I <3 The Wire, and Other Television Shows of Note

I love television. In fact, in recent years I've come to love television much more than I love film, primarily because story lines and character development in film is no where near as deep as it is on television shows.

Some of my favorites: The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, The Sopranos, Girlfriends, Sex and the City and the Bad Girls Club. I'm not sure if reality television gets italics.

But the past few weeks I've been watching The Wire- in fact, I got Netflix just to watch it. And even after hearing from my parents how good it is, and reading about how it's the best show on television for the past couple years, I really wasn't prepared for just how awesome it was going to be.

The thing about The Wire is that every character, from the cops to the drug dealers in the pit, are dignified. I love that they show Stringer Bell in an economics class at a community college. Throughout the rest of the season he tries to explain things like saturated markets to hood kids, and they look it him like whatever. Love Stringer Bell, but Omar is my favorite.

A lot has been written about Omar Little's character- he's even Obama's favorite. He's unlike any character I've ever come across in literature, film, or television- but at the same time like all my favorite characters. It's hard to explain but I think anyone who's seen the show can identify with what I mean. He's a lot like Robin Hood- he only steals from people who are stealing from others. He never curses. He goes to church with his grandmother once a month. He also carries a shot gun and whistles 'The Farmer in the Dell' when he's about to steal someone's stash. And he's homosexual- but that's beside the point. Everything about this dude is intriguing- his braids, his trench coat, that scar on his face. There's something about him that makes you root for him, even though he kills people and sells drugs.

But that's the thing about The Wire- you find yourself rooting for the most unlikely characters. The show is cop drama, yeah. But it's more about institutions and how these institutions affect the people whom they serve and the people who work for them. Each season is a different institution- the drug trade, the docks, the school system, the political system and the media. The last season is about the media, and I've read it's the most realistic account of the media works, and I'm pretty pissed that I have to wait until August to see it.

It's also the little things about the show that make it awesome. Like Wee-Bay's fish, the kids Wallace takes care of, the economics class Stringer takes and the large button calculators that the money counters in the Barksdale crew use to count money. There's also the Pimp Roll that Tom Wolfe talked about in Bonfire of the Vanities, on display in every episode that takes place in a court room. Movies just can't move me in the same way because they last three hours tops. The Wire has 55 episodes, roughly 55 hours.