Reminder

By odd coincidence, TCM was playing Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven tonight at the same time that I was flipping over to watch the new and penultimate series episode of HBO's The Wire. The epigram that opened this one was by drug kingpin enforcer Snoop, the most dangerous woman in Baltimore, "Deserve's got nuthin' to do with it." Clearly an intentional echo of Eastwood's William Mummy's immortal line, "Deserving's got nothing to do with it."

Beautiful.

Lately I've been taking it for granted that The Wire is the best dramatic series ever aired on American television. Sure, it's easy to say that it's the best cop show ever -- maybe cops and robbers being more accurate, more The Untouchables than N.Y.P.D. Blue. And with HBO having truncated the season by three episodes -- 10 instead of the usual 12 or 13 -- for budgetary reasons, a lot of us may have felt we've been carrying water for televauteur David Simon et al. McNulty's moves came too soon, past season callback cameos too fast.

Then came tonight's episode, one of the most satisfying -- and tantalizing -- ever.

What a reminder.

Some previous season and tonight's ep SEMI-SPOILERS AHEAD.
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Second-to-last season episodes have always been the big ones on The Wire. Who can forget Stringer Bell in his development, or when Nick Sobotka i.d.'ed The Greek, or Omar taking down the entire Co-op resupply?

This one was a doozy, starting with Lester's net encircling Marlo and hosannas at City Hall, ending with the entire success in jeopardy and next week's previews seeming to set up that the whole shebang may hinge on whether now Colonel Daniels has regained the moral compass he has long grieved for slipping back when he was in the Western District (although I'm praying Lester's tip from, of all people, Clay Davis, somehow keeps Levy from capitalizing on McNulty's disaster).

What makes The Wire arguably the best ever show on television isn't just the novelistic realism or the relentless commitment to it's compellingly difficult worldview. Those are the underpinnings that validate the narrative brilliance of the show in an almost unfair advantage over science fiction or comedies. In a less politicized, less germane, less pressing genre you would admire the story, maybe even feel deeply for the characters, but you're just able to put it away more quickly. Suspension of disbelief hits its shelf-life.

I'm not so sure it ever will for The Wire.

Because the artists creating the show, the keepers of the narrative, are willing to go deep, go complex, and go long, and most of all because they believe in closure, albeit rolling closure, albeit often delayed to the point of ecstasy, it's complexities never seem like riffing, never seem like usual TV where popular characters are kept alive like cards in a hand, maybe dying for cheap effect or because an actor's contract has run out.

For all it's labyrinthine planting, the payoffs are huge. Marlo showing his steel in the cell, Bubbles making one year, Michael saying goodbye to Bugs and Dukie and maybe turning into the next Omar, maybe Dukie turning Bubs, it is all killer stuff.

But what's coming clear once again the is staggering sweep of The Wire, where the main character can recede for an entire series and the new young characters who seemed to take up his space now occupy completely different positions in the current story. As McNulty said so aptly as to be embraceably overdetermined at the end of last week's episode, "When you start telling the story, you think you're the hero, but by the time..."

Will Det. Bunk Moreland, who opened this season and has (nearly) consistently played by the rules, turn out to be the hero? Will it be Daniels who stands tall, and maybe even survives? Will McNulty somehow pull a rabbit out of his flask?

It seems to me that next week's agonizingly awaited outcome will hinge on which of two rules prevails.

On one hand, season after season, well-intentioned character after character, the show has stuck to it's guns that reformers fail -- the institutions always beat them.

On the other hand, as the Bunk told us just before the opening titles rolled at the beginning of this season, "The bigger the lie, the more they believe."

Oh, man, it's been five wrenching seasons.

I want to go out a believer.