The last few episodes were absolutely crazy and they definitely secured my attention where it may have lacked in the first few episodes. I became fond of certain characters and was very interested to see their stories.

Episode 10:

I think the discussion video about “The Cost” and the name of this episode really cover the main theme of these three episodes. There is a cost for everything, and sometimes that cost is people.

As a huge fan of Bubbles, I like the opening scene where Bubbles is sitting on the bench and looking around. He just looks around at the beauty of the women and their children walking by and kids playing with actual bubbles. This is juxtaposed with men walking around and drug dealing. Bubbles seems to contemplate this opposing world that contributes to his life.

This scene also links up to where D’Angelo’s girlfriend is talking to him about what they need to fit the kids and how they must get certain things to be a family.  While Bubbles seems to want a family, D’Angelo seems to push the idea of family and children away and simply walks out of the house.

There is a lot of focus on Bubbles in this episode. We see him again on the bench talking to the guy from the drug meetings about his sister and nephew. I thought an important note was the discussion on forgiveness within self, not from others. Later we learn Bubbles wants to get clean and asks for Kima’s help.

Again we get a glimpse into the home lives of the characters. McNulty’s home life is almost falling apart. He is at risk of losing his sons because of his conduct with them. He lets his home and work lives come together. We also see Kima’s life outside of the cop world, which links to when she is attacked at the end of the episode.

McNulty and Kima have close relationships with Omar and Bubbles. They ask them for help but they also help them in return and try to protect them. But Kima fails to return to Bubbles when she goes to do her work and gets hurt; this is a failure to help reestablish his life.

There are such intense plans for trying to bust the drug dealers and the most action happens at the end of the episode when it goes wrong and Kima gets hurt. This means the possible loss of the only woman and the loss of the best cop.

I love the end when the Lieutenant says, “The Wire is what gives up Barksdale. It gives us the whole crew. Day by day, piece by piece.” This is the underlying force of the show and the eventually key to solving the puzzle and sorting out the drug war.

Episode 11:

I love the beginning scenes where all of the cops are there and working to find out what happened. We still don’t see or know what happened to Kima, but we see all of her blood on McNulty. Kima’s entire team seems to be run down and even McNulty’s jerk of a boss tries to make him feel better. Everyone is being careful about how they proceed to make sure they get all of the possible evidence. The reaction of everyone listening to the car recording of the attack was very telling of the feeling of a team member getting hurt, and McNulty’s guilt is plain.

We hear about Kima’s condition slowly throughout the episode, which made me worry that she was already dead. The focus on Kima’s girlfriend shows the influence she had on other people in the show. We see how everyone is affected by Kima’s pain, including Bubbles. We see the inside of the police system from the perspective of someone we care for and Bubbles reaction to Kima’s condition.

McNulty’s guilt seems to make him become completely crass and angry and he starts to overstep the usually quiet lines that not supposed to be stepped over.

The ending of the episode with Kima in bed is very powerful. It suggests a loss, but also implies that more loss will occur in this unending “war.”

Episode 12:

“It was never about Avon Barksdale Lt, it was about me,” says McNulty toward the beginning of the episode. McNulty’s change since Kima’s attack really characterizes his anger and realization of his selfishness in the past. We even see the drug dealers start to fall apart and work the defense. Simon puts a lot of focus on Stringer’s hands when he talks to D’Angelo about how they will proceed from then on.

D’Angelo himself seems to be disillusioned with the drug war. He even sticks up to Stringer and Avon about protecting Wallace, saying, “Just let the boy be.”

Everyone and everything seems to be falling apart after the attack on Kima. Chardine is still helping with recording Avon and Stringer through a wire, but she is stressed by the undercover aspect of her new life. The question soon becomes, how many more people will get hurt through this war, especially those who should be protected by the cops, including Chardine and Wallace.

Wallace returns to D’Angelo’s dismay and we see him just looks at Wallace for some minutes and then try to talk him out of the life Wallace says is the only thing he is meant to do. There are clearly plans by the top men in the game to get rid of Wallace and the scene where he walks around looking for the children he protects while his “friends” follow him and then stand to kill him was awful to watch. Wallace is just a child, maybe not as innocent as the children he protected, but still a child life lost. What is manliness in this society? The ruthlessness to be able to kill your friends with a gun point-blank? Is this the life the children Wallace protected will follow into?

A new plot twist is that senators and other high up officials are coming out to protect themselves and saying that they are not taking money, which clearly shows they are hiding something and possibly corrupt. The enforced dissuasion of the cops from looking into this possible corruption implies there is more to the story. Lt. Daniels stands up for his team, but becomes a threat because he and his team are delving too deep. The Lt. is threatened into keeping quiet and ending the case, begging the question, what is worth following. The Lt. stands up wonderfully against his boss, saying he will keep going, which is entirely different from his attitude when this case began.

As Avon Barksdale cleans out his office, so do the cops start moving out of their hidden hole. There is a sense of things winding down and of bodies piling up toward the end of this episode. D’Angelo seems to represent a breaking down of the system. He asks questions and gives up a life out of jail and lying for a life of truth behind bars.

One thing I really noticed in these last few episodes were the many scenes where people watch children. This almost seems to be a suggestion that this drug war will never cease, and each generation will get involved eventually and be ruined in turn. When will the chain break? When will the chess game stop?

This show really explored more in the last few episodes and tied up links that started at the beginning. Deaths and resolutions occur, while the cops continue to look for a bad guy and the drug dealers continue to hide. Avon Barksdale is arrested at the end of the episode and the board finished, but there still seems to be something missing, that even the cops feel.

I am very interested to see what happens in episode 13 regarding the case that Simon tries to make us think is over!