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• Sunday, September 17, 2006 01:39 PM

  The Wire's Most Ringing Endorsement

  I'd been a fan of the show since the beginning of the second season. I was fortunate enough to be stuck home one weekend with a bad cold and HBO OnDemand. I watched the entire first season straight through and was extremely frustrated when I could only watch three episodes of the second. Of all the shows I've been a devoted fan, includikng Six Feet Under, Carnivale & Deadwood, none has truly gripped me as much as The Wire and none of those have I rewatched as often.

  The most ringing endorsement I ever heard of the show came from an actual low-level stree-thug drug dealer I happened to strike up a conversation with in NYC. We both loved the show for the same reasons, and he was just as taken aback as I was in the writers' ability to show the true nature of crime and punishment in a major U.S. city, along with all the messy connections, ironies and motivations that the 'good' guys and 'bad' guys are entangled in.

  If you love the show, keep watching, and make sure that HBO gives Simon the fifth season he deserves. He has always had a five season arc in mind, the first dealing directly with the drug trade, the second with the death of the working class and it's intersection with more criminal elements, the third with politics, fourth is education and the fifth will zero in on the media.

  —beedee Read beedee's other letters
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