MagneticMediaFed

HBO is going to be posting new episodes of The Wire on HBO On-Demand a week before they air. Because of this, and because “seeing them early” doesn’t really mean “seeing them fast” I have watched the season five premiere three (3!) times over the past week. Some would say this may be excessive. Those people are idiots. More after the jump…

As much as I’ve thought about this week’s episode over the past six or seven days, I’ve probably spent as much time thinking about how exactly I was going to write about it. The thing is, The Wire isn’t really a show that needs episode reviews. While there are certainly scenes that stand above and beyond the rest, no one episode is all that different from another (one of the facets of this show that is rarely talked about is how visually interesting it is while never being distracting — it is one of the few shows that openly embrace the 4:3 full-screen format). If reviewing an episode seems pointless at this stage in the game, recapping an episode would be downright foolish. So here’s what I’m thinking: while I will certainly dive head first into discussions about choices made by certain characters or how the wheels of bureaucracy have again screwed the common man, I think I’d much rather use this space to talk about the bigger picture — after all, if The Wire has taught us anything its that the details matter.

So why not kick things off with a question raised by Paul last week in the comments: should an artwork *transcend* its medium or *embody* it?

The New York Times ran an essay last weekend on why The Wire is like Dickens, a comparison you hear quite frequently, though not a comparison you would hear in reference to basically any other piece of television… ever. Anyone who has watched an entire season all the way through can attest that the show’s aims are far higher than serialized TV, and bully for them and their ambition. I think what makes The Wire not only great but significant is the fact that despite these lofty goals (goals that have for four seasons been wholly met) the show does precisely what television should be doing. What’s sad is that after seventy-five years of the medium so few programs have figured this out — this, being the art of long-form story telling. The Wire is the rare piece of art that somehow manages to transcend and embody its medium, a sentiment that seems oxymoronic, but strangely fits.

What is also interesting is there are a couple shows from this past year that solidly fit into one of those categories, but not both. Mad Men, I felt, transcended television in its successful attempt at mirroring our world through that filter of 1960 American advertising. Though as television, as good as that show was, I always felt like I was being kept at a distance (though Don’s remarkable sales pitch for the Kodak projector at the end of the season was about as great a television moment as any). Week-to-week, however, Mad Men didn’t always deliver as a story.

This is in contrast with FX’s Damages a series that was shockingly successful in its embodiment of the medium. I feel like I should compare Damages to a film like The Bourne Ultimatum or Michael Clayton — a masterfully produced piece of genre entertainment. Damages was an edge of your seat legal thriller with a mystery at its core as twisty and complex as any great piece of crime fiction, but just like a piece of crime fiction is ultimately empty calories. There may be some universal truths to be found but that was clearly not the goal.

As much as The Wire is about the decline of the American citystate it is also an industry taunt. I watch the episodes over and over again trying with all of my might to figure out just how the hell a group of people write something like this. It’s like Simon and co. and saying, “See what we’ve done? I dare you to try it!” Hubris is dangerous in the wrong hands (note the current administration), but when you have the assets to back it up it becomes almost enviable.

Tags: AMC, art, Damages, FX, HBO, Mad Men, The Wire

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Commentary, TV. 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.