The so, we come onto that rarely touched boxset of The Wire.
This is not the kind of wire I'm talking about and that bird has nothing to do with it. (PHOTO: Studio H (Chris))
It all started last Christmas when my Mum bought The Wire boxset for my Dad, in an attempt for us to stick with the latest TV trends and so that we could watch it before the Guardian found out and stopped us from reading their paper (EEK).
So, this boxset has been sat in our living room for over 10 months now and until recently was still wrapped in its plastic. I have been leading an organised and high developed strategy in order to manoeuvre these discs into the DVD player. This has involved a lot of hint dropping and gentle suggestion that maybe The Wire might be better than watching an episode of Johnathan Ross from five weeks ago that we have on the Sky+. I was forced to develop this strategy due to very strict rules, enforced by my Mother, surrounding who can watch it and where – due to the fact it was a present for my Dad.
And so after weeks of groundwork it came to pass. We watched the first episode.
And then many, many more weeks passed. And we had to watch it again because my parents couldn’t remember what had happened.
And then many, many further weeks passed and we watched the second episode with full on side commentary and crib notes from yours truly to remind my parents what had happened in the first episode. Take this scenario and replay it a few more times and then you should get the picture.
So last week we finally found ourselves on the second disc of the first series. Now this was a GREAT achievement, I can tell you. We made it through episode four without incident but then made the decision, possibly foolishly, to watch the next episode straight after. This led to not one but BOTH of my parents falling asleep. And snoring.
The fifth episode, as anyone who has watched The Wire (and can remember that far back), is very important. It is the pinnacle of everything else to come and really needs to be paid attention to.
The overarching problem here is that my Mum doesn’t really understand what’s going on in The Wire at the best of times. Recently she has been partial to throwing in a willynily “YO!” at the end of a sentence, over dinner, to convince us otherwise. But being unconscious does seem to be putting her at a disadvantage. Below is a classic example of why my Mum gets lost so easily:
Her response to the above was, “Why are they just saying ‘Fuck’?”. MUUUUUUUM, get with the program!
My Dad reassures her each time by saying, “Don’t worry , it’s just like Shakespeare. You only really need to understand half of what they say.”
So at this point I had watched the fifth episode and was keen to move on. But I had to wait for them to catch up with me due to the aforementioned RULES. So I went off into the other room to watch David Attenborough talk about little creatures and left them to it.
That was until this happened:
“Sof….can you come in here please? Who died?”
“Ummm, what do you mean ‘who died?’. No one has died.”
“Then what are we watching?”
“I’m not sure…”
Cue my Dad walking over to the DVD player and exclaiming, “WHOOPS, I put in the wrong season. This is season five.”
SEASON FIVE! Season blinking five. This really could have blown the whole thing out of the water, but luckily, as I have mentioned before, neither of my parents really understand what is going on in any given episode so I think we dodged a bullet there. I just hope that the disc was replaced in the right case, otherwise if we ever get to season five it could all go terribly wrong.
Needless to say we managed to nail down episode six, ‘The Wire’ later that week, which is great news because now we have done groundwork for the rest the blasted thing. But we have become stuck again. I pray that we are able to finish season one before Christmas.
The most hilarious part of all of this is that my Mum actually doesn’t really like it. She doesn’t like the way they talk, the way they dress or really the entire premise of the show. But she is determined that we will watch it and that we will watch it together. She also likes to mention that the opening credits remind her of those of the Sopranos and that hasn’t become old yet, honest.
I’m staring down the barrel of another Friday night in, because none of my friends lives here any more (honest) and I am going to work on my best ‘Why don’t we watch The Wire’ argument for later. If we can break the half way point I really think that we might be able to do it.
Wish me luck.
