Much as we hate to admit it, the penultimate episode of the fifth and final season of “The Wire,” shown tonight on HBO, was a true and brilliant return to form for David “McNutty” Simon, the crackpot genius whose comic failings we have been charting with such gusto in this space. The show was full of drama and pathos; chilling images, absurdist red herrings and the thrilling plot turns; marvelous acting, complex political maneuverings, and loose ends brought together mordantly. Indeed, all of the things we have known and loved about this show—all of the things that have been so irritatingly absent this season—were back.

The universe is a ticking clock; but the earth is, as the poet said, an old chaos. We are accordingly buffeted by precise mechanisms and random events; each of these forces play their roles tonight. It is a delight to see the various pairings here—Daniels and Perlman; Levy and Herc; Marlo and Chris—ponder their workings and their mischief. And clocks, too, play a role in Marlo’s downfall, Freamon’s redemption, even McNutty’s foolish imaginary serial killer, as the time runs out on Kima’s forbearance.

Watching “The Wire” this season has been much like a succession of painful dental procedures. We know, we believe, it will end sometime, but it scarcely makes the individual steps on the journey less discomfiting. And it hasn’t helped as own suspicions grew, with each passing visit, that the person in whom we’d entrusted ourselves—David Simon—was taking leave of his senses.

We don’t know whether it is due to a Dostoyeveskian moment of lucidity or an accident; a respite, sheer chance, or a incipient mutiny on the part of his crew or perhaps his masters at HBO as the fifth season progressed; but we are just happy that this particular episode didn’t suck beans the way the others have, and we are suddenly and giddily optimistic about the last.

(The last episode, according to the HBO schedule, will be 93 minutes long; if you are Tivo-ing, it might be smart to record the immediately following program as well, so you don’t lose the final three minutes. The TV sites are reporting, incidentally, that there will be no on-demand version of the last episode available the week before its formal showing.)

The bad old days of the dual imaginary serial killers are behind us. The aftertaste lingers, but we have distractions. Now that the absurd and unbelievable plot contortions of Scott “Smeagol” Templeton’s abuses are past, we can savor a chase: Intrepid city editor Gus Haynes is out to expose the fabricator, and the hunt is limned with a great deal of style and intrigue.

Similarly, over in the police department, we hear almost nothing of McNutty’s own serial killer itself, though he is now dealing with the consequences of his creation. But we’ve forgotten about it in any case, because Freamon’s wiretapping of the Stansfield gang produces the information the department needs to haul in the whole lot—Marlo, Chris and Cheese among them. This too, is handled with drive, economy and panache of “The Wire” of old, like the cop lying in a field doing surveillance slapping bugs.

After episode after episode of utter foolishness surrounding Clay Davis, even that thread of the show pays off, in an underplayed but powerful tête-à-tête between the mountebank state senator and a very cool Freeman. After several episodes in which he chewed the scenery, delighting his partisans but not impressing the rest of us, actor Isiah Whitlock Jr. here gets to play Davis down: reflective, sharp and lethal. We’re delighted to see as well that the Davis plot strain is brought back into the main action.

Now, not everything is hunky dory:

° Since David Simon’s bugaboo is the Tribune Company, we are forced to listen to more of his proselytizing. One character utters this cludgy line: “These newspaper chain guys just don’t give a fuck, do they?” It’s amazing how the ear of Simon and his writers, generally so resonant, go tinny in the newsroom. Indeed, the show still flirts with the narrative incoherence that has been driving us batty this season, all because of Simon’s nostalgia for the good old get-me-rewrite days. For example. Haynes asks a veteran reporter at the paper to look into Templeton’s stories. “Quiet, subtle, discreet,” Haynes says. So the reporter walks into the paper’s library and announces, “I need you to give me a global printout of everything under Scott Tempelton’s byline… all of it, every edition!” You can also see how far back in the past Simon is living, as well. Neither Haynes nor the reporter was familiar with the internets, a mysterious contraption that lets one read the work of newspaper reporters in the comfort of one’s home, with the help of a newfangled device called a “personal computer.” (Every newsroom in the world, incidentally, also has an in-house computer database of the stories it publishes.)

° We have refrained from mentioning this in the past, mostly from exhaustion at charting the manifold exasperating plotting this season. But we will note here that the chances of a lawyer like Levy hiring an ex-cop like Herc and making him part of his inner circle of drug-ring conspirators is slightly less than zero. However this plays out, whether Levy figures out that Herc gave the cops Marlo’s phone number or not, the initial implausibility of this makes the whole thread a joke.

° And Simon can’t resist getting in some new Pulitzer digs at his fancypants top editors. Simon is so wrong on the subject of newspapering that you just want to smack him. Does he really think that trying to win Pulitzer prizes is a bad thing? You can chuckle at the process, but the same sort of routines go on at the NY and LA Times and most other good newspapers. The editors at the Sun are just getting their staff into the game, trying to get them the national recognition they deserve. In “The Wire,” as the effete editors smack their lips, it’s like something out of “I, Claudius.” Simon remains a knucklehead.

Some other interesting aspects of this episode:

° The word “evacuate” turns up again, this time in its scatological sense. In the first episode, Simon’s mouthpiece, Haynes, makes a big deal about a reporter’s using the word “evacuate” incorrectly. Simon and Haynes were wrong about that, on about five levels. There’s a certain justice here in the word being used here again in this sense, because Simon was full of crap the first time he used it.

° There are two plot threads to watch next week. One is Levy: Who is his source in the court house? What will become of Herc? The other is the internal police investigation that we assume will occur after Kima spills the beans on McNulty’s crazy scheme.

° Something must be done about Steve Earle’s facial hair.

° There was a dig at Showtime’s “Dexter.” “Check this out,” Dukie says to Michael, pointing at a show on the TV. ”There’s a serial killer, but he only be killin’ other serial killers!”

° We have to note the passing of Snoop. If memory serves, we first caught a glimpse of her spraying a corner from the back of a motorcycle. Her arresting presence came again at the start of the fourth season, buying a gunpowder-driven staple gun with a street patois that was both touching and filled with menace. As Chris’ horrifying sidekick, stoic and frighteningly amoral, she embodied the show’s most degraded humanity, but also one of its most elegant tropes: Amid this unfortunate city’s thousands of unfortunates, she was an urban success story, performing admirably in a position perfectly suited to her talents.

* And we say goodbye to Bug and Dukie as well and perhaps Michael too. While in this season Simon has gotten a little precious about it, there is an enormously touching strain of humanism that has run through the portrayals of many of the supporting characters, no matter where they end up. (Part of this is due to the participation of novelist George Pellicanos, who has shown himself a master of this in his crime novels.) While our glimpse of Namond is two pat by half, there is something truly Dickensian, in the most elevated, and bleakest, sense of the word, as we see Michael and Dukie part, one a child and one with no more childhood to fall back on. Dukie recalls a moment he and Michael shared from one of the first episodes of last season, a moment any child might invest with deep significance: an ice cream after a scary run-in with an opposing gang. Michael is sad about parting with his makeshift family, and does his best to humor Dukie. But in his face you can see something missing as he endeavors to conjure up in his mind the moment from his childhood. He tries, but he can’t remember.

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If you’re interested, Hitsville’s analyses of this season of “The Wire” are available below …

Episode one: As a journalist, David Simon is a pretty good showrunner
Episode two: David Simon continues to go crazy
Episode three: David Simon and the obsession that passeth all understanding
Episode four: “They call me Mr. McNutty!”
Episode five: David “McNutty” Simon and the Quantum of Solace!
Episode six: McNutty says, “I drink your milkshake!”
Episode seven: Preposterouser and preposterouser!
Episode eight: Whenever I call you friendo!

… with additional tangential expatiations on David Simon’s growing leave-taking of his senses here and here.

Finally, there’s a list of a lot of the ancillary reading of this season of “The Wire” here.