Telegraph Lines

The Wire has always been deliberately dancing on the edge of commercial and aesthetic viability. One of the things that makes the show so great -- it's uncompromising approach to storytelling -- has also tended to make it difficult to secure an audience. It's not intended to be watched "like a television show" where you just tune in on any given week when you happen to be bored. You need to watch one episode after another, in sequence, and pay attention. But people (myself included) tend to like the ability to dip in and out of things as schedule allows. Still, The Wire's approach has allowed the writers to craft a much more compelling product than what you normally see on television.

But after the second episode of Season five, I'm coming to share the doubts expressed by Kay Steiger and Jesse Singal. It seems very strange to pick now -- when the show can't be renewed or cancelled no matter what happens to viewership -- to suddenly decide to incorporate way more exposition than we're accustomed to. But that seems to be what's happening. Everything in the Sun plot is being marked out like a runway. Do you think the Unscrupulous Journalist and the Douchebag Editor are going to conspire to cause the Fall of American Journalism? I think they just might!

Maybe there's some cool double-reverse in the works and this is only being done in an apparently heavy-handed manner to throw us emotionally off track. Here's hoping....