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I just tore through all 4 seasons over the past 2 or 3 weeks. Now I'm seriously debating whether I should watch season 5 week by week or just wait and watch it marathon style in a couple of months. I can see advantages to either way. I feel like watching the episodes close together I definitely picked up on a lot of little parallels between different story lines that I probably would've missed with a week in between, but I also feel that by rushing it I am missing part of the anticipation and spending a week wondering what will happen next type excitement.
In any case, I had actually tried to watch the show two or three times before (and even posted in this thread back in 2003) but got so annoyed by a couple of scenes in the first episode that I found it tough to go on. (The primary scene in question being the introduction of Rawls in which he berates McNulty for the first time.) Obviously in retrospect, a lot of the office politics/relationships are supposed to be as frustrating to the audience as they are to some of the characters, but I had a really hard time sitting through it. I can admit that part of that was probably being younger and impatient, so in some ways I'm glad that I put off the show until now, but even now I really do think the first episode was probably the worst of the entire series.
The first two seasons were very very good, and certainly among the best things on TV, but seasons 3 and 4 were just unbelievable. I can't think of any other show that just continued to get better and better as it went along. A lot of writers seem to run out of ideas after a year or two. The Wire continues to sprawl and get more complex and intricate every year without losing any of its richness or depth. It definitely has raised the bar for TV drama.
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