The Wire Claims Another Victim

Posted by Kyle December 11th, 2006 at 12:26pm In General Internets TV The Wire

Last night Maggie and I saw Aziz Ansari, a great stand-up comic who has made some funny videos with his sketch group Human Giant, featuring former Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy Rob Huebel. My favorite is Shutterbugs

We learned last night that MTV ordered 8 episodes of a Human Giant sketch comedy show, which will air early next year. But my favorite thing about Aziz's act last night was that he got up on stage with an air of defeat. He told us he'd been watching The Wire and he knew  there was no way anything he had to say would be better than that show. And while I enjoyed his set, he was right. The Wire is great!

Maggie and I are near the end of the 1st season on DVD, unintentionally breaking the newly minted Two Seasons Rule. After the orgy of Buffy this summer we decided to preserve our sanity by only starting shows that had fewer than three seasons to catch up on. Battlestar Galactica and Lost  just made the cut. Netflix only showed two seasons of The Wire when we first put it in the queue so we thought we were safe. Then it turns out they've just finished airing (premium cabling?) the fourth season of the show! Where have we been? Luckily it's HBO so the seasons aren't that long, but from now on we're going to do more intensive research, like looking it up on IMDb. Although that's dangerous for a show where people are always "getting got" since IMDb's always giving shit like that away with their (2002-2004)s.

People often throw around that "Best Drama on Television" thing when they talk about The Wire. I can never make those decisions. I tend to change my mind depending on how good the last episode was. After last week's convoluted and weak episode of Battlestar Galactica, The Wire has it beat. And 30 Rock is beating out The Office right now because The Office wasn't on last week and because "Past Pete is here to kill Future Pete!"

Best or not, The Wire is really good. Like all procedural dramas, there is a lot of emphasis on rules. If everyone just followed the rules, everything would run smoothly. But the problem is that smooth doesn't mean right. The majority of police and drug dealers in the show would be happiest if the drugs were sold in an orderly manner. And at the beginning of the show there is a certain kind of stability to the system. But two things happen to seriously destabilize it. First is Detective McNulty's seemingly casual conversation with a judge about Avon Barksdale, a powerful drug dealer that hardly any of the police have even heard of, who most likely had a witness killed. Second is freelance thug Omar's decision to rob Avon. Avon can't let it go, and neither can the judge. Their power must be respected. The machinations the two sides go through to return to the previous détente are frustrated by the nagging nobility of detective McNulty who actually wants to solve crimes and make the world a better place.

It's a sprawling epic with more characters than I can keep track of and more than a few cops who look just like other cops, and gangsters who look just like other gangsters, so I've spent some time in the dark. But I like that. And even when I'm confused I still know more about what's going on than any of the characters do. For most of the first season, the cops don't even know what Avon looks like. And the drug dealers are only vaguely aware of the case being built against them. It's a messy, complicated situation and if you're not watching, you should be.

Update: Maybe we should have editorial meetings. Sorry for my slightly redundant posting.