Stringer Bell's been taken out by a vengeful Omar and Brother Mouzone, and Avon feels incomplete without his partner-in-crime Stringer as he prepares to embark on a seemingly endless gang war with Marlo Stanfield. String was truly the Mind to Avon's Heart, or perhaps more importantly within the context of this season's Iraq War parallel -Cheney to his Bush. Perhaps the most obvious comparison (aside from the title) is when Slim Charles tries to persuade King Avon to take the fight to rival Marlo: "If it's a lie then we fight on that lie." The War on Terror idea that a common enemy will unite them and looking inside their own ranks will only divide them. Just before Stringer got whacked by the Brother and Omar, on information given by the treacherous Mr Barksdale, String gave Major Colvin a little gift of his own -the address of the Barksdale organizations' soon-to-be-depleted armoury. Avon gets got by the BPD and serves out the rest of his original parole sentence. Checkmate.
One gigantic arc of storytelling ends here just as another one begins. Marlo is the heir to the throne of West Baltimore and he's just another gangster with no other aspirations like Avon, unlike Stringer. The city hall story arc will continue into the next season where another similar act of political regeneration will occur (in the form of mayoral election). Bubbles loses Johnny to the Hell of Hamsterdam but corner boy Sherrod will become his new right-hand man. So there is no satisfaction in seeing Poot, Bernard, Country and all the other pawns being herded through court to receive sentence while we know the King will be afforded the same status on the inside and replaced on the outside. Small pathetic victories for the police as usual.
But there's nothing like a depressant to chase the ol' blues away for McNulty and Bunk, who drink from Kavanaugh's to the railbed. It is at the end of this episode that the visual metaphor for the tracks that first appeared in the pilot is made apparent. Solomon Burke sings 'Fast Train', the song that will play over the ending montage and close the season. The only time we see the trains moving is in the first episode when McNulty hovers on the track as the light envelops his form in a very religious shot before stepping out of the way in his drunken state. We usually go to the decaying railbed at points in the series when the wire is down or when the brass is reassigning their casework. "Well you've been on a fast train and it's going off the rails And you can't come back can't come back together again... On a fast train going nowhere". McNulty rides the train of the mythic big case every good cop dreams of, only to find that he's just a passenger (or 'pawn' in Wire terminology) and can't affect change. "It was like i was pouring it all into my cup and the thing had no bottom", he tells port cop and former detailee from last season Beadie Russell. The season ends with him walking foot patrol in the Western, his old home.
Colvin stands before the Gods in a Comstat meeting where he is duly executed by Rawls acting under Burrell and the Mayor's orders. "Get on with it, motherf*cker." he very appropriately utters into the microphone just as Stringer yelled at Omar and the brother. The noble experiment that was Hamsterdam is now just rubble much like the Franklin Towers, fodder for up-and-coming parasitic politicians like Tommy Carcetti and paydirt for those at the Baltimore Sun (no offence, David Simon). And the laws of fecal gravity perpetuate.
One gigantic arc of storytelling ends here just as another one begins. Marlo is the heir to the throne of West Baltimore and he's just another gangster with no other aspirations like Avon, unlike Stringer. The city hall story arc will continue into the next season where another similar act of political regeneration will occur (in the form of mayoral election). Bubbles loses Johnny to the Hell of Hamsterdam but corner boy Sherrod will become his new right-hand man. So there is no satisfaction in seeing Poot, Bernard, Country and all the other pawns being herded through court to receive sentence while we know the King will be afforded the same status on the inside and replaced on the outside. Small pathetic victories for the police as usual.
But there's nothing like a depressant to chase the ol' blues away for McNulty and Bunk, who drink from Kavanaugh's to the railbed. It is at the end of this episode that the visual metaphor for the tracks that first appeared in the pilot is made apparent. Solomon Burke sings 'Fast Train', the song that will play over the ending montage and close the season. The only time we see the trains moving is in the first episode when McNulty hovers on the track as the light envelops his form in a very religious shot before stepping out of the way in his drunken state. We usually go to the decaying railbed at points in the series when the wire is down or when the brass is reassigning their casework. "Well you've been on a fast train and it's going off the rails And you can't come back can't come back together again... On a fast train going nowhere". McNulty rides the train of the mythic big case every good cop dreams of, only to find that he's just a passenger (or 'pawn' in Wire terminology) and can't affect change. "It was like i was pouring it all into my cup and the thing had no bottom", he tells port cop and former detailee from last season Beadie Russell. The season ends with him walking foot patrol in the Western, his old home.
Colvin stands before the Gods in a Comstat meeting where he is duly executed by Rawls acting under Burrell and the Mayor's orders. "Get on with it, motherf*cker." he very appropriately utters into the microphone just as Stringer yelled at Omar and the brother. The noble experiment that was Hamsterdam is now just rubble much like the Franklin Towers, fodder for up-and-coming parasitic politicians like Tommy Carcetti and paydirt for those at the Baltimore Sun (no offence, David Simon). And the laws of fecal gravity perpetuate.