BY ALEXANDRA ISRAEL

In print | Published March 27, 2008

It’s hard to watch HBO at Swarthmore. I know this from firsthand experience: I haven’t yet found a television set that receives the channel and the official HBO online video player doesn’t work with Apple computers (which, given that Macs are vastly superior to anything even remotely connected with Microsoft, remains a mystery). I realize that HBO is a subscription channel that doesn’t sell ads and therefore can only make money from those who pay to receive the channel, but I don’t think it would kill them to sell episodes on iTunes.

It was, therefore, with much impatience that I waited for the chance to return home for Spring Break and, snacks and remote close at hand, spend an entire day catching up on the final season of HBO’s groundbreaking drama “The Wire.”

Many critics have called “The Wire” the best show that has ever appeared on television. Not having personally viewed every show that has ever been broadcast (hard to believe, I know), I can’t say for sure that this is the case; however, I can state that “The Wire” is the best TV show that I have ever seen. I don’t mean to say that it is my favorite show – – that award would have to go to “Lost,” in case you couldn’t guess – – but I can appreciate that the quality of the writing and acting, as well as the way the show digs deep into its subject matter, is the best on the airwaves.

For those of you who didn’t read any critic’s top-10 lists in the last five or so years, “The Wire” is a drama that deals with the daily struggles of the Baltimore Police Department: the drug busts, murder investigations and wiretaps that constitute an attempt to hold back the tide of crime that threatens to engulf the city completely. In addition to this particular thread, which has run through all five seasons, each year has explored in-depth a particular theme.

I started watching during the incomparable, heartbreaking fourth season, which followed a group of kids from the ghetto as they worked (or failed to work) their way through the toughest middle school this side of … actually, I can’t think of anything that even comes close. When, early in season four, two girls got into a catfight in the classroom and one cut the other so badly that she suffered nerve damage, I was, suddenly, immensely grateful for a seventh grade spent as an isolated pariah. At least I made it out uninjured.

The fifth (and, sadly, last) season of the show did not reach the same heights that season four did, but it was still the most compelling ten hours of television on air this year. The focus of season five was the media – – more specifically, the Baltimore Sun – – and its relationship with the police department and the mayor’s office. The portrayal of dishonest reporters and the decline of the print newspaper were compelling. The scenes set in the Sun’s offices also gave time to an issue dear to my heart: the public’s fascination with grotesquerie and train wrecks, encapsulated in the reporters’ slogan: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

“The Wire” benefits not only from the consistently wonderful writing that allows the show to explore such themes without seeming like homework; it also has one of the best (and certainly the most diverse) ensemble casts on television. Every character on the show is fully fleshed out, and there are far too many wonderful parts for me to talk about even a small fraction. So, I’ll leave you with an example of the kind of impact that “The Wire” has on its viewers, and the way in which the audience was able to connect with the characters. Midway through this season, fan favorite Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), a vigilante who stole money from drug dealers and killed them if they acted out of line, was gunned down in a convenience store. The next week, Newsweek magazine ran his obituary, as if Little were just as real as Arthur C. Clarke. And, in a way, he was.

Alex is a first-year. You can reach her at aisrael1@swarthmore.edu

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