In a series that isn't leading up to one central resolution (i.e, she graduated from college despite all those obstacles/found he was ready to be a father!), the best that can be asked of the final episode is that it doesn't disappoint. And you gotta hand it to David Simon and Co., the Wire's close didn't disappoint. The newsroom stuff remained atrociously bad, but the serial killer narrative was pretty effectively folded into the Wire's larger critique of institutions and the incentives that pervert them. I remember moving to DC a few years ago, and all my colleagues would talk about "the Greek" and the ports and "the game." The whole show seemed impenetrably complex. And maybe it was. But I loved struggling to understand it. And in doing, I think I may even have learned a thing or two.
