The Wire: Season One by Alex Snider

MmmmmmmHmmmmmmm

*Spoiler Alerts Ahead* 

I know I'm kinda late to the game (as I usually am, except with stripped nail polish weirdly enough) but I just finished watching season one of The Wire with Rebekah and our friend Carolyn (neither of whom have watched the last two episodes yet (I thought we had agreed to go ahead on our own...)) and hot damn, Deadwood might have competition for the greatest TV show ever. Might (there have yet to be any Swearengen-level rants and so far no one has been able to muster a Seth Bullockesque glower).

All those Bubbles references from like eight years ago?
I get them now!

There is just so much goodness:

Stringer Bell. Greggs. Wee-Bey. Greggs' head movements. Rhonda's voice. Stringer Bell in a suit. McNulty sometimes breaking into his British accent. The at-times-Mamet-like dialogue. That it's the aughts and they're all working away on typewriters and pagers (adorbs!). Stringer Bell wearing glasses. Prez: "I like word-searches".

"I really come around by the end of
the season, you'll see!"

The nicknames, in particular: Poot. Shardene's glasses. Omar's whistling. Finally knowing who Bubbles and Omar are. Bubbles. The looks that Carver gave when Herc told sexist stories. Wallace handing out juice boxes and chips to all those kids who lived at Wallace's Home for Wayward Children And Will Never Be Properly Explained in Season One. Stringer Bell. 

I think I may be attracted to McNulty? Maybe? He looks like
Mark Antony from Rome? And, he may have swagger? But,
he looks like he would smell of really stall  whiskey and vomit?
But, he might be really misunderstood and sweet? He might
need me? I historically have horrendous taste in men?
(At least two of those statements are true)

The scene where Bunk and McNulty are investigating that cold-case (the one where Wee-Bey shot the girl through the window but they thought it was D) and they just keep saying fuck over and over. Daniels. The discussion about Chicken McNuggets. Stringer Bell breathing air. Lester getting off the pawn shop unit. Lester making doll house furniture minitures. Lester totally hooking up with Shardene. How sweet is Shardene?!

This is how you rock a turtleneck. And, I am
the fucking awesomest.

And, so much badness that is necessary and thus is good (in the context of the show): 

Police brutality (oh man, when Greggs got in on beating up Bodie I'm pretty sure it broke all three of our hearts). McNulty's alcoholism and dead-beat-dadism. Bubbles' scabs. Prez, pretty much everything about him: pistol-whipping a child then going on to be this really sweet savant that I just can't stay mad at. Politics, man, politics. Wallace, man oh man, that shit's hard, huh? "Where Wallace at?" D'Angelo wanting to break away and go to school and everything. Brandon. The way the cops manipulate everyone.  That no one was wanted to talk to Kima's girlfriend at the hospital, ugh, fuckers. 

"I feel like not only was the turtleneck a bad idea but the
mock-neck on top was mos def overkill"

And, shit that is just bad: 

D'Angelo and the fucking turtlenecks. Rhonda and McNulty's synconized sex-breathing. The homicide sergeant's disgusting stories about him jerking off. Ugh, Orlando's HAIR. How they showed that horrible naked crime scene photo of that murdered woman (Deirdre) every goddamned chance they got, fucking unnecessary and dehumanizing. That every episode didn't have a scene dedicated to Stringer Bell getting caught in the rain and then having to, on a dark spot-light stage, take off his wet, clingy shirt while swaying his hips just so through the end credits. 

Yes.

Come on season two!