OK, so re: McNulty - I had a hard time with this too (because while I've hated things he's done in the past, I've never felt truly contemptuous of him before) but I think the critical piece here is that fifteen months have passed since season 4 and McNulty genuinely believed this time that things would be different; he bought into Carcetti's "new day" nonsense and because he bought into it, I think he fell harder than he would have done at any other time. The parallels for me are really with Frank Sobotka in season 2 - someone doing something they KNOW is wrong with the very best of motivations (although some of McNulty's motivations are less pure - his desire to "win" at all costs, which we've seen before!)
As for Lester, I too was shocked that he took part in McNulty's scheme, but then I thought about it for a while, and I think Lester is, in his own quiet way, just as obsessed with winning and being the smartest guy in the room (which he very often is!) as McNulty is. So I'm good with that.
Agree that the newspaper story is one of the less nuanced ones on this beautiful show - I wonder if that's because of the cuts to the timelines. Perhaps with a couple more episodes, they would have been able to flesh out stuff a bit better.
Re: Omar. I think it's precisely BECAUSE he's such a larger-than-life character, he had to go out that way - otherwise he wouldn't have been credible? Plus, there's a mythic element anyway to being slain by the unforeseen element - Omar as Achilles, or if you want to see him as a character from American mythology (the lone gunman of Western lore), then his fate fits in so well with fictional (I've heard "The Wild Bunch" mentioned often!) and real (Wild Bill Hickock) characters.
If it helps, in episode 9, Omar's legend continues to grow :)
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OK, so re: McNulty - I had a hard time with this too (because while I've hated things he's done in the past, I've never felt truly contemptuous of him before) but I think the critical piece here is that fifteen months have passed since season 4 and McNulty genuinely believed this time that things would be different; he bought into Carcetti's "new day" nonsense and because he bought into it, I think he fell harder than he would have done at any other time. The parallels for me are really with Frank Sobotka in season 2 - someone doing something they KNOW is wrong with the very best of motivations (although some of McNulty's motivations are less pure - his desire to "win" at all costs, which we've seen before!)
As for Lester, I too was shocked that he took part in McNulty's scheme, but then I thought about it for a while, and I think Lester is, in his own quiet way, just as obsessed with winning and being the smartest guy in the room (which he very often is!) as McNulty is. So I'm good with that.
Agree that the newspaper story is one of the less nuanced ones on this beautiful show - I wonder if that's because of the cuts to the timelines. Perhaps with a couple more episodes, they would have been able to flesh out stuff a bit better.
Re: Omar. I think it's precisely BECAUSE he's such a larger-than-life character, he had to go out that way - otherwise he wouldn't have been credible? Plus, there's a mythic element anyway to being slain by the unforeseen element - Omar as Achilles, or if you want to see him as a character from American mythology (the lone gunman of Western lore), then his fate fits in so well with fictional (I've heard "The Wild Bunch" mentioned often!) and real (Wild Bill Hickock) characters.
If it helps, in episode 9, Omar's legend continues to grow :)