THE WIRE Returns Tonight!

(For the record, I’ve watched the series in a weird order: Season 4, then Season 2 ("On Demand"), and most recently Season 1 (on DVD box set, reasonably downpriced at Amazon). I still have to catch up with Season 3, which I intend to do before Season 5 runs it course.)

Creator David Simon has tackled a different Big Theme each season, but the basic mooring of the series has been provided by the Baltimore Police Department and people involved in or affected by criminal activity. The first season followed the investigation of a powerful drug lord in West Baltimore; the second season examined the intricate workings of the Baltimore port and the descent of a hard-working family of dock workers; the fourth season introduced a group of young men on the cusp of adulthood, dealing with the failures of the school system and the temptations of street-corner dealing.

Characters come and go, live and die, disappear and get promoted. I have no doubt that watching all the seasons back to back—now totaling more than 50 episodes—is the preferred way to get the most out of the series. It is an incredibly rich mosaic, it is a novel for television, it is an intricate, layered show that makes continual, subtle references to its own created history.

But don’t let that keep you from picking up on the series.

Here’s my reasoning: way back in the early 90s, I had fallen out of the habit of reading novels. It was a familiar story—the pressures of work and relationships had convinced me that I no longer had time. One day, though, my roommate enthused to me about Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park—more about the cool ideas than the writing—and encouraged me to give it a try. I initially balked, until I was sick and picked up the paperback, more or less at random, and started reading where the book fell open. I don’t remember what I read, but it intrigued me, and I read another paragraph, and then skipped to a few chapters later, and read that chapter, and then read the previous chapter, and the following chapter, and then I gave into the inevitable and started at the beginning.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Don’t expect fireworks or gun battles or pumped-up quote fests masquerading as arguments. The show hews as closely as possible to realistic situations.

Don’t expect dialogue that sounds like it was written. It’s filled with local references and some of it is, frankly, indecipherable mumbling. The show tends to recruit novelists (George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane) to write one or two episodes each season, which results in a much higher level of invention and subtle, revealing incidents than your average police procedural.

Don’t expect quick pay-offs. The show takes its time to develop storylines and the pace is almost never hurried. At the same time, neither is it lazy, slow, or boring. It’s always moving forward toward an inexorable conclusion, though maybe not the one you expect or want to see.

This season, the Big Theme will be The Media—David Simon is a former crime report for The Baltimore Sun—and I can’t wait to see where the show goes.