The other night as I was handing the homie Vernon his ass in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 I also had a chance to kind of halfway watch David Simon’s new show “Generation Kill” on HBO. Dude who played one of my favorite characters from the Wire (Ziggy played by James Ransone) is also on there. I’ll give it it’s due diligence at some point in the future, but what the show really did was remind me that I needed to watch my favorite season of the Wire again, season 2.

*don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the Wire and want to remain spoiler free*

Whenever I get into discussions about the Wire with other people, invariably they mention that season 2 was their least favorite, because it was “slow” and “so different”. Of course, those are the things that make it so appealing to me, but I’ll get into that later.

One of the things that makes The Wire as a whole so great is that it’s SO layered. It’s literally the closest thing we’ll ever get to a series of novels written for television. Each episode is a chapter that could stand alone, just fine, but you’d never want it to stand alone. You want to know what comes before and after. That’s what hooks you. That is why whenever I let someone borrow a season, they will almost inevitably end up watching most of the episodes back to back to back, often in one night, never longer than a week. It’s like a good book you can’t put down.

The people who I haven’t managed to hook often share the sentiment that it’s depressing to watch a show about “hood people doing hood things”. I hate when people say things like that because it really sells the show short. It’s like describing Goodfellas as “a mob movie about mob people doing mob things” or Jimi Hendrix as “a left handed guitarist”. It’s so much more than that, and no season of the show speaks to that more than season 2.

Don’t get me wrong, season 2 is still very much “hood”, I think it’s the saving grace for alot of the people who watch it for that element and were turned off by the dock element. The dock element to me made the show transcendental. Without it, it would have just been a really good “hood” show, which would have been fine with me. With it, it became probably the greatest television drama ever.

On the docks, we learned about the Baltimore working class. We learned that it’s not just Black folks out there struggling to get by and not just us affected by drug trafficking. We learned about the so called “victimless” crimes like prostitution’s effects on people’s lives. We saw the corruption of the prison system without the ostentatiousness and surrealism of Oz.

Key characters were gained (The Greek and Vondas and Bunny Colvin towards the end) and lost (D’Angelo Barksdale) this season (some within the season, like the Sobotkas). Stringer Bell’s character is fleshed out, McNulty hits rock bottom for the first time, the unlikely partnership of the Bunk and Lester Freamon is born here, Prez manages to stay out of trouble, Prop Joe’s family tree is expanded (say Cheese!), Omar was Omar and had probably his greatest moment as he took Maury Levy to task for his seperate but equal role in “the game”.

I think the opening shots of McNulty on the water unnerved alot of people because it was what they least expected, and rightly so, as Bubs pointed out “something just ain’t right with that scene”. It was righted in a jarring, Wire-like fashion by the end.

Speaking of Bubs if I found fault with any one thing about this season it was his lack of presence through most of it. I guess some sacrifices had to be made.

I don’t know if this will manage to turn any of you into season 2 fans, but I implore you to give it a second look! It’s one of those things that gets better with each viewing.