Flecks of… Gray?

pictures of t-shirts from printfection

I read somewhere that “The Wire” is the show that, “teaches you how to watch it”. This sums up my feelings for this show almost more than anything else.

It’s a completely unique show in that it has many deep character arcs that span multiple seasons to accomplish what a normal show would cover in a special two-parter. After I buckled down and watched the first season (it was kinda tough to get used to), I got into the second season thinking I knew what to expect and it spends a season re-teaching me that I need to learn how to watch it.

The themes of the show are massive, covering relationships, family, corruption and most thoroughly, politics. Most of the time, the politics fit in very naturally to the show because of all the long arcs and personal beefs, they’re easy to see unfold and their effects linger.

This show does still hang around with me even when I read the paper or watch the news as it gives me a whole different perspective on other things that are going on in the world that I know nothing about. Some of my favorite people/parts of the show are Hampsterdam, anything Omar does (well, almost anything), Stringer Bell’s smoothness, D’Angelo’s heart, the cell phone tapping cat and mouse games with the drug gangs, Carver’s character transition, Bubbles trying to keep his head above water, the unexpected awfulness of Snoop, in a weird way, the things that come out of Rawl’s mouth, and how it all cycles back (the last episode tying everything back to the original characters was great!)

The first four seasons were quite good making the 5th season that much more of a potent disappointment. I liked bringing in the newspapers to the fold and the focus on corruption in the police, paper and politically but I was so upset to see McNulty and Lester stoop to where they did; I thought it was a betrayal of their characters and it ruined McNulty as one of my favorite characters.

All that said, this is a hard series to really recommend to anyone. The language is pretty raw, any action is virtually non-existent, there are a lot of main and side characters to keep track of and the stories take FOOORRREEEEVVVEERRRR to unfold. Getting past that, it is a rewarding experience to journey with these characters and learn about the underbelly of a city and how it gets to be (and stay) that way.

You come at the king, you best not miss.

This post was because Chris asked for it, I’ll try to do a Shield comparison sometime soon.