The Wire has checked out

OK, so this post is more than a week late... I'm catching up a bit. The finale of the Wire was a week ago, and it was a sad day for TV (if I can say so). The Wire was by far my favorite show on TV in the last maybe 3 or 4 seasons. OK, maybe not my only favorite -- the Sopranos, of course, was also great until it ended.

The finale was pretty good, and this season was decent, but last season was by far the best. I didn't always catch every line of dialogue, or keep up with all the characters' names, or understand every plot nuance. But to me, it was a very well done, affecting, and entertaining show that (I'm guessing) comes as close as possible for a TV show to depict what is happening in our cities' institutions. Yeah, the newspaper storyline could've been better this season, but Jimmy's wake in the final season was great, I thought. So many great characters: Jimmy, Bunk, Omar, Lester, Bunny Colvin, and the kids from season 4.

When we lived in Columbia Heights, I would usually watch The Wire on Sunday nights and then go walk the dog in our 'hood. And I gotta say that watching the Wire put a new spin on living in a place like CH. For one thing, it made me more paranoid about crime directly after watching each Sunday night -- everyone on the street while I was walking the dog was up to no good! But more generally, it really made me look at the things that I was seeing in CH streets in a different way. Seeing the people on the streets and knowing that they had stories behind them, some positive, some negative. Right now I'm writing at a superficial level, but the show really did affect me in the way I looked at my 'hood.

I was in Baltimore a few years back for a work retreat and we took a tour of some of the worse-off neighborhoods in Baltimore. Drove through streets of boarded up houses and I thought "wow, that really looks like something out of The Wire." And then we turned a corner and saw a bunch of HBO trucks set up for filming.

So now that The Wire's gone and The Sopranos is done, I might have to cancel my HBO... I like Big Love and Entourage well enough, but that might not be enough to keep us subscribed. Although Flight of the Conchords is pretty good... hmmmm.