Slim was a real one.

prolifik5

I told you guys they would stick the landing. Whatever issues some of us might have with this season, we wouldn't be calling this the GOAT TV show if it ended on some GoT bullshit. 😂

prolifik5

"13 years and 4 months" was how long Lester was in exile in the Pawn Shop Unit. Brolik is correct about the 20 years. With regards to Nerese and Valchek, remember the big thing was the white mayor firing a black Commish and replacing him with a white one. Not an issue with a black mayor bringing in Valchek as acting Commish (which funnily enough he suggested to Carcetti a few episodes ago).

prolifik5

I think what happened at the end underlined that the serial killer scheme was doomed in the long run. At the end of the day, Levy was going to smell a rat once he realised they broke the clock code so quickly, and they would have had some explaining to do once the case got to court. They were super fortunate that Lester went on his side mission to catch the courthouse leak, which they were then able to use as leverage against Levy. Meanwhile, the only reason they were able to provide any closure on the serial killer case itself was due to the emergence of copycat killer, who just happened to be a) someone McNulty was already familiar with and could easily track down and b) a mentally ill homeless guy. Honestly, I think it turned out better for all concerned that Kima snitched. It gave everybody a chance to come up with contingency plans and squash the story before it blew up in their faces later on.

Wes

I'd like to see a poll on whether people think Marlo's last scene is his farewell to the street, or a sign that he can't live any other way. I always interpreted it as the latter. Avon: "Just a gangster, I suppose." Also Marlo telling Prop Joe that if he lets him go, Joe would be back up to some mischief in no time.

Edward

before hbo switched to just max, they included the prequal shorts with season 5. looks like they forgot. smh

John Collins
>>113714214

Can’t live any other way, but he has no recourse. How can he get back in the game? He had the most fearsome muscle; now they’re all dead or in jail. He had the connect; now he sold it and we saw the Greeks telling Slim and Rick they only want to deal directly with them much like they did with Marlo. He took over leadership of the co-op; now not only do the members not need him for supply, he probably has a lot of enemies for how he did Joe and promptly upped the price on the rest of them. The cops couldn’t get him for a long while; now they have a whole case they can prosecute if he ever gets back in. Shit, as smart as he was he got lucky in the war vs Avon; they had the drop on him at the end and if the cops showed up 10 minutes later Avon would’ve gotten Marlo and Chris both.

M Salam

Disappointed y'all didn't notice Sydnor was talking to the judge that McNulty would always go to get things done. And yeah they got Kenard for the Omar murder, that was Michael Crutchfield (Homicide police) that picked him up.

Craig Manning

And the game goes on. The pieces move and rearrange and change, but it's all in the game yo.....I feel like I could go a few paragraphs but I'll just leave it at that -- really enjoyed your reactions!

Kiana B.

for once i don't have hella shit to say lmao, just that it was a good run and i hope y'all love the wire even a fraction of the amount i do.

celilmandir

Marlo in the end would have had on a silver platter what Stringer had always been after, but what Marlo wanted was what Omar had, recognition on the street. Everyone knew who Omar was by sight, but nobody knows who Marlo is, and that galls him because he's all up in arms about his name.

Eric Posin
>>113734431

I bet Stringer would love if he was facing jail time and was told by Levy that he could just be a businessman now. Hell he would like that even if wasn’t facing jail time!

mbds

Thanks to y'all for these videos. It's been real enjoyable not just to see the reactions, but also to hear the breakdowns, theories, and predictions. Really appreciated your perspective on a show I've seen a bunch of times; y'all even gave me a new slant on certain things I hadn't thought about. Can't wait to see the rest of Sopranos and what comes after that. I was one of the people that doesn't fw Season 5 as much, primarily due to serial killer and HBO cutting it to 10 eps, but no one can deny this finale is straight fire. For me, the heart of the show is that, the pieces on the board don't matter, the game stays the same, and this ending really showed it. As much as we love Omar, Marlo, Avon, McNulty, Daniels, they'll move on/get replaced and the system will stay the same. Nothing changes in the end. HBO fucked us over cutting this show's budget and ending it at season 5. They 100% wanted to do a season 6, it would have focused new Hispanic population coming in town around that time. If go over eastside now, there are a ton of Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan immigrants, so it would have been cool to see their take on it. Last thing, I don't think there is any way Marlo ends up with Stringer's dream, lol. He ain't interested in the business side, he's ignorant of how it works, and he's young. String and Avon are like 35 when they die/get locked up. Marlo's probably ten years younger and he's headstrong. He can't away from the game anymore than Avon could. This dude ain't gonna be a developer, lol.

mbds
>>113721908

Tbf to them, we don't really know much about Sydnor. He's easily the least developed of the people that are in the MCU the whole show, so if you don't remember Season 1 McNulty, it's easy to miss.

Jori

Loved your reactions throughout the show! Love the finale as well. I think it's important that in the ending montage we see Bubbles going up the stairs after we see Dukie using. It shows that there is always hope, no matter how far down the line.

physaks

Awesome ending to the series and your reactions!! Already many great commentary from others, but I have just have to leave a few more notes about The Wire, which I just cannot omit…: So, obviously Dookie is the next Bubbs. As tragic as that is, it is actually Bubbs that is one of the few characters in the tragic drama that gets saved by the end, or at least “saved”. The lowest of the low is the one who manages to get redeemed, or at least the lowest in our societal standard — I think there are some New Testament vibes there, the Meek shall inherit the Earth, etc., Since Mike is obviously the new Omar, you should go back and read the tag on Omar’s corpse in the morgue (the one that was temporarily misassigned ) — under the “Medical Examiner” line you can read “Michaelson”. As in Michael-Son…I don’t think I need to say more here for the symbolism…impossible to be accidental. It’s actually amusing that it’s as “Medical Examiner”, since Mike was babbling about who actually killed Omar, whether it was Kenard, right after he was babbling about barely escaping Omar’s wrath because Omar didn’t recognize him as one of the assassins in the high-rise apartment before Omar jumped off the balcony. Also, both Omar and Michael have societally-stigmatized or taboo sexual narratives. Parental molestation of Micheal and his constant, almost obsessive, worry about abuse of himself and Bug, and how Avon/Marlo/gangsters continually berate Omar because of his homosexuality, are a parallel as well. Carver is the new Bunny. Rhonda Pearlman is the new ‘who’s your daddy now’ judge (Daniel Phelan; so she’s ethical-enough in the end but willing to force the law to her design like he would do), and ironically her consort Cedric Daniels has now become the new Rhonda Pearlman lawyer. This might be stretching it, but maybe Namond is the new Carcetti….?? Just observe the passion and force with which Namond presented his human-rights and medical-aid arguments in his public presentation, in the same style as Carcetti did in the first scenes when he was on the City Council…and THEN, OF COURSE, Carcetti witnessed that speech by Namond, and then Namond met Carcetti in Namond’s last scene, and said some shit like, “dang, you know the mayor too Mr. Colvin??!!!”. Etc. Given how The Wire does shit, this is probably another mindfuck. Kenard is the new Marlo, a prodigy child killer who is already incarcerated for murder at a very young age (as Marlo was first introduced, “the spawn of the devil” or some shit like that in the police station). Kenard has a fascination with Omar, then kills him, while the new Omar — Mike — beats the shit out of Kenard, while the old Omar robs Marlo and Marlo cannot get Omar out of his head — which if you think about it is a bit unreasonable, as Chris/Snoop think: let the motherfucker go. “My name is my name” is all fine and good but in this case not worth it to that extent. Omar/Marlo are intrinsically linked together in the Greek-tragedy paradigm, but that’s enough for that here. For Renaissance dramatists, again, Christoper Marlowe, Shakespeare’s rival (compare with Christopher Partlow, Chris in The Wire, haha) died young — as Marlo essentially did here as a “storyteller”, and turned to a “businessman”. There are debunked theories that Marlowe did not actually die but continued to write undercover and actually was responsible for some of Shakespeare’s works. As in a sense continues here in The Wire in this fanciful way. This is a bullshit conspiracy-theory historically, almost certainly, but I think it’s a wink-wink funny homage to that by David Simon here, just for shits and giggles on his part. Lastly though, there is a “cameo” by Marlo in an earlier season on the show, where he and his boy bump into Bubbs and Johnny (Bubbs’s friend that OD’ed later — don’t remember which episodes these were but easy to find online). This is on the street and annoys Marlo’s dude, so Marlo says to his underling something like “if you want to do him then do him, but I got places to be [as in, hurry the fuck up whatever you want to do with this junky either way]”. Lester is the Greek Chorus, which in Classical Greek dramatic tragedies explains background context to the audience (as in, observe how he ALWAYS explains all the technical surveillance/legal aspects of law enforcement to everyone, even if you would think that a lot of the police officers would/should already know that). Of course McNulty is David Simon, Shakespeare, Gus (full name Augustus Haynes) in the newsroom, and everyone else who tells you how to think about life, with “reasonably” good intentions. But all that is too complicated for me to write here, especially as I haven’t thought it all through or read the literature fully yet, and I need to shut the fuck up, go to sleep before work, etc. LOL...and also there are comments from others above about who might be the next McNulty.... Great job on the reactions!!! DO REACT TO THE PREQUEL SHORTS ABOUT SOME OF THE CHARACTERS! (Prop Joe, etc.)

physaks

Oh, also, those horse-buggy drivers are a traditional institution in Baltimore, historically important as fuck. The fact that Dookie/New-Bubbs joins them is quite a nice touch....

Haye Zeus

I think out of all the reacts to this show ya’lls was the best. Ya’ll always went deep into it. The reactions were always entertaining. It was the most fun I had rewatching my favorite show. Glad you guys had fun with it as much as we did. I may continue with you guys to Fargo. I only saw the first season but yeah I wouldn’t mind trying to get into it again. This was cool you guys.

physaks

I love Bralik's statement about appreciating Slim. But observe: the ONLY two characters that Omar refused to kill after targeting and getting the drop on them were Brother Mouzone and Slim Charles. And both saves happened after a brief, critical conversation with Omar about who had motives for murder and transgression, with Omar recognizing the truth in the others' denial of intent or participation. And both Mouzone and Charles are basically mercenaries, not wanting any real-high leadership position (something like Slim's "I'm not cut out to be no CEO" to Marlo's proposal in the Co-op meeting). They just play a role, narratively integral in the drama but ultimately unsympathetic towards tribal partisanship. They are the three Greek Furies in D. Simon's scheme, furious punishers taking people to task, on behalf of the Gods, for their shit transgressions. (Mouzone: "I'm at peace with my God" before Omar wastes him, just that he didn't. Then, "So you know, this is not my style", about not being the one who wasted Omar's boy-toy youngin, who did no wrong. All of them are experts at weaponry, Slim's scenes also showcase tactical dexterity.). And the Furies had beef between each other in the mythology, so that's what those scenes reflect, symbolically. Brother Mouzone calls Omar "Brother" in the alley scene, which in its entirety is also just a fucking comic-book depiction of mythology. How does the song go?...."Got the fire and the FURY...at His command". Here are a quick couple of those scenes links if too lazy to search but can find yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20G17K_0ghU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Pb8MHIy2s

Peter

Even though this show fits into the category of “copaganda,” I still think that for its time, it mostly holds up. Which is kind of crazy since it’s dealing with some of these issues before the Internet existed as it does today. But I think that it does a good job of showing that most of the time, when you think you are going to work within the system to change it from the inside for good, the system actually winds up changing you. It’s also just nice to see a mainstream tv show provide any portrait of poverty that isn’t immediately blamed on the characters themselves. And something I also think about is how the show almost implies that the police function like a gang too, by proxy of how often their situations mirror one another. EDIT for the replies: The recurring theme throughout the entire show is that, if we just got the cops more money they could do it right this time, we swear! The framework of the show is still very much within the prism of mass incarceration as the only solution. The creator himself has said this much in a long and tiresome Twitter exchange: https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1573854665766223872?s=20

Pacman24

My first time noticing something. Levy Said cheese is going to put up his uncles house to get out of jail lol. Thats the house Prop Joe said his grandparents were the first to own a house in johnson square lol. Even In Joes death Cheese said fuck that house lol.

Blood Raven
>>113748078

While the cops here are hailed as the 'good guys' they definitely showed how messed up the system of policing actually is. They're trained to bring back numbers, not to prevent crime or protect citizens. Almost every cop in the show is a gray character. Even someone like Kima wasn't above beating up a kid like Bodie even if he did assault an officer. It shows you how it's an 'us vs them' mentality. This show is far from 'Copaganda'. I'd say it's the exact opposite.

Blood Raven
>>113697995

He only got 50k for the Butchie information. He got 900k for basically replacing his uncle as the biggest dealer on the Eastside. Remember they took out Joe and Hungry Man. That's a lot of territory that Cheese took over.

Raul Panzar

What do y'all think about the theory that Namond is on track to become the next Clay Davis?

prolifik5
>>113804431

I find it to be kind of a reach tbh. All seems to be based on that one line the two of them said in the same episode. Their personalities don't seem remotely similar to me.

Black Valyria

I BEHOOVE y'all to REWATCH S1E1 to witness the GENIUS of David Simon THEN watch The continuation of Mayor Narese Campbell... #WeOwnThisCity💯

JT Dehaney

Daniels was in that elevator like Darth vader😂

physaks
>>113712479

Actually, there's one more difference: remember when Valchek was laughing that Rawls thought he would actually be made permanent commish earlier in the season? Valchek said that not only was Rawls "too pale" or something to that effect, but that he wasn't even a native, as in not from Baltimore. At least Valchek is a born-and-raised native Baltimore Polish guy, from a traditional Baltimore community, so I think he actually might have had a chance at permanent commish regardless. I mean look at Carcetti winning the mayoral seat back then too...but obviously much better chances for the Big V if it's the Queen Bee doing the nominating now...