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The Wire - S5 underlines the frustrating inability to do anything with a lack of public funding. We see it through various points of view, the cops, the newspapers, and the government. It's a real nice critique of the flaws of Capitalism as social policy.
Interesting - they are really making Marlo and his gang, irredeemably evil. Stringer and Avon seemed a bit more well-rounded. But Marlo is a bit...well, mwwhahhahhhah evil. And not nearly as well-rounded a character. Same with Chris and Snoop. Bodie and Poot and Weebay were a bit more multi-dimensional, I think.
There is a hilarious scene with Bunk, Lester, and McNulty in the third episode. Bunk is trying to get Lester to help him with McNulty, who has come up with the insane plan of creating a fake serial killer of homeless people in order to convince the brass to throw money at them - to solve the Marlo Stanfield case. But Lester, who is as frustrated as McNulty, and as "independent" minded, decides McNulty has a great idea but is doing it all wrong - and comes up with a far better plan.
Bunk: WTF Lester? What are you doing!
Lester: Whose going to notice that we've faked a few deaths...and then can't solve them? Or care?
It's just homeless people after all. And they are dead already. Plus it means we can get the wire to solve the Marlo case - all we need is three weeks.
Bunk: You guys are insane. I'm out of here.
Lester and McNulty are very Machiavellian at times. But my heart goes out to Beadie. Ball Buster Jimmy is back with a vengeance...she's losing the man she fell in love with. Yet another link to the addiction theme - which threads in and out of the series as a whole. Also Lester and McNulty's the ends justify the means view is paralleled with Carcietti and Norman's use of the newspaper to push Burrell out of office...and Marlo's attempts to manipulate the organization into linking him directly with the Greeks, so he no longer has to go through Prop Joe.
Also, I agree with Snoop and Prop Joe, Marlo's plan to pull out Omar is not that bright. Prop Joe doesn't want Omar back - leave him be. Snoop - we still have no idea where Omar is, and now we have him gunning for us...this is not a great plan. Considering Omar killed Stringer Bell for just setting him up, I somehow think...he's not going to think too kindly on what they've done to his best friend in the entire world.
I've never seen anything like the Wire on tv before. (No not the Omar arc - seen that plenty of times...it's a popular trope, or the cops/drug dealers - also popular trope, no I mean the exploration of the docks, papers, and schools, along with the inner city politics...and politics within the police force - that's new. Most tv shows on drug dealing/crime either do the whole Breaking Bad/Sopranos/Sons of Anarchy/Weeds/Dog Day Afternoon anti-hero drug dealer trope (which if you watch a lot of American television and films, you've seen quite a bit of by now and let's face it - much like Vampires? There's really nothing new to say on the topic, they've clearly exhausted it), or the whole we must put the bad drug dealers down trope (Chicago Code, Traffic, Law and Order, 21 Jump Street, etc - also nothing new to say about it.) But they don't expand and explore the universe to the degree this one does, or the consequences on that universe. The Wire pretty much examines the whole crime tale in a new way, in that it's not really a cop show or a drug dealer show.