> Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one" but this one was "the establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins".

I think this is why The Wire captivated me. I'd been raised on a steady diet of hero's journey stories and then suddenly I ran into David Simon's buzzsaw of contravening those expectations.

In those years I'd just I started my working life and unfortunately the parallels were uncannily accurate.

I do love The Wire and just recently ended up watching Generation Kill with my dad. That's another amazing one from David Simon. Very real. Cpl. Ray Person still talks about his experience in the actual unit portrayed there on Reddit as /u/plasmata.