It's a great, great show. It's problem is that it's pretty lib-brained, so the only thematic conclusion it can come to basically amounts to "wow, the problems sure are bad, huh?" Critics who compare The Wire to the more sweeping, social Charles Dickens novels like Nicholas Nickleby are basically right, but I'm not sure they realize that it also has Dickens' ideological limitations. Dickens wrote these vast, penetrating examinations of Victorian England, but his only real solution for the problems he wrote about amounted to "people should really be nicer and more Christian in their behavior towards each other." But for all that, Dickens is one of the greatest writers in the English language and The Wire is probably one of the four or five greatest shows ever made.

So, whatever, you can like Dickens and you can like The Wire if you want to. None of this cultural shit really matters so much.