The Wire: Season Two (2003)

Executive Producer/Showrunner: David Simon

The second season of this landmark show does something I have never seen in a television drama before. After a successful, critically acclaimed, first season that is heavily serialized, the show starts the second season with a completely new story. We revisit some of the main characters, but we are introduced to a brand new story-line in the Baltimore shipping yard with many new characters. But this decision ends up being not just bearable, but brilliant. The first season was about the poverty-stricken predominantly black drug-dealing lower class of Baltimore, but this second season expands by showing how the urban decay effects not just those on the bottom, but also white blue collar workers as well.

The show builds and expands on that first season in a very brave way. Eventually many of our main characters and format of the first season comes into play, but that takes a lot of time to happen. Like the first season, the season takes time to get everything into place, but by the end of the season everything feels completely perfect. The blue collar members of the working class are the ones that have it hard this season, and in a genius move, their connection to the drug trade in the first season is made very clear at the end.

The second season is almost a Godfather-like sequel to the first, in that the first season is a great piece of art in its own right, and the second one expands on the first season and almost equals it. Once again, David Simon created a crime show that actually focuses on the reasons for the crime. When the jobs for the working class go away to other countries, or when their jobs are replaced by technology, where will those workers go? If the only place hiring is the local gangster, they'll do anything to feed and house their families.

Grade: A