Word: drama
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...forever tarnished by the Spygate affair, in which the team was caught trying to steal an opponent's signs, using a sideline camera. On the surface, more controversy would seem like the last thing the league needs. But it turns out the Patriots are the ideal villains. The drama inherent in their chase for an unblemished record and the emotions the team engenders make these imperfect Pats perfect for the NFL--and especially for the league's bottom line...
...fifth and final season of HBO's The Wire--TV's greatest current work of social criticism, of drama, of, well, TV--is about the failures of the media. In that spirit, let me begin with an apology. The odds are good that you have not yet watched the first four seasons of The Wire, which returns on Jan. 6, and that means that I as TV critic have failed you. Mea culpa...
What are you missing? A bleakly funny critique of struggling postindustrial American cities; a novelistic, street-smart social drama; a passionate, un-p.c. look at race and class dynamics--all wrapped up in a sprawling story of police work and politics that makes CSI look like an Encyclopedia Brown mystery...
...wire, lowercase, is. In the first season of the series, in 2002, the wire was a wiretap, which a team of Baltimore cops used in a season-long probe of a drug gang. At first blush, it sounded too conventional for the home of The Sopranos. A police drama on HBO? What's next? A sitcom about a friendly Martian? "We were the 'gritty cop show,'" David Simon, the former police reporter who created the series, recalls of some dismissive early reviews...
...show is a variation on old-fashioned populist reportage à la Studs Terkel. It elevates the lowlifes and mocks the highlifes. It's steeped in lived experience, with voices as distinctive and regional as a crab boil. Simon may be angry and intellectual--The Wire differs from most TV drama, he says, because it's based in Greek tragedy about fated individuals, not Shakespearean tragedy about heroic individuals--but his show doesn't play like a tract or a thesis. It's full of memorable characters, like Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams), the principled bandit who robs from drug dealers; Detective...