The Emmy nomination process is clearly more flawed than a line of Dora the Explorer lawn darts.

The system is outdated and always in need of a revamping, as technology and the proliferation of programming increases every year. Some contenders are just going to get a big, ugly, high school prom date snub.

That doesn't mean the process is without its no-brainers. I'm referring, of course, to the shows that deserve special recognition for changing the course of the medium and showing the world its possibilities and not to the people actually doing the nominating. The last season of The Wire will go down as one of the biggest no-brainers of all time.

As John Howard noted in the comments in last week's Jane After Dark column, I really haven't talked much about Omar yet. I just finished season two of The Wire, and to be honest, most of my thoughts right now revolve around the Sobotka clan.

First of all, how stupid was Ziggy? The guy's always been a live wire, and you could see the bad karma building throughout this season, with him flashing money around, showing off his Italian leather coat, and going a little bonkers with the stolen Mercedes. Things were bound to go bad for him, and they did just that when his deal with Double-G went oh so wrong.

I'm three episodes into season two of The Wire. I tried watching it online as Usama suggested in last week's Jane After Dark comments (thank you for that awesome site!), but decided to just buy the DVDs, because I stop and start a lot and need easy access to it. So I looked around town and found a fairly reasonably priced season two at FYE. It's new; no one seems to have any used sets, which makes me think - as you all have suggested - that no one ever gets rid of their DVDs of The Wire. They keep them around to watch again and again. I'll probably just buy each season as I work my way through the series.

And speaking of starting and stopping, The Wire does not get any easier to watch while doing something else at the same time. Whenever I try to do that, I end up replaying those parts again, because there's way too many subtleties to be only half-paying attention.