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The Wire Season 5 Premeires tonight and none of y’all motherfuckers better call me when it’s on!

FROM EONLINE:
The Wire, The Wire, The Wire—don’t you get sick of critics saying this HBO drama is the best thing since TV was invented? Do you find yourself thinking, If it’s so good, why aren’t more people watching?


We did.

That is, until we watched the entirety of the first four seasons (as well as the first episode of this final season five, which premieres Jan. 6 at 9 p.m.), and we can only conclude the following:

Yes, it’s really that good.

We won’t lie. The Wire, created by David Simon and Ed Burns, can seem like a complex, unwelcoming series to the uninitiated. The show explores the city of Baltimore through the eyes of cops, crooks, kids, union bosses, dock workers, politicians, preachers, teachers, newsies, drug abusers and a fascinating guy named Omar.

The series, which boasts stellar novelists Dennis Lehane, Richard Price and George Pelecanos on its writing staff, has featured hundreds of characters and multiple story arcs—some of which are still in play going into this last season. (And the soundtrack is good, too.)

While it can seem complicated to explain all its richness to a viewer just dropping in now (trust us, we’ve tried), at its root it’s simple: The Wire is about the system and how it can either eat a person up or be played with some savvy self-interest.

That said, it’s also funny, gripping, smart and heart-wrenching. There are stories that have moved us in ways television just doesn’t usually do. Cops who do the right thing, cops who don’t. Criminals with vision and those who just want to work their corner selling drugs. People who try and fail, people who cheat and prosper.

It’s a diverse cast of characters all the way down to, yes, Omar, a silk pajama-wearing, shotgun-wielding stickup man who only robs drug dealers and who takes his grandmother to church on Sunday. He’s an amazing creation, but there are many more—Lester, Bubbles, Stringer Bell—just as compelling, if not as flamboyant.

Seriously, this isn’t good-for-you TV, this is simply good TV. So, what are ya gonna do? Watch? Ignore? Say something down below.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 7:49 pm and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.