I don't get The Wire. And by that, I don't mean I don't "get" The Wire, that I don't understand it, or its appeal, but that, not being an HBO subscriber, The Wire doesn't get into my home.
Having said that, I listened to an episode of Sound of Young America during which our pal Jesse spent 55 minutes slobbering all over two cast members from the show, one who plays a junkie called Bubbles, and the other who plays a cop with a short name (Bunk? Shad? Thor? Something like that.)
The thrust of the interview seemed to be that the show was so great because it made junkies likable, more three-dimensional, and it made drug-traders more sympathetic.
Ignoring the fact that I can't think of almost anything I would less like than to make drug-dealers more sympathetic, I at least got insight into the hate pits, the people in them, and the deeds that placed them there. Surely it's just that we don't see the three-dimensional fullness of Mickey Dolenz, that if we only understood what he went through, he would be more sympathetic, and we would be appreciative of the pressures in his life that forced him to blow off our pal Tom. If only we knew him more fully, his life could be an example to us, and we could learn to love his flaws, and use those flaws to shed light on the dark corners of our own lives, our own feeble attempts at impersonating Jimmy Cagney, and to be better people by virtue of being more empathetic to those we would otherwise casually dismiss.
Bob Saget, we hardly know ye!!!
