The HBO show is a valuable artifact from the post-9/11, pre-social media revolution era.

HBO

The Wire's first episode aired on June 2, 2002, 10 years ago this week. A decade has now passed since HBO took a chance on showrunner David Simon's grim vision of a decaying, desperate Baltimore and nearly half a decade since the iconic series ended and was enshrined as the Greatest TV Show Ever, taught at Harvard and Duke.

A decade on and 60 episodes later, the show has aged. Countless people still discover the five seasons every day, yet the main elements of The Wire remain very much a nuanced product of their time. The dysfunctions that Simon portrays in the series are chained to dynamic shifts happening in the specific years when it was set.

"We just don't have the manpower to stay on anything big," an FBI agent tells McNulty in the 2002 premiere, regarding to the agency's shift from focusing on domestic crime and drugs to counterterrorism. "Not since those Towers fell." McNulty is not pleased: "What, we don't have enough love in our hearts for two wars?" David Simon, of course, feels no need to clarify what the FBI agent meant by "those Towers" or "two wars." What the man referred to was, back in 2002, recent and real news. Al Qaeda flew two planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the effects run throughout the core institutions of The Wire. The two wars are on drugs and terrorism. Baltimore police attempt to take their case against the Barksdale drug crew to federal authorities at the end of that first season but why do they fail? The FBI insists that political corruption must be the priority if they step in, thanks to new War on Terror orders. The second season echoed the conflict, as the FBI only joined the dockworkers investigation, full of sex trafficking and drugs and violence, to pick at the corruption of Frank Sobotka's stevedore union.

The Wire's dysfunction is all part of the changing politics and technology of the early 21st century. Yes, the War on Terror warped American law enforcement policies, apparent in the first two seasons. Frank Sobotka, union leader of the docks, spends the second season in fear (and, consequently, loses his moral compass) because his profession is dying and becoming automated, a not-uncommon shift as our machines grow all the more powerful.