While pondering a topic for this week’s See Jane Clack, I was struck by the number of shows featuring characters who turn to unscrupulous or illegal means to make a living. These are tough times, but would I turn to selling pot, prostituting myself, or becoming a drug kingpin to make a living? Probably not. I’m too much of a chicken.

Still … with a family to feed, and no other immediate way to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, some of these options do have their appeal.

These folks are not that much different from the rest of us. Their connecting link is that they’ve all experienced a life trauma that’s made them desperate, and/or fearless. It’s stuff that could happen to any one of us. Lives and luck can turn in a split second.

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I’ve been covering The Wire in my Jane After Dark column at TV Squad, and I can’t help but think about the similarities to another favorite HBO show: The Sopranos. They’re both edgy and well-written and filled with knock-out characters, but they’re also very different. Here’s my rundown on these two top-notch shows:

Reality vs. Storytelling. The Sopranos is an awesome example of great storytelling. We’ve got the panic-plagued mobster dealing with his biological family and his mobster family. What could be better? I know there are people like Tony Soprano out there, but to me, The Sopranos is just a really good story.

The Wire, on the other hand, is so real that you feel like you”re watching a documentary. I’m into season three now and just noticed that there’s no soundtrack, no music at all (yeah, it takes me a while). It’s like someone is following these guys around with a camera.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys. The Sopranos is mostly centered on Tony Soprano and his thugs and family, while The Wire gives equal time to thugs and the cops, with some politicians and dockworkers thrown in (as mentioned, I’m just into season 3, so haven’t gotten into the school system or press yet). I guess you could say that Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale and Omar Little are the Tony Sopranos of The Wire; Stringer’s got his real estate business, and Tony’s got his sanitation business. But that’s not quite right either.

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(Season 2, Episodes 5-7)

Well, I’m more than halfway through season two at this point and things are just starting to come together. The jigsaw puzzle isn’t quite done yet, but I’m pretty sure that all the pieces are on the table and all the edge pieces have been put together. Now that tricky middle portion needs to be figured out.

This season has definitely been slower than the first. So many more characters are involved, but luckily I am finding them engaging and interesting. Watching TV on DVD is a much different experience than watching it live, waiting a week or more for a new episode. I could definitely see myself getting frustrated having to wait in-between episodes during this slow-developing season. Luckily, I don’t have that problem, so I really don’t have anything to complain about.

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iStockPhoto

There’s a divide in this country between those who believe pot is an innocuous party drug that makes everything hilarious (and even the worst fast food taste like angels’ tears), and the people on the other side who are old and boring.

Maybe that’s not fair, but let’s be honest: everybody knows that pot is a (relatively) harmless diversion drug.  Certainly, when you compare it to legal drugs like alcohol or nicotine, pot is the 98-pound weakling at the mind-altering pharmacy party.

So that’s why it’s so hilarious to watch the government spend millions of dollars, desperately trying to sell kids on the idea that pot is a dangerous destroyer of identity and ambition.  What’s even more hilarious is that in order to get the message out, they felt the need to create a series of “hip” ads to “grab” the attention of teenage pot users.

The central irony of this is that instead of creating a compelling argument why kids shouldn’t be smoking pot, they, instead, created a series of commercials that are completely awesome to watch when you’re high.

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