All the pieces matter
catnip_mouse and I have recently finished watching season 4 of The Wire. For those who don't know, The Wire is the greatest cop show not on TV, better even than Homicide: Life on the Street (which is written by the same person, from much of the same source material). Some critics have even gone so far to call it the greatest TV show ever (though there are diehards who still believe that title belongs to The Sopranos. After the abortion of the final season, I don't think so).
Structurally, each season of The Wire is like a novel, with each episode a chapter. The series as a whole forms a linked series of novels, exploring what is wrong with Baltimore and (by extension) contemporary America. That's right, it's not just a cop show (though its a damn good one), but also a work of serious social criticism. The first season built on Simon's other work, The Corner (which I have not yet seen, but am hoping to acquire), exploring the drug trade in Baltimore. The second season built on this, but also talked about the betrayal of the American working class, and their reduction from the great middle class existence to scraping a living practically on the breadline. The third season introduced politics, looking at the possibilities for reform through political action. The fourth season threw in education, examining the dysfunctional school system and the absurdity of No Child Left Behind. The fifth season, screening at the moment, looks at the media, who ought to be screaming about these problems but stay silent (did I mention that institutional dysfunction, the sheer fuckedup-ness of large organisations, is a key theme of The Wire? I'll never be able to run a police game again without being informed by it...)
A side effect of this structure is that (as Freemon says) all the pieces matter. This isn't something you can just start watching halfway through; you need to start at the beginning, and pay attention the whole way, otherwise you'll miss a lot of what's going on, a lot of the bodies that people are carefully tiptoing around (or letting lie on the table between them, unmentioned). But if you have the attention-span, its highly rewarding, watching the intricacies of the plots unfold (not to mention four years of character development). The show is full of back-references, people popping up again from the past, and seemingly trivial incidents can have significant consequences later on (as I suspect will happen next season over the theft of a ring... or maybe a camera).
The other thing The Wire is good at is making your care about characters, and conveying the inherent tragedy of their situations. This was particularly true of the schoolkids in season four, of whom many really seem to have no future but the corner, and no way of even seeing that something else might be possible. Then there's Bubbles, the homeless junkie who is fucked on and betrayed by everyone, even the people he turns to for help. But it's not just the nominal innocents, but the dealers too. Having watched Bodie (a smalltime dealer) grow up over four seasons, always there, on his corner, taking no shit from anybody, I can't help but like him, care about his fate, and cheer when he puts one over on the police at the end of season three - despite the stuff he does. Which makes his fate at the end of season four just a tad distressing; the streets of David Simon's baltimore just won't be the same without him.
So, now I'm left waiting till March to get the final season. And then I'll be wondering what to watch for my serious drama fix...