And so ends my Wire experiment for this year. Sadly, despite my best efforts, I have failed to reach that elusive 500 mark and the prospect of arriving at Season 5 Episode 10 remains as distant as ever.

I started off with noble intentions. Over the years, man has built bridges, travelled to the moon and then did nothing for a bunch of years… Yet man has never undergone the gargantuan task of analysing each episode of The Wire individually – except for The Guardian who had to use a whole team of writers for this endeavour (losers!).

Anyhow, I was all set to alter the course of mankind when, after writing about two episodes, the novelty kind of wore off and the length of time which this task would require actually sunk in. Woopsies.

It was then that I realised that on top of writing about The Wire, I would also have to allocate time for: doing readings for my course work, writing essays, giving presentations, studying for my exam (I only had one this year), writing a 20,000 word thesis, typing these exact letters, writing other articles for this newspaper, writing for another website that shall remain nameless (and no, it wasn’t Playboy.com), doing actual work that I get paid for, going to see obscure foreign films, doing podcasts, staying up for 35 hours waiting to do podcasts, brushing my teeth… you probably get the picture if you haven’t stopped reading this by now.

Anyway, despite suffering the ignominy of not even reaching the preliminary stages for the Smedia Awards Blog of the Year nominations (damn you Fantasy Girls!), I still enjoyed myself and learned some valuable lessons. Sort of like a Scrubs episode if you were to discount the enjoyable element.

The following are some of the consequences of my 220 Days of Wire (God, that pun is so dated): 1. I have created the church of Omar. That man is now literally a God. 2. I never want to hear that Godforsaken bass-line (i.e. the one that plays over and over for the DVD options list on the season 1 discs) ever again. 3. I have acquired a compulsion to refer to the gardaí as the Poh-lice, to say ‘sheeeeeeit’ whenever misfortune befalls me, to always refer to my house in Dundrum as ‘the motherfuckin projects’, to study economics intensively so I can be more like Stringer Bell, to constantly make reference to ‘the game’ without ever really knowing what this means, to drink nothing but Jameson and listen only to The Pogues, to wake up every morning and immediately say in a suitably wry tone of voice: ‘I still wake up white in a city that ain’t’, to regard all poh-lice as inherently corrupt and to presume all criminals are really quite amiable and fun-loving – not to mention super intelligent, to constantly refer to my Observer colleagues as ‘ma niggas’ and finally, to automatically describe anyone who criticises me or my religion as a ‘punk-ass motherfucker’. 4. I have decided to stop writing about The Wire because frankly, this behaviour is beginning to disturb me like the ghost of Stringer Bell (Ha! I warned you there’d be spoilers).

But before I go, I’d just like to thank my fan for all his support, Catriona and Gav for letting me write the blog (and for picking such terrible fantasy teams – PS: please don’t edit this), Santa for buying me all five seasons of The Wire on DVD, those legions of irritating people who originally kept telling me to watch The Wire and making me feel as if suicide was the only other option, Stringer, Bunk and of course, Omar for being awesome, Rhonda for being awesome and sexy, McNulty’s ex-wife for being sexy (though not particularly awesome), my head for not exploding at the sheer thought of having to write on all 5 seasons of The Wire, that one image (pictured above for the umpteenth time) which I was continually able to rely on, The Sopranos for helping me get through my post-Wire withdrawal symptoms and Michael McSweeney for leaving a negative comment on the blog despite admitting to only having read ‘one paragraph’ of it (all publicity is good publicity).

Anyhow, my moment of true disillusionment came last Friday when I saw Stringer Bell talking to that epitome of effortlessly hip and cutting-edge television, Jonathan Ross, in a rubbish English accent, while showcasing some incredibly turgid looking drama in which he is now starring. Oh Stringer, you used to be cool.

Rant over.