Business…here’s a defense of the BCS.
So I paid the $7 to watch the season finale of The Wire a few days early.  Honestly, the waiting was killing me.  I’ve never been this hooked on a television show.
It’s the smartest thing I’ve ever watched, and it’s also pulled off something that I’ve never seen–the optimal level of drama.
As an economist, I’m all about optimization.  Every good thing comes with accompanying cost, so you’ve got to pick the right levels of everything.  It’s a basic tenet of economics as they were taught to me–benefits increase at a decreasing rate and costs increase at an increasing rate.  That means that after a certain point, adding additional units of something generates a cost that exceeds the benefit, thereby making it unnecessary to add more.
It’s part of the reason soap operas are hard to deal with on a consistent basis.  All that drama is interesting, but the accompanying loss of realism messes up the party.  That doesn’t apply when talking about The Young and the Restless, though, because there’s no such thing as too much Victor Newman.  Am I right, WMD?
(Are you there, WMD?)
What David Simon, creater and writer for The Wire, has is a keen eye for natural drama, the things that force people to make fateful decisions.  Because he has that, he can add drama without making the show foolish, sappy or sensationalist.  The villains can be despicable in a natural, human way.  The cops can make human mistakes and catch the same hell regular people catch for mistakes.
It’s intelligent writing, and it’s the kind of writing you can’t learn in a class.
It’s the kind of work that I wish I could do.  I work hard to make sure that the humor and drama in my work is already out there.  I’d rather point out those things than try to create it myself.  People are so compelling on their own that they don’t need me to add too much.  I just need to use my eye to find what’s worth talking about, what’s moving.
Watching The Wire has reminded me of the ways people respond to environmental stimuli and how interesting that can be.  If you read my work, you’ll find it’s the sort of stuff that I try to point out.  I’m not nearly as good at it as Simon, but I hope to get there.
And I hope they hurry up and put the new season on the air before the scheduled date of ’08.
I’ll talk more about The Wire after the finale airs on regular HBO.  Cuz as anyone that watches can tell you, you can’t wait to talk about the show after you’ve seen it.  Shouts to Mumba J., Simmons and Whitlock for turning me onto the show.
And thanks to steady employment for allowing me to afford premium cable!