The Wire: WHOA

Good people told me it was terrific.  I dismissed them.  I thought "you've seen fifty cop dramas, you've seen them all".  I was wrong.

I am the better part of two seasons into The Wire, and I just got it.   I don't mean to tickle you, I didn't mean I just figured out that it was worth watching;  I've been glued to my TV since my first hit.  I knew it was good, but I spent a good three weeks trying to think of a cognoscente way of nailing down why it's so special.

I got my answer tonight.

While one Mr. Cash and his bag-of-sex-and-nails voice walked the line,  the humble audience is treated to machinations of good honest-to-Christ detective work in action.  They bug, they snap, they follow and they track bad guys who are every bit as smart as they are in an opening act montage that belongs on the Mount Olympus of Television moments.  It's gritty, it's mean, it's funny and if it's missing anything in terms of realism, it makes up for it with believability.  Every character in this show is patiently thought out, interesting and believable.    The show can embrace such an amazing scope, an cast of journeymen and amateurs alike playing "real" people in so many different stages of "the Game" and never once make me feel like they're skimping, on a story line or a character.  There are certain personality traits (McNaulty's libido and Rawls' angry) and even some characters (Omar, Ziggy and Brother Mouzone) that are over-the-top, but the urge to roll my eyes is mercifully absent.   

They just show love for every character on the screen.  It is badass to be good at what you do, and on every level from criminal to copper to politician, every character on this show is firing on all cylinders.  Even the junkies and baby mommas are playing the game.

The natural reflex I and everyone I've run through this with is to compare The Wire with The Sopranos.  I think that's fair, but only because both shows took a formula buried with examples of mediocrity and made it enthralling on all levels, but that's where fair comparisons have to end.  Where Sopranos was operatic in everything it did, from violence, to story, to comedy to the absurd, the Wire can be understated and still pull off the same greatness.  The Sopranos is about Tony, and because of that they got away with a stable of one dimensional characters filling up the cracks.  The Wire is about Baltimore, and that's where it's special.  Any character could get shot and the show could go on without a snag, because it's a big city and for all the work, and the violence, the net result of whoever wins or loses is inconsequential in the end.

So, since I'm only 2 seasons into it, and since Tony and Malfi have come to occupy the same place in my mind as Lucy and Charlie Brown playing football (thus rendering it sacred), I cannot and need not pick a favourite.

All I can say is, there is no Janice in The Wire.