The Wire, Season 5 -- Read Between the Lines

Would Season 2 have been better without Ziggy? I found the rest of it pretty watchable, but I ended up fast-forwarding through almost every scene that featured him. I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn.

 

I agree but you really needed Ziggy (or someone like him) to show just how much Frank valued the union over the rest of his life. And it's not a stretch to say that because he was so focused on keeping his coworkers afloat, he neglected those closest to him, resulting in his son acting out.

And that's why, as much as I hated Ziggy, I understood having him there as the perennial screw up. Not to mention, if he doesn't kill the electronics store owner, we don't get yet another taste of how little communication there is between departments when homicide neglects to tell the MCU that the killing happened and they can't get there in time to gather the evidence.

What I could really have done without was the whole Valcheck personal vendetta thing. I get that the investigation had to start somewhere but I thought it was a pretty flimsy start. And all the scenes where he kept arguing about the investigation being only about Frank dragged the show's momentum down a bit.

 

I've only watched the entire run once, and it was a few years ago, so I don't know if I'd have the same thoughts on a rewatch. But I LOVED season 2. I'd rank it as my favorite of the series (although there's not a dud in the bunch). Just like Schieza, it was Sobotka that put it over the top for me. Just a great performance.

My rankings: 2, 4, 3, 1, 5. The dropoff (and it's a very slight one) is between 1 and 5.

 

I think Nick could've served a larger role to signify the significance of Frank's love of the Union over family if Ziggy hadn't existed. And I think he would've been better suited for it. Nick was a guy who obviously could've done other things with himself. He was hard-working and reasonably smart (he picked up the ins and outs of drug dealing and working with the Greeks really quickly). He tried to be a good Union man. In a way Frank sold him a bill of goods by presenting this life as one that would sustain him, when it couldn't even support one young man anymore, let alone a wife and kid anymore. You would've definitely needed to rework some plotlines, but I don't think Ziggy's absence would've made the season lose anything and would've improved it in several places (the fucking duck? Really, show?). Also, certain Docks plotlines were instigated by nothing stronger than "Ziggy is a fucking moron." Frank and Nick had plenty of motivations beyond that which easily could've driven the story in the same overall direction.

Speaking of Ziggy, the dude who plays him, James Ransone, is aces in the Simon/Burns Iraq miniseries, "Generation Kill." I don't fault his performance of Ziggy either, really. He's doing a perfect jittery fuck-up. He's annoying as hell, but he's supposed to be.

 

See, I think you needed both Ziggy and Nick there to show how bad things were for the younger generation of dock workers. Like you said, Nick was a hard working guy who, by all accounts, would have risen quite high in the ranks of the dock world 20 years ago. But here he is unable to get steady work and forced into the drug world by his inability to support his family through legal means.

You also need the Ziggy character, though, to contrast that and to show what happens when you have a character who, given some guidance, might have turned into a strong computer world prospect. Much like Dukie, Ziggy's character arc is one where he's overlooked as a general annoyance and his true potential isn't taken advantage of because he's forced into the only world he's ever known (Here the dock world, for Dukie the drug culture). It's an even better example of the screwed up system than Nick because, by all accounts, Nick was born into that world and could thrive had it thrived. But Ziggy was forced into the world because he didn't know anything else and once it turned out he wasn't made for that, it was clear he wasn't made for anything.

 

I really wish they would've explored the characters of Alma and Fletch more. Young decent reporter in over her head on a beat that a guy who'd been unceremoniously bought out had worked for years. Talented, also young reporter with a gift for features that, even though they explored the city better than the Jason Blair knock-off's prize chasing, the higher-ups had no interest in. They rang quite true for me, but Scott the Fabulist ate the media leg of that season. I still appreciate the fabulism just because of how it parallels McNulty's own web of lies, but it seemed to overwhelm the more day-to-day problems with the media that Simon seemed, at least in interviews, interested in exploring.

I did love the feel of the newsroom and I don't think there's anything wrong with Season 5 that couldn't have been solved by it being two or three episodes longer. It did feel rushed.

I still ain't much on Ziggy (he is to me, alas, fast-forward material), but in other respects I adore Season 2. It improved for me as I watched the subsequent seasons because so much groundwork is laid there. The Barksdale side of ti, with Stringer doing D'Angelo behind Avon's back and the Co-op, is setup to the eventual payoff in Season 3.

 

I wonder if they had had three more episodes, just for consistency sake, how would it have changed Season Five?

I feel like they could have slowed down the progress of the Fake Serial Killer angle and, maybe, made it more believable. Instead, what we got was McNaulty minding his business one minute and manipulating evidence the next. Given three more episodes, that angle might have worked. Of course, that's assuming you take Bunk out of the equation because I really feel him there constantly beating the "Jimmy! You can't do this!" message ruined any chance that angle had of taking off.

I also am intrigued by your idea of following the younger reporter around but, if given more time, I would have liked to have seen the struggle a young reporter has in a newsroom like that. Where you're trying to prove yourself as an equal to veterans but the veterans see you as a young-gun, nobody hired because the bosses are trying to find cheap labor.

Then again, maybe my problems with Season Five are that the page designers get no love.

 

For those of you with Comcast OnDemand, season five is now available.