The Wire

I am watching the second season of the Wire, which is even better than the first. I am constantly surprised at how few people I know watch this show. Part of the issue arises from two problems; the show is grim and it requires patience. The shows are structured like novels and the first season is a slow starter. You could easily give up around episode six, as the long story of a police investigation of a Baltimore drug lord and the day to day violence of the drug trade goes on and on.

This would be a mistake. This show surpasses the Sopranos in many ways and rewards watching. Not only is the season one story compelling in and of itself, but it is important to understand the second. This means you should ignore the advice to skip the slower Season one and move on to the more immediately rewarding Season two. Quite a few of the subplots and motivations will make little sense without the context of season one. On the lighter side, many of the little joys and jokes are based on what we learned about the characters in the first one.

The show surpasses the Sopranos by having equally compelling characters, this time on both sides of the law, that interact in a tightly constructed narrative. Narrative weakness, and the resort to throwaway non-central plot episodes, has been a problem for the Sopranos. Because each season of the Wire is about a single criminal investigation, even the sub-plots tie nicely back into the main one.

Much is made of the similarities of how internal politics drives outcomes, for both the criminal gangs and the police. Some extend this argument to say the show sees them as morally equivalent. I don't think this is the case. It presents the gang members as human, with understandable if flawed (that is to say, criminal) approaches to situations. There is the underlying idea that the drug war is a bad idea, but it is not presented so obviously as in Traffic.