Why The Wire Was The Greatest Show Ever

The Wire had the misfortune of introducing itself to the world not long after the September 11^th attacks on America. It premiered to a nation reeling from those attacks. We wanted entertainment that forwarded an ideal of America “the hero”. The nation that was the envy of the world, the right and noble that was honest and righteous. This was the same time that shows like 24 hit the airwaves. 24 was the embodiment of the American justice dream. It was a show with a protagonist who would stop at nothing to ensure the safety of our nation. Its hero, Jack Bauer, was willing to do anything to protect all of the vulnerable viewers tuning in every week to see the evil “other” punished for their radical attacks on our home.  

              The Wire operated on a whole different spectrum. It was not a show about the “other”. It was not about noble Americans fighting the evils from the outside. It was about broken people, with varying motivations, fighting the evils within. For five seasons, The Wire took viewers deep into the world of Baltimore crime and punishment.  It dissected the city like nobody initially expected, all due to creator David Simon’s vision for the show. He knew going in, that if he presented his entire idea to HBO, the show would never have been green lit.  He told the studio they were going to produce a police show unlike any other. Instead of a standard police procedural, that focused on a new case every episode, this was going to be an in-depth look at one long-term case that spanned an entire 12-hour season. The studio was confident in the Homicide creator and gave him the go ahead. Surely having co-creator Ed Burns, former detective, didn’t hurt either.

                  What HBO did not know was what Simon and Burns really had in mind. This wasn’t just a show about cops and criminals. This was going to be a methodically planned out and executed work of art that worked as a cross section of an American city in a post industrial, post modern world. It was going to explore themes of political corruption, the bureaucracy of law enforcement and the brokenness of our education system, the failure of media, and the war on the lower class. The show was ultimately about the structures America had built to protect it and how we had all ended up serving those systems. Throughout the show, the viewer comes to understand the dangers of attempting to turn against or change said systems.

            As mentioned previously this was not all present at first. The first season of The Wire was focused on the war on drugs. It revolved around one crime family in the inner city and the police’s attempt to bring them down through the use of wire surveillance. In this season, we were introduced to the first wave of what is possibly the best ensemble of actors ever brought together.  They were complex characters that blurred the lines of good and evil and operated in the grayness of reality. The cops, Mcnulty, Bunk, Daniels, Kima and numerous others, populated the fractured world of law enforcement. Meanwhile we met drug lords like Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell and their street level workers D’Angelo, Bodie, Poot, and the tragic Wallace. On both sides we had people working in varying levels of nobility to get their piece of the American dream. Further graying the lines are two of the shows best characters, lifelong heroin addict and career police informant, Bubbles and gay-gangster/drug-world robin-hood, Omar.

            What seemed like a battle between these two sects became more complicated each season when another layer of the city was revealed to us. Season two introduced us to another group of people fighting for survival, the broken system of union employees that populated the port of Baltimore. Season three took us deeper into city hall and the justice system as we began following the mayoral race and one rogue Captain’s ideas about the war on drugs. Season four acted as an origin story. We were thrust into the school system and met the children that would soon be the players in the conflict we had been watching play out for the last few years. Season five ultimately introduced the media’s role by portraying the city’s dying newspaper and its role in shaping public opinion.

            While the show ran for five years it always struggled to find a large audience. It never reached the numbers of HBO juggernaut, The Sopranos, and the reason for this is simultaneously one of the shows greatest strengths and weaknesses.  The Wire never talks down to its audience. It does not go out of its way to explain things to you. In its entire run there was only one flashback used to remind the audience of something and that was in the first episode. David Simon was going to take his audience seriously and he expected the same in return. This wasn’t a show to watch while doing chores or balancing your checkbook. With a huge cast and several storylines, you had to pay attention. It was not a show you could just jump into midseason and appreciate. This hurt its ability to gain an audience over the course of a season. DVD really is the ideal format for this show, you can watch faster and be allowed to appreciate the many layers of the show. Watching it over the course of its run would have made moments in later seasons that were paying off things from the beginning of the first season, very hard to notice. Simon treated the show as a long novel. Each chapter slowly built on what had come before it. That way, there were not many single standout episodes. You have to judge it on its entirety, not its pieces.

The Wire is now over, but my thoughts on it are not. I will consider this entry as just an intro to what was the best show ever and end it now. I will come back every once in awhile to cover more of the show and build my defense for its greatness.