"The truth that doesn't bend, breaks."

"Bend to far, and you're already broken."

"Theres the street, the game, and what happened here today."

 

                The Wire: My favorite television show…ever

 

So often television tries to shed the robe of cliché and transcend the entire genre. Endless, but not very deep are the annuls of television history. Despite that matter, I have struggled to "assign" what I consider to be the best of television. Not that the world is waiting with bated breath… I think I found a definite contender for number one. The Wire ended 2 years ago on HBO. "It's not television, It's HBO" the tagline for the network which has brought many other great shows such as The Sopranos and Deadwood has put out cinema quality shows now for years. The three aforementioned shows are all favorites of mine, and Wire being the best.

All three of the shows are character driven, and both Deadwood and The Sopranos have dominating lead characters. What makes The Wire great is the depth of characters both in numbers and in the quality. Series creators David Simon and Ed Burns took their real life experiences in the trenches and created a series so visceral that it demands your full attention. Leaving you with questions about how can this be true, and I bet that is true and a perverse curiosity of what it would be like to live "down in the hole". Simon was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Burns was a Baltimore homicide and drug cop for twenty years, then taught in the inner-city schools prior to working with Simon on The Wire. A lifetime of experiences can be quite the muse. These two men have put together one whopping story, and then took that story and invested in its characters like no other television show has in my opinion.

Although many of the characters are described by the creators as being "inspired by" they affirm that it is a work of fiction. The genius of the show is that it takes a story line, a dubious cast of characters, and makes you care for them. Even the drug king-pins and murderers have a connection with the story in which it is hard to assign villain or hero. Shades of grey pervade the show at every angle. Each show is so intricate, so nuanced, and every detail matters that it requires a commitment of the viewer to carry on unlike many other shows. It eschews red herring, and cliché in lieu of reality. Reality so unbelievable sometimes that it strains the credulity to believe that this … really happens. Each season has a payoff for the audience. Then they hit the reset button, shake everything up, and change the plot line. Each season exists within itself, but not ignorant to the others. In the end, all five seasons can be put together like a puzzle. The complexity of the show is what really stays with you after watching the entire story. It's not an obvious complexity, but one that you appreciate after time.

 

Many have called The Wire Shakespearian, and not only a great television achievement a "literary achievement". This acclaim is deserved, and seconded here. I can relate to those that have seen clips, or the cover of the box-set and think they are getting Boys n' the Hood. Season one, the closest to 'Hood speaks to the same plight of growing up in this environment yet offers so much more. Those movies that romanticize the "Gangsta" lifestyle, offer just that and very little substance. Where 'Hood waxed poetic on brotherhood, Wire is poetically true to the streets and that same brotherhood. A relationship that comes with a heavy price. Proof that the term "thick as thieves" can mean more than those on the corner slanging, but can better be used to describe the politicians and the powers-that-be who we trust to protect and govern us. The show pulls no punches in regards to police and government corruption, union and organized crime collusion, the schools futile endeavor to educate the inner-city youth, and the media's affair with headlines and ad revenue.

The show doesn't get behind just one hero but the many that go to work every day and have to oppose these very forces. Some turn a blind eye to it and accept the bleak circumstances that are portrayed so realistically here. Then there's the teacher that reaches into his own pockets. The newspaper editor that says something doesn't seem right here. The cop that says when people are dying, policy doesn't matter. The stories of the unsung rebels that are truly heroic.

I highly recommend The Wire. I spotted this on my desktop when I sat down to write a little about a new show called The Walking Dead. I can say even today, that I yearn for the time to sit down and reexamine The Wire. The last episode goes down as one of the greatest ending chapters to any store told. Not gaudy and overcooked like so much television. Pitch perfect and reverent to the characters and the city that made the show what it is and always will be--a snapshot of a time and place that will always exist if we choose to ignore it. An exposé on society and a forgotten world right under our noses, and all around us. A thank-you to those that have the duty to enforce the laws that insulate us from the atrocities that happen every day, right under our nose. Especially the true heroes that stick their necks out in order to make sure justice is served even though the forces against them seem unstoppable.

Ill end on a quote, just like I started this piece with and just like each episode of The Wire started.

"Thin line between Heaven and here." Bubbles