Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Wire

Last weekend at Crazylegs, my brother accused me of being a fan of just about anything out there on pay television. The Sopranos. Entourage. Weeds. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sex and the City (yikes).

Guilty.

So Jana and I have had HBO for about four years now, and somehow, we never managed to watch The Wire. This is a show that has been widely praised, but not as widely as most of those shows listed above. I just started paying attention as its fifth and final season was winding to a close, reading a nice tribute in Newsweek, but still didn't bother to watch.

But the Newsweek tribute did say the show might just be better than The Sopranos, which the Scandinavia Tappas regard as just about the greatest show of all time. And with the dearth of good movies out there right now — what, you think Jana's going to get me to watch 27 Dresses? — we decided to go back to something we've enjoyed doing since the advent of Netflix: watching acclaimed shows from the beginning, three of four episodes a weekend.

Saturday night we finished the first season of The Wire. Un-freaking-believably good show. I've always been a sucker for stories centered around gangs and the like — Godfather, New Jack City (yikes), Sopranos — and that's what season one served up.

It's gritty. It's profane. It's violent. It's funny.

It's really good, and the season two disc arrived in the mail today. Hooray!

Anyone else a fan?

5 comments:

ruffian96 said...

yes The Wire is an awesome show. Have fun catching up. The end of the series will probably leave you strangely satisfied.

Anonymous said...

This reminded me of you when I read it:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/watching_tv_shows_on_dvd

Anonymous said...

Yes, I'm a big fan. It's one of the few shows that can generate a wide array of emotional responses. I ended up watching the first four seasons last year back-to-back, and then the fifth season this year. You will like the media angle that the paper explores for the final season.

Would be interested to hear what you think of season 2....without spoiling it, many fans have strong views about the plotlines for that season.

The Wire is my favorite show...in my view, the quality of the Sopranos dipped the last couple of seasons.

But try to watch Mad Men on AMC. Another enjoyable viewing experience.

Coach Scott Tappa said...

Thanks for the comments, Ruffian and Will. You've managed to pique our interest even further!

Coach Scott Tappa said...

That's pretty funny Andy, especially since it mentioned The Wire specifically. We've also done this with Sopranos, Weeds, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared ... and probably another couple shows that I'm forgetting.

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping