Emmy Winning Shows: The Wire

When a show is regarded as one of the greatest of all time, doesn't it deserve to get an Emmy award? What about when it's considered the most important show ever produced due to its profound social commentary (Rhetorical Questions)? Well, if you think so, then you would cringe when you heard that The Wire went five Emmy award-less seasons even with its critical acclaim. The question is how. The answer lies in the show's frighteningly true subtext: America turned out differently from what the country's founders envisioned. The Wire skillfully chronicles Baltimore's dependence on the illegal drug-trade and how its institutions—such as the Baltimore Police Department, City Hall, the Baltimore public school system, the drug trafficking operation, The Baltimore Sun, and the stevedores' union—comparably conflict with desires of individuals bound to them. Yet, despite The Wire's widespread critical acclaim and rave ratings, it never received any Primetime Emmy Awards because the social message it sent uncovered the American government's neglect for inner-city communities: the other America, the America you couldn't see anywhere else on television, the America that got left behind (Anaphora).

By never garnering any Emmy awards for any category, The Wire exposed the award committees fear to publicize shows that pointedly criticize the status quo in America. In the opening scene of the pilot episode, David Simon keys everyone in on the show's theme. On a cold Baltimore street, Jimmy McNulty, a brilliant but brazenly maverick detective, talks to someone who witnessed Omar Isiah Betts', nicknamed as “Snot Boogie's,” murder (Alliteration). The witness explains how at the local craps game every week, Snot Boogie would play through several roun...

... middle of paper ...

...rano or Jamie Lannister; specifically, the tales of Bubbles, a loveable dope-fiend/police-informant and gay stick-up man Omar Little who steals from drug dealers.

Upon concluding The Wire, one has a broad scope of what has (or rather, has not) happened to inner-city communities. Precisely, one sees David Simon's interpretation of how the black communities in Baltimore have fallen to the worst, most profitable form of welfare around, the illegal drug-trade (Metaphor). Yet even though every aspect of the show get kudos, its award shelf is empty because its subject matter was too incisive for people to not apply it to what has actually happened to black communities today. If everyone in America experienced The Wire, the call to reform America's drug policy could only get louder, so the Emmys committee chose not to nominate for a mere fraction of the awards it deserved.