“The Wire” is literally stunning. There’s so much turmoil on so many levels, such vibrant performances from the 51 cast members and such fierce, reality-based writing firing at breakneck speed that one almost wishes HBO would throw in a simple-minded commercial. But no, the only option is to grab onto an episode’s message or motif and enjoy how it rockets across multiple layers of social strata in a forlorn and impoverished Baltimore. When a dad tells his son to get a haircut in this town, it’s so the cops won’t recognize him when he’s running drugs.

At its core, the show is all about systems, the people who control them and the victims who get sucked in or spat out.  The brilliance comes in the pronouncement that every system works the same, no matter the stature. A heated mayoral race exposes the dirt of city hall while a volley of murders among drug gangs makes clear the politics of surviving on the street. City cops laugh out loud at a lecture on terrorism even as teachers guffaw during a school meeting on suggested forms of discipline that would never stand a chance against the violent student population. A senator charged with money laundering and a kid who takes a $200 gift from the local drug lord express the exact same sentiment, “I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if he givin’ it away.” A detective examining a corpse and a teacher learning the ropes are both advised to have “soft eyes.”

Blissfully free of such dramatic devices as narrative voice-overs and ticking clocks, each episode is built from a pile-up of brief scenes that expose raw confrontation or calculated cooperation. In the best pairing of assassins since Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction, Felicia Pearson and Gbenga Akinnagbe are Snoop and Chris. Veteran murderers at an early age, they go about their duties with weary resignation. Pearson is particularly shocking for her physical appearance; a 26-year-old actress who looks like a cherubic teenage boy. Glynn Turman portrays incumbent mayor Clarence Royce like a Shakespearean king blind to his faltering power while Jim True-Frost plays a lousy cop on his way to becoming a lousy teacher with just the right understated panic. Series creator David Simon, who wrote the seminal Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, leads the crackerjack crew in transforming the bowels of Charm City into the most captivating hour on television.