Multiple people have sent me this semi-critical article by Mark Bowden on The Wire, which starts it fifth and final season on HBO this week. Bowden respects the show and its verisimilitude, but takes on David Simon for letting his personal anger get in the way of "accuracy and evenhandedness." I don't buy the argument that the show's bleakness is exaggerated, although I do think the show has become more didactic in its later seasons. I also dismiss the argument, which I've seen elsewhere, that the show merely serves to comfort the guilt of liberal viewers -- one might as well make the same argument about any great work of social realism. Thoughts?