Sheeee-iht

One of my new favorite games is spotting actors from "The Wire" in other places. I like this game a lot better than seeing "Deadwood" actors all over the place, 'cause "The Wire" could possibly be the best drama ever* on television and everyone connected to it is therefore awesome by association.

Some of the sightings are fairly mainstream, like Lt. Daniels (Lance Reddick) on "Lost" as a scary lawyer and orderly, but I was watching an episode of "New Amsterdam" (a show I'm still on the fence about) and there's Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), Season 2's dock leader and the honorable Senator Clay Davis of the state of Maryland (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) IN THE SAME EPISODE. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that if you see Clay Davis anywhere, somebody's gonna get fleeced.

So, it's not that odd to see these actors all over new shows since they're out of work, but I re-watched Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992) recently (turns out there are quite a lot of nice little moments in the movie that I'd forgotten about) and there's Prez, my favorite cop (Jim True-Frost) hanging out with Campbell Scott. This actually blew my mind a little.

(Incidentally, turns out that maybe Baltimore isn't as awesome as it appears on The Wire, at least according to the NYer.)

*The formula for determining overall greatness is number of episodes/quality level. Sadly, "Twin Peaks" and "Seinfeld" both suffer because several episodes or story lines were shitty and dragged the overall score down.