So...here I am again. I won't apologize for the length between posts, because from what I can tell about reading blogs, it's pretty much a given that there will be long absences from writing. Fine. Y'know, life happens. It's not like anyone is paying me to do this or anything. And since I haven't even told anyone I'm blogging I don't expect anyone is reading this yet anyway.
One of the big things I have been doing with my time lately is watching what some have called the best show on television: The Wire. I never watched the show during its on-air run since I did not become an HBO subscriber until a couple of seasons had aired. Every once in a while when traveling, I would turn on HBO in my hotel room only to note (disappointedly) that The Wire was airing, cheating me out of catching a movie I had not yet seen or an old favorite. My default setting is that if I don't start a series "at the beginning, I typically don't watch it at all (notable exceptions: ER and The West Wing, but I was able to quickly get caught up on those thanks to syndication). So it went with The Wire--I knew very little about it at all, somehow missing any of the critical buzz it had, until a few months ago. I still think the main reason I searched out the series on DVD was because Idris Elba showed up as a character ("Charles Minor") on The Office (American version) and everything I read on the Internet always referred to him as "Stringer Bell." That's when it entered my consciousness, and I began to pick up on other references to The Wire.
Turns out it was a really good thing not to try and catch an episode of The Wire "here and there": the show is absolutely mercilous on casual viewers. I would dare say that you would be nearly completely lost if you did not start with Episode 1 of Season 1 and watch every episode in sequence. And I say with complete confidence that if you do start at the beginning, you will be HOOKED and HAVE TO see the rest of the series. I am a sucker for a serialized story, and The Wire is perhaps the greatest series I have ever seen (and I DO watch a lot of TV).
Beginning around the second week of May, I rented Season 1, and I have plowed through the first three seasons in the past 6 weeks--that's 37 full hour-long episodes in 42 days. This show is so good! Each season is like one long episode--this isn't like the Law & Orders or CSIs out there where there is a bit of a thread carried out over the season's arc for the loyal viewers, while the casual fan can catch an episode every few weeks or so and still enjoy a nicely introduced-and-wrapped-up storyline. No. Its like a TV version of a novel, with interesting chapter breaks and a slow build to the climax in the final episodes of the season. I highly recommend watching the first 2-3 episodes without taking too long a break between: the show has its own rhythm and it takes a few eps to get used to it. Scenes can and will play out cryptically, making very little sense until much later in the episode or even one or two eps down the line. Stick with it--it is SO worth it!
And it isn't your typical cop drama either. Season 1 focused on the West Baltimore drug trade, with equal time spent on the dope dealers and the cops chasing them. But Season 2 shifted to the Baltimore docks and a completely new set of characters, while carrying on with the storyline of many of the players in the first season. Season 3 focused on city/state politics, while again playing out the storyline of some of our favorites from the previous seasons. As Alan Sepinwall says in his blog for Episode 1 of Season 2:
...what David Simon, Ed Burns and company are doing here is revealing that "The Wire" is going to be far more than a cops vs. drug dealers saga. It's not a crime show. There's a lot of crime in it, yes, but it's a story about the death of an American city (really, the death of the American city), and little by little the show is going to take us into every corner of that city.I am trying to make myself wait before diving into Season 4, because I know that with only two seasons left, it will be hard for me to take my time and savor each episode, knowing that once they are seen, they will no longer be "new" to me. It's like that melancholy sense you have when you are nearing the final page of the excellent, riveting book you are reading: you want to know what happens, how it all turns out, but you don't want it to be over.
Long post, I know, but do yourself a favor and get started on Season 1 of The Wire: rent it, get it on loan from your library, buy it. Trust me: you won't be sorry.
