Help Me Appreciate ‘The Wire’
November 27th, 2007, 17 Comments »
There isn’t a ton of English-language media floating around our village. However, some ex-pat friends of ours (she’s from Vancouver, if you can imagine) lent us season 2 of The Wire. I’d never seen an episode of the show, but a couple of people had recommended it to me, and it’s quite popular over at TVTorrents.
We watched episode one of season two, and I’ve got to admit that I was pretty lost. There seemed to be no affordances–to borrow a term from usability–for new viewers. And frankly, we were pretty bored. ‘The Wire’ is the talkiest cop show I’ve ever seen.
The show definitely seemed very gritty and realistic (I’ve never worked on the docks in Baltimore), and strongly influenced by the men-with-men tone and dialogue of David Mamet. Plus, the acting was strong. Still, it didn’t really float my boat. I guess I like my TV more in the middle-brow escapist mode of Weeds or The West Wing.
If you’re a fan of “The Wire”, why do you like it?