I Like to Watch

Sept. 17, 2006 | It's been a cruel, cruel summer for the TV enthusiasts out there. Sure, there were some cheap thrills: Ryan Star's gloriously stupid "rocker" antics were the highlight of "Rock Star: Supernova," with the alarmingly dorky comments of Jason Newsted coming in a close second. "Hell's Kitchen" featured one of the most repugnant lineups of street toughs, sniping babies and blatant morons ever to appear on any reality show, topped off by Gordon Ramsay's closing comments (while laughing) that everyone out there could go f*** themselves. The second season of "So You Think You Can Dance" provided several hours of entertainment, before the judges' and dancers' mutual stroke-fest got a little repetitive. And when you throw in a great third season of "Deadwood" and an undeniably entertaining third-season "Project Runway," the summer's offerings were sparse, maybe, but not entirely disappointing. Besides, without a little elbow room in the schedule, how else would you have found the time to reorganize all of your closets, learn conversational Portuguese and take that three-week Italian vacation you've always dreamed of?

Wait, you didn't do all that stuff? You rented the first three seasons of "The Wire" and watched them back to back instead? Well, then, even better! Because now that the hearty fare of the fall is upon us, what could satisfy the rapacious palate better than the fourth season of "The Wire"? And if you have any energy left after devouring that multilayered microcosm of life in Baltimore, there are a bunch of new dramas that you really won't want to miss. Some of them look promising; others, you just need to see before they die. You know, sort of like the Pyramids in Egypt, except they'll only be around for a few weeks and you won't get your wallet stolen while you're checking them out.

Let me stand next to your wire
But first things first: Damn, it's good to have "The Wire" back! Even if it means we get a smaller serving of Detective McNulty (Dominic West) than usual, this season's focus on kids and the Baltimore school system more than makes up for it. ("The Wire" airs 10 p.m. EDT Sundays on HBO.)

David Simon and the other writers have always had a knack for putting sometimes clever, sometimes shortsighted but always genuine-sounding words in kids' mouths. Remember the first season of the show, when Barksdale cronies Wallace, Bodie and D'Angelo talk about how good Chicken McNuggets are, then wonder if the guy who invented them is rich now? When Wallace guesses that the guy is loaded, D'Angelo sets him straight, scoffing at the notion that Ronald McDonald rewarded some guy in the basement for dreaming up the McNugget. "You think Ronald McDonald go down to that basement and say, 'Hey, Mr. Nugget, you the bomb. We selling chicken faster than you can tear the bone out. So I'm gonna write my clowny-ass name on this fat-ass check for you!'?"

These are the juicy little moments that make "The Wire" so appealing. The dialogue may seem like a digression, until you recognize the brutal logic of the Barksdale drug empire. Like D'Angelo says, it's about money. People have to die, sure, but it's not personal. For Stringer Bell, the business manager of the operation, laws of supply and demand are king -- nothing is personal. Avon Barksdale, on the other hand, gets a kick out of the ego rewards of ruling over his territory and standing up to those who'd threaten it. As we witnessed in the third season, though, even when the two major players and lifelong friends start to feel suspicious of each other, they coldly set about undermining each other's power, while keeping their game faces intact to the very end.

For those who've watched since the first season, it's been tough to imagine getting into a season of "The Wire" that didn't focus on the charismatic yet loathsome characters at the center of the Barksdale clan. But with the demise of Stringer Bell and incarceration of much of Barksdale's crew, the show's writers had to look elsewhere for inspiration, and they found it in the Baltimore education system.

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