TVSquad

The Wire may have wrapped production on its final season, but with the ten episode send-off set to premiere in one month, the promotional campaign is in full swing. HBO has already been airing a short teaser promo and behind the scenes look, but now? They've added more. In case you can't tell already, I'm absolutely in love with this masterpiece... so I'm going to write about pretty much anything I can find. The pay cabler is now airing new short promos. I saw the McNulty and Marlo versions last night for the second or third time and it prompted me to look for more. As I expected, someone far more resourceful than I has put them all up (there's five total) on YouTube. If that wasn't enough, HBO has also released three short prequels currently available for view at Amazon according to The Hollywood Reporter. Read on to hear my thoughts.

"Let McNulty be McNulty" by James McNulty: Looks like McNulty is back to his old ways. I suppose if you think about it, he was pretty devastated once he found out that he may have played a role in Bodie's murder. After reading some of the comments for this video, one thing really jumps out at me. You have to remember who he's with now. His cleaned himself up in season four and Beadie Russell (from the port) took a chance on him. Now he's back to his old ways, making late night "I won't be home" calls just like he did with Elena.
"Play Or Get Played" by Omar Little: Five words. It's all in the game. More on Omar when I talk about his prequel.
"It's All About The Crown" by Marlo Stanfield: I spelled it right there, but anyone notice the typo? Marlo's last name is spelled "Stansfield." Who let that slip by? Doesn't matter. I'm still terrified of Snoop. It's going to be great to see how she and Chris react to Lester's findings once he finally gets through all of the red tape.
"One Step at a Time" by Reginald Cousins: I like to think of myself as connoisseur of The Wire, but I can't for the life of me ever remember hearing what Bubbles' actual name was. The only time I can think of when it may have been dropped was when he tried to get clean in season one and his sister let him use her basement. Even then... I still don't remember hearing Reginald or even Reggie. Either way, I hope he gets clean for real this season. He's had so many ups and downs throughout the series and perhaps that's too simple an outcome for him, but I still want to see it.
"Give The People What They Want" by Thomas Carcetti: Didn't he learn anything from Bunny or the death of Stringer? You can't reform something that works as well as The Game does. It'll sure as hell be fun watching him try though.

The Prequels

As I mentioned earlier, all three of these are available to stream on the page for The Wire season four DVD at Amazon. Really nice touch doing something like this. I realize it pertains to absolutely nothing but I love stuff like this. Very cool.
1962, Baltimore, Maryland (Young Prop Joe): Nice to see that even as a kid, Prop Joe was a master of the deal. You can easily see how he became who he is though. A short pudgy nerd with more brains than most of his classmates, he was sick of being used. So he got wise to The Game. .
2000, Baltimore, Maryland (Bunk meets McNulty): Frankly, I'm not sure this could have gone another way. I think it's hilarious, that even back then, Ray Cole (rest his soul) was as crappy a murder police as we knew him to be.
1985, Baltimore, Maryland (Young Omar): While I liked this one the most out of all three, one thing bugged me. OK, so Omar had a conscience back then too... but how did he get that scar?? I can only assume it's a much longer story and 90 seconds wouldn't do it justice.

So there you go. That's about as big a dose of The Wire as you're going to get until it premieres on Janurary 6. Hope all you corner boys and hoppers are as excited as I am.