This just in! [via Baltimore Crime] Despite the lack of ratings and profitability, due to an overwhelming critical response (Entertainment Weekly just stated The Wire is “...the best series on TV, period...,” and gave the show’s fourth season an A+. Apparently, Entertainment Weekly never gives an A+ rating. Ever. Not to mention The New York Times editorial page stating The Wire is "the closest that moving pictures have come so far to the depth and nuance of the novel."), thanks to David Simon’s diligent efforts promoting the fourth season, basically pleading with the critics to to save the show for one more season so the story lines could be brought to their proper conclusions, HBO will be announcing today that they are renewing the show for a fifth season!

So my bmore bias has nothing to do with it. It’s official. The Wire IS the best show on television. Now to be biased, I have to say that The Wire is the best drama in the history of American television, and I’m still probably right.

Excuse me squealing like a tween girl at a boy band concert. I’m a tool for The Wire. David Simon is the only man I’d voluntarily have sex with, and he isn’t even good looking, so you know it’s true love.

So, just to keep it real, fuck you New York*. Fuck you LA*. Fuck you Emmys, especially. Entourage and Deadwood, keep up the good work, but you can kiss my white Baltimore ass. Of course, fuck you D.C. (just for good measure. George Pelecanos is excluded) Fuck all the rest of ya’all mother fucking shit birds, because Baldamore is where it’s fucking at!

*All those affiliated with HBO, Entertainment Weekly, non-resident Wire writers, non-resident Wire actors (your accents are getting better!) and all critics who made this happen are excluded. Thank you.

Update: One last thing about The Wire, and I promise to shut up about the show already and get my nose out of David Simon’s ass for a while. I’ve just discovered metacritic, which as far as I can see is sort of a Rotten Tomatoes that covers television as well. The overall critical assessment of season on a scale of 1 to a 100: 98. Holy Mary mother of Christ. Is that even precedented? The reviews I had already come across were just the tip of the iceberg. Check out these snippets:

The New York Post ..the single finest piece of work ever produced for American TV.

Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
To me, what allows “The Wire” to surpass “The Sopranos” in the pantheon of greatest American TV shows is its ambition and its anger.

TV Guide Matt Roush
This is TV as great modern literature, a shattering and heartbreaking urban epic about a city (Baltimore) rotting from within.

Newsday Verne Gay
A critic for this paper once declared "The Wire" "the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television" and as the fourth season gets under way Sunday night, there's no reason to quibble with that assessment.

San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
The breadth and ambition of "The Wire" are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season -- any season -- it's an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era.

Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
If you have only one hour a week for television, give it to "The Wire."

Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
The best show on television.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
If there ever was a series that makes HBO a necessity, "The Wire" is it.

USA Today Robert Bianco
Brilliant, scathing, sprawling, The Wire has turned our indifference to urban decay into a TV achievement of the highest order.

Variety Brian Lowry
When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few.

Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn
The best series on TV, period. [15 Sep 2006, p.63]

New York Post Adam Buckman
One of the finest TV shows ever made.

The New York Times Virginia Heffernan
This season of “The Wire” will knock the breath out of you.

San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
If you stick with it, you will be rewarded with some of the most compelling, provocative drama ever produced for television.

Washington Post Tom Shales
So is "The Wire" as good as ever? Perhaps even better.

Slant Magazine Keith Uhlich
David Simon and his writers... aren't out to change the world; the slippery slope of civilization is already in place on The Wire and Simon is just out to document how each and every person survives. Or doesn't, as this season quite devastatingly proves.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Tony Norman
"The Wire" is as complex a picaresque as one is likely to find this side of Dickens.

Time James Poniewozik
They have done what many well-intentioned socially minded writers have tried and failed at: written a story that is about social systems, in all their complexity, yet made it human, funny and most important of all, rivetingly entertaining.

This side of Dickins, indeed. I can’t even imagine how good this must feel for those who have been toiling away, holding on by the skin of their teeth for the past four seasons and making that show, which was already the best thing about television, into basically transcending the media of television itself. Like HBO could have canceled the show even if it wanted to. They would have gone down in history as the network that prematurely killed what the critics seem to have decided is the greatest accomplishment in modern narrative storytelling. Granted, HBO is also the network that made it possible for this to have been accomplished in the first place, but still...