HBO's The Wire- Arrested Development on Drugs?

The fourth season of The Wire, HBO's gritty, intelligent drama about the Baltimore drug trade, arrived with plenty of critical fanfare. The show is being hailed by many as the best thing on television, a claim made more outrageous by the fact that it's arguably true. Unfortunately, like many excellent shows before it (Arrested Development comes to mind), The Wire is still struggling to find an audience. In fact, HBO renewed it for a fourth season based largely on critical success, not popular support-HBO apparently did not want to be known as the network that canceled "the best show on television." But this is not to say that The Wire's only fans are a handful of television critics. On the contrary, The Wire has a small but intense fan base, and a growing number of devotees that include many students right here on campus.

"I watch it all the time," Sue Basile, SEAS '07, said. "We have cable in River, and my friends and I will usually watch it together. Even so, I try to catch it a second time because I'll miss subtle things."

Not everyone, however, follows the same viewing schedule.

"I have a TV, but no cable, and definitely no HBO," Courtney Duncan, BC '09, said. "My dad, who is a Wire-head himself, TiVos it for me, and I'm going to have a Wire marathon when I get home. I tell my friends and everyone not to tell me what's happening so I find out everything when I watch it myself."

Ben Ernst, GS, is also postponing his enjoyment of this season. He believes that the only way to watch The Wire is on DVD "one after another, preferably in the span of a day or two."

Ernst continued, "The show is so subtle and the details are so important that watching the shows every week as they come out is pointless. I have seasons one, two, and three, and will wait to see season four until it comes out on DVD."

Unfortunately for HBO's ratings, more and more people seem to be taking Ernst's route and waiting for the DVD. While a subscriber network like HBO can make back enough money this way, larger broadcast networks are forced to rely on Neilsen ratings and on-air advertising. This is, at least in part, a cause for the disparity in quality between subscriber and broadcast networks.

The Wire follows the vicissitudes of the Baltimore drug trade and the ongoing struggle between cops, dealers, and politicians, with no side staying on top for long. Season four takes viewers into the classroom, following a group of eighth graders as they navigate the ups and downs of life on the corner-or, more innocently, the stoop. As the season progresses, these kids begin to settle on different paths, with Michael Lee (Tristan Wilds) taking up boxing, Randy Wagstaff (Maestro Harrell) taking up algebra, and Namond Brice (Julito McCullum) taking up the "neighborhood business." Of course, with drugs as the driving force of the neighborhood's economy, none of these boys can really escape them for long. In this type of environment even boys like Michael, who are trying to stay on the straight and narrow, wind up running drugs to make some spare cash. How long until he drops out of school and picks up a gun?

Of course, the fourth season doesn't restrict itself to the classroom. Jimmy McNulty (played by Dominic West) is back as a beat cop who's been burned by the system too many times and is content to stay out of the high-profile cases. Due to political pressure, the Major Crimes Unit has been disbanded, but Detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) is still gunning for Mayor Royce (Glynn Turman). Detectives Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) and Shakima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) are investigating a homicide that might just bring down the entire political establishment. Tommy Carcetti (Aiden Gillen) just won a bitterly contested mayoral seat-with a little help from the detective work of Moreland and Greggs-and is hoping he's up to the task of setting Baltimore right again.

With all this drama, why isn't America tuning in to The Wire? Could it really be that viewers aren't ready for an almost entirely African-American cast and story line? Or is The Wire just suffering the same fate as Arrested Development: too smart and well-executed for its own good?

In fact, this season of The Wire almost never saw the light of day. Based on its previous ratings, HBO easily could have canceled the show. But the scripts the show's creator, David Simon, presented HBO for the fourth season were so impressive-and the show's critical acclaim so unequivocal-that HBO renewed it.

Yet The Wire is still struggling to find an audience. The season premiere attracted 1.53 million viewers. To put this into perspective, The Sopranos averages over 9 million viewers. Thankfully, HBO can afford to look beyond a show's ratings and take stock of the larger picture.