Time to Re-Up

This Sunday is a big day in my world.

And no, it is not Chris Castile's birthday.

On Sunday, "The Wire" returns for its fifth and final season. I really can't say enough about the show that, in my opinion, is far and away the best thing ever broadcast on television. But I'll try, because it's Friday, which means it is blog time, and I may as well write about something that I already push to people with similar zeal to an evangelical missionary.

Let me start off by staring that the show is wildly unappreciated. Perhaps even moreso than "Arrested Development", another one of my favorites. The only reason it has run for (soon to be) five seasons is that it airs on HBO, which doesn't have to worry about ad money. Also, I'd imagine the station needs something good to balance out the fact that it will probably show "Norbit" about 1,100 times over the next month, but that's just a theory.

Even though it has received great critical acclaim, the show has, for some odd reason, never won an Emmy. In the TV world, this is somewhat of a travesty (in the real world, it ranks somewhere on the sad scale around "Aw, man, I dropped my ice cream!" Still it's a bummer. Bear with me). How this show has not been recognized is beyond me. I am not alone in these sentiments. In one of the behind-the-scenes specials about the show, a critic from Time Magazine exclaims "'The Wire' hasn't won an Emmy!? It deserves the Nobel Prize for literature!". 

The critic's statement may seem to be a bit of hyperbole to most people, but, frankly, I think it's close to the truth. Although it is a TV show, the series stands as a great achievement in storytelling. Each episode is unbelievably well crafted and the overarching story gives deep insight into many of the ills affecting inner cities and America in general. It is difficult to sum up the excellence of every facet of the show, and I usually just end up exclaiming something to the tune of "IT'S FUCKING AWESOME!". Suffice it to say, the skill put into "The Wire" is unparalleled.

Also, parts of one episode involve an Orioles game. Suck on that, "winning" baseball teams. But that's beside the point.

So why hasn't the show received much attention? I think it may lie in the nature of TV shows itself. Television is an escapist media. Most of us, including myself (For God's sake, I've watched about a million hours work of Nickelodeon "Guts" over my lifetime), will sit down and watch something we find entertaining to separate ourselves from the real world and relax at the end of the day. Thought-provoking shows yank us out of this bubble, and, with shows like "The Wire" in particular, may force us to deal with things we may not necessarily find all that pleasant. Most people don't want to really think when they watch TV, never mind face the facts that many of our institutions are failing inside cities. Thus, "The Wire" gets poor ratings.

If you look around the series-of-tubes that is the internet, you'll likely find hundreds of testimonials as to why "The Wire" is great. Some will praise the acting, while others will champion the superb writing or gritty realism. Some may dwell on the fact that Omar both slings a shotgun with the best of 'em and enjoys tongue-kissing dudes. As for me, well let me just say... um...

IT'S FUCKING AWESOME

Yes, I am extremely eloquent.

If you have HBO, do yourself a favor and tune in on Sunday night, and if you have Netflix, try to get your hands on the DVDs. Shows this good are few and far between.

Or you can always watch "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?". Your choice.