Anyone notice the connection of Omar to Chigurth in No Country, limp, indestructable, speech before killing, harbinger of death, coming out of nowhere into nowhere? Coincidence?

The issue for me is not realism but credibility. The Davis trial is certainly not realistic, since the defense hardly talks at a Grand Jury proceeding; at a trial, it only puts its case on after prosecution has finished; and at cross, must respond to specifics, which Clay does not. But the real problem is the romantic speech making from a depressive who has agreed to take one for the team...and not being punished for it. This rise to the peak comes from nowhere and will go nowhere. Pols get off, but only with pay offs. OJ never made a speech. In fact, he can hardly talk.

This reflects the larger issue of turning a drama whose credibility came from its morally ambiguous secondary characters into pure romantic fiction, substituting plot for character. Suddenly Kima is mother superior, Landsman is an enthusiast, Bunk is pure cop, Calicchio is nowhere, Bubbles is a guide to the perplexed, Cutty, the only one whom you could believe might actually make it without compromising his moral ambiguity, is gone...and so on. For me, the show rested on the 2ndary characters struggling through their daily lives and choices...no more and then having to answer for those choices. The street is now reduced to kill or be killed (while those doomed are reading want ads or moved to the suburbs), the police are reacting rather than experiencing and Carcetti, whose indecisiveness about ambition/corruption was also rooted in conviction, is now an aspirant to higher office. Its not so much that this wouldn't really happen, but that it gives him a focus that makes his inner life invisible. I worry we've got another Deadwood here..where, in the last season, character is replaced by story line and we loyal viewers are asked to rest on the echoes of what we know while our less hip friends catch up from Netflix. Only the Sopranos went the other way at the end. Everyone suddenly seems to have a thematic stick up their butt, to enter with one of those Wagnerian leit motifs..we know what they will say or do before it happens. I worry.

I agree this was one of the best episodes of the season, if not of the series: Carcetti's half-conscious realization that every step up is a step down, Templeton's parallel to McNulty as creator of fictions, Dukie's lesson at the shoe store, that their are no short cuts on the street-- you have to put in your time like everyone else. To me, the lesson in Omar's demise is that weakness is weakness, pure and simple, and can't be overcome with heroism or heart, both of which he has in abundance. This is the point of Kenard's killing the cat, which, in its vulnerability, is really not that different than Omar. It is Omar's appreciation of this pitilessness when he passes Kendard, the fact that he yells at empty doors, disposes of the drugs on empty streets and yells threats to no one in particular, that makes his death comic. I wonder now what will bring McNulty down. The romantic in me says the plot is exposed and everything crumbles like a house of cards. But this sounds too much like truth will out. More likely, little changes when the whistle is blown, leaving McNulty, like Prometheus, pushing that rock, the rock of his tortured soul, up the endless hill. In this world, when you come clean, shout "but it was a lie," the only thing you hear is your own echo. Omar's heroism is a fleck of dust.

I agree on the novelistic quality of the last few episodes, the drama is fantastic; the messages/moralisms a bit of a mess. Women make an appearance in this episode as something more than the furniture they've been until now. First, Carcetti's wife's prophecy that he won't have much of his integrity left if he stays on this road is fulfilled when his aide repeats the same order to fudge the crime statistics ("be creative") his predecessor gave. Things change...but nothing changes? Snoop's final and so touching act of vanity...wanting to look good as a corpse, touches us so much because its the first time we've seen her as a woman...as somehow vulnerable and even though the aunt never speaks, but somehow we know she's been waiting all along, and bubbles' sister let's him down and Kima becomes the pin in the balloon...in all these actions,women are the moral center..keeping their boundaries, not giving too much, but ready to do needs to be done when called. And I so agree that Bubbles and Snoop are the fonts of wisdom here...I will not forget that line about holding on to grief. Is this how we should remember the show? But what is the damned message about getting 'out?' Is it just another version of individual luck...some get picked, others don't?-- or mentoring, one rookie ruined by the illegal tap, the other left with the stinking body, Duc making his living off 'junk' just like Michael? -- our symbolic as well as our biological offspring? Or is it the joke of the Greeks, that the Gods left reason and truth seeking to us because they didn't need it? Or is it that all these subwriters want to maintain the ambiguity of the whole without committing themselves?