TV review: The Wire season 3

The target of the investigations is again the Barksdale organization while the shadowy world of local politics is introduced.

Notionally this season should be about politics but I must say that here they didn’t achieve the amazing results of the first two season, we don’t really understand what it’s all about apart from a generic impression of “It’s complicated” and “They’ll try to swindle you”. The writing is still amazing of course; it just does a worse job at explaining the subject.

Spiritually this is more a sequel to the first season, we go back to drug trafficking and the Barksdale whose plotlines come to a thunderous conclusion.

Overall the show is still very realistic and maybe a bit bleak, the effort to diminish the crime and help the underclass are actively sabotaged and stopped by the higher ups in the system. Even the cop hero, McNulty, is actually a moron ready to work behind his colleagues backs to get what he wants. This is noteworthy; here we have peoples, real human beings who do things, who make mistakes, dictated not by plot necessity like in so many other shows. Their mistakes are dictated by their nature, by what they are.

This is also an extremely cinematic show, there are thousands of moments where the storytelling is so elegant, so sophisticated.

This is really must see TV, for the first time I feel like I’m watching a 60 hour long movie and not the usual stuff stitched together just to get to the end of the season.