Still looking for a gift to give this holiday season? If you’re really stumped and have no idea what that special someone would like, why not surprise them by giving them the greatest television show I’ve ever seen. Better than Lost, better than Mad Men, better than Sex and the City, and yes—even better than Seinfeld.

Welcome to The Wire.

Here’s the best part: a lot of people still don’t know how good this show is. It was on HBO and it ended in 2008, after five incredible seasons. The other great part? The complete series came out on DVD earlier this month, which means you can now give the whole thing to someone you really care for (not just anyone, mind you) all in one fell swoop.

If you can’t afford it, don’t fret. Here’s what you do: you buy the first season and give that instead. After that, they’ll buy/rent the rest on their own—guaranteed. The show is that addictive.

OK, now that I’m done talking like a salesman, let’s get down to the nitty gritty about this show. This is my review of my favorite show of all time:

The Wire is the Greatest Show Ever

There are shows that take you by the throat and smack you upside the head with a great first impression and fool you into thinking that it’s a fantastic show. Then years and seasons later when you’re arranging your life around watching this show, it hits you: Why? The show hasn’t done anything but ride on the coattails of that first impression and settled into a nice comfortable groove afterwards.

Or some shows, like The Wire, keep you intrigued with how “real” they feel. When someone asks you what The Wire is about, you try to explain. “It’s a cop show, but wayyyy better.”

“Cop show” doesn’t do the show justice.

But then, as you’ve had your heart broken over and over with every TV show out there (like Lost), you start to see cracks. You start to wonder if the so-called “reality” at the core of this show isn’t anything more than just straight-up pessimism. Imagine the worst possible thing that could happen to a series of characters and that’s what happens on the show.

McNulty, Bubs, Michael, Omar, Duquan, and on and on and on it goes. As you’re nearing the end of season five (the last one) you start to feel that familiar dread and you want to fight it. “Not with this show. Not The Wire. Please, no.”

Then you watch the last episode of the last season, and you’re glad you had your doubts about The Wire. Glad you put it through your most stringent standards — that you weren’t blinded by the whims of one man who worked as a cop reporter for all those years and decided to start writing for TV. That you were conscious, that you doubted, that you fought the good fight the whole time. All the way to the end.

And then, it ended and the truth was revealed. you were right to follow your instincts: this is the greatest television show you’ve ever seen.

It is reality, it’s the way it is — that much is obvious even to a middle-class white kid that’s never stood on a street corner like that before (and doesn’t want to).

The dialog, the reality of it, the characters come to life.

The first few episodes weren’t a great first impression—it just felt like a very old, dated cop show. Then, after the first couple of discs, I got hooked and couldn’t get enough. As the characters would say, I got a taste and now I was hooked.

Hooked on McNulty and his self destruction, his freeing himself of himself.

Hooked on Bubs, the only real ray of hope in the whole show.

Hooked on Duquan and Michael and how they are simply part of a cycle.

Hooked on Bunk, my man. Probably my favorite character, especially early on.

So many characters that you have to come to terms with that you’ll never see or hear from again: the admiration for Daniels, the pulling and rooting for Omar. The first guy we rooted for was D’Angelo, then Poot’s friend and then Michael. You start to think of them as long-lost friends instead of TV characters. That’s when you know this show is different.

If you’ve already seen the show, you know these things already. This is nothing new. But I have something for you too: here are a couple of really cool links that fans should check out that I really enjoyed:

• Mix a little Freakonomics with The Wire and what do you get? This series of posts my economist/gang expert Sudhir Venkatesh titled What do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? He sits down with real gang members to watch the show and gets their impressions. I read Sudhir’s book on gangs in Chicago and it was pretty incredible what he did spending time with them back in the day. Any fan of The Wire has to check out these posts.
• Slashfilm has a three hour podcast/special of various critics discussing the show. What they liked and didn’t like, etc. Listening to it so long after watching the last episode brought back some great memories. It’s an interesting perspective on the show—more from a critic’s standpoint, although most of the guys are obviously fans.

OK, that’s all I got. If you’re a fan, please let me know if I got a good grasp on the greatness of the show in this post. If you’ve never seen it, did I sell you on it or did I just blab on about it like a schoolgirl?

Either way, if you still have a gift to give, you can’t go wrong with giving the gift of drug dealing and gang violence that is The Wire.

Enjoy.

P.S. This post is featured in the Movie Monday Blog Carnival.

Other Posts You May Like:

• My Cyber Monday Wish List
• Good Reads
• The Freakonomics Blog