The conclusion of episode 49 is seared in my memory: Randy's foster mother is being treated for third-degree burns after drug dealers threw a Molotov cocktail through her row house window because they suspected Randy had been talking to police about an unsolved murder. Randy is sitting outside his foster mom's hospital room when Sgt. Ellis Carver, who in an earlier visit to Randy's home promised him protection for helping the police, shows up to again promise help. Randy won't look Carver in the eye, and Carver gives up, walking away in despair. "You gonna help, huh?" Randy yells as Carver retreats down the hospital hall, "You gonna look out for me?"
We know that no one helps these kids. No one looks after them. They are discards, tossed away as easily as a piece of trash.
But those that get rich off the drugs they sell aren't glorified either. The drug lords, like Avon and Stringer, may think they've got it made, but they always end up behind bars or dead. If "The Wire" offered a bleak picture of life in our inner cities, it also avoided turning the issue into a white-guilt trip. Indeed, "The Wire" may have been the most colorblind show on TV. Most of the characters, at least during four of the series' five seasons, were black. But friendships, romantic relationships, heroes and villains crossed color lines.
"The Wire" always seemed more like a great 19th century novel than a television series. It will be hard to let go of the final chapter, but the characters -- Avon, McNulty and Bubbles -- will live on in our memories no less vividly than Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, Porfiry or Marmeladov. "The Wire" was Crime and Punishment on the streets of Baltimore.