Watching The Wire is a bit like watching the writers assemble a giant jigsaw puzzle. They have all the pieces and we're looking on as they fill in all of the blanks, starting with square one. I hesitate to say that every season is like this, as some of them come "pre-assembled", if you will. You have the center of the puzzle, which is usually the detail or some faction thereof, and as the season progresses you watch the puzzle fill in from the edges. They take more time here in the first season, as there's world-building to be done, yet episodes five through nine are where we start to see the pieces all fall into their correct places.
