Finally, or On The Wire and There Will Be Blood

Man, now that's how you end a TV show!

Like, most thinking people, I am totally and passionately on board with The Wire. Best show on TV? I don't watch a ton of TV, but...yes, yes, an unqualified yes. Season 3 of The Wire is, to my mind, the greatest achievement the medium has ever produced. I found the much-heralded Season 4 to be excellent but a bit overrated...still great, but not on par with Season 3. Which brings us to Season 5, the end of The Wire...

Having taken a week to process my thoughts, I'm realizing this last season is a bit tough to get my mind around. I mean, I'm finding my reaction requires all sorts of qualifications. It's not enough to say "I loved it" or "it was great" or "I was really disappointed." All of those things are true, and sifting through them, it's easy to get lost.

Confusing as my reaction to the Wire finale is, one thing that's clear is that it's the exact opposite reaction that I had to There Will Be Blood...another beloved work I find frustratingly unable to summarize in terms of my like or dislike for it. I mean, I like it, I like it a lot, BUT...

Okay, let's take one at a time:

1. Blood: 95% of this movie is probably one of the 5 best things I've ever seen in a movie theater. A stunning, mesmerizing, pitch-perfect, visionary work...that's utterly, completely, and savagely destroyed by its inane final act, which I like to subtitle: The Comedy Stylings of Daniel Plainview. This last act is so off for me, so dreadfully unlike all that precedes it, that I can't help but wonder if the movie actually isn't very good...or, how can I say the movie is so good when it turns so very bad at the end? I've never encountered anything like this in twenty years of serious film watching. It's sort of like if, in the last ten minutes of Manhattan, aliens descend, forcing Woody and Mariel to fight them off with laser guns and save the city. I mean, would Manhattan still be great if this happened, even if the rest of the film remained unchanged? I don't know.

2. The Wire Season 5: until the last 2 episodes, I couldn't believe how far the Wire had fallen. I didn't buy McNultey's serial killer plot for a second. For me, it stank of standard TV show hackdom. Not bad for a couple episodes of CSI: Miami. But for The Wire? Hell, no. The Wire feels so awesomely grounded in reality (or at least in plausibility). That's what's great about the show, and that's the very thing that elevates it so high above other works in the genre. I hated to see it go out like this. It was painful and unconvincing (and most of the stuff at The Sun I just found boring). But then...the last 2 episodes were so outlandishly over-the-top brilliant, that....well, I don't know. Did they make the season great? Do I just forget about the preceding 10 episodes? The final two episodes do rescue the season for me, I suppose. They make me feel great about how the show ends. But I'm not sure I could recommend the season as a whole. It felt like amateur hour, coming from the Wire. And I'm not sure it's any coincidence that the final season only gets good once the serial killer plot peters out. It was hackneyed, awkward and forced.

So how to regard creative works that take a serious U-Tun in the final moments, either for good or for bad? A stroll through the criticism canon might shed some light. I mean, I can't imagine a few minds way more distinguished than my own haven't already tackled this dilemma. Of course, I'm way too lazy to do any such actual reading myself. And so I remain confused.