Rate the Last TV Show You Saw
I'm setting up this thread because not only did I feel the need to review the first season of the Wire, but also because there will be a few shows that I'll most likely see and think they are not so great. I'm thinking this thread can be used to review a show based on one episode or by a whole season.
So, I'll start off.
The Wire - Season One
So I finally started checking this out a few weeks ago. It seemed appropriate to review it as a whole season rather than one episode, as it's novelistic structure - of crafting one season long story with a beginning, middle and ending - meant it took a few episodes to put the pieces into place and for the main group of characters - from narcotics and homicide divisions - to truly become a team. It's an interesting approach to take with the series. Even more interesting is that, for one whole season, it's all really focused on trying to arrest one suspect.
Not that it's character focus is narrow. One thing I really grew to appreciate in the series was its huge cast of characters, as it not only focused on the lives of the police but also the criminals, too. In time, there's a lot of characters that we begin to care about on both sides of the law, and a lot of characters we grow to hate, too. One interesting problem added to the mix was the amount of bureacratic bullshit the team had to deal with in trying to get enough evidence to arrest this one single suspect, as the team will sometimes be told to make an arrest that won't only hold up in court but also fuck up the case, purely for the sake of bringing statistics up, or effectively told to look the other way if one direction they follow the case in leads to something a little bigger than drug dealers.
With such a large focus, it more than makes up for its first few episodes where arguably, very little of the main plot happens. However, even these episodes were very watchable, with its characters feeling completely real and even some great moments of humour added in (one of my favourites being two cops bringing in a drug dealer and telling a bullshit story about a man he'd shot just to get him to write a letter of apology to the victim's mother).
The dvd box set really helps in watching this show, as there's less of the usual structure of having something resolved by the end of an episode and more of one long story broken down into 13 parts, so it can certainly help in remembering something brought up in the finale that was mentioned in the first episode when you only watched it a couple of weeks before. The show may not be for everyone, and it's got a fair bit to go before I can describe it as "the greatest tv show ever made" as a few fans seem to describe it, but not that much. It's an extremely well made, incredibly complex series that has far, far more to it than the surface plot of cops trying to arrest one man. I've heard the other seasons each have a very different focus, both on what the case is and on the city of Baltimore, which considering how much was resolved by the end of the first season is very fitting. I'll be interested in seeing where the show goes next, certainly. 9/10
Originally Posted by Mattrick
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Agreed completely. An excellent use of 
