WireTAP, Part II

I'm part of a discussion that's up today on TAP about The Wire, this time, including former Prospect online editor Sam Rosenfeld. I'm starting to come around to this season, but have been feeling like the first few episodes have been wasted time:

What struck me after watching episode six was that the season seems to be getting steered a bit back on track: The hierarchy of the drug dealers is taking more of a prominent role, Bunk is digging up the evidence on 22 murders, and Omar is back. But the brief experiment into the fantastical, as Kriston calls it, reeks of series writing like you might find on a soap opera or sitcom -- or, god forbid, 24 -- rather than The Wire. It seems that the writing has gotten away from the writers. Now they have to rein in the story.

Previews suggest that McNulty wants out of the pseudo serial killer plot, and by god, I do, too. The storyline is so ridiculous that it has restrained the rest of the season. Instead, Bunk is digging up the murders again. If they'd have used the newspaper to leak a story about department incompetence on real murders instead of trying to invent a serial killer, they would have saved everyone time and frustration.

Also, you should check out the first discussion we did on episodes one, two, and three of season five.