Seriously, overacting aside, the two actors playing Davis and his lawyer deserve some sort of award for all that. Spectacular, if a little overboard.

But, does Clay's testimony bear any resemblance to reality? His stuff about running out of money while he walked down the street? I get that he can play the race card, and convince a jury that it's a different world on the streets, but in the real world, is that really how it works, that life in west Baltimore is a cash-and-carry business?

Obviously, he's totally corrupt, but a character like that in real life would have to be doing something right. So I hope Simon based all that testimony on some semblance of reality.

Omar is turning the corner into a coldblooded executioner. He's definitly justified, but it seems like Simon's making sure the character's violence is going up a few notches before the end. Even Stringer he shot face to face.

It's all going to come apart for everybody. It's going to be great. Poor Carcetti...he thinks the homeless will make him govenor, and they're going to destroy him.

Overall, maybe not the best season of Wire...probably trying to pack too much into too few episodes...but, honestly, so what. The Davis courtroom scene was better than anything in the entire run of L.A. Law....and like every season, you can start seeing how it's all going to fall apart, and it will be a tragedy.

that this last season just wasn't up to par. It came together for me when McNulty was called "boss." The best story lines come from unintended consequences.

Did you catch the Richard Belzer cameo, where I assume he was playing Detective Munch? It was great. Like three seconds, just to put him there like a little gift.

I am pretty sure Belzer was playing Munch since he made a reference to owning a bar - a bar that he and Meldrick Lewis (and Bayliss) owned. Of course Meldrick has since changed his name to Gus Haynes and got a job at the city editor's desk, but hey.

It's sad that we are all mostly deluded about our motivations and how we operate, let alone how others operate. In the cold light of morning we just have to figure out how to do the job we actually have rather than the job we thought we had. Sometimes the dream just can't be put down and we either put one over or we get ground down. Either way, it's hard out there on the street.

I did like that scene with Bubbles and the young reporter. Youth and experience might just accomplish something; not something big, but something.

You know, for four seasons I believed that The Wire was so authentic in its portrayal of cops and the drug trade and life in the schools, but now I am just wondering if it was because I knew nothing about those things. Many newspaper journalists on the web have been complaining about the Sun plot, and now Simon gives us a courtroom scene that has no plausible basis in reality. Clay Davis would have had no opportunity for all of that grandstanding. Objection! Not uttered once by the DA. Cross examination? Why bother apparently. The whole thing was so beneath the show that I am now starting to doubt what I thought about the authenticity of the earlier seasons.

On an unrelated note, another example this season's allusions to previous ones. In season one or two, I am pretty sure there is a scene with McNulty throwing a fit while trying to build some furniture for his kids' visit.

I liked Simon is comparing McNulty to Clay Davis. Davis's courtroom self-justification for "redistributing" the wealth is parallel to McNulty's redistribution of police resources. Will McNulty be as successful as Davis when he has to explain himself? Don't bet on it.

Sign me up for not believing that one bit. No way would even a semi-competent D.A. allow that, nor a judge. There would have been follow-up on cross, the lack of corroboration would have been pressed heavy. Where was the sidebar or the judge's chamber with the warning that if the defense was going to go down this path, witnesses in support were going to have to appear forthwith if the defense didn't want a directed verdict of guilty. The grandstanding, in all likelihood, wouldn't even HAVE to been objected to--the judge wouldn't have allowed it. I'm not an attorney myself, but during my career as a police officer I testified and watched many, many trials. That nonsense just wouldn't have happened.

I liked the fact that Munch is a Baltimore police here, while on SVU he's on the job in New York.

By the way, the prosecution can't get a directed verdict. It would violate the defendant's right to a trial by jury.

So now, who do we want to get Marlo: Omar or Bunk?

Munch is a NY detective on SVU, but that character's arc began in Baltimore on "Homicide". For some reason he must be visiting the old home turf, and of course he's in the local cop bar and going on about his expertise as an old Baltimore bar owner.

I don't think the cameo was a gift to us--in fact I found it a little distracting--but to Belzer. After all, he already had a record for the number of different TV series playing the same character. From his NBC bio: "Belzer has played Detective Munch on a record number of television series--'Law & Order,' 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,' 'Homicide,' 'The X-Files' and 'The Beat.'" Five was hard to beat, but now he's got six, even if he only had one line on "The Wire"--

Thanks for highlighting Mike's introductory dialog with Bubbles. The way we know he'll write something worth reading (and following Gus-cum-Simon's advice on how to report the streets) is his upfront confession that he can't imagine what it's like out there.

Templeton thinks he can imagine it, so that's what he keeps doing, writing what everyone expects anyway. Mike will listen to people and watch them and write about what he sees. I'd like to think there is a grizzled city editor with the resources to allow his reporters to do that sometime.