MagneticMediaFed

I try to watch The Wire each Monday on HBO On-Demand so I can attempt to stay ahead of the game. If I don’t get the episode watched on Monday it starts working its way further and further down my queue, especially after Monday nights onslaught of watchable programs.

Today I watched the episode that will air this coming Sunday on HBO (November 12th). It’s the ninth episode of the season and things are really starting to come together. The great thing about watching The Wire is the way the seasons are paced. Those first three or four weeks we learn about the principle characters of the season and set up the stakes. Then we have another five episodes of our new friends doing what they do. During this time we, the audience, start to see connections being made. We see how the cause and effect relationship of everything in this city, The City, plays out. We start to understand how a campaign donation can cause a city district to be denied services or how a chain of command can keep justice from being served. That part of the story seems to be wrapping itself up. Now we’re in the last act. The last four or five episodes where we’re suddenly sprinting through dozens of characters lives every hour, drawing conclusions, stacking bodies, and making arrests, all while The City goes on living like none of this matters. By the time we reach the end, we realize that The City was right all along, and yet deep down we feel, I feel, like there’s something to be done. Something to be done by real people. Even if those attempts ultimately end in disappointment.

Watching an hour of The Wire each week creates the ultimate viewer dichotomy. It is the only television program that makes me want to jump up, turn the idiot box off, go outside and do good. And yet the drama is so tight and so endlessly fascinating you can’t walk away. The week between episodes is sometimes enough to drive a man crazy. You end up not going outside and not doing good. Thirteen weeks later, you’re so cynical about the system you couldn’t even stomach the thought of trying to intervene, the thought of trying to change things for the better. Each week when I watch The Wire I want to become a homicide detective, or become a teacher, or run for political office. Something, anything. I can do good. I can change things. But then the credits roll and I realize that I’m still sitting in my living room in my underwear drinking Diet Coke out of a plastic cup. But its not an hour I’d want back. Never.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 4:45 pm and is filed under HBO, The Wire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.