The Best Show on Television Isn't on Television

It's been a while since my last posting. I have seemingly recovered from my January tragedy (as much as any human possibly can. . .) and am looking towards the future with hope and joy.

Speaking of the future, I almost gave up on the show Heroes. Almost. What hooked me in was the seemingly obvious plot of getting all the characters together. Seriously, it's been four seasons now and we're just now getting to the point of one story arc instead of a million smaller side stories. As of the last season, I was terminally bored with the show and was about to throw in the towel. After the season opener, I'll stick around for a few more episodes to see if it gets better. If not, I'm gonna drop it like a bad potato.

Speaking of television shows, your old uncle Caleb wants to recommend a show to you. I truly believe that his show is the best, grittiest, raw, real and ultimately redemptive yet true to life show ever created. The Wire. It's an HBO series (now ended after its brilliant 5th season) about inner city Baltimore and the drug culture of the poor urban areas. It is a hard yet realistic portrait of the city and the people who live and work there and the massive challenges of trying to end drug traffic and drug culture. The police aren't your nice, predictable officers. They're deeply flawed and often willingly do the wrong things to get the "bad guys." Throw in a healthy robin hood like character named Omar Little who steals from the drug dealers (as well as kills them) and gives to the junkies and a gangster who wants to turn into a business man for the drug world Stringer Bell and you need a cop like McNulty, an irish, womanizing alcoholic cop who is just as messed up as the people he puts away.

Sound gritty? It is. It's foul-mouthed, violent, sick, twisted, filled with drug use, sex, and any other form of objectionable content, yet it will leave you identifying with these characters - the good and the bad. It makes you feel like you could be any of these people because the things these characters go through and do are shadows and echoes of the very things in all of our hearts. We may deny this thought, but it is true. We all are just as corrupted as these people, and they're not pretending they're not. We are the ones pretending we're better than them. Watching this show will force you to re-consider the black–and–white world some of us have fooled ourselves into believing  exists. I promise you, it may be a tough watch at first, but you'll be glad to did. 

If you've already seen it, cheers!