That's because this show is so unique, so special. It's that rare show where the characters feel like people you know. Everyone is so flawed, so relatable. Every storyline (yes, even this season's media-focused plotline that has so many people in my profession shaking their heads) feels like it could happen. The show's creator, ex-Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, has compared the show to a novel, and the comparison is apt.
Like a good book, "The Wire" gives those who absorb it a lot to chew on. There are all kinds of points made about morality, responsibility and the ways that human beings are betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to protect them.
But, like a good novel, "The Wire" presents that information by filtering it through memorable characters. The series has literally hundreds of characters, ranging from its nominal lead, Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) to smaller, but still vastly important characters like corrupt Sen. Clay Davis (Isiah Whitlock, Jr., who has turned the four-letter epithet for human excrement into verbal poetry), Major Bill Rawls (John Doman) and the taciturn crime co-op leader "Proposition" Joe Stewart (Robert F. Chew, whose character was tragically killed off this season. RIP, big guy).
It's saying something that nearly every character has been given great material over the show's five-season run. But that means that there are a lot of storylines to wrap up during the course of the show's 90-minute finale.
To their credit, those involved with the show manage to tie up many loose ends without making it feel too neat or pat. We find out what becomes of McNulty and Det. Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters), now that their fake serial killer plot has been revealed. We learn what happens to the sniveling Sun reporter Scott Templeton (Thomas McCarthy), and the erstwhile editor (Clark Johnson) who suspects him of fabricating stories.
We learn the fate of nearly every major character in an elegant epilogue and, though not every story ends the way we'd hope, each ending seems fitting. So does the final shot, which lingers on McNulty's face, full of both dispair and hope.
It's a near-perfect ending to a near-perfect series.