idris elba

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.

I just watched the last episode of season one of The Wire. You guys are right. It's good stuff. Most of season one was pretty slow-going, but things started to kick in during the last few episodes, about the time Greggs got shot.

As in last week's Jane After Dark column, I'm still a bit lost on exactly what's happening, but that doesn't seem to really matter. The characters are so interesting to watch. It's almost like you're watching a documentary about the real thing, rather than a scripted TV show. I took the suggestion of some of you and started watching with the subtitles on. It really does help!

I noticed that Alan Sepinwall is also blogging on The Wire -- and writing a masters thesis on each episode. He even has two different versions -- one for newbies and one for veterans. I'm the anti-Sepinwall, just trying to grasp the storyline and get the basic gist. But I did read his newbie editions and found them helpful.

I never intended to watch The Wire next in my Jane After Dark pursuits. In fact, I planned on watching Veronica Mars, as many of you suggested. But a good number of you also recommended The Wire, and I had season one sitting here, so I popped it in one night.

I'm not gonna lie to you. It's been slow going. Here's how it went down:

Episode 1: I was completely lost, so I watched it twice to see if I could grasp it the second time around. Then I read the detailed synopsis on The Wire's official HBO site. Clearly, this show is not meant to be watched while you're doing something else. You need to sit down and focus on what's going on.

(S05E23) About half a dozen episodes ago, I started to worry about The Office. They had several episodes in a row that really didn't do much for me, and that's not something that has ever happened with this show before. So when I heard that Michael Scott may be quitting Dunder Mifflin, I was dubious. It seemed like a cheap stunt that wouldn't amount to much. Instead, we ended up with some of the best episodes of the season.

I have loved everything they've done with The Michael Scott Paper Company: From putting Pam in sales, to bringing Ryan back, to having Michael actually manage to wrestle away some of Dunder Mifflin's clients. Of course, it couldn't last forever, so it's no surprise that it had to come to an end tonight.

I don't think this is going to happen (not permanently anyway), but Zap2It thinks that it's possible that Michael Scott could be leaving Dunder-Mifflin.

We haven't heard any rumors that Steve Carell is leaving the show, but we do know that Michael Scott is going to become increasingly upset with his corporate bosses at Dunder-Mifflin. He thinks he deserves crazy Jan's old job, but that job is going to former The Wire star Idris Elba. He has signed for six episodes (so far) and just might be the new guy in charge in Scranton. When this happens, Michael actually leaves, and another character leaves with him.

In a way, I'm just as interested in who leaves with Michael as I am the reasons why Michael himself leaves.