photo via flickr user daveynin

The question: What is the best show of the aughts? And now for the opening statements.

SUMMER: The best show of the 00s?

LOST. Lost. lost. Lost. lost lost lost lost lost. lOsT. lost lost. LOST. LOST. lost. lost. LOST. Lost. LoSt.

I don’t know how else to say it. Hands down, best show.

Anyone who knows me would know my answer to this question off the bat. My love for Lost is not something I try to hide. But to explain why it’s the best? What an undertaking! I don’t even know where to begin. LOST has everything a show should have. Mystery, humor, love, a complete narrative (even though viewers haven’t seen the story in its entirety yet, the show’s major plot points have been laid out since the beginning) mythology, audience interaction, stunning performances from new and seasoned actors, the best set imaginable, philosophy, physics, heartbreaking death, joyous births, epic finales and premieres, and time travel! What more could you ask for in a single weekly hour of television?

SETH: Well, well, well… a Lostie I be through and through, but my answer here will differ (Wouldn’t be much of a debate without it, right?). Ladies and Gents, I give you THE WIRE. HBO’s cinematic, operatic, incomparable art work of good vs. kind of good vs. kind of evil vs. evil. I could easily list all of its stunning qualities, wait, no I couldn’t- they are innumerable. There are very few shows which have undertaken telling a story as sprawling, intelligent, and captivating as The Wire- from the Streets of Baltimore to its loftiest offices, The Wire is the story of some of the most memorable characters in television history and more so it’s the story of a broken city whose villians are not far removed from its alleged “white knights.” The Wire packs more into a season of 13 episodes than any show on television, let alone during the 00s, its thought-provoking storylines reach into American life in ways most shows only dream of. The Wire is the ultimate in American TV masterpieces and with respect to LOST is the unquestioned achievement in American television for the 00s.

Main Arguments

SUMMER: Psh. The Wire? I tried it. It never grabbed my attention. Not like a mysterious black smoke monster or an underground hatch has. But besides my own personal tastes, Lost still wins in this battle for its revolutionarianism. Yep, just made up that word because no other words can describe how superb Lost is. In it’s first season, Lost gripped a nation with it’s intriguing plot, captivating characters, and that hint of “WTF is going on here?” Although viewership has declined in later seasons, the show still has a hold on a huge crowd of devoted fans. I’m going to go beyond the show now and point to Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. One of Johnson’s main points is that television shows, such as Lost, which engage rather than simply entertain make the audience smarter because of the increased cognitive activity. By leaving elements out of the show and teasing mysteries throughout the series, Lost‘s writers require viewers to anaylze rather than simply follow. Another aspect of his argument involves audience participation, something Lost abounds in. How many blogs, forums, chat rooms, entire websites are devoted to Lost? People spend hours after each episode airs dissecting the meaning behind Jack’s facial hair or the inflection in Claire’s message.

Lost has even got viewers, myself included, researching time travel, Egyptian gods, philosophers, and psychology. Lost is the Best Show of the Aughts because it has made TV and its viewers better. It accurately reflects the decade’s focus on intelligent, grabbing shows. You want good vs. kind of good vs. kind of evil vs. evil? Look no further than Ben Linus. He’s all of those rolled into one. You want intelligence and captivation? Hello, 4-toed statue! You want villains and heroes? I give you Man in Black and Jacob (or Jacob and Man in Black, we don’t really know yet). You want thought-provoking storylines? Have I mentioned time travel yet? Lost has everything The Wire has, and it has it better and it simply has MORE. But for me, the main point is that Lost took me, a simple girl whose previous favorite TV show was Full House, and not only piqued my interest in television as a medium but also got me researching Jeremy Bentham and Taweret, when I don’t even read for class. Lost has made me smarter and it’s made television as a whole smarter as well.

SETH: The question at hand is one that is difficult to answer without bias, my bias honestly lies with LOST. It’s my favorite show. But I recognize said bias and also recognize a masterpiece when it’s staring me in the face. That face is the pocked, grisled, ocassionally shining, and terrifyingly beautiful face of The Wire. What’s most unfortunate is that The Wire was never recognized for the incredible heights it took television to and it may never get it’s due as THE show of the Golden Age of Television. But that’s besides the point. The point I want to make is that The Wire is unequivocally the show of the Aughts. The Wire is the super-most-realest show on television. It lays everything bare, there is no posturing (except by the corrupt politicians- BOOYAH!). What this show did so well, better than any show on television was show human beings in every stage of being, emotion, and juncture. Let’s take for example, perhaps my personal favorite character of all time, Omar Little. Omar Little is a modern-day, gay Robin Hood. Interest piqued? Well, Omar Little perfectly encapsulated what is so great about The Wire, he was this renegade who you had to love. He robbed from the drug kingpins and gave to, well he mainly gave to himself. But what he did was debilitate a blight on his “Sherwood Forest.”  The streets of Baltimore serves as his Sherwood and he protects them in the only way he knows how. In this way, he represents all that is good within The Wire. He is bold, he is honorable, but above all, he is real. The Wire kept it real.

Which segues into one of the show’s other great strengths, its characters. The cast of characters on the show is dynamic, there is a set of regular characters whom you get to know over seasons worth of time, but there are also casts which relate to each season. The incredible thing about the characters is that no matter how long they are on screen, you form this incredible bond with them. People who you rarely, if ever, would interact with become people who you win and lose with.  It’s made all the more impressive by how VERY massive the total cast is. The cast of heroes and villains doesn’t rival any, it destroys them, in part because it has tons of both, but also unlikely ones of each ilk. It manages to blur the lines of good and evil in such a way that at points you can’t tell where each character is going to go, but you care about which way they DO go. Characters that matter.

The final reason I’ll state as part of The Wire‘s supremacy is that it’s important. This show doesn’t simply tell a story about a group of people, it tells a story of an entire city. Each season revolves around a social problem/issue that the city of Baltimore faces or a facet of life that plays a large role in Baltimore from Project Housing (season 1) to labor unions (2) to radical police strategies (3) to public schools (4) and finally to the news media (5). Each year dissects and intersects the story of the drug battle within each one of the levels of society. The weaving of law, order, politics, and day-to-day life is something that creates a network of stories so beautifully intertwined that it displays the tapestry of a city broken. The Wire is important not for its entertainment value (which it has loads of) but because it tells us who we are and then shows us why we are that way. It confronts problems our elected officials often dance around or are incapable of fixing and it often reminds us that there are very few actual white knights out there. The Wire is a story about people, it’s a story about a city, but all in all, it’s a story about America as a place where WE operate, where WE breathe, and where WE live and it’s not afraid to show us the dirty underbelly of this place we call home. OUR HOME.

Rebuttal/Closing

SETH: Valid points all. EXCEPT ONE. And it’s kinda a big one. My opponent uses the word “more” to describe the trappings of LOST relative to The Wire. I’ll give you many of your points, but I will never give you that. Let’s just talk about sheer volume of characters on each show and that’s in regards to another point from the Johnson book mentioned earlier. The point he makes is that one of the ways shows as complex as these two test your ability to work through a show is via their incredible network of characters, i.e. knowing who they are and how they relate to each other and the story. Lost has a listing of 78 characters according to Wikipedia, some of whom have roles as small as 1 episode. The Wire on the other hand has a cast reaching 194. You read that right: 1-9-4. Umm complex much? The greatest thing about that list of characters is that for about 80 of them I can remember tiny little things about that person and how they relate to the show’s story.

While I’ve never really had to research what goes on in The Wire, I have learned an inordinate amount from it- law procedure, politics, labor unions, school administration, etc. The list is long and it’s important. While LOST works to expand our perception of what is possible (totally valid and noble), The Wire focuses on explaining who we are and what our ills are (TOTALLY important and necessary). LOST isn’t alone in its mission, there are other shows which also look to push our borders (Fringe, Heroes, X-Files). What The Wire does is incomparable to anything on television, no single other show forces Americans to look in the mirror in a sober manner and pushes them to understand and confront what lies within their current borders, which no show has ever done ESPECIALLY in a manner so very entertaining.

Where LOST relies on riddles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in burritos to push its story and watchers, The Wire relies solely on its own merits as a story and exploration of an American city. This microcosm of American life has no bells and whistles, it has scars, drug deals, drive-bys, police brutality, and broken homes. These THINGS HAPPEN. EVERYDAY. To quote one of my opponent’s favorite books (Life of Pi), The Wire “makes the miraculous routine” by making the routine miraculous. There are facts here, just the facts.

I appreciate the personal touch that LOST has had on my opponent here, but honestly, that’s not what we’re after here. We’re after the BEST, not the FAVORITE. If art is supposed to mean something, and we’re to take television as a viable medium, then we have our Mona Lisa. I wholeheartedly agree that LOST has inspired and improved its viewers, I just happen to think that The Wire did this as well and in a more important/impressive fashion. The thing that makes it so is that it doesn’t posit questions of the sci-fi or supernatural ilk, it focuses viewers attention on the here and now, its anchored in our real world and shows the parts that we don’t often want to see, but need to. I think it goes without saying that both of these shows are excellent, but I think they are excellent for different reasons, LOST is high entertainment masquerading as high culture, The Wire is high culture that happens to be highly entertaining. I urge you, even if you find no truth in this argument, watch The Wire, get it on DVD, it is too good, too important, and too epic to not be viewed by everyone. Besides if you don’t Omar Little could show up at your house, too bad right now, most of you don’t even know how scary that really is.

SUMMER: I feel as if I’m at a disadvantage here. My opponent can compare The Wire and Lost because he’s seen them both. He can also talk more extensively about The Wire because it has completed it’s run while Lost has another season to go. Nonetheless, I still have faith that I will win this battle because, in the end, Lost is THE show of the Aughts.

I have supplied you with reason after reason about why Lost is a superior television show. But beyond the makeup of the plot, characters, viewer interaction, mythology, etcetera, Lost represents what television from 2000 to 2010 was and where it is headed. Here we have a show that started as a simple run of the mill serial drama. There were signs of a deeper meaning and sci-fi undertones from the beginning, but for the most part it started as a show about people dealing with their past misdeeds and their present survival. As the show progressed, it took an incredible turn toward sci-fi, bringing in elements of time travel and human experimentation. This genre-bending represents what I see as a hallmark of telvision of the aughts. No longer are shows stuck in the 30-minute laugh track sitcom or hour-long soap opera boxes. They now have the agency to break down those barriers and become more amorphous, adding elements that were previously unacceptable in that genre. Lost is the poster child for this fad because it did it so well. It grabbed viewers with its drama in the beginning and was able to keep them interested even when it went sci-fi. Think about it: changing the entire type of show you are producing would normally be considered the most extreme form of jumping the shark. But Lost did it and did it successfully.

I can not speak for The Wire. Although it did not grab my attention when i gave it a shot, it sounds like a wonderfully complex show with great lessons. But it’s just a great show. It doesn’t represent anything more regarding the larger scheme of television. Not to mention I see most of the elements that my opponent lauds The Wire for in Lost. He keeps touting the depth of the characters and messages about human ills, but fails to recognize their existence in Lost (“Not Penny’s Boat?” Not to mention Benjamin Linus is the biggest walking human ill ever.).

Lost has it all. It has an intriguing, long-running plot. It features characters that mirror our own insecurities. It engages viewers in revolutionary ways. It pushes the boundaries of normal television viewing. It forces viewers to think beyond what they know. It’s funny, smart, dramatic, scary, heart-wrenching, interesting, engaging. I am a die-hard Lostie; I will defend it to the end. It has changed television and audiences in its own time and will continue to impact the medium in the future.

What a doozy. I don’t even know what I think anymore. At least we’ve given you something to think about, maybe? Did we miss something obvious? Who won the debate? And what’s the best show of the aughts in your opinion?