The Wire: Not the best show on TV

It's only episode 3 of the fifth season of The Wire, but it's clear that this season is going to be one of the best. The storylines are complex yet digestible, and there's already a sense of not being able to wait for the next couple of episodes to see what's going to happen.

As for those claims of The Wire being the best show on TV, it's not. It's not a better show than Buffy, than the short-lived Firefly, than Lost at its best or The Sopranos. That's because The Wire isn't a TV show. It's really a 60-hour motion picture that's taken five years to make and view. The serialized drama nature is so pronounced that individual "episodes" really aren't stories in and of themselves, they are just chapters in the longest, most thickly intertwined character-driven novel that just happens to be on television.

I think it's interesting that there are two classes of people: Those who love The Wire and fully agree that it is probably the best thing ever filmed (or at the very least, one of the best), and those people who haven't seen more than two episodes of the show. Watching a single (or even two or three) episodes of the Wire is a fairly poor viewing experience, because of the lack of context. This is probably one of the reasons the show hasn't received the awards it deserves; it requires solid commitment from the beginning of the series to fully appreciate it.

In tonight's episode, Valchek, who was introduced in season two, makes what seems like a cameo. But in the short minute he's on screen, with the few lines he delivers, and the responses from the characters while he's in the room and immediately after he leaves, is worth hours of discussion. You feel you know these characters, so even when you see them or just hear their name mentioned (another police officer, "Bunny" was mentioned in what seemed like a throwaway line that had a similar effect). Each scene of the series causes you to reflect on other scenes, situations, and even "I wonder what character X is doing right now" because of the incredibly rich characterizations.

Because of this richness, I've adopted an unusual viewing pattern for this season. Before each new episode, I watch the previous week's episode. I do this for three reasons:

1. To catch a lot of the details I missed in the first viewing.
2. To make sure I'm ready for the new episode, with last week's activities fresh in my mind.
3. Because it's so good I can watch it again a week later, and look forward to doing so.

If you haven't seen The Wire, don't start watching it on HBO now. Buy or Rent the DVDs of the first season and watch that first, then the 2nd, then the 3rd and 4th. In some ways, I'm jealous of folks who haven't seen The Wire yet, because they'll get to view it all for the first time in a nice big solid chunk. Those of us who have been there since the beginning have patiently waited week after week for each show, with no possibility of the instant gratification that DVD watching provides.


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