Yes, yes, you already know: The Wire is the best show ever made. But that only became the consensus late in the game. Despite critical praise, many viewers didn’t start tuning in until the show began racking up nominations for awards in its fourth season—then binged on DVDs in order to cram the first 40 or so episodes in before HBO’s next live transmission. In the process, the show not only became retroactively anointed as Great TV, but established itself as a staple of the early days of binge-watching.
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It’s Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaMuch of that bingeability stems from the series' unique narrative structure: While the sprawling cast of characters persists throughout the show's run, each season focuses on a different aspect of the social, economic, and political forces that keep these blocks of Baltimore locked in dysfunction. Starting with an overview of the drug game in Season 1, the series leaps to the decline of the working class in its second season, goes back to slinging for Season 3 (but with a political twist), ventures into to the public school system for Season 4, and ties it all up with a scathing critique of the media in Season 5.
Despite its 4x3, standard def, aughties feel, The Wire’s lo-fi grit continues to attract fans who rabidly proclaim its praises. You could throw a crack rock and hit a think-piece on the show, but here’s the shorthand if you just want to rip and run.
Number of Seasons: 5 (60 episodes)
Time Requirements: Seven weeks. This is a show to be taken slowly—as befitting the pre-cellular, pre-streaming era that the show inhabits—tackling one episode per weeknight, two on each weekend day. You’ll steadily mainline Seasons 1-4; Season 5 is when you might start slowing down a bit.
Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon Instant, HBO Go
Best Character to Follow: Six years after the show's end, a lot of names still ring out. It’s easy to side with the unaffiliated Omar, the most charismatic dealer-robbing, twink-loving vigilante we may ever know. Or to have a soft spot for Stringer Bell, the CFO-style striver ready to cash out of the game. Or goddamn McNulty. Or the ever-quotable Clay Davis.
But I’m partial to Lester Freamon, the brilliant detective whose refusal to get political earned him a 13-year (and 4-month) punishment assignment generating and filing index cards. But back in his natural habitat of the homicide squad, “Cool Lester Smooth” has a calm, steady authority that anchors the department.
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip:
There is one rule among Wire purists: never, ever skip an episode. I generally agree (and wouldn’t even advise watching them out of order), but if forced, would come up with the following exceptions:
Season 1: Episode 1, “The Target” Confession time. I started “The Target” at least three times, either falling asleep or wandering off before meeting even half of the characters. Someone suggested that I start with a later episode, and sure enough, that time I was hooked. I’ve since gone back and watched this episode, with a higher-level comprehension of who’s who and what’s what, realizing that it’s just as solid as the rest of the season. There’s nothing you can’t pick up by watching later episodes, and not much plot-wise that you haven’t seen in your basic Law & Order episode.
Season 2: Episode 4, “Hard Cases” Many viewers have an aversion to the somewhat tangential Season 2, but I enjoyed my time with Sobatka boys. A family of dock-workers who get entangled with European smugglers, the Sobatkas fall victim to a changing era and the vast, covert workings of the international drug trade. While Season 2 opener “Ebb Tide” has the IMDb consensus of worst episode of the series overall, “Hard Cases” isn’t far behind. At this point, you’re nearly a quarter of the way into the season and nothing has happened. Yet. (The next episode is where the plot really takes off, when characters at all levels in the drug war start to see the enormity of the shit they’ve gotten themselves into.)
Season 5 So maybe you shouldn't actually skip Season 5, but feel free to watch it with at least one extra electronic device nearby. After Season 4's intense, revealing classroom scenes, there’s a bit of a tacked-on coda quality to the show's final season. (Why does the picture-quality look different? Why is the drama in the newsroom so simplistically hero-vs.-villain? And WTF did McNulty just do?!?)
From 1983-95, show creator David Simon worked at the Baltimore Sun, and had many an axe to grind about the state of the media during that time. As of 2008, these issues were clearly still a hot-button issue for him. That frothiness might have got in the way of plain old storytelling.
Nevertheless, the final episodes that tie up the series pull through to deliver the mix of hopeful and heartbreaking that your tear-ducts have long learned to expect.
Seasons/Episodes You Can't Skip:
By now, you know that the answer is “all of them.” But a few highlights:
Season 1: Episode 12, “Cleaning Up” Crime novelist George Pelecanos was tapped to write the penultimate episode of every season of The Wire. These episodes often stand out not only as among the best of each season, but also the one where mass devastation rains down on just about everyone. “Cleaning Up” is the first time you really see how high the stakes are for so many of the characters. It’s also when you really get to meet the comically corrupt Clay Davis, and where you finally learn the context of this meme.
Season 3 Don’t think about skipping a single episode of Season 3.
The game modernizes, leaving payphones behind for disposable burners—which lead the police to pivot from the eponymous wiretaps to intercepting cellular signals. While the cops write new rules for their role in the drug game, the dealers suffer the upheaval of a change in command. Season 3 introduces the deeply terrifying Marlo, whose ice-cold brand-building mission gains him prime corner real estate at the expense of Avon Barksdale’s crew. It is also the season of Hamsterdam, which had plenty of armchair sociologists wondering whether Maj. Bunny Colvin’s hail-Mary scheme would work in real life. Then there's the specter of the mysterious Brother Mouzone, in from NYC to handle some business (and act as a harbinger for long-missing chickens coming home to roost).
Season 4: Episode 13, “Final Grades” Come to think of it, don’t skip the episodes of Season 4 either. The season traces the transformations of Michael, Namond, Randy, and Dukie, four (fairly) innocent teenagers, who in “Final Grades” end up worlds away from their Episode 1 debuts—thanks to a combination of system failure and poor decision-making. The final montage, set to Paul Weller’s version of “Walk on Gilded Splinters,” wraps up with a shot that’s the very definition of bleak.
Why You Should Binge:
Co-creators David Simon, who spent 5 years on Baltimore’s homicide beat, and Ed Burns, an ex-Baltimore homicide/narcotics detective and public school teacher, had an ambitious goal—laying bare the stories and issues they were privy to during their time on the Baltimore corners, and tracing them back to dysfunction in schools and families, the police department, the media, and the political system. And they succeeded: much of what our culture at large understands about inner-city issues has its roots in this show’s broad-reaching arcs.
Best Scene—McNulty and Bunk Work a Crime Scene:
Any of the season finales’ wrap-up montages could take this prize, showing the trajectories that each character’s actions have set them on (and leaving viewers devastated). But this is no place for spoilers.
In Season 1, Episode 4, “Old Cases,” McNulty and Bunk single-wordedly work together to decode a mystifying crime scene. This may be on just about every list of best scenes, but there's a reason for that: it's perfect. Perfect storytelling, perfect characterization, perfect tone.
The Takeaway:
Pawns in the game get capped quick, unless they some smart-ass pawns. And to some extent, just about every character—from cop to robber—is a pawn in the larger system.
If You Liked The Wire You'll Love:
Check out Homicide, adapted from David Simon’s bleak and enthralling memoir of his time on the Baltimore streets. There’s also The Shield for a solid seven seasons of gritty, gripping LA-cop drama. And if you’re interested in a soapified version of the life and times of a Stringer Bell type, check out the new Starz show Power.