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How The Wire Ruined TV For Me.

Last year while I was enduring, with great joy I might add, all five seasons of The Wire within about an eight week period, it dawned on me that there would be repercussions.  Many cable and basic have had shows that have been good, but they all, almost without fail, lose their way.  Even shows like the Sopranos, which started off so well, fizzled out into something that became unwatchable.

Last year, a friend mentioned I should watch Dexter and I have to say, it's brilliant, but you can see them stretching the same old cliches and trying desperately to come up with new ideas.  The show, peaked in it's fourth season, thanks in large part to the brilliance of John Lithgow.  Then a strange thing happened, it stayed really good.  Season six, imported another nice villain in the form of Edward James Olmos, who had a side-kick, sort of, played by Colin Hanks.  At the end of the last season, we had the biggest cliffhanger and the initial three episodes became tedious.  Enter one beautiful blond woman with a dark secret of her own and a plot twist I never saw coming and there you have it. The show has gone back to basics with multiple baddies and the ongoing search to catch him.

So what does this have to do with The Wire?  The Wire, despite having it's better season, never had the fall off, episode to episode.  The Wire threw everything we knew about a series out the window, because each season was unique, despite using the same basic characters. Since watching The Wire, I have tried to get into three very popular shows and I've given up on all of them.  It's as simple as a bad storyline for a season (Prime Suspect) or sometimes just really shitty acting (The Walking Dead) and sometimes it's just not worth the effort, even if it is a guilty pleasure (Grimm, Elementary & Person of Interest).

I'll finish Dexter out, because it is a great show, but even it, now pales in comparison to the like of The Wire.  This gives me great pause to get into thinks I've heard boasted about like Weeds, Downton Abbey, Justified and Boardwalk Empire.  I just don't want to commit to something that fizzles, when I'm still waiting to lose myself in more Bergman, Truffaut, and Kurosawa.

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