The Wire

The word is out that there aren't enough teevee posts at Blogcritics, so here's my offering, admittedly cribbed from a few posts I've made at my own blog in the past.

Can't say I know much about the Golden Globes ... I believe those are the ones where the results are questionable? Anyway, I just saw a news story about them, and noticed that in the teevee category, The Wire won exactly zero Golden Globes. For all I know, it wasn't nominated. But I just thought I'd mention that The Wire is the best show on teevee, even if the Golden Globes doesn't know it.

The primary reason is the labyrinthian depth of plot and character. And that's also the reason why it will likely never be a big hit ... I want to say a "watercooler show," but I don't actually know anyone who talks about teevee around a watercooler. Quite simply, The Wire is too much work to be popular. Which isn't to say that fans of the show are somehow better than the riffraff who prefer Everybody Loves Raymond. There are good reasons why, when we turn on the television, we might not want to have to think and pay attention and focus and obsess.

So The Wire becomes a show that rewards diligent viewers, but most of us aren't diligent viewers, and even those of us who are diligent aren't diligent 24/7, so how many people are actually gonna watch this show?

But it's a great show. Excutive producer David Simon did an interview where he talks about the show:

The show is crafted as a visual novel; most of episodic television, even when its very good, is crafted as a series of short stories.... You have to consider that the nature of a novelistic television show is that each chapter builds on the previous, so that the pace accelerates. That means that the first episodes of any season are much like the early chapters of a long narrative. They set the stage, introduce characters and begin the plotting that will result, hopefully, in the payoff.

Perhaps the most infamous scene in Wire history came during the first season. The setup was mundane: two cops visit the crime scene for a months-old unsolved murder case. But two things happen during the scene, which goes on for almost five minutes. The two detectives detect. With nothing more than some old photos, a little paperwork, and a tape measure, they figure out what happened six months ago and collect a couple of pieces of vital, previously undiscovered evidence. And as you watch them work ... well, it's fascinating, and you are v.impressed with how good they are at their job of detecting.

Article Author: Steven Rubio

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