I stumbled out of my room on multiple late 2016 evenings and went upstairs to get food or water. I would usually come upstairs to see two of my roommates fixated in our dark, trash and bug-infested living room, watching a show that immersed their attention.

It was "The Wire". At times, I asked them what was so good about it and what it was about. It was kind of hard for me to understand, as "cop show" wasn't enough to do the show justice.

Three years later, however, I am a full-on convert as a fan of "The Wire", God's gift to the Earth and the best show of all time. I am an active member of a Facebook group for "The Wire" that discusses and debates scenes and characters. I have been kicked out of multiple group chats for my steadfast insistence on sharing gifs and quotes from "The Wire," ranging from the more savage variety of quotes like "you come at the King, you best not miss" to the insightful life lessons like "a life is...the shit that happens when you're waiting for the things that never come." Those same roommates who primed me to start watching the show have urged me to chill out and make my own group chats about "The Wire" because my steadfast obsession with the show was freaking people out.

Yes, "The Wire," which is set in Baltimore, was such an obsession that I chose my post-graduation plans to go to become a Baltimore City Schools teacher. Right now, my full-time job is being a special education teacher in a middle-high school in Northeast Baltimore.

So what is "The Wire" actually about? It's a testimony to the American inner-city, and the pain of an American City's institutions to be in touch with and serve the needs of its most vulnerable institutions. The show paints a drug organization, a police department, school system, political machine, and newspaper as much more similar than different. Individuals at the top were always protected and well-paid, but at the bottom, the situation always looked bleaker.

In spite of a city institutions failings, however, was the beauty, hope, and resilience within the people that did serve and did suffer. No one in "The Wire", barring death, gave up.

The bad part of being obsessed with a show as glorious as "The Wire" is that it ruined television for me. I can't watch another show without first comparing it to "The Wire". Shows I liked before paled in comparison to "The Wire". "Breaking Bad" became unrealistic. "Mad Men" became boring. "How I Met Your Mother" became the least funny comedy in the world. "Game of Thrones" started to become stale. These shows are only juvenile now.

Anyways, I hope to tell people why "The Wire" is such a good show, and hence the best show of all time. I said a year ago that "The Wire" is the best show of all time because it makes you a better person. "The Wire" taught me empathy. "The Wire" taught me compassion. "The Wire" taught me empathy.

But "The Wire" is also the best show of all time because it re-shapes the way you see the world, and it literally re-wires your brain to think approach people and life as a more understanding person.

Andre Royo, who played one of the most inspiring and humanizing characters of the show, Bubbles, who is a struggling heroin addict and police informant, said this of his attempt to portray Bubbles:

"I wanted Bubbles to be human first, addict second…I wasn't trying to play the addiction. I was trying to play the person."

What makes "The Wire" so special is that the show does this with every character. The show is titled "The Wire" not only because it literally refers to the wiretap, but because it blurs the line between good and evil. While cop shows traditionally depict cops as good and drug dealers as bad, "The Wire" depicts every part of the equation, from the politician, to the cop, to the drug dealer, to the schoolteacher (like myself) as occupying the gray area. All characters have noble and genuine motives and wish to make the world a better place in the way they see how.

Despite the attempts of well-meaning and heroic individuals, however, "The Wire" is a constant reminder that institutions and systems are so entrenched and powerful that the good intent of reforming individuals is usually stifled by the status quo. And despite the noble intent of so many individuals of "The Wire", the fact remains that those individuals still had lives, families, kids, and had to survive. Loyalty to their institutions meant survival. Speaking out against the system, whether it meant a disillusioned drug dealer snitching to the police, or a police officer breaking the chain of command to do what's right for a case, often meant life or death.

As a teacher in Baltimore City, with the education system the focus of season 4 of "The Wire", there are many administrative beliefs and practices of the education system that I fundamentally disagree with. But will I, as a new teacher, voice those concerns outside private circles? Absolutely not! I still need to survive and get paid, and staying with the job means I'm acting as part of the solution, and not being a critic of people who serve in some of the most trying jobs in the country.

I love "The Wire" because the show changed, above all, how I see people. Everyone is a good person. As a Christian, my theology is that I have made so many mistakes and sinned so badly that everyone else is a good person in comparison.

But these are ideas and philosophies that are up in my head, untested by life circumstance and hardships. What has tested and cemented those beliefs is "The Wire," which shows that despite what someone does as a job, no matter how they appear to only serve themselves, everyone is a good person at the core. They occupy the gray area and make a lot of mistakes, but "The Wire" taught me that if God forgave someone like me for all my mistakes, for being as racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and classist as the next person, then God can forgive everyone else.

Every character in "The Wire" is human first, everything else second. That taught me a lot about life. In the show, Omar Little robs drug dealers and is responsible for the murders of a lot of people who cross him, but still serves as the moral compass of the show for refusing to get civilians caught up in the crossfire. To add, I wrote back in May of last year this:

"And that's not just this one character — it's all of them. Even though Wee-Bey, for example, is responsible for many of the murders on the first season of the show, he's still a great, loving father to his son. Even though Thomas Carcetti, the Baltimore mayoral candidate, is a politician so narcissistic that he gets sexually aroused by his reflection in the mirror, he also genuinely cares about fixing issues. He is constantly in a state of flux between his own self-ambition and doing what's right for his city, and many times he does right for one, but there are many other small moments where he does right by the other. Even though Avon Barksdale is a West Baltimore drug warlord, he still donates $15,000 to his former employee, Cutty, to open a gym."

The Wire has also been critical to my faith as a burgeoning Christian. Religious and social historian, D.G. Hart, has attested to "The Wire" as a Calvinist manifesto, of sorts. David Simon, in "The Wire," depicts life, and especially life in Baltimore City, as Hobbesian, "poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It presents a fatalistic view of the world where human condition of sin reigns supreme above everything but the grace of God. Humans don't flourish. They persevere.

If God used King David, a rapist, to do good as the King of Israel, then He used Jimmy McNulty, a selfish workaholic and womanizer, to move the investigative cases forward. If God used Moses, a murderer, to lead the Israelites to the promised land, then He used Avon Barksdale to give livelihoods to a whole network of loved ones and relatives. If God used Peter, an all-talk-no-show coward, as one of the biggest spreaders of the Gospel, then He used Bubbles and his story of survival as an inspiration to all.

"The Wire" was a tool of God that told me that flawed people are still good people, that flawed people do great things.

"We were bored with good and evil. To the greatest possible extent, we were quick to renounce the theme," Davis Simon once said. "[The Wire] was about The City."

"It was about The City.It is how we in the West live at the millennium, an urbanized species compacted together, sharing a common love, awe, and fear of what we have rendered not only in Baltimore or St. Louis or Chicago, but in Manchester or Amsterdam or Mexico City as well. "

"The Wire" teaches me on how to live within a City, how people in my City live together. It teaches me to always give someone the benefit of the doubt, because it's not a Darwinian battle for survival -- "The Wire" is a lesson that we're all in this together, whether it is the businessman, the teacher, the drug dealer, the politician, the cop, or the journalist. In my daily life, and although it differs from how what "The Wire" gives screentime to, it means living together with the church members, teachers, custodians, secretaries, students, parents, squeegee boys, homeless people, friends, and neighbors. It means living together instead of divided, reconciling the disagreements that come about.

In all these ways, from faith to urban life to humanity, "The Wire" changed the base settings with which I saw the world. To me, now, that's what makes it the best show of all time.