Hypocrite Alert!

Awhile back (ok, it was yesterday), I bitched about a class at Cal State Fullerton about the Harry Potter books. I still think it's insanely stupid.

But this? This is awesome.

A class on The Wire

UC Berkeley is offering a class called What's so great about The Wire?

Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon's The Wire was "the best TV show ever broadcast in America"--not the most popular but the best. The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been aptly been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. These comparisons attempt to get at the richly textured complexity of the work, its depth, its bleak tapestry of an American city and its diverse social stratifications. Yet none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling "show" on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will explore these comparisons, analyze episodes from the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons and try to discover what was and is so great about The Wire. We will screen as much of the series as we can during our mandatory screening sessions and approach it through the following lenses: the other writing of David Simon, including his journalism, an exemplary Greek Tragedy, Dickens' Bleak House and/or parts of Balzac's Human Comedy. We will also consider the formal tradition of episodic television.

I agree with Kottke that there seems to be no good reason to skip Season Two.

Yes, I'm a hypocrite, but I'd definitely take this class. I wonder if they let 40-year old guys with no plans for a degree audit this?