My boyfriend and I are HUGE Wire fans, so much so that we once watched three episodes back to back during season 2 and season 3, so you know that takes some serious dedication to a series!  The Wire has not only excellent, top of the line acting from it’s talents, but it also offers a riveting script that is just gritty enough to remain real even if the subject matter or plot lines take somewhat far fetched turns (which they rarely did during seasons 1-4). 

However, now, with season 5, there is a bit of hackiness coming into the writing and the story line.  For example, Lester and Jimmy Mcnulty come up with a far fetched scheme to get the feds to pay attention again to their wire tap of the new gangster extraordinaire, Marlo Stanfield, who has a lot of bodies on him and who also seems like the biggest sociopath since Tony Soprano in any series, only he doesn’t even seem to like animals.

Some of the actual dialogue is also a bit weak in season five, which really disappointed me.  I keep thinking, well, maybe the next episode will be back to normal, but we’ve watched six episodes so far and each episode has been good, yes, but still below par for the previous 4 seasons high precedent. 

In season five of the Wire, we see Jimmy McNulty screwing up his life again after meeting a wonderful woman who in season 4 he seemed to be enjoying a domestically blissful life with by going out and getting drunk and womanizing again.  We follow his self destruction again as we say to ourselves, ooh, Jimmy no, and that part is also a little hard to watch, although true to his character, so kudos to the writers on not writing a fair tale into this season I guess.

I miss the characters that really made us love them in previous seasons, like Bunny, Randy, Prezbo the teacher/cop, and others that we either haven’t glimpsed in this season or see very little of.  My boyfriend also mentioned that the story line of Omar, the renegade Robin Hood of drug dealers and thugs, isn’t really fulfilling and I have to agree so far.  Could season five get a lot better still?  Sure, but I’m not going to count my chickens til they hatch, and if there’s any indication so far, it looks like it will definitely be the weakest season of the Wire so far.  I’ll keep you Wire fans posted!