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March 11, 2008

No re-up

The fifth and final season of The Wire is done. Flea-readers who were fans and are suffering whatever is the pop culture equivalent of postpartum depression* will find themselves in good company as WireTAP holds its final round table on the episode, the season and the series (many spoilers). If you have not seen the show, do so starting at the first episode of the first season. The stories are massive, complex and finely detailed and will not make much sense unless they are seen in the order they unfold. The seasonal arcs of the show, its finely drawn characters and refusal of exposition (until this final season) are all cited as reasons the show never gained a wide audience. More than this, it is a story that is difficult to pigeon-hole by genre as nothing quite like it has been told before. When I have tried to convince people to give The Wire a chance, I have described the show as a police procedural - sort of - that is about municipal politics, urban planning and public policy. I realize this does not sound promising. Just trust on this one.**

Stuff White People Like explains.

For the past three years, whenever you say “The Wire” white people are required to respond by saying “it’s the best show on television.” Try it the next time you see a white person! Though now they might say “it WAS the best show on television.”

So why do they love it so much? It all comes down to authenticity. A long time ago, someone started a rumor that when The Wire is on TV, actual police wires go quiet because all the dealers are watching the show. Though this is not true, it seems plausible enough to white people and has imbued the show with the needed authenticity to be deemed acceptable.

This is is almost exactly right. After the first couple episodes of season five it became de rigeur to deny the show's authenticity and instead wax poetic on its magic realism.

* Popartum, presumably.
** Or trust James Lileks. "I watched “The Wire” – dour, wry, knotty, depressing, bracing, perfect as usual. It will end up being the most overpraised show worthy of overpraise in cable history, and will have 1/100th the impact of “The Sopranos,” which looks like a cartoon in comparison." Quite. And this was before the final episode. More at today's Bleat.

Related: Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price and David Simon argue the war on (some) drugs should be opposed by jury nullification.

Also related: When did "granular" enter the vocabulary of left intellectuals? Samantha Power referred to granularity twice in her much maligned BBC interview. The scribblings of Hardt and Negri fans I can avoid but now the term pops up at the Belmont Club we all have a problem. I realize it is early in the year to ban a word but I am nominating this one for the dustbin.

Update: Quotulatiousness, who gets out more than I do apparently, is fed up with the sturm und drang.

I've never watched an episode of The Wire (the "best show on television"), nor did I ever see an episode of The Sopranos (which I gather from recent articles was the previous claimant to the "best show" accolade); I generally watch little-to-no broadcast television. I'm sure that's most of the reason I'm getting heartily sick of all the fin-de-siecle sturm-und-drang about the end of The Wire that seems to be clogging up every blog these days.

Two small points. Point the first, anyone who thought The Sopranos was the best show on television had never seen Deadwood. Point the second, and this is critical as I believe it lies at the crux of the matter, The Wire was an HBO joint and not the product of broadcast television. Try premium cable, my friend, and you shall see the light!

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 11, 2008 04:44 AM

Comments

My favorite show ever. Really enjoyed this season, except for how the journalism plotline played out. Unrealistic. They would have had to out the fabulist; one of the burned reporters would have burned them back, no mention of blogs, and that info would demand to be free, somehow.

Posted by: Bill from INDC [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 11, 2008 09:03 AM

Ban "granularity?" I've always found Ghost of a Flea to be smoothly and flawlessly granular myself. Deliciously so.

(Hmm. It seems that sounding erudite while making absolutely no sense at all isn't really that difficult.)

Posted by: Damian [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 11, 2008 04:54 PM

Damiam
Don't you mean "gritty granularity"?

Cheers

Posted by: J.M. Heinrichs [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 12, 2008 02:07 AM

I am hoping I managed to avoid the word "gritty" in writing this up. Now I am afraid to look.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 12, 2008 10:47 AM

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