My solution to this small dilemma has always been to tell anyone who will listen that there are two shows that they must watch, because they are the greatest of all time.

The Wire is excellent in every single way. It is deliberate, but never boring. Thoughtful, without taking sides. Except for the side that continues to scream that things aren’t so great in West Baltimore. The show is beautiful and epic. I love it. Just wish more people would’ve loved it too.

Where Wallace at?!?!?!?

The interesting thing I took out of that article was Simon’s thing about it being about the “death of work” … So true. It’s just so much about bullshit and red tape – on the professional, legal side anyway. It really shows how bogged down things are, how superficial, phony, etc.

But yes, too – such great, realistic characters. You end up talking about them like they’re real! And the only one that has a kind of heightened fictional feel is a character for the ages, Omar Little.

re: accent

A friend played a clip of Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell, on a British daytime talk show, now I can’t hear Stringer talk without hearing Idris which is funny, since I’d not have guessed that he wasn’t American the 1st time seeing the series.

An interesting melange of casting, American actors, British actors, 1st time actors who used to be in ‘the game’.

The novel comparison is quite apt, though I could see David Simon’s hyperbalic self-promotion wearing thin.

So many wonderfully conceived and written characters, that feel so intrinsically lifelike and thoroughly human that I could discuss them for hours (and have).

The Wire is an enormous jigg-saw puzzle, that reveals and reflects and refracts the condition of so many Modern American cities: drugs, crime, poverty, addiction, corruption, the collapse of American manufacturing and the Urban Middle class, blight, gentrification, the failure of our schools, the stifling affects of bloat and entrenched bureaucracy that prevents change in city goverance, the school, the police, the hopeless abandonment of the homeless: the addicted, the poor, the mentally unstable.

All achieved through the weaving of an such amazing tapestry of characters that it rarely feels forced or didactic, and the spread of the story, the reach and drift as the plot begins to spiral farther and farther from its beginnings, feels utterly organic, as inter-connected as an ecosystem.

[1] I’d go:

Season 4
Season 2
>
Season 3
>>
Season 1
>>>
Season 5

Season 4 might just be the finest season of drama I’ve ever seen on television.

Anyway it’s hard to compare shows that have different parameters. But generally I’d say the Wire is definitely in the top, top, top, top tier. It’s just soooooo good.

Nice.

[3] haha, indeed.

I have yet to watch a minute of The Wire and I too have had folks tell me it may be the best show ever (I’m skeptical, but still expecting a great show). Alex, lemme know when you’re going to dive in – maybe I’ll do likewise so I have someone to jaw with about it!