The Wire, Season Two
Started: mid-September, 2009 | Finished: 10/11/09
Second seasons of TV shows make me nervous. They inevitably introduce a slew of new characters, which are difficult to adjust to. Everything that was wrapped up in the first season is long since forgotten, and the gang is off to a new adventure this year. The Wire is keenly aware of these pitfalls of serialized drama, and avoids most of them by giving a broader view of Baltimore’s drug scene in which all of these sophomore season traits are nothing but believable.
The jargon seems easier to follow this season (whether it be my own adjustment, or network execs clamping down after a wordy first season I’m not sure), but the complex interrelationships between an assortment of drug runners becomes the new hurdle to jump over. I’m not sure I grasp the massive amounts of connections going on just yet- and I’m not sure how many are legitimately involved with each other, and which are symptoms of a small(ish) city being run by a handful of kingpins.
In any case, it adds much tension to the season when the detail is always several steps behind the crooks. Despite humanizing the bad guys in Season One, I felt this season was much more tragic, in that neither the cops nor criminals prevail— instead, it’s the people who get caught in the middle of it all who take the worst beating. In doing so, The Wire has sunk its hooks deep into me, and won’t let go until I see how the saga finishes.
A minor beef: Those quotes up front are almost unbearably cheesy. I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s the punctuation that really gets me. None of these lines would be under Potent Quotables in tonight’s Jeopardy match. It would be much more effective, and much less cringe inducing, to format the quote as a line from a script, or even a play, if need be. Consider:
versus:
It’s just a little classier my way, and a lot less pretentious. (The quote selection still needs work, as you can tell. I mean come on. Does anybody even remember that line??) But if this is your show’s biggest problem, you’re doing a lot of things right. Onward to Season Three…
