I wanted to watch the season finale of The Wire last night but was stymied by HBO On Demand. Generally HBOOD subscribers have been able to watch episodes a week before they air but now that the series is coming to a close, and my favorite characters are getting killed off (goodbye, Omar! so long, Snoop!), I’ve been told that I have to wait until March 10 — a day after the finale airs.

Well, what’s the point of that? I want to fast forward to the conclusion — just like I would prefer to speed through the coming six weeks and get to the Pennsylvania primary to see what’s going to happen. Of course I was disappointed in the results of this week (though they’re still digging through the TX caucus results as I write) and hate to think that this thing is going to be settled by the kind of fear-mongering displayed in Hillary’s three am phone call ad, which seems to have played pretty well in Ohio. But mostly I would just like to get to the part where we’re fighting with Republicans again.

I mean, I like political process more than most but at the end of the day, it’s hard to really dislike Hillary. She’s just kind of a boring scold with a dangerous sense of self-entitlement — not a possibly deranged, Frankenstein monster of a conservative like the GOP’s presumptive nominee. That fight will be a lot more fun. We can all sing “Fie on Goodness,” along with the restless knights of Camelot. (“Ah, to spend a tortured evening staring at the floor/Guilty and alive once more!”)

But now the rest of these states want to vote and if Hillary does as well as polls (and her people) indicate she will in PA, she will continue to crow about her electability and Obama’s amateur status. And he has made a few missteps this week, blaming the press for being mean to him and then giving a mish-mash of a speech Tuesday night that sounded more like a joint effort by Mister Potato Head and Woody Guthrie than the kind of ringing poetry we’ve come to expect from the man.

But if setbacks like the Ohio and Texas defeats really knock him off his game, he probably doesn’t deserve to be president. Hillary is right to say that she has been vetted more than Obama has, mostly because she’s been out there longer, drawing fire from the GOP death squads. I think Obama needs to learn to take her kitchen-sink attacks — deal with the Rezko connection, answer the NAFTA memo questions — and lob back a few of his own. Might I suggest he look at a little documentary called The War Room? That’s where we saw Bill Clinton’s then-cornermen, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville perfect the art of the modern political counter-punch.

As far as The Wire goes, I’m not expecting any miracles. Generally each season has ended the same way, with the same old crooks in power, doing the same old same old. But there is also, always, a glimmer of hope. You just have to wait for it.