All 60 episodes of TheWire, ranked from worst to best
When The Wire fell silent ten years ago, it was a critical darling but far from a hit. The show’s most-watched episode was its second-season premiere, which managed to pull in 4.4 million viewers — a number Game of Thrones regularly quintuples. Toward its end run, viewership was barely registering on the ratings scale. The series never won an Emmy; amazingly, it was only ever nominated for two .
59. “Collateral Damage” To be clear: While season two gets a lot of flak, newcomers shouldn’t skip it completely. If given a second chance, even the most die-hard season-two haters will notice bits of nuance and depth they probably missed entirely the first time around. The addition of Amy Ryan as Port Authority officer Beadie Russell is one of the season’s bright spots, and her partnership with McNulty is a fruitful collaboration that blossoms into more a couple seasons later.
55. “Transitions” Look — it’s McNulty restaging select corpses to make it seem as if there’s a serial killer targeting the city’s homeless population! Which, if we’re being honest, isn’t the craziest thing he’s ever done. But the sight of him using false teeth to leave bite marks on a victim is, for lack of a better word, silly.
51. “Backwash” The title refers to a comment D’Angelo Barksdale makes while discussing The Great Gatsby in the previous episode, “All Prologue,” to describe the negative condition that persists in the wake of a tragic event. In this case, it’s the death of D’Angelo himself and the fracture that begins to form with what is left of the Barksdale organization. He may have been the black sheep of the family, but he was also its heart.
47. “Stray Rounds” It’s not every day that the police are tasked with infiltrating a brothel. Good thing the squad has McNulty, who takes one for the team when he “accidentally” gets seduced by a pair of prostitutes. You can’t say the man is not dedicated. 43. “Storm Warnings” You wouldn’t think that some bespectacled dude in a freshly pressed suit and bow tie would be able to put the fear of god into West Baltimore’s toughest drug dealers. But you would be wrong. The inclusion of Brother Mouzone — the nerdiest enforcer/hit man to ever emerge from New York City — is yet another way The Wire plays with cop-drama tropes. Meanwhile, back in Sobotka-land: a spiraling Ziggy shoots and kills Glekas and doesn’t even try to flee the scene.
39. “Took” Whether you think it’s sharp satire or just too silly, McNulty ups the “no, you’re a liar” game with Templeton by calling him — as the serial killer — to complain about the many errors in his reporting. Elsewhere, Omar continues to close in on Marlo, and proves why he’s the most feared man in the streets.
35. “Home Rooms” Prez learns important life lessons the hard way as he contends with a classroom of kids whose main exposure to adult behavior is what they see in the streets. McNulty, meanwhile, is a new man. After reconnecting with Beadie, he’s turned into a regular family guy, and Stringer’s death teaches him that his job is just a job.
31. “Hamsterdam” Bunny Colvin’s vision of a more structured approach to West Baltimore’s drug problem finally comes together, and gets a name: Hamsterdam, the result of some drug dealers not knowing what or where Amsterdam is. The idea: Police will look the other way on drug use as long as there’s no violence. If it seems like a narrative stretch, consider this: In 1988, less than a year into his first term, then-Baltimore mayor Kurt L.
27. “Slapstick” Though the episode is no Marx Brothers movie, the title reflects the almost absurd nature of what goes down, from a couple of Barksdale soldiers shooting off Omar’s grandmother’s church hat to the always-careful Carver sloppily moving a body out of Hamsterdam. One of the series’ most heartbreaking moments comes when Prez, now a beloved and vital member of the MCU, accidentally kills a fellow officer.
23. “Unto Others” “Vulnerable” isn’t a word we normally associate with Omar, but it’s the only way to describe his situation in jail, where he’s being charged with a murder he didn’t commit. So he decides to call in some favors. His friends in power can’t make the charge go away, but they do manage to move Omar to a safer facility.
Yet, with all that going on, the biggest moment here is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of Rawls hanging out at a gay bar, which was never referenced again. Try finding another series — or showrunner — with that kind of narrative restraint.
16. “Back Burners” New seasons bring new telecommunications technologies — and with it, new hurdles in the MCU’s quest to get that titular wire going. In season three, disposable burner phones become the communication device du jour, presenting the team with a yet another puzzle to solve. While the Hamsterdam experiment is having the desired effect on crime stats, it’s also disrupting the nature of the neighborhood.
12. “A New Day” From Carcetti to the Co-Op, a “new day” seems to be what everyone in Baltimore wants. It finally comes thanks to Freamon, who, after Herc stops Snoop and Chris only to find a nail gun in the car, wonders if they might be using that nail gun to turn the many vacant homes of West Baltimore into makeshift grave sites. If only he had been wrong.
8. “Bad Dreams” Yes, a season-two episode in the top ten! Drama with the Greeks turns into a full-on Greek tragedy when Frank makes it clear he’ll do everything in his power to protect his son, whether it’s making a deal with the police, further entrenching himself in the criminal underworld, or both .
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