David Simon Still Has Some Things to Say

Say what you want about Simon, but the man can talk. So we picked out the best parts of his post-finale interviews for your reading pleasure. Warning: Spoile… oh, never again. Not with The Wire. Sigh.

With more time, we might have seen Cutty and Prez:

With another half-hour, I probably could have managed to run Cutty’s story through… . Part of that was, “Should we run a Cutty story, or has he reached that point of redemption that is appropriate for the character[?]…And is Prez at the place he should be?� We decided we’d said what we needed to about those characters. [A.V. Club]

No. 6 on our list of unanswered questions is sort of answered:

It would not have added to the overall theme or to either of those characterizations of Cheese or Randy. It would not have resolved in any unique way that would have revealed anything more about the character than we otherwise revealed. It would have just been more story and more scenes. [All TV/New Jersey Star-Ledger]

No. 5 on our list of unanswered question is sort of answered:

We could have cannibalized Rawls’ moment in the gay bar and advanced that moment, but I’m not sure we would have created any more theme, and on some level it was very satisfying just to grant the notion of a closeted gay man’s sexuality a moment on screen and then move on. [All TV/New Jersey Star-Ledger]

No. 1 on our list of unanswered questions is sort of answered:

I think viewers can make their own assessment about whether or not McNulty is going to be happier in the police department or out. But I’m not so sure that this isn’t the best thing that ever happened to him, in a merciful way. [Police work] clearly drove him to the point of great turmoil and great ethical struggle. You know, he was happy being almost semi-retired, when he was walking foot in the Western…Maybe [he could] take a step away from this, you know? At least get out with [his] soul. [Salon]

The specific replacements for the cyclical character arcs were not set in stone:

Whether it was going to be Greggs or Sydnor who walked into the judge’s office was still something we were arguing about in season four and at the beginning of season five. Whether it was going to be Randy or Dukie who followed Bubbles down that path was an early debate, which of the four would have which outcomes. [U]ltimately the cyclical manner of the institutional prerogative was going to be asserted. [All TV/New Jersey Star-Ledger]

Contrary to popular belief, Omar was not originally going to die in season one:

It’s an urban legend. It came from some early interviews that Michael (K. Williams) did. I’ve never corrected him, because he wasn’t saying it (out of bad intentions). I think he got a little confused in this regard: In the first season we told him he’s only doing seven episodes…[a]nd I think he took that to believe he was going to be killed after seven. [All TV/New Jersey Star-Ledger]

Are you ready for the David Simon … comedy?

There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies. [All TV/New Jersey Star-Ledger]

Beware: The real Gus Haynes may be just next door:

I had a great editor, Rebecca Corbett, from the time I was a city reporter right through to the years I worked on the Sun’s enterprise reporting team. She is now at The New York Times and [is] one of the stars of the place. She made my s–t 30 percent better, day in and day out. So no, Gus is not simply a dream. [Newsweek]

David has something to clarify about his relationship with Vulture:

New York Magazine, on that Vulture [blog], had a thing about the evacuation, and they called the HBO spokesman and said, “We want to write something about how ‘evacuation’ can be used two ways. Will you ask David if he has a comment?� They called and asked for comment, and I text-messaged my comment to their specific question to [HBO spokesman] Diego [Aldana], and he texted it to them, and they put it on as if I’d posted it to their website. Like I hadn’t responded to their question, but I’d been trolling around on the Internet and decided to respond. [A.V. Club]

Overall, David Simon is as impressed by bloggers as you probably would expect:

If you’re saying that there needed to be scenes of the Internet interacting with journalism and bringing down journalism, I will now write you a scene: Interior, garden apartment anywhere. A white male, mid-30s, sits at a laptop computer in his underwear, linking to a Baltimore Sun story. He then scratches his left testicle until satisfied and continues to type commentary about that story onto his blog. Cut to drug corner, and on to the next scene. [Salon]

—Amos Barshad