More With Less

The best television show ever ("The Wire," as if you didn't know) made its fifth and final broadcast season premiere last night. It was good to see many of my favorite characters again. The cold open, with Bunk, Landsman and some of the other homicide detectives tricking a confession out of a couple of perps was hilarious although it apparently was done before on David Simon's previous show "Homicide: Life on the Streets." It seems like the more things change in Baltimore, the more they stay the same, McNulty at least as the episode begins, is back where he can make a change with the major crimes unit but he seems intent on destroying the personal happiness he was able to achieve with Beadie last season and by the end of this episode, major crimes is all but shut down and McNulty is back in homicide.
I thought it was darkly humorous that one of the first things we hear from Mayor Carcetti is a gripe about crime stats being too high when just last season (a year ago in The Wire world) he assured Daniels and the rest of the police that there would be no more focusing on stats but instead the focus would be on major, high-value arrests. Apparently Rawls and Burrell didn't take long to bring him to the dark side. The mayor has also broken his promise for across the board raises for Baltimore City Police. This is causing major morale problems throughout the department.
Speaking of the dark side, Herc, who was drummed out of the Baltimore police last season is now working for scumbag lawyer, Maurice Levy.
Bubbles AKA Reginald Cousins is living in his sister's basement and has a job selling newspapers on the street to people as they drive by. He is clean but is also still reeling from inadvertently causing the death of his friend Sherrod.
Two of last season's corner kids are back, Micheal who now has his own corner and Dukie who works the corner for him somewhat ineffectively. It remains to be seen whether we will see Randy or Namon or for that matter Bunny, Prez or Cutty at all this season.
The character who is sure to be back is of course everyone's favorite gay, drug dealer robbing bad ass, Omar. Not sure when he'll be back but I'm betting sooner rather than later.
Each season of The Wire expands its focus to add another aspect to the big story, in season two the docks become part of the story, season three features politics and season four we got to see what is wrong in urban schools, this season the media and more specifically they dying print media give us yet another perspective on the causes and results of modern urban decay that The Wire is really about.
I do have to say that I was a little disappointed in this episode. I don't know if it was because my expectations were so high (and they were sky high) or if it was because there seemed to be lots of exposition which of course is nesecary for the first episode. Who am I to criticize how these always brilliant writers work?