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Its been said by a lot of people that the Wire is the best series ever made. Its a well made show, but the funny thing about it is that it is essentially a cop show unlike any of the other hundreds of cop shows that have been out in the last few decades.
Most cop shows explore people's frustration at not being able to control the world we live in, without ever going deeper then that. This is just about the only cop show that tried to actually delve into the reality of what's been going on in this country for the last thirty years.
For instance, this is the only police drama I've ever seen that talked about how a city can no longer do in depth investigations because they've cut back too much. They don't have the budget for modern audio bugs. They can't afford to put a 13-year-old child into witness protection, even though he can identify the biggest drug dealer in the city. The police officers go for easy arrests on the street because they take less time, and as a result never go after the people who are actually causing a lot of the crime.
In another part of the show, an aging police officer calmly explains to a younger cop that once upon a time, police could get information in the community, but as the war on drugs has continued, all cooperation has ceased.
When I went back and rewatched the series, what really struck me about it was how remarkable it was that in all those derivative cop shows and movies, and there have been many hundreds of them, not a single one of them ever brought that up until this one. The thing that made the Wire so brilliant is that it said what was obviously true.
Embedding has been disabled for the wire, but I've included links to a few of the best scenes from the wire.
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Click here.
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