Season 2 was the original version by Tom Waits.

My order: 1, 4 (best title sequence footage, too. Chilling with the kids' voices), 2, 3, 5

It was a shout-out to Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart, who was an early believer in the show.

I forgot about that.

I'm watching episode 10 of season 4 right now, and holy shit if McNulty's younger son doesn't look exactly like Ricky Rubio.

Oh, ****! What happens at the end of that episode is the most brutal shit I've ever seen on television.

Chris' beatdown of Bug's pops?

Did you ever see Cy Tolliver beat Veronica Mars cross-eyed and lumpy skulled on Deadwood?

I dunno, it just felt rushed and in need of a good 2-3 more episodes to really flesh it out.

Very true.

No, I didn't mean to insinuate that it was entirely self-contained. I consider the fact that we had the 3-4 kids continue their story-line (along with a Neamon cameo) a big crossover. Plus, you still had the mayor as a big player.

Well, Namond and Randy were just one-episode cameos. They had reached end-points in terms of story-telling. What else could Simon & Burns say about them that serves the story? Michael & Dukie had their fates still very much up in arms, as they entered into Marlo's world.

I think Randy could have had a much more fleshed out story. What that would be? I'm not entirely sure but it felt like I could have seen more of his transformation from the kid that knew he was going down for being a snitch to the guy who pushes people down stairs and storms out of an interview. I felt like Carver could have gone and visited him or tried, once again, to take him in. Who knows.

I just felt like 5 was paced differently than the rest. The rest were methodical builds whereas 5 just kinda I'm faking murders, it's going downhill really fast, he's forging articles bam done.


Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. I just thought there could have been more to it.

There could have been more, I suppose. 5 was two episodes short after all. But I'm having a tough time thinking of things that would both fill that time and serve the story. Anything that I think of would just be unnecessary fan-service.

Randy went from sweet, promising kid with an honest-to-god shot at getting out to being an angry, hopeless lost cause. I don't really think they needed to wade much further into that.

All of the seasons were great. In terms of how I enjoyed them, I'd rank them: 1, 2, 4, 3, 5. But if I ranked them on how "good" they were, I'd put season 4 at the top. Season 5 is easily the worst season though.

See, I wanted to see more of that transformation as Randy was one of the four I really cared about. They did more for Neamon than Randy which I thought was sad because Neamon was more of a Colvin story than a Neamon story.

That'd just be fan service, though. As soon as Randy walked into that group home, you knew what his fate would be. His season 5 cameo simply confirmed it. Showing the transformation wouldn't say anything that wasn't already said.

True, I guess.

:hmmm: