“No one gives a f#ck about a 40-degree day…”
It’s Thanksgiving (at least it was an hour and twenty minutes ago) and I’ve been wracking my brain all day about something I could be thankful for this fall in the television universe. The fact of the matter is there’s nothing there, so I was just going to forgo it.
Then I got off work (yeah, I had to work… blarg!) and went over to a friend’s place to drink pumpkin ale. While we surfed the channel guide looking for something to watch we ended up on HBO On-Demand (a place a lot of us end up when we are confused and in need of comfort) and as most voyages to this, the queen-bee of the instant-access universe, end we settled on watching The Wire — season three to be specific.
I’m going to keep this short: The Wire season three is THE SINGLE GREATEST SEASON OF TELEVISION EVER. We watched three episodes, each better than the previous. As I watched I tried to figure why this show was so much better than everything else. My conclusion was in the obvious stuff (the characters are brilliantly written and fun to watch, the arcs are subtle but important and long-running, the plotting is brilliant and plays better with each viewing), but also in the fact that each season of The Wire, while all set within the same universe, is completely different from the previous season. A character that may have been a supporting role in season two might be the primary focus of season four. Great dramas on the networks, like Friday Night Lights, have had brilliant first seasons but then had no where left to go. The Wire is one of the few shows ever that has realized there can be dramatic success built around original plot, not simply character and repetition. Less than two months left until season five!
Two great scenes from season three:
A forty degree day
The brown paper bag
