Wire Fraud

Are there any other journalists out there offended by the oppressive praise smothering the final season of The Wire, especially with this season’s bizarrely fatuous depiction of a Baltimore Sun newsroom? In the opening episode we were insulted by a grammar lesson on the use of the term “evacuate,” which only patronized its Spanglish young reporter. The narrative is clotted with unnecessary exposition (usually over drinks, the locus of “truth” in this oh-so-gritty streets), and scene gave us a thoroughly obnoxious and overbearing tussle over the word “tumescent.” If this David Simon has had “experience” in a news room, it surely has curdled into cliche by now. Yeah the “more with less” drumbeat is numbingly familiar to old-schoolers, but most of these sites have since embraced and integrated web consciousness into their thinking, and that desperate reporter who makes up colorful wheelchair characters for his color pieces is already blogging his ambition into scoops his deadwood brass has long since given up on. Has there ever once been a TV newsroom that upends these tired types? Can’t some of our better critics dig into why The Wired is suddenly a idol as sacrosanct and hoary as Angels in America? Fits the larger Hollywood theme of great performances propping up weak writing.