On Sunday HBO aired the last episode of the fifth and final season of The Wire, a show many critics agree was the best in the history of television. See here, here (read Matthew Yglesias’s first sentence), and here (see page 5). Sadly, most bourgeois Americans are as blissfully unaware of The Wire as they are of the world that it depicts. To date, the show hasn’t won a single Emmy, even though its fourth season was arguably the best single season in television history. Given series creator David Simon’s apparent distaste for Pulitzers, however, perhaps this is precisely how he wants it to be. Nevertheless, the real travesty is that viewership has always been abysmally low for such a masterpiece.

The Wire is simply a cop drama in the same way that Monet was merely a painter. The show is actually a Dickensian foray into the drug-ravaged streets of present-day inner-city Baltimore. The lives shown are those of people often forgotten, ignored, or kicked to the wayside. Soldiers in crack gangs, heroin addicts, drug kingpins, and in later seasons stevedores, and students and teachers in under-funded urban schools. But the beauty of The Wire is it’s strict adherence to reality. Bad guys do bad things, but oftentimes the good guys (cops, politicians, even parents) do far worse. Indeed, the three most likable characters are a kingpin who takes economics classes at community college and enforces Robert’s Rules of Order at meetings, a nail gun brandishing female gangster who kills on a whim, and Baltimore’s version of Robin Hood, a black homosexual stickup artist who robs drug dealers and has only a double barrel shotgun for a best friend. Rest assured, he’s not hunting ducks with that bad boy.

The Wire is hands down a better show than The Sopranos, but it never drew a fraction of the audience. Why? There are many theories. Some say it’s because of the reliance on black actors, many of whose inner-city parlance is difficult to understand. Others believe it’s because of the sheer number of characters, and the fact that it’s hard to miss a show or tune in during the middle of a season and understand what is going on. But the fact remains that The Wire asks its audience to take a hard look in the mirror and see what we as a society have done to our own citizens, and the picture is not a pretty one. For anyone who professes to care about human rights and social justice, however, it’s a show that needs to be seen.

In the end, The Wire is far from inspirational. Good things happen to awful people, and horrific things happen to good people. But that, as they say, is life. As hit woman Snoop says, “Deserve ain’t got nothin’ to do wit it.” Perhaps, however, if enough people out there watch the show they might decide to work and change things for the better. If you’re a Wire fan, great, you know what I’m talking about. If not, do yourself a favor and put the first couple of DVDs on your Netflix queue. I personally guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.