HBO’s “The Wire” started it’s fifth and final season earlier this month, meaning that my next 12-13 Sunday nights are accounted for.

The show is easily my all-time favorite. The Wire is a groundbreaking examination of all the institutions that contribute to drugs and urban crime. The creator, David Simon, resists all of the Law and Order/CSI crime clichés and instead turns in something far more powerful, by looking deep into the “why” and not just the “what”.

Plus, it’s based in my hometown, and the theme song is by Tom Waits, one of my all-time favorite musicians. Simon leans more of the song’s feeling (dark subject manner and driving rhythm) without relying on the song’s meaning — a theme throughout all of the series’ musical choices.

As anyone who’s been unlucky enough to mention the show anywhere within earshot of me, I can talk about it ad nauseum. Newsweek had an excellent article yesterday (on my birthday to boot) that describes the series in eerily similar terms to those I use:

If you’ve never seen an episode of “The Wire,”… by now you’re probably sick of hearing about what a fool you are for missing it. The show has become an object of worship among critics and culture snobs (Barack Obama told TV Guide that it’s his favorite show) and they—OK, we—can be flat-out annoying in our zeal for it, as if there are only two types of people: enlightened fans of “The Wire,” and everyone else. Worse, with all our talk about the show’s Dickensian cast of nearly 30 principal characters, its novelistic, episode-opening epigrams, its street-level patois and labyrinthine detail about city bureaucracy, we tend to make “The Wire” sound like homework.

In fact, the show is riveting, infuriating and funny as hell. (In one scene last year, a schoolteacher locks his keys in his car and one of his 13-year-old students, already an accomplished car thief, helpfully jimmies the door open for him.) Baltimore’s ruling class has complicated feelings about “The Wire”—there’s more to their city, they complain, than crime and blight—but its embrace by Baltimore’s underclass hints at its uncomfortable truth. “There is a sense around here that someone finally said, ‘Your lives are worthy of the same degree of drama and meaning as beautiful housewives’,” says Simon. “That’s a simple thing, but it becomes profound. It becomes a bit of connective tissue between these two Americas that are going their separate ways.”

A few seasons ago, country-rock musician and political activist, Steve Earle, made a cameo as a recovering heroin addict (undoubtedly cast at least in part because of his own serious struggles with drug addiction). His role on the show expanded this season, and he was even tapped to take his turn covering the opening credits (previous seasons feature versions by the Blind Boys of Alabama, Waits, the Neville Brothers, and DoMaJe — a Baltimore teen group). Earle turns in a much lighter reading of Waits’ fire-and-brimstone faux-sermon, leaning more towards R.L. Burnside-style electro-blues. It’s not as good as Waits’ original by a mile, but it’s an interesting reading and worth the listen.

Further Reading:

Tunes:

Bonus: