Bracket-Idiocy, Part Two

In my first piece for Indiewire's TV section, I go further into The Wire and why I found Grantland's "Smaketology" to be complete insanity. This is following up on my flash-second response last week, though the point remains more or less the same. Check it out here.

Interlude: Bracket-idiocy

"[The Media] have less and less ambition and are demanding less and less of themselves as arbiters of what is actually important, of what our problems are and how we’re addressing them. The Wire was trying to say, at the end, 'Look, if anything in the first four seasons struck a nerve with you, don’t think for a moment that anyone’s going to address themselves to it—least of all the watchdogs of society—because their teeth have been taken out.' They’ve done it to themselves." -David Simon, Interview with Vice, December 2009.

"What if we actually did subject the key players of the Wire-verse to rigorous bracketological inquiry? If we played corner boys against dock workers, murder-polices against hoppers, and craven politicos against enigmatic not-actually-Greek human traffickers, in matchups as arbitrary and occasionally unjust as life and death on the mean streets of West Baltimore, would the king stay the king?" -Alex Pappademas, Grantland post announcing a bracket match featuring characters from The Wire, March 5th, 2012.