More Wire Awards...

1. Best Moment for Unsympathetic Character. Rawls comforting McNulty after Kima is shot in season 1. Herc giving up the cell number in season 5 is great...but I think it's debatable whether Herc is sympathetic or not.

2. Most Missed Character in the Finale...Avon Barksdale. Runner-up, but not very close...Clay Davis.

3. Best saying. "Sheeeeeeeaaat." After season 1, it would've been "What the fuck did I do?" but Clay got so crazy with the "Sheeeeaaaat" and there were so many callbacks by other characters of the Sheeeeaaaaaat...this one is easy.

4. Best futile F--- you to the world moment. Gotta give the shout out to Sabotka in season 2 when he decides to cleanse himself with a day of hard work. Runner up - when Alma shows Gus the empty notebook and Gus goes to the editor's office.

5. Best Wire Coverage. There's been so many great articles on the Wire from the New Yorker to Salon to the Atlantic, but my favorite material is on the Freaknomics blog, the series on "What Real Thugs Think of the Wire." A must read.

6. Worst Directed Episode. Dominic West gets a cameo directing gig in season 5 and has the worst two shots in the entire series - the final shot of Kima doing a version of goodnight moon with a huge pull back shot similar to those in Working Girl or Once...and a scene shot in uber close up with Bunk and Amy Adams in the same episode. Awful.

7. Biggest Badass - Chris Partlow. I know this is a weird call with Omar, Brother Mouzone, Avon, Snoop, Wee-Bay, Marlo etc... But let's put it this way - Omar got the best of Brother Mouzone in their dual. Partlow was a Batman moment away from getting Omar. He trained Michael, who got the better of Snoop. He was a "cunt hair" away from killing Avon himself. He didn't shake when Marlo almost lost his mind in jail. No one ever got a gun on him. He killed 20 + in the vacants plus several more on screen. If I'm going to war on the street, I draft Partlow #1.

8. Best Drunk. Jimmy is fun, but destructive; Lester brilliantly channels an old negro bluesman; Landsman becomes eloquent...if not elegant; but no one can top the Bunk...setting fire to his own clothes to get the smell of pussy out. THE BUNK!

9. Best Parallel. Structurally, the Wire uses a lot of parallels between characters to hammer home similar problems of bureaucracy and staleness within institutions whether it be the police force or drug dealing culture. The series starts out with the parallel experiences of McNulty and DeAngelo in their respective fields. By the end, Dookie-as-Bubbles, Michael-as-Omar, Carcetti-as-Burrell, are a reoccurring theme...my favorite, ultimately, was Gus Haynes and the young reporter Fletcher who he's taught the craft of reporting underneath all the corruption and ugliness of other things happening at the paper. The hope in the show comes down to how characters behave within the void of institutions...and the intrinsic value of good, hard-nosed, local journalism shines through.

10. Best "Friends-turning on one another" - Hats off to Bunk and McNulty in season five, but this one is no contest - Stringer v. Avon in season 3.