I finished watching The Wire tonight.  

I tried to finally pace myself a bit with a show, and I think I did okay. I watched all five seasons in a little over four weeks. That’s still pretty fast now that I think about it, but when you consider that I watched four seasons of Breaking Bad in like a week, it’s a pretty remarkable reduction in pace!

Anyway, overall I really liked The Wire. The more I think about it (and I seriously can’t stop thinking about it tonight), the more the greatness is setting in. 

I’m not quite sure where I’d rank The Wire among my list of favorite shows, but it’s up there. It hasn’t surpassed my favorite (Six Feet Under), but I don’t know if anything ever will/can. I can safely say that The Wire is perhaps the most intricate show I’ve ever seen. There are SO many characters, but they’re able to present them all without it becoming too convoluted, which is impressive. It’s just extremely well-written. 

Spoilers and rambling will follow…

I loved the first season. In my reading around the internet tonight after finishing the series, I noticed that a lot of people rank it as a weaker season, but I really liked it. It didn’t hook me immediately, though. During the first few episodes I was wondering if it really was going to be the ‘greatest show ever’ like I’d heard so many times, but I quickly got into it. The death of Wallace, one of my favorite characters, near the end really cemented how much I liked the show because I wept for at least half an hour, which I totally did not expect to do. 

The fourth season is my favorite, though. I loved the look into the education even though it thoroughly depressed me and ripped my heart out every night that I watched it. Another one of my favorite characters, Dukie, made me want to die every time he was on-screen. It just depresses me so much to see people born into terrible situations. It’s not their fault at all, and they didn’t deserve it. It’s hard to rise above the hole you were born into, and I really see that now. The fourth season opened my eyes to the world a bit. I mean, I live in an extremely boring area with almost zero crime. The public schools here are pretty fantastic, and almost everyone goes to college. You know, I live in North Dakota. I’m pretty much a stranger to a lot of what’s depicted in The Wire, but the education storylines in season four hit me the hardest. I just can’t fathom going to schools that bad with people from so many tragic backgrounds. I’m not pretending like my city is perfect and that everyone who went to my schools came from perfect families. There are problems, crimes, injustices, abuses, etc. here too…but to a much lesser extent, I guess.

The second season was another favorite of mine. I found the docks to be really unique. There was just something about that season that I’d never seen before. I don’t know. I’ve noticed that the second season isn’t a huge fan favorite overall either…but I thought that it was well done. The main focus, the docks, was totally different from the main focus of the first season, but it wasn’t jarring somehow. The way they kept integrating the characters from the first season fit really well.

For some reason the third season just isn’t as memorable to me as the others. I don’t know why…I mean, I really liked the whole Hamsterdam thing, and there were definitely some significant and/or great moments (Stringer Bell’s death, etc.), but it’s just not as memorable for some reason. This season will definitely benefit by a rewatch.

Season five was weird somehow, but I liked it. I love this show for the way that everything ties together…the politics, the Sun newspaper, the streets, the police…everything just meshes so well. It’s what makes the show so impressive. I’ve noticed online that a lot of people have a problem with McNulty’s “serial killer,” but for some reason it didn’t really bother me or strike me as that ridiculous. 

At first I was really angry tonight while watching season five. I really did not like Omar’s death at first. Omar is my favorite character, and I was just really pissed off that he didn’t have a very strong presence in season five. He had some decent moments, but I just felt like they wasted him a little bit. At first his death made me really angry, but after I’ve been able to step away and think about it a little bit, it’s probably for the best that they didn’t have some big glamorous shoot-out between Omar vs. Marlo/his people. That would’ve been too…typical, too expected. I mean, yeah, it would’ve been satisfying and exciting, but it would’ve been a bit shallow regardless of the outcome. Of course I’m disappointed that Omar died because I really loved the character, but I had always known that there’d be a great chance that he’d die at some point. I just wish that he’d done…more in season five. I don’t even know how, really. 

Anyway, I’m rambling a lot and I doubt that anyone has even made it this far, haha.

What a great show. I look forward to rewatching it someday down the line. It seems like one of those shows that’ll really benefit by a rewatch or two. There’s just SO much there that I know I’ll pick up on so much more during a second time through.