Monday, February 18, 2008

A Season Coming Together

I haven't posted on here in awhile. Last episode was the first time when I really felt the season starting to come together. Consider the following: The third and fourth seasons were both driven by social experimentation, trying to remake the rules to make society better. In Season 3 with Hamsterdam, in Season 4 with the "street" classroom. Both of these were clear attempts to make society a better place. In Season 5 we have McNulty and Freemon rewriting the rules, but up until this season it was hard to see how the fake-serial-killer storyline was actually constructive. It just seemed like a couple of people, frustrated with their jobs, selfishly fucking with the system. This past week, that changed. McNulty's story finally got legs. And it transorms into more than pure selfishness. McNulty has become a goddamn soup kitchen of police manpower in the homicide department. In the most recent episode we see how utterly depleted the homicide unit has become, not just with Bunk's lab evidence, but with all the detectives who come to McNulty asking for more manpower.

One of the weirdest aspects of the episode is that Lansman seems to KNOW that McNulty is deferring manpower for other projects and ACCEPTS this indiscretion.

Lastly, however, in the most recent episode we see McNulty becoming overwhelmed with the responsibility of keeping his secret intact and properly exploiting the resources his fabrications have produced. One of the dramatic motifs Simon loves returning to, is the anxiety of the creator when his creation comes to life. Like Bunny Colvin, who becomes the "mayor" of a "city of pain," or Tommy Carcetti who looks crestfallen when he gets the phone call that he will be mayor, McNulty is another figure who tries to change the system, only to realize its inherent uncontrollability upon taking the reins.

1 comment:

Katie said...

That last paragraph was awesome; the comparison of Colvin, Carcetti, and McNulty was right on. That never occurred to me before.