Starting with the end of its second season, The Wire started to build up some real steam towards becoming a great show. After ten episodes of stewing over a case I didn't really care about, suddenly like the turn of a switch it became compelling television and I got invested in most of its storyline. Could The Wire keep up that momentum going into season three, despite moving away from the docks and back into the drug-heavy streets? The answer is a resounding "yes". Just as expected from reading others' posts here on the Back-Blog, The Wire started to enter the discussion for "greatest show ever" with an awesome third season. I'm not saying it is the best show ever, as I still feel Breaking Bad and The Sopranos and several others have been significantly better, but this was still pretty darn good. We have a power struggle between Avon, Marlo, Omar, and Stringer. We have the recently-released from prison Cutty who is tempted to return to the drug trade. There's Carcetti, the initially idealistic city-councilman trying to swing a campaign for mayor based on the war on drugs. The most compelling storyline of all though revolves around Baltimore cop Bunny Colvin and his unorthodox way of fighting drug crime- by not fighting it at all. Rather than continue to fight a losing battle, he sets up a deal with local drug peddlers- if they do all of their dealing in an abandoned section of town, then the police will look the other way and not take action. This seemed to be the major question of the season- just how much is the war on drugs actually helping? Anyway, it won't be long before I jump into season four which has been hyped up to be the best and also somewhat horrifying. I know it mostly features kids in and our of school, so something tells me it's going to get very depressing. Can't wait!
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