The Joy of March

Sure, UConn lost. (I'll post more on that in the coming days.) But the sting of their early loss (& AJ Price's injury) was more than made up for yesterday with West Virginia taking out Duke. Buh-bye.

It's "The Wire" Wednesday!

"From start to finish, The Wire has been one of the best series ever produced for American television, one in which the commitment to honesty and authenticity has never wavered. Despite that quality, its subject matter — nothing less than the failure of the world's most powerful nation to solve the fundamental problems of its urban centers — was never likely to pull in a mass, casual audience."

Too few were plugged in, but HBO's 'The Wire' was electric, USA Today

Also, here's two good podcasts to check out.

- Interview with David Simon

- Bill Simmons (ugh) & Jason Whitlock (yes) talk about "The Wire" for 55 minutes.

Tuesday With "The Wire"

Or, "sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!"

It was something my uncle used to do all the time. Growing up, he would do it five six seven times a day. You'd go, "Did you sleep well?" and he'd go, "Ah, sheeet, my head was on the pillow." I would every now and then just do it in conversations.

The Wire: The secret origin of Clay's catchphrase

Monday's "The Wire" Stuff

TV Guide interview with Tristan Wilds (Michael Lee):

TVGuide.com: Why doesn't The Wire get its due?
Wilds: The show is real enough to strike a chord in [everybody], and most of the time people don't want to see realness like that. Or maybe they think that it's fake TV and we're just being violent for no reason. What you see on the show is really happening, and not just in Baltimore. It's happening in a neighborhood two blocks down from where you live. People don't want to open their eyes to the truth.

TVGuide.com: What makes The Wire different from other cop shows?
Wilds: I don't want to say it's a cop show. What makes The Wire a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In The Wire, bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.

San Diego Union Tribune:

It was a harsh night on"The Wire" this week, and a beautiful one, too. Beautiful because it was so true and so human that it hurt. And when a television show can make you care the way "The Wire" makes us care, it is worth its weight in tears.

Slate Magazine:

Like the rest of you, I've been watching this story slowly crack open for several years now. It's been 59 hours of TV time; there's one more hour to go, and I can't wait for it. But for now, this hour, this episode, felt like a coming together. It was simply breathtaking -- the logical, perfect conclusion to all those hours, those years' of stories, at once exhilarating and devastating, just like you knew it would be.

I watched this on Tuesday, and it's haunted me in lonely moments ever since. I'm still a bit hopped up on it, so please forgive my sounding overwrought. The thing is, it wasn't just the plot developments that got me, though these were obviously huge: Marlo! Snoop! Namond! Kima! McNulty! Bubbs!

But there was also something more complex here, something more intricately beautiful. In describing "The Wire" to friends, we've all remarked upon on its novelistic properties. This episode felt like the climax of that novel. Every scene hangs on the subtext of years' of accumulated storylines; the story, now, is not just the script but also all that we've learned of these people's motivations, their impulses, their relationships, the constraints in which they operate. The story is the system, and now, finally, we're seeing the system in full.

Wow, Wow, Wow

Once again, wow, wow, wow.

We're now less than a week away from the season & series finale for The Wire.

Once again, this show has exceeded expectations. Tonight's episode was, like Alan said, the ultimate roller coaster ride. (Speaking of Alan, I'm glad there's no shortage of TV writers who actually know what they're doing out there.)

This show not only rewards you for paying attention early in the season, it calls back stuff that happened way back in Season 1.

There's no way I can write anything to give this show justice. There are plenty of people who can articulate their thoughts far better than I can heaping praise on The Wire out there. This week, I'll try & link to as many of those stories as possible.

These past two episodes have been unreal. First, dealing with the whole Omar thing. Tonight, there was far too much to even touch on here.

Thank goodness for DVDs, because this is something I will be re-watching many times.