During a prison visit early in the fifth season of "The Wire," incarcerated drug kingpin Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) quizzes his ruthless rival Marlo Stansfield (Jamie Hector) about life back in the old neighborhood.

Avon's successor doesn't like chit-chat, but he feels obliged to say something. Ever laconic, Marlo tosses off what could easily be the enduring motto of "The Wire's" five brilliant seasons so far: "The game's the game."

In the 95-minute series finale airing Sunday night at 9 on HBO, Baltimore Police Detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) finally have to answer for perpetuating one of the biggest frauds since, well, Major "Bunny" Colvin (Robert Wisdom) legalized drugs in a tiny corner of West Baltimore two seasons ago.

When the episode opens, McNulty and Freamon's superiors are barely able to absorb the news that the detectives ran an illegal wire tap on Stanfield's crew on the back of a red ball for a nonexistent serial killer of homeless men.

Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) doesn't know how to punish the two without torpedoing his own gubernatorial ambitions. Police Commissioner Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) is furious because two of his men have mounted a police operation that yielded a major drug bust and brought down Baltimore's biggest drug kingpin with tainted evidence.

Marlo's lawyer figures out that his client isn't the only one who should be worried about going to jail. Maurice Levy (Michael Kostroff) enters into tense negotiations with state's attorney Rhonda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy) to put Marlo back on the streets or risk public exposure of corrupt police tactics.

Meanwhile, over at the Baltimore Sun, star reporter Scott Templeton (Tom McCarthy) is in the crosshairs of city editor Gus Haynes (Clark Peters), who is determined to prevent the paper from publishing more bogus stories about the serial killer. In doing so, Gus butts heads with bosses who are prepared to look the other way for the sake of a good story.

The final convergence of these two story lines, contrasting and mirroring each other from the perspective of two moribund institutions with parallel problems, is what "The Wire" is all about.

For five seasons, "The Wire" has chronicled the failure of institutions like city hall, the police, labor unions, the public schools and the media to deal credibly with the challenge of deindustrialization and its impact on our great American cities.

Throughout "The Wire," the drug trade stands as the purest distillation of capitalism imaginable. Drug baron Russell "Stringer" Bell (Idris Elba) used Roberts Rules of Order to conduct business meetings with his dealers. The crime syndicate is often the least dysfunctional organization in the series.

The breakout star of the series is Michael K. Williams as Omar Little, a seemingly invulnerable gay stickup artist who harassed drug lords and terrorized their corners.

Having successfully robbed and disrupted major drug operations in Baltimore for years, Omar was murdered two episodes ago by a young boy last seen torturing a cat before doing what Marlo, Avon and Stringer's people couldn't.

For all of his street notoriety, Omar's murder only merited a few lines in the Baltimore Sun. "The Wire" thrives on this kind of irony.

Helmed from beginning to end by former Baltimore Sun reporter-turned-TV-writer David Simon, "The Wire" prides itself on being the most uncompromising of television shows.

The plots are labyrinthine and defy easy entry. The dialogue resonates with the lingua franca of the streets, so there's much that can't be accessed until viewers get used to the language.

The large, 50-plus cast is predominantly black with the bulk of its actors unknown -- though that is already beginning to change. The show is also propelled by Simon's anger at injustice and institutional apathy.

Some of the best scribes in the business -- including Richard Price ("Clockers"), Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") and George Pelecanos -- wrote for the show.

Like "The Sopranos," the series has been described as novelistic. Unlike its HBO stablemate, the viewer-challenged show was never showered with industry awards or nominations, though critics have long considered it one of the best shows on television -- ever.

Now that the series has run its course, it may be time for it to be "discovered" by the masses. The first four seasons are available in attractive boxed sets. Beginners should start with season one or risk total confusion. "The Wire" is why services like Netflix exist.

First Published: March 6, 2008, 10:00 a.m.