The Wire: The Newspaper Storyline

The Wire is one of the greatest TV shows ever, but its last season had to deal with a horrible millstone in the form of an inane and completely superfluous newspaper subplot. I explain it here.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• wire
• newspaper
• david
• simon
• jimmy
• mcnulty
• gus
• hoynes
• scott
• templeton
• season
• five

[Rmlohner]

By the way, that last line is supposed to be "Warts and all." Youtube has a bad habit of cutting off the ends of my videos now.

[R0undAboutMidnight]

I thought the newspaper story line was quite interesting. I thought it showed how the media largely ignores inner city problems in Baltimore.

[rcroton]

I agree in many ways, but Templeton does it to win a Pullitzer and get to "the post, times, where else?" as he says to Alma. Templeton doesn't care about Baltimore- that's his character in many ways. He just cares about himself.

And I do believe it's based on a real reporter who fabricated things at the Sun, part of the reason why Simon left. So it has to have SOME basis in reality.

Otherwise, decent critique.

[mmrion0]

I agree. This season was weak in developing Templeton and the Sun's motives to cover the homeless story. However, their motives are somewhat realistic since the last season explained that newspapers are disappearing in America, and that the Sun needed to make many budget cuts. Templeton wanted job security while the Sun wants that Pulitzer Prize since it can keep them in business longer. Once again this season didn't develop the motives very well, but they did a great send off to the series