The HBO series “The Wire” will enter its fifth and final
season on Sunday night. Even though the show, which talks about the urban decay,
turned out to be the best in TV, apparently it didn’t gain the attention of the
Emmys.
It’s quite hard to understand why the series didn’t get any award
yet. It has all it needs to be a hit: the actors, the way the urban life is
depicted and plots that are as entangled as the ones in “Lost” or “24.”
Probably the issue is the fact that the movie is done in a
way to put us in front of the facts, in the most brutal way, without sparing
us, not in a comforting way.
So far the show has treated matters like the drug war, the
decaying life of the working class, the bad leadership of the government, the
problems in the urban schools and the way these problems affect different
characters from cops, teachers, politicians, drug dealers and others.
In this season the show will confront with a new situation
that of a newspaper that has less space for the news because of the cuts by the
owner and the buyouts. The newspaper, The Sun, a fictional paper, and not to be
confused with the Baltimore Sun,
has to live up to the social responsibilities. David Simons, the creator of “The
Wire,” who was a reporter for the Baltimore
Sun, is using the plot to show the ineptitude of the modern journalism.
Clark Johnson hopes that the new season will change the
situation regarding the ratings of the series.
He said: “I really
hope people who haven’t tapped into the show will tap into it. Maybe they don’t
care about gang bangers, but they care about newspapers and how information is
transmitted,” the New York Times reports.
Johnson plays in the new season the role of an editor at The
Sun. He also directed the last episode of the series.
The executive producer of “The Wire,” Nina Noble, said:
“There’s an incredible poetry in Clark directing the
last episode. He’s the bookend of the show, in terms of directing. There were
30 original crew members with the show at the end, and everyone knows everyone
well, and Clark is probably our most beloved director. On
the surface he’s a laid-back, casual kind of guy,” she added. “Inside, he’s so
passionate about what he does.”
Even though it’s not an Emmy winner, “The Wire” it’s a show
you can not miss.
