The gangsters get younger all the time. That's the point. Everyone knows it. Barksdale begat Omar begat Marlo begat the next young hood who would be king. These kids throwing piss balloons at each other will soon be shooting bullets, unless Cutty, the boxing guy, can make the difference he wants to make.

What makes The Wire so powerful is not the surprises, it's the inevitable. The banality of the obvious. None of it is a mystery. The bad get dead and the good get demoted. Corruption afflicts both cops and robbers. What this show has done is humanize both. Tell me you want to see Omar as dead as Stringer Bell or DeAngelo. Tell me you want to see McNulty become the next police chief.

We know where these characters are headed. We can taste it. And yet David Simon and his crew of city-born realists have made this aging Mid-Atlantic port city so real to us that we pray for a Hollywood ending to a Baltimore story. And being from Philadelphia, I know how this east coast rowhouse saga ends. It ain't pretty.

But it's real as dirt.

Those kids being introduced in this first episode of the season, those kids are as real as pavements. I have no idea what the season will hold. But I know there will be no surprises. There ain't no savior rising from these streets. There is only humanity. As flawed and magnificent and obvious as it is. The girl bought a Cadillac of a big-bore semi-automatic nail gun to do a job. I kept waiting for a murder by nail.

I won't spoil for you what the nail gun did. But I will say that it sealed the deal.