Longest Blog Post Ever! But Don’t Worry, It’s About a Show You Don’t Watch
Friday, January 4th, 2008
For a few years now, highly influential opinion makers like Slate.com, Stephen King and myself have been wildly calling The Wire “the best show on TV,” and audiences have been wildly ignoring us. You’re statistically more likely to have read an article praising the The Wire than you are to have actually watched an episode. While this probably has something to do with its decision to focus on black characters who don’t speak in two to three word catch phrases, even I have to admit that it can be tough to get into. Over it’s four year run, which will culminate in a fifth and final season starting on Sunday, the show has unfurled more plot lines than a Dickens novel, and refused to tie any of them off into neat little bows like Dickens did.
That’s right TV viewing public, it’s less accessible than Dickens! Are you programming your Tivo yet?
This is where most articles of this sort would tell you that the show rewards your patience with characters that get under your skin. But that’s all been said before. What is really worth noting is the herculean effort it took me to turn a Wire primer into a Cracked-style update.
As the editor of Cracked.com, it is my duty to listify anything and everything. I have turned articles about great literature and hegemonic decline into lists. If Dante had submitted the Divine Comedy to me, I would have edited it into “The Top 9 Circles of Hell” complete with a YouTube clip of each level’s horror movie equivalent. But The Wire is so sprawling, and chock full of characters and plot strands that it presented a unique challenge.
After literally minutes of intense contemplation, I believe I’ve come up with a Wire primer that people might have read in a hypothetical universe where people actually care about The Wire. Behold…
The Top 4 Wire Theme Songs
One of the show’s many awesome quirks is that it uses a different interpretation of the same theme song over the opening credits of each season. In anticipation of the upcoming fifth, and final season, I’m going to take you through the theme songs for the first four, explaining what each represents about that season of the show, and ranking them from worst to best, because that’s the only way I know how to organize things (this is handy for editing a website, but could prove problematic when rearing children).
#4. Season Two
Gravelish croaking over spare instruments, Tom Waits’ version of his own song is the least listenable of the four versions, and wound up as the theme for arguably the least watchable season of the show. If Season One’s focus on the drug dealers was microeconomics, than Season Two was macro. It’s focus on the drugs’ movement through the ports required the show to shift focus from a bunch of hyper-intelligent drug dealers to a bunch of fat unionized Polish dock workers. But, Season Two is probably the most satisfying to watch beginning to end. Most of the dock workers’ character arcs are contained within the season, and it even has a twist ending that would make M Night Shamylyan poop his pants. I tried to come up with a way to say that Waits’ version is ultimately the most rewarding to listen to, but it’s not. It’s painful. The analogy between song and season will have to be imperfect.
