I haven’t watched as much television as I watched this week in a long, long, long time. Out of nowhere I received the upcoming release of all five seasons of “The Wire” on Blu-ray (buy it here) and I’ve been told for years how great this show is. Hell, the cover of the Blu-ray release has a quote calling it “The best show in the history of television”. That’s quite a claim. So, I got to watching. In fact, I watched the entire first season and all of the second season in the span of three days. I guess the question is, “Is this the best show in the history of television?”
Obviously I still have five more seasons to watch, but I will admit I enjoyed the first season quite a bit, but the second season is a bit of a step backward. For starters, the Ziggy character was a bit of a nightmare, never really feeling “of the moment”, but more a distraction from what the season was all about. That being said, the second season also felt a little confused as to what it actually was all about, confused as to whether they should continue to focus on the Barksdale storyline, on the docks or on McNulty’s battle to get back into the game. Just a few too many characters and not enough time.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I still enjoyed it, mainly because the characters are great. Obviously Idris Elba and Michael Kenneth Williams are great, I didn’t even recognize Michael B. Jordan until my wife noticed who he was and the light bulb switched on, “Damn! I knew I recognized him, but I couldn’t place him.” The main team though, all of ’em are great. I particularly love Dominic West, Wendell Pierce and Sonja Sohn. I liked Clarke Peters a smidge more when Lester was more the mysterious, silent contributor, but he’s still great nonetheless. I might write a bit more once I finish the whole series, but I’m looking forward to the next three seasons since I’ve heard the second season is the worst of the lot, which means if that’s the bottom of the barrel then there’s a lot to look forward to.
Otherwise, I watched the season three premiere episode of “Hannibal” and I’ll have more on that soon enough as I’ll be covering the entirety of the third season (premiere is June 4) and I watched Pitch Perfect 2 and caught a second showing of Mad Max: Fury Road. Pretty damn good week if you ask me.
So, your turn, what did you watch?
