2004 Buffy Award Winner

Salon has created a new award for the most unjustly ignored TV show…The Buffy. Unsurprisingly the first award goes to The Wire. Thankfully a new companion guide to the show has been published for those lost in the dense material. Also the episode guide can be critical if you get a little lost.

The article cites the scene that got me watching the series. Bunk and McNulty investigate a crime scene. It has no dialogue except for the word “Fuck” repeated in various ways. (At the time this was about the only dialogue I understood!) The story elements are revealed through different camera angles and movement. I was surprised that the series would take a risk on losing the audience like that. It’s a complex scene and turns out to be pretty crucial to the series. Six episodes later they provide the conclusion for the scene during an interrogation of D’Angelo. The detectives utter the word “Refrigerator” and everything clicks into place for the audience.