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The genius and beauty of "The Wire" is not that it's all a game, a tragic game its characters are for the most part trapped in. Yes, these dealers, cops, politicians etc. do treat life as if it had a series of win conditions, rules, as if nothing mattered but how well you used the latter to achieve the former. And yes, every time the characters step outside the game they are crushed by those who continue to play. But if this were all "The Wire" was, it would be a fairly mundane show. Well-written, perhaps. Entertaining, sure. But really just another "Law & Order" spinoff.
Instead, the beauty of "The Wire" is when it reveals to its audience--and less often, its characters--that the game is false, a shield behind which we hide in order to avoid the terrible truth that life is about real people, real tragedies. The genius is that "The Wire" lets us to participate in these games--the procedural, the tactics of drug traffickers, the ploys of small-time dealers, Union bosses, politicians. We watch wanting to see how the game plays out--for exactly the same reason we watch "Law & Order"--to see who wins, loses. And then the show sucker punches us. It brings it all back to the human level--the death of D'Angelo Barksdale, Frank Sabatka, the shooting of Detective Greggs, or maybe something more subtle like Tommy Carcetti receiving the trump card from those who play even better than he, anytime Bubbles is on-screen during the first two seasons--and then moves along, back to the game, back to what we would prefer to watch. It is jarring but it is seldom melodramatic.
"The Wire" has problems, namely the fast-forward "wrap ups" we inevitably get at the end of the seasons. These are annoying, obnoxious, and a betrayal of everything the beginning of the season has worked toward. But this can be forgiven because the show does what few others have--it shows us that life is *not* a game, and then it moves on, back to the game, because even the creators of television shows have to play.
