The Wire

Due to the fact nothing of note is occurring in my life, I have decided to begin reviewing different pieces of media. It might be television, movies, books, newspaper articles or music (though I usually have little criticism for music other than whether I enjoyed it or didn't). I will start with a review of the first two seasons of The Wire, which I just viewed. Here goes nothing...

The Wire - Season One

A depressing, grim, pessimistic series involving death, drugs and violence, and it happens to be one of the most fulfilling shows I have ever seen. In a world of cops catching bad guys after an our of investigation (counting the commercials), I finally found a show that demonstrates all the messy details of police work.

Plan on arresting the ring leaders of a crime organization? Well, you better follow the small time gangsters for ten episodes first. Want to try some tricky legal maneuver to get a legal wiretap? You better prove that you did your homework before hand and not just to the judge but also to the audience. Want to drop Benjamins while rollin' with your homies? You better sell your red-tops all day in the pits with the dope fiends first.

The most impressive aspect of The Wire has so far been how it turns the mundane of the police work and drug dealing into the fascinating. My favorite scenes from this season involve some pretty boring stuff: Detectives McNulty and Bunk investigating a crime scene (where the perpetrated crime was already described in detail by another character) using continuous profanity as a way to quell their boredom; another scene involves D'Angelo (a drug dealer) teaching some of his drug dealer minions how to play chess ("The King stays the King"). Both scenes would have been cut from a run--of-the-mill procedural drama to fit in more exposition about the case, but The Wire was wise enough to let them remain.

Overall, with the twists and turns of a roller-coaster, the season finished off a bit too easily (I still have trouble understanding where all the money went to, but I guess I will find out during Season Three). This easiness though was not a bad thing at all, but instead continues with the theme of being so undramatic and yet dramatic at the same time that you feel like every ending is both a cliffhanger of the story and an ending of a dozen others. This Season deserves a good score, so it will get one: 10/10

The Wire - Season Two

The reason I did not mention characterization as the best part of Season One (which it was) is because Season two showed growth of characters even better, and repetitivenesses is a bit annoying, and I mean really annoying.

Though I was at first concerned about the addition of a boat load of new cast members to the already filled out show, The Wire continued its trend of taking nobodies and making them somebody. Several characters that I couldn't stand the first few episodes (Ziggy especially comes to mind) were so substantially changed by the end that my heart went out to them.

The section of the story I was most interested in was the continuation of the Barksdale story from inside and outside the joint. Whether it was Stringer Bell (who I felt was the one character I didn't enjoy this season, though he improved vastly in what I have seen so far of the third) manipulating circumstances or D'Angelo's issues, their story logically progressed from where it left off at the end of Season One and was able to stay on it's own two feet without the benefit of the cops discussing all the plot twists immediately after they happened (at least until the last episode).

While the season didn't grab me as firmly as the first, it still had more of a hold than even the best trials and tribbleations of Law & Order. Season Two deserves: ****and 1/2 of a *.

Now if only Season Three would start heating up...