We just started watching season 5 of The Wire, and I’m remembering that one thing I love about this show is the way it promotes good (i.e., boring but vital) police work, like the surveillance and records-combing Freamon has been running for a year as the season opens. The show makes it look like this stuff is really an art, and I guess it is.
Anyway, I couldn’t find a good Freamon clip on Youtube, but I like his quote in here about how “all the pieces matter,” because that pretty much sums up what I’m talking about.