Thanks, Dave, for devoting some space here to your thoughts about the best thing that ever happened to television. When I tell my friends and students that there is real wisdom on The Wire---so many lessons about the twin diseases of capitalism and racism, and in the best kind of narrative storytelling imaginable---I get a lot of skeptical looks. Until people watch the show...I mean, really watch it. Too much to say about it all here, but I wanted to pass along a nod to the possibilities, Slim (Charles) as they may be, for insight about our various worlds through too-often dismissed popular culture (yes, Virginia, sports and tv!).

I just found out about this show last week (I don't get cable) and watched a coupole episodes a friend had recorded. Good stuff. The last time I really hung out in Baltimore was in the mid - 1970s, but it still rang true. As a personal aside, I had a novel published last year with the Baltimore area as its locale. It's a story about drugs, race and racism, among other things. It's called Short Order Frame Up--look it up.

Hi Dave,
Just thought you should know there's a very important story that came out last week about the Wire's writers coming out against draconian drug laws that lead to all this BS in the first place. Also, how jury members can inject some much needed sanity in the "war on drugs" by simply nullifying nonviolent drug sentences. Can't add a link here, so please google the Wire, drugs and jury on the site prorev.com or email me or Dave for the link.

best,
Brian

I've just started the 4th season, after being mesmerized by the first 3. I don't think I'll ever get over Wallace's death, as silly as that seems to say out loud.... A friend of mine and I were trying to explain why we love the show to two skeptical girl friends. And we both agreed that the reason was because the show never made you comfortable, but drew you in with characters and situations that seemed more real than real. Less of those TV situations where white folks like myself get to feel liberal and anesthetized, and more about situations that forced (or seduced) me to be compassionate, wiser, comfortable with the gray areas that life in cities like Baltimore just is.

I am almost happy that I haven't caught up to this season. So when I'm done with 4, I can look forward to prolonging the Wire, for me, a few more months until the season 5 DVD is out.

Thank you for this appreciation. I hope your fine column draws new viewers to the program.

Dave; Thanks for giving props to the greatest show on TV -- ever. I briefly discussed The Wire with you at Powell's Books in Portland last summer. I'm slowly going through Wire withdrawal, but have Seasons 1 - 4 on DVD and will surely purchase Season 5 when it's available. My two teenage sons and I are huge Wire fans who will revisit this phenomenal show again and again. Because we have family in the DC area, we've visited the Charm City and have enjoyed our time there. I have to admit, however, our travels rarely take us to the Western District. Yours in struggle and sports,

Ed

I teach 8th grade math in South LA and last year I had one really rowdy bunch. There was one student who would say, "This class is just like the one on The Wire." The show indeed reflected the inner city experience of broader America. I plan to get to the library and get filled in on those episodes when I had no access to a Home Box Office. I really dig the characterization of the new gentrified zones: "faux-devastation chic"! Peace.

You succinctly pay homage to the code of the devastated and gentrified city scape inhabitants echoing Brother Mouzone telling Avon that "it's your word and your reputation that got you here."
Bravo to David Simon for this masterpiece of five years and to Dave Zirin for knowing it is more than North Avenue in Baltimore but also New Orleans, Detroit among any other city ,U.S.A.

10 years ago, it was unheard of to sit and watch an entire television series and now it seems so commonplace. But is this devouring our free time? Free time we could presumably be using to get involved in community organizing?

I will eventually watch this series and respect Zirin's opinion and the comments below but there's so much work to be done in my community that I just can't see where now to spend those 60 hours (episodes were an hour long right?) or an hour each day for two months.

Please don't interpret this as criticism. I just feel much more relieved when someone recommends a 2 hr. movie with a radical social message. Hopefully, this series makes people so bored/disgusted with other tv series that they get out and discover their community a little more. That is, unless the series made you feel too hopeless.

Amen amen amen!!!

HBO has had a lot of celebrated series, (see Sopranos, Sex in the City et.al...), but none had the sustained excellence in writing, acting, direction and all around production value on a episode by episode basis as The Wire. Never have I've seen on the small screen such a thorough and long-lasting committment to edgey wiriting without sucumming to plot trickery that often sucks in episodic writers--(Sopranos came close but much could be and was forgiven where there were gaps in the show because the general public walked into the Soprano life with a highly developed romantic relationship with the subject matter. Deadwood I loved [apparently with only a few others] but I enjoy the chippy dialogue full of anachronisms in David Milch work) --And then to have the unbelieveable scripts brought to life with what I felt was the most synogistic cast I've ever seen put together made The Wire pure TV crack!!!
I mean where else can you develop an admiration--damn near a personal relationship--with a gay stick up artist with the same honor and reverence to a way of life, of a red white and blue bleeding marine. Omar's character was so geniue, so compelling and so well protrayed that both masoginistic hiphop mogal wannabees and middle age soccer moms, (see Terry Gross's fawning over the character in her interview with Michael K. Williams, the actor who played Omar) gravitated to him, and counted him amoung their favorite characters on television.

Only The Wire, could terminate or marginalize so many of it's major characters--characters seemingly essential to the show's storyline-- and move forward undeterred and unbothered in the same way the city in which it was based does and continues to do. Only The Wire could move the plot in a completely different direction and continue to tell the same story. Only The Wire could mock and be so cynical of major public institutions and show the nobility in them at the same time. And only The Wire could both be so addicting that it collected a small mass of faithful followers so hooked on it's realism that they sat unfulfilled until they got their fix, and go nearly unnoticed by most, including those who dole out awards.

From the intensity of the many Wire eulogies I've read since the airing of the last episode, it's clear that those who watched agree. The Wire has certainly earned a spot on the short list entitled "best television show ever".

Leonard F. Spady

The Wire was television at it's best and I will miss it. I think that when HBO takes on subject matter that includes class, race and cultural differentiation, like it did with Oz as well is when it does it's best work. The Wire ran completely against the current of modern entertainment and thought that says you must pander to the lowest common denominator to draw acclaim and an audience.

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The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has
already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished,
and put inside boxes.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"


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