The Wire returns to television this evening at 9 pm ET for it's final season on HBO, and I cannot wait.  I have not missed an episode of this show from the start, and won't be missing any this season either. 

If you haven't watched The Wire, you really should.  The scripts are genius, the acting is sublime, and the research on the various characters -- decent cops and broken ones, drug dealers and their long-suffering and/or grasping families, community leaders and sell-outs, flawed politicians and the people who bribe them -- has been so spot on, beyond anything you usually see in the sterilized, shorthanded, cardboard cut-out "cop and law" shows.

This season, the show's creators turn their razor-sharp analytical scripts on the media's role in all of this, and I cannot wait to see the storyline unfold.  To see how they peel back the layers of corruption and tainted attempts at change, bit by bit, as the weeks move forward.

Far too much of television -- and politics -- these days looks at everything from a stereotype, find the easy solution, or sound bite basis.  What The Wire does brilliantly is lay out why none of the enormous problems facing this country have easy solutions -- and why anyone who is trying to sell you that line of bullshit is either a moron or a huckster.  And I love them for it.

This is a show that will make you think.  And will haunt you for days afterward...the best shows always do.  I'll be watching, and setting the Tivo for a second viewing.  If they take on the media like they have every other facet of public corruption and criminal intent, it's going to be one helluva ride while it lasts.

For more:

-- On Lester Freamon and his "follow the money" investigative genius.

-- From USAToday, a great summary review and a number of questions on why this show hasn't made more of a viewer breakthrough.

-- An actor/director's eye view of the show in the NYTimes.

-- And, finally, why I love this show, in a nutshell, from the SFChronicle:

...Season 5 is the culmination of brilliant, nuanced storytelling, exceptional acting and the fearlessness of Simon and his writers from the get-go in telling novelistic stories on television without pandering....

As for this grand finale, "The Wire" doesn't disappoint (has it ever?). Simon returns to his familiar themes of institutional incompetence, soul-crushing bureaucracy, retrograde human behavior and the perseverance it takes to survive and the sadness that comes when you can't.

All the regulars who weren't either killed off or cashiered at the end of Season 4 are back, more desperate than ever. For all the danger that exists in "The Wire" - drug dealers, rogue cops, kids who kill for thrills, ignorance, the brutality of capitalism - it's always the desperation of failed systems that drives people toward doom....

...using the media as the big-picture idea in Season 5 also serves a greater good for the writers. "The Wire" needs some kind of closure. Simon and his gang of novelists and former journalists have been illustrating the dire failings of Baltimore (and American society) for some time now, so it's fitting to see how that story can be missed even by the very people paid to tell it.

Brilliant, haunting television.  Can't wait...