Confessions of a Pop Fan

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

OUT ON AN ENDLESS WIRE

If you aren't watching the fourth season of HBO's police drama The Wire, what the hell is wrong with you? Get your "On Demand" fired up and snag this season's first half and get caught up before it's all over.

I had the opportunity to see the last five episodes of the season over the weekend, and the finale left me in absolute awe. I was already a huge fan of the first three seasons, but the more the show progresses, the more impressed I become. The Wire is easily the most complex show on television. Characters rise and fall, moving in and out of the story, but always with purpose. Each season, the creators spend the first half setting up all of their various players and laying out their plot threads, and then around episode eight or nine, they lift the magic veil and suddenly all the disparate elements move together. You never get the sense they don’t know what they are doing at any given moment, and when you look back at all that has preceded it, you realize that they've had it planned from the beginning. Each series essentially focuses on one case, and there is no greater evidence of the show's vision than the way season two bridges one and three, the way the characters that were important to the investigation of one ride through the background of two to reemerge in three. For those of you who are complaining that the people behind Lost don't appear to have any clue where their own show is going, hop over to my island and see what is really possible.

The close-out of season four has a lot of surprises. Characters that you thought would go one way don't, and certain positions change up. The fate of a couple of the players really broke my heart. I really want season five to get started just for the hope that we'll hear they are okay. The end of the episode is one of those long montages that veers through the various members of the cast (keep in mind, you have the police, the criminals, and the government, and all the places they splinter and merge) to give a quick denouement and assessment of where these everyone is at. It's cut to Paul Weller's cover of "I Walk On Gilded Splinters," an excellent choice to illustrate the posturing and tenuous illusions of life in "the game." It's a perfect exit, and I'm ready for the next entrance.

Current Soundtrack: De La Soul, The Impossible Mission: TV Series Pt. 1

Current Mood: enthralled