R.I.P. HBO's The Wire:

The Best Damned Television Show Ever.

 Period.

By Mark R. Leffler

"(The Wire was) really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how ... whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to."

- Creator/Producer/Writer David Simon

      Okay, listen….I understand that I am given to hyperbole. After all, within these pages I have written about a live Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert in an article titled "The Greatest Show on Earth". And my essay about the late, great Stanley Kubrick's Sci-Fi masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey" ran under the headline "The Greatest Story Ever Told".

      So it's understandable that you, Dear Reader, may have chuckled a bit or rolled your eyes indulgently when you saw the title of this piece.

      "Oh, really, now? The best damned TV show ever? Well, we'll just see about that, won't we. Better than "MASH"? Better than "The Sopranos"?

Better than "ER", "Upstairs, Downstairs", "The Young and the Reckless", "The 20 Minute Workout", "Sixty Minutes", "Cosmos", "Sesame Street" or "Oprah"?

      All right. Calm down for just one minute and stop referencing Eighties shows that younger readers might not catch. Who do you think you are, anyway? Dennis Miller?

      Here's the thing: HBO's "The Wire", which ran for five seasons, was one of the finest dramas ever to be broadcast on American television.

No brag, just fact. Look it up on Wikipedia if you don't believe me.

And given its rather unique style and format (an urban procedural crime series, set in Baltimore, with each season examining a different dysfunctional organizational system), "The Wire" truly did boldly go where no TV show had gone before.

      For five glorious seasons, creators David Simon and Ed Burns weaved a novelistic series of tales of the city. Like chapters of a great book, each episode demanded total attention from the viewer in order to understand the next one. Every line of dialogue was significant.

What happened in the background mattered. This was not a show you could catch while cooking or folding laundry.

      "The Wire" held a cracked mirror up to urban reality. There are, sadly, few shows of any kind that show inner city life with anything approaching richness and complexity, let alone compassion and understanding. While "The Wire" was unflinching and honest about the violence and drug use, the streets and neighborhoods were filled with families and neighbors, not just dealers, gang bangers and sassy or strung out hookers.

      It introduced us to memorable characters like Irish-American alcoholic homicide detective Jimmy McNulty (played with a perfect Baltimore accent by British Dominic West), his partner, the sartorially resplendent Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce), the unforgettably lethal, bisexual Robin of the Hood, Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) and the struggling street junkie Bubbles (Andre Royo) Wee-Bay, Body, Griggs, Proposition Joe, Mayor Carcetti, Snoop, Stringer Bell, Marlo, The Greek, and dozens of others.

      In its fifth and final season, which is now available on DVD, a newspaper editor directed one reporter to live among the homeless and, among other things, chronicle "the Dickensian aspect" of their lives.

And while it's meant to make the character pompous, out of touch and ridiculous, the reference to British novelist Charles Dickens and his sprawling morality tales set in the high life and low life of the English society of his day is quite apt.

      At its best, "The Wire" was like a heady mix of Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Mamet, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Tupac. It made you laugh, it made you cry and it made you think.

      Now, one can make the argument that television today is going through a new Golden Age. Shows as brilliant and eclectic as "24", "The Unit", "Deadwood", "The Simpsons", "LOST", "Mad Men", "Weeds" and several others are indeed excellent on every level.

      But "The Wire" took the spotlight and aimed it at a segment of American life, the urban underclass and working class (you might call it "The Street" or "The Hood") and depicted it with an intelligence, creativity and relentless intensity and integrity unmatched by any television show this writer has ever seen.

      Although "The Wire" is most easily described as a crime drama, it certainly had its lighter moments. Once, while staking out a drug dealer, Bunk corrected McNulty about the designer suit a dealer wore.

"You know what they call a man who pays too much attention to clothes, don't you?" McNulty teased.  "Yeah," Bunk replied flatly. "A grown up."

      And one classic scene from the first season showed the pair reviewing a cold case crime scene and making a remarkable discovery with almost all the dialogue consisting of variations of the F word and the MF word. Words cannot do justice to the scene. Please buy or rent it and see for yourself. Or search for it on Youtube. I'm smiling just thinking about it.

      When Omar strolled down the mean streets with his trench coat, shotgun and a blunt in his lips like some Baltimore version of Clint Eastwood's western heroes, whistling "The Farmer in the Dell", it was both funny and sinister at once. And I will never hear that tune without thinking of Omar and that facial scar that was never talked about much less explained.

      There is a deceptively simple epigram that comes to mind: "A thing is what it is and not something else". And one interpretation of that is that we often try to make things and people into something that they are not. Television (and bad art of any kind) suffers from this.

There is rarely the time or the talent to really offer viewers three dimensional characters presented in a context that gives their life meaning and makes their choices understandable even when they're self destructive or tragic.

      One comment the actors and production staff have made repeatedly is how realistic the show was. How stories had been told that had never really been told before on television. And how proud they were to have been a part of such a project.

      Even music was used differently than it is for most shows. With few exceptions only "nat sound" was used, a video and film term meaning music organic and natural to the scene, not added as soundtrack. In bars, jukebox music was heard. Bass thumping rap emerged from dealers'

cars. Oldies and classic rock came from the cops' car radios.

      Tom Waits "Down in the Hole" (originally heard on his classic album "Frank's Wild Years") was the show's theme song. Each season saw a different version, one by Waits, others by The Neville Brothers, The Blind Boys of Alabama and one by guitar bad boy, recovering addict and ex-con Steve Earle who appeared sometimes as a recovering addict.

      Simon's main premise is that all organizations are dysfunctional, be it the police, City Hall, unions, the school system, or the media. And even the most hard working, idealistic and passionate workers in those systems are handcuffed and frustrated in their attempts to do their jobs well and make a difference in people's lives.

      Season Four, which earned rave reviews from TV critics and fans, focused on the decaying Baltimore schools. But while Simon and his team appreciated the kudos, he wondered if they were doing such a great job pointing out how horrible things were, why didn't people care enough to do anything?

      And that's the bittersweet irony of "The Wire". Simon began writing the series based on his years as a working reporter on a Baltimore newspaper. His partner Burns had been a city cop and later a schoolteacher. They were as pragmatic as they were gifted. While they thought they might change some viewers' minds and make some think, they never for a second really thought life would change for the better for the people whose lives they depicted so vividly and tragically.

      Simon's first unflinching look at urban decay was a book, "Homicide:

A Year on the Killing Streets". That led to the critically acclaimed NBC series "Homicide" which ran for several years. Although praised for its realistic view of Baltimore, there was only so much grit and dirt network television would allow.

      His next book, "The Corner" narrowed its focus to a single family and the hell it struggled with because of drugs and violence. That book resulted in an award winning HBO mini-series directed by the talented Charles "Rock" Dutton (also worth checking out on DVD).

      The success of "The Corner" gave Simon and Burns and company the opportunity to work on a bigger canvas over several seasons with "The Wire". But the series' greatest strengths (an ensemble cast of relative unknown character actors, an ethnically diverse parade of characters and novelistic storytelling) were also the same factors that led to somewhat disappointing ratings and not a single Emmy for acting or writing.

      Now that's a crime. And hardly a misdemeanor.

      But with the series running in syndication on the BET cable network and available to buy or rent on DVD, "The Wire" will live on and be discovered and enjoyed by viewers for many years to come. Like all great classics, it will have a far longer life than its creators envisioned in the beginning.

      After all, President-elect Barack Obama himself said "The Wire" was his favorite TV show.

       And you know that can't be bad for business.

      Maybe there is hope for change we can believe in.

      Maybe this time an election slogan will prove to be more than just that. Maybe.