Twas with a heavy heart that I and approximately 16 other fans across the nation last nite bid permanent adieu to The Wire - arguably the greatest series produced for American TV.

It hit home hard when the credits ended and there was no Lt. Daniels voice booming, "Next time - on The Wire." There won't ever be a next time on The Wire, and that's tremendously sad.

But goddamn if Eliot Spitzer didn't give The Wire the perfect day-after coda. The perfect remedy for a post-Wire hangover. Exposed in a prostitution ring, via Federal wiretap. I mean, if that's not Tommy frickin Carcetti ...

It reminds that all the corruption, the hypocrisy, the institutional dysfunction - David Simon wasn't exactly pulling it out of the air. Just a brilliant show.

That said, we had huge expectations for Season Five and I think it fell a little short. Not entirely Simon's & Co's fault - HBO only gave them 10 episodes to work with this year so they had to squash more into less space.

And how fitting - "More with Less" has always been central to The Wire.

It's Bubbles selling tee shirts out of a "Bubbles' Depot" shopping cart, Bunny Colvin's "Hamsterdam" approach to the drug war. Mr. Prezbo trying to teach instead of just train kids to take a test, McNulty's crackpot scheme to get the bosses to "turn on the faucet" for adequate cops funding, Tribune scuttling their international news bureaus.

In all, the show posed a grim truth: The American city is foundering. But where The Wire entertained was the creative solutions its characters devised to keep their ships afloat.

Here's the thing, though. Season Five was supposed to tell us something profound about the media and its mounting woes, but the "More with Less" theme was strangely peripheral - even lacking. About three or four episodes in, an editor gets up on a chair and announces some bureaus are closing overseas - and that's about it. Simon uses the rest of the Season Five media storyline to grind an axe.

It's a tale that mirrors Simon's specific frustrations as a journalist 10 years ago - when apparently the Baltimore Sun had its own Jayson Blair and rather than fire the fabulist the Sun's Pulitzer-seeking editors defended him at every turn. It sounds awful. If I were Simon I'd still be fuming all these years later too.

But is that the bigger problem with today's media? That newsrooms are overrun with over-the-top pathological Jayson Blairs? I don't think so. But I think Simon simply couldn't help himself. Rather than examine the fundamental problems - as he and the writers did with each of The Wire's other failing institutions - he uses the TV show to cash in on that deep, festering grudge against his former bosses, Marimow and Carroll.

You knew he probably had good reason, but you still felt a little for Marimow and Carroll. They might've been bad, but there's no way they were as bumbling and idiotic as Simon portrayed them.


Editors are definitely about chasing awards, and that does impact coverage and priorities. It's something I've quietly observed in my short career so far, so he's on to something there. But still, I don't need to see Jayson Blair. Instead, I want to see how the budget cuts play out in the newsroom. I want to see reporters chasing in-depth stories while getting reprimanded for not posting daily quick-hits online. I want to see the effect it has on the coverage, the context - the perspective.

I guess I'll have to wait for the next great show to tackle that one. Simon exited the newsroom just as the media Web sites were taking off. Still, couldn't he have asked around?

Anyhow - no need to lay it on thick. I only analyze because this show is so incredibly wonderful and amazing and important. You talk about it like you'd discuss which of your favorite superheroes would win in a fight and why. For all of Season Five's flaws, The Wire still easily laps 98 percent of the shows out there.

(And I'll take its series-ender over The Sopranos' pretentious Journey bullcrap any day of the week. Although I think Six Feet Under still wins for best closing montage.)



And I'm sorry, I can't help it - I just gotta point it out. Barack's favorite show? You guessed it - The Wire.


Hillary's?


....


American Idol.