The Wire: Season Five

I recently rewatched the entire series of The Wire, so I thought it was a good time to update my thoughts on the final season.  They haven't changed.  In fact it is "now more than ever" that Season Five was arguably a success and definitely in line with the preceding four seasons.  With new or newly edited text in red, I am trying to get on paper 

1. why the season was a success, 
2. how it aligned with the show to that date and 
3. what caused the (unjust) negative reaction.
   

I remember a lot of complaints about The Wire: Season Five when it was airing.  While I think at least some of that was typical "I watched it back when it was good" feeling of longtime fans, as the show was finally starting to pick up steam in the mainstream.

Personally, I liked it and disagree that the show sunk to an unwatchable quality reserved for lesser shows.  Here's why:

Season Five started with one hand behind it's back.  While Season One and Season Four* included thirteen episodes, and Season Two and Season Three included twelve, HBO renewed The Wire for only ten episodes in Season Five.  While "-30-", the season/series finale ran over 90 minutes, this is still provided only about 80 or 87 percent of the storytelling time previous seasons had, leading to some compressed plotting particularly noticeable as McNulty's serial killer takes shape.  For the show that perfected the contemporary novelistic season plotting, this is a major blow.

On the most recent watching, I think the finale needed 90 minutes regardless, in order to tell the stories of that episode as well as tie off the season and series.  Being down three whole episodes, or 180 minutes, or however many scenes that is, had a huge effect on the plotting, but also the character development, perhaps even more so.  A reasonable complaint about the Stanfield crew is that they are one dimensional and lack the shades of gray the Barkesdale organization had.  Marlo would never provide $15,000 to a boxing gym, let alone to a boxing gym run by someone who parted his employ.  The missing pieces from these episodes mostly occur on the front end, and then have the effect of weakening the payoffs and turning early items into caricatures when they try to make due with what they have. 

McNulty jumps to 11 in the second episode when he flies off the handle and starts messing with the crime scene to create his serial killer.  Such a drastic action would normally take place later in the season (Hamsterdam) with more set up.  McNulty is not the only guy at 11.  The police force is decimated by draconian budget cuts and Carcetti is more asshole-ish than ever both to his staff and in his policies.    The near riot in Carver's briefing comes off as cartoonish, but necessary to quickly establish the dire nature that the budget cuts have caused, necessitating McNulty's drunken stupor into serial killerdom.  Even McNulty's demeanor is exaggerated for effect, drinking in public more than ever and using a snarl as his regular speaking voice.  As bad as the police department has been in the preceeding four seasons, it is at it's absolute worst now.  And Simon has no time at all to show that.  

Think of the journey it takes to get to what the season is known as.  

1. Valchek is upset at a stain glass window donation by Sobotka, which results in a petty attempt to investigate him.  This ends with solving a dozen prostitute murders and major crimes zeroing in on an international drug conspiracy.
2. Hamsterdam isn't functioning until the season's sixth episode.
3. The boys spend the summer exploding pee balloons on themselves.  School doesn't even start until episode three. By Christmas the boys are all completely separated from their original homes and lives. 

In short, the cause > effect > effect > effect > unintended consequence > detour > uintended consequence, etc is not allowed to happen organically.

A few moments allow us to see what composes a true newspaperman.  Gus lives, eats and sleeps the paper so much he wakes up in a sweat worried about transposing numbers.  It tells us about his character.  If Simon made a mistake, it was to not include more of the "show don't tell" examples like this, rather than simply have some of the reporters wax nostalgic about their love for the old days.  There's a time and place for that (Frank Sobotka) but we have to see and learn more first so we're invested in those monologues.  But again, time is a factor and it may have simply been a calculation to hurry up and get the information at us.  

Some of those monologues took place in bars and it brings to mind the fact that a lot of this season is simply conversations taking place in bars.  It is jarring even after a three season McNulty bender.  You have the newspaper folks, you have the former Major Crimes crew plus Bunk, Gus meeting Lt. Mello, Lester meeting Clay multiples times.  

I wonder if this was an intentional budget-related decision. 

Anyways, the other way to establish Gus' character was to line up validators.  Other editors and reports look to Gus and echo his concerns.  We don't get to learn much about the validators which weakens their effect unfortunately, but again this is a casualty of losing three whole episodes.  

That said, I did enjoy the copy editors who never moved from their ancient computers and sat there like Oracles, dispensing vocabulary and sentence structure lessons.  One dimensional characters can not only be entertaining but are also necessary.  If everyone on television was as fleshed out as Tony Soprano, then we'd never get anywhere, plotwise.

Not only did Season Five tell a compressed season five story, but it had the responsibility of wrapping up storylines from previous seasons.  Some were still able to be done with a single scene as with Namond's debate.  

But the serial killer storyline was completely unbelievable!

More unbelievable than a police commander effectively legalizing drugs?  I do not believe the point of the serial killer was to create a serial killer but to illustrate the state of journalism and comment on anonymous sourcing.  At least there are real life instances they can point to for that one (including reporting on a serial killer sniper in the DC area). 

For some reason, critics are able to suspend their disbelief in cases where Simon uses dramatic license, like in Season Two when the state attorney's office lets Frank Sobotka out of their sight and vulnerable to violence (because they aren't as familiar with procedures within the state's attorney's office) but scream bloody murder if the screen doesn't reflect every day of their life in journalism, exactly. 

It is a mistake to label this as the "Newspaper Season"

Focusing only on the newspaper aspect of Season Five sells it short.  In fact, the newspaper plays a smaller part in the season than any of the other seasonally added aspects of Balitmore (Port, City Hall, Public Schools).  The Sun is there almost as an extension of the police department in order to divert resources (and show the problems associated with that).  As a bonus, we see some of the dysfunction in the Sun that speaks to why we're all so ignorant of this sort of thing.  Specifically, it's shown through a "teach to the test" attitude that we saw with the public schools and a corruption that we see in City Hall and the Department.

However, the lack of volume paid to the Sun doesn't allow it to be the headliner.  It plays a part roughly equal to the part the Department played in Season Four, ancillary to several stories, but not the major story itself.  

Instead, the Marlo/Jimmy & Freamon show is the biggest story.  It throws back to Season One, but now armed with what we know from Season One it does not need to be as dense.  

Second is Carcetti's ascent to the statehouse which received due attention.

Bubble's road to recovery is the one positive thing to take away from the season, perhaps the series.  A seemingly small, but in reality huge, victory is gained when he ascends the stairs in the final montage.  I think many people believed Simon viewed himself as the Gus character, but it's my sense that he felt more in tune with Fletcher, the young reporter who spent time with Bubbles and learned his story.  Bubbles was in real life one of Simon's sources and when he passed, Simon wrote his obituary.

The story that receives the least attention but could have had miles more was the State's Attorney/Clay Davis trial.  If the Sun showed us why we don't hear about these things, the trial showed us why the bad guys don't go to jail.  The dysfunction is apparent immediately when Bond leaves the "headshot" on the field, prosecutes the case himself for the profile, and loses handily after Clay plays not just the race card but the "whole deck."  We saw a lot of the trial but could have been even more informed if we had seen Bond bungle the preparation.  Not only that but the prosecutor's office and courts have been a source of ire for McNulty-ilk, upset about how everyone wants a clean record so they can become a judge.  We only saw the state's attorney in conference rooms when a case was brought to them, or in the halls preparing to go into court, but seeing some inner turmoil from Bond's shop would have made for a good story, especially considering they already had Rhonnie established as a character. 

 "You have to listen to the notes she's not playing" **

I think Lisa Simpson sums up the season in that single sentence.  We've spent four seasons watching bureaucratic and institutional dysfunction, not to mention out and out corruption, in the police force, labor unions, political arenas and public schools.  Why is this the first we're hearing about it?  Why is this the first we are seeing the incompetence demonstrated and explained?  David Simon, the show's creator and executive producer, posits the answer by adding the newsroom storyline: the state of journalism is a mess and fails to focus on important aspects of real life because they are populated by journalists with little experience and led by those who prefer to focus on winning awards.  They go about winning awards by following a proven formula of reporting, not unlike Season Four showing the fundamental flaws of "teaching to the test" when the kids are preparing for their standardized testing.

 

The best novels and televisions shows "show and don't tell" but it's even more difficult to show the absence of a positive, which if I viewed the show correctly (and there is a correct way)*** was the goal.  While the systemic problems shown in the other storylines continue, the newspaper has other priorities than shed on a light on these, never more apparent when they decided to de-prioritize reporting Prop Joe's murder.  It is a subtle, quick moment which encapsulates the entire newsroom storyline.

The unreporting of Prop Joe and Omar are two examples of why the stories being told in The Wire are not being reported in real life.  A third example speaks about race more broadly when a story about race relations within the University of Maryland faculty starts to form.  However, the story is spiked before it's ever written based on the executive editor's relationship with the dean at UM.  Their association is obviously a conflict of interest which should result in the opposite effect (Whiting removing himself from the story) but instead shows the larger picture of how the Sun is being steered.  In mainstream media, race is discussed when Obama is elected president, or when a cop shoots another kid, but lacks any serious day to day examination of why inequality still exists at the level it does today, socially, economically and legally.  No one wants to discuss it, least of all Whiting, who is one of the gatekeepers that could change that.  

Speaking of things no one wants to talk about: heart disease is the biggest killer in America and we really don't care.  But one person gets Ebola and it's all day every channel.  A sensational story of a biting, sexual, serial killer of homeless people garners more attention and resources than anything else happening in the city.  This despite the fact that it is fake.  Meanwhile, someone is actually killing dozens of people (just by the murder, think of how many people are killed or having their lives ruined by the drugs themselves) and it registers a zero.  Heart disease is killing everyone and all we can care about is Ebola which is barely a thing.

This harkens back to something the show started with: there is no federal interest in drug crime and the city's ills because we are too busy fighting the Terror.  When McNulty visits Special Agent Fitz in Season One, he learns that Fitz has all these cool toys to fight drug dealers, but is being reassigned to the Terror as soon as he winds down his current case.  In fact, the whole Bureau is being reassigned to fight the Terror with counterTerror.  The FBI's shift in its mandate to become primarily about counterterrorism is as jarring as when J. Edgar first started introducing wire taps and such to catch the bad guys.  

* Season Four's finale "Final Grades" ran 78 minutes because they needed 18 more minutes in that season to finish stabbing us in the heart/crotch

** From "Lisa the Simpson" where Lisa comments on how to listen to jazz

*** Simon later clarified what he was saying.  It's pretty interesting no matter what you think about it.  Also his thoughts on blogging and oh my god I started a tv blog!

Plot Not to Be Foiled - Part 2

This is Part 2 of posting about how shows, specifically Justified and their new approach, plot their seasons.  Part 1 included some background.

Why Justified is the Best


Season Four is a whole new approach to plotting a season. it carries an underlying story throughout the season, a mystery, while allowing for detours throughout.  Some plots last an episode, some plots take a few or four episodes for their own arc.  One starts in the premiere, only to be revisited in episodes seven and eight in near complete detour that somehow still manages to be a character study of Raylan.  Some of them tie back into the main mystery and some do not.  The kicker is that the mystery is resolved not in episode 12 or 13 but in episode 9!  How does one tell a thirteen chapter story by resolving the underlying question in episode 9, you ask?

Fallout and reactions.  The world constructed by Graham Yost & Co. is such a well developed, organic creature that revealing the mystery demands fallout and reactions from the characters.  The characters created by Yost & Co. are so well fleshed out, even if they are new to the scene in Season Four, that the audience is better served and more interested in seeing the reactions to the unfolding events than by simply playing up the mystery at hand and making the climax the reveal.  Instead, the climax of the season is when all parties, deftly tied together, react and converge in a not only believable but expertly plotted way.

The approach could have been inspired partially by the format of Raylan, the most recent book by Elmore Leonard which contains three stories.  Each story is about 100 pages long, too long to be a short story but too short to be novels unto themselves.  While the entire book tells a story of Raylan's marshal adventures in his hometown, each story has a beginning, middle and end similar to the detours taken in Season Four*.

* Started this post only talking about Justified ("Why Justified is the Best"), but realized I could not properly explain it without the context of other plotting examples. 

We discuss and analyze and recap shows on an episode by episode basis out of the natural convenience of shows broadcasting one episode on a weekly basis.  However, the cumulative effect a show cannot be felt by discussing a single episode, especially early in a season, without considering "all the pieces" as David Simon would.  If someone (who had not yet seen the show) were to re-cap The Wire now, it would not make sense to write four articles for the first four episodes.  Even the most ardent Wire fan would not claim the show grabs you from the start.  Instead, it takes a few episodes before you are "in it" *.  Rather, if I were writing about The Wire, I would probably take it four or so episodes at a time, at least to start.  There is a reason the show gained traction and attention in the media when HBO decided to send critics the entire season prior to it airing.

* Like Natalie Portman's character in Garden State would say.

As plotting becomes more and more complex, not just in the sense of following a season long storyline, but integrating vingettes and side adventurs like Justified did, the question will be if analysis and discussion can find a new paradigm as well to best suit the new format.  Otherwise it will become like recapping a book chapter by chapter and comparing the chapters to each other (if it isn't already). 

And we already see the format changing again.  With Netflix recently releasing all thirteen episodes of House of Cards and all fifteen episodes of Arrested Development, viewers are more able to get the whole picture in a manner more appropriate to the format.  When House of Cards was released, a bunch of articles popped up about this new phenomenon called "binge watching" that has been around for quite a while.  In fact, binge watching, which was just called "watching DVDs" played a big part in revival of dead shows like Family Guy and Futurama.

The reason this now has a name is because of the demographic shift in who is doing it.  Rather than college kids (with no money) watching a DVD collection they got for Christmas, these are adults watching a high minded show via a subscription service.  A Venn diagram of the audiences may actually show that many of these adults are simply the aged 2013 version of the Family guy watching college kids from 2004.

You could build a house, or at least a nice shed, out of the brick jokes flung about in the new season of Arrested Development.  The serialized and simultaneously released nature of the House of Cards episodes lend to show predicated on the long, long con at the highest stakes.  So not only has the way we watched television allowed us to enjoy the shows in ways not previously available, it is actually influencing the way shows are produced.

Plot Not to Be Foiled - Part 1

In the 1980s, shows like Hill Street Blues extended story arcs beyond an episode.  In the 1990s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer used a Big Bad * each season.  At the turn, The Sopranos plotted a thirteen episode, season long story that had a clear beginning, middle and end, and launched the new paradigm that would become prevalent among cable drama.   Various models are used but by and large cable drama** tells a thirteen episode story each season.  David Simon***  has spoke about constructing his seasons like a novel, and each episode like a chapter.


* “I’m not the new Big Bad everybody needs to be afraid of.” said a villain on True Blood who was recently introduced at the top of the new season

** One network example (when it was exclusive to NBC) was Friday Night Lights which would take viewers through the naturally occurring timeframe of a football season and the milestones throughout.  Due to the writers strike and a half renewal and custody sharing with DirecTV, only Season One had the classic 22 episodes.  It speaks to the advantage of plotting the new standard 13 episodes compared to old model of 22.

*** What we were asking was, “What should we spend 12 hours of television saying?”

 What was once cutting edge is almost a prerequisite for (cable) drama these days.  Viewers expect a cohesive story.  What was new and exciting in 1999 on The Sopranos is almost conventional by now.  A season may depend on a theme, an idea, the introduction and defeat of a new villain or any number of things.   Even getting a character from point A in episode 1 to point Z in episode 13 is a large change from former drama models.  Before The Sopranos, you'd see a character move from place to place from season to season, but rarely was it a meticulously plotted season long journey.  More often you'd see a three episode arc that happens to coincide with the end of season/sweeps.  The only long term plot line one was likely to see was a pregnancy in the fall meaning a birth in May sweeps.

The new, hyper serialized television demands viewers' attention, and thus rewards them.

At the same time, these meticulously plotted shows can suffer from slower, table setting episodes that are necessary but less attention grabbing.  Case in point, watch episodes in the 5-8 range for the first three seasons of Game of Thrones.  If you are someone who watches a show for the season long story, you are not as likely to be bothered by slow moments as someone who is amazingly able to still be viscerally upset by the end of the Sopranos while simultaneously breathing through their mouth.  However, even knowing there is a payoff, the middling episodes cause an evenness in the season.

Breaking Bad has been a great example of a show that has beginning and end points in mind for the series, as well as clear progress each season*.  The end point for each season accumulates everything that has happened thus far and contributes to the ultimate goal of Walt becoming Scarface. They are like landings on a staircase until you reach the roof. 

* Group Season One and Two together due to the writers strike, and consider two halves of Season Five as separate seasons, a la Sopranos. 

While The Sopranos often introduced a new foil to Tony each season* , a show doesn't necessarily need to schlep in new villains or a whole host of characters each year to plot out that season's novel though.  Justified** spent Season Four (possibly its best) on a mystery.  Finding it's way midway through the first season, introducing the baddest of the big bads Mags in Season Two, piling on two new guys in Season Three.

* Again, formerly cutting edge, now conventional.

** Something that Justified and Breaking Bad have in common is the relatively slow passage of time on the show.  Debuting in 2010, only about a year has passed in Justified's Harlan County (including about 10 days in Season Four), and debuting in 2008, Breaking Bad's ABQ has only seen two years pass from the pilot to the (still not seen in a real time context) flash forward of bearded Walt on the run, purchasing a BFG.*

*  Footnoting for the explanation of that term because the text isn't hidden when hyperlinked. 


Coming in Part 2 is the innovative approach Justified took in Season Four, which was originally the whole point of this post.

Showrunning

There's currently a debate in television blogs about showrunners, importance of.

An article from The New Republic, written as a reaction to this book and this book, as well as magazine pieces on showrunners, takes the position that showrunners are not to be (solely) credited with the current state of television, and producing responses such as this one and this one.

Showrunners are a curious concept if you think about it.  Here you have someone entrusted with huge budgets and productions, who is essentially an elevated writer.

Craig Fehrman takes issue with how far we've elevated showrunners when discussing shows, or even promoting them and implies that critics and fans do not acknowledge the collaborative effort it takes to produce quality television, as opposed to the sheer will of one man, or more recently, one woman.

Several points raised in the article:

• Using an example from Justfied to extrapolate on the group effort needed to create a memorable scene
• Pointing to higher ratings for Walking Dead and Hell on Wheels compared to Mad Men as proof showrunner turnover produces television just as well as deities like Matthew Weiner

June Thomas of Slate addresses the first point well, citing expediency as a driving factor

And, with some notable exceptions, critics do tend to underemphasize the director’s and cinematographer’s role in producing quality television. But Fehrman’s prescription—that critics consistently acknowledge the complicated interaction of actors, directors, writers, and editors behind every creative decision—is impractical. It’s like saying that reporters covering Google would get a more accurate picture of the way the company creates new products by talking to the engineers, designers, product managers, and marketers who work on them than they do by simply interviewing Sergey Brin or Larry Page. That’s undoubtedly so, but it isn’t obvious to me that it would be a better or more interesting story.

Regarding the second point, Walking Dead and Hell on Wheels have had five showrunners between them in the five combined seasons.  While Walking Dead is the highest rated drama on cable, Mad Men attracts the wealthiest audience in television, which helps drive up the cost of ads without increasing ratings.  And if ratings directly translate to quality, that is news to me. 

Also, Walking Dead suffered it's poorest quality season following Frank Darabont's abrupt departure.  While Glen Mazzara's capable hands took over the show, it did not feel like a smooth transition and took a while (until Season Three) for the show to regain its footing (and get off that farm).  It kind of goes to show that the position itself, whoever is in charge, is that important.

On the flip side, just as a creative and innovative showrunner can lead a successful show, a righteous and condescending showrunner can detract.  The misleading and condescending attitude of Veena Sud cannot be separated from the disappointing grief porno that is The Killing.*

* And that will be the last time we speak of that show

I admittedly follow the showrunners when I pick my shows and I read all the pieces out there interviewing them. My favorite weekly reading (when in season) is the Entertrainment Weekly post-mortem with creator/showrunner Graham Yost, and what I immediately thought of when Fehrman referenced the salt shaker scene. 

Yost, like David Milch and David Chase and David Simon, doesn't put his name on every script, but his fingerprints are always all over them.  Yost credits his crew to the fullest extent he can remember, because there are sometimes when they sincerely cannot remember who came up with an idea.

And isn't that part of being a showrunner?  Fehrman uses the collaborative effort, highlighting other well known well done "lesser" jobs like the cinematographer on Breaking Bad, to show that it doesn't all come from one person...but he undercuts himself because he's highlighted the capable people on staff who are hired by the showrunner and given the appropriate conditions to succeed.  Hiring smart people and listening to them is usually the mark of a good leader.

I often view showrunners like NFL head coaches, but with more control about a final outcome*.  A good head coach is going to higher capable assistants.  If he comes from a defensive background, he may rely more on his offensive coordinator.  If he is a players' coach he may need a position coach to be the disciplinarian.

* NFL coaches can't force their running back to not fumble at a critical time.  Showrunners can choose the exact timing and manner of a major plot point. 

Not unlike the hot assistant candidates for the new vacancies every year, showrunners often hold staff positions on successful shows before getting their own vehicle.  NFL coaching trees are always interesting, and the success of a particular unit often gets that coordinator attention for vacancies.  IN the 1950s, Jim Lee Howell hired Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry to be his offensive and defensive coordinators and played in three NFL championships. 

Glen Mazzara, mentioned earlier, was a writing on The Shield, whose creator had the foresight to hire both Mazzara and Kurt Sutter, who would go on to create Sons of Anarchy.

David Chase, hired both Matthew Weiner and Terence Winter* who run Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire.  More attention needs to be paid to a young writer he fired after being nominated for an Emmy with him, Todd Kessler.  After his firing, Todd and his brother Glenn created Damages.

* Martin Scorsese is a producer on Boardwalk.  Winter wrote the script for Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street which features another good match of Leonardo Dicaprio playing a Rich Guy to the tune of Kanye West music  These are all awesome things.

 Did you like Friday Night Lights?  You may like Jason Katims other show, Parenthood.

Enjoy Spielberg's Band of Brothers?  Writer Graham Yost created Justifed.  Enjoy Justified?  Try Graham Yost's new show (though less involved with) The Americans.

Basically, having information about showrunners and their pedigree is the best way to find shows you'll enjoy.

In Support of The Wire: Season Five

Includes several mentions, blacked out, of The Wire: Season Five

I remember a lot of complaints about The Wire: Season Five when it was airing.  While I think at least some of that was typical "I watched it back when it was good" feeling of longtime fans, as the show was finally starting to pick up steam in the mainstream.

Personally, I liked it and disagree that the show sunk to an unwatchable quality reserved for lesser shows.  Here's why:

Season Five started with one hand behind it's back.  While Season One and Season Four* included thirteen episodes, and Season Two and Season Three included twelve, HBO renewed The Wire for only ten episodes in Season Five.  While "-30-", the season/series finale ran over 90 minutes, this is still provided only about 80 or 87 percent of the storytelling time previous seasons had, leading to some compressed plotting particularly noticeable as McNulty's serial killer takes shape.  For the show that perfected the contemporary novelistic season plotting, this is a major blow.

Not only did Season Five tell a compressed season five story, but it had the responsibility of wrapping up storylines from previous seasons.  Some were still able to be done with a single scene as with Namond's Geography Bee.

But the serial killer storyline was completely unbelievable!

More unbelievable than a police commander effectively legalizing drugs?  I do not believe the point of the serial killer was to create a serial killer but to illustrate the state of journalism and comment on anonymous sourcing.  At least there are real life instances they can point to for that one (including reporting on a serial killer sniper in the DC area). 

For some reason, critics are able to suspend their disbelief in cases where Simon uses dramatic license, like in Season Two when the state attorney's office lets Frank Sobotka out of their sight and vulnerable to violence (because they aren't as familiar with procedures within the state's attorney's office) but scream bloody murder if the screen doesn't reflect every day of their life in journalism, exactly.

 "You have to listen to the notes she's not playing" **

I think Lisa Simpson sums up the season in that single sentence.  We've spent four seasons watching bureaucratic and institutional dysfunction, not to mention out and out corruption, in the police force, labor unions, political arenas and public schools.  Why is this the first we're hearing about it?  Why is this the first we are seeing the incompetence demonstrated and explained?  David Simon, the show's creator and executive producer, posits the answer by adding the newsroom storyline: the state of journalism is a mess and fails to focus on important aspects of real life because they are populated by journalists with little experience and led by those who prefer to focus on winning awards.  They go about winning awards by following a proven formula of reporting, not unlike Season Four showing the fundamental flaws of "teaching to the test" when the kids are preparing for their standardized testing.

 

The best novels and televisions shows "show and don't tell" but it's even more difficult to show the absence of a positive, which if I viewed the show correctly (and there is a correct way)*** was the goal.  While the systemic problems shown in the other storylines continue, the newspaper has other priorities than shed on a light on these, never more apparent when they decided to de-prioritize reporting Prop Joe's murder.  It is a subtle, quick moment which encapsulates the entire newsroom storyline.

* Season Four's finale "Final Grades" ran 78 minutes because they needed 18 more minutes in that season to finish stabbing us in the heart/crotch

** From "Lisa the Simpson" where Lisa comments on how to listen to jazz

*** Simon later clarified what he was saying.  It's pretty interesting no matter what you think about it.  Also his thoughts on blogging and oh my god I started a tv blog!