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Today is Dec. 4. Not a big date in terms of holidays (unless you live in India, in which you're probably drunk already celebrating Navy Day) -- that is, until this year. That's because today is the day HBO is releasing Season 4 of their acclaimed show The Wire on DVD, only less than a month before the fifth and final season -- completed before the writers strike -- debuts in January.

Season 4 is still my favorite season of The Wire, and I didn't even see every episode when it aired last year. But now it's available for purchase and you can be damn sure it's on my Christmas list. Why am I so excited? I'll let America's TV critics answer that, from these reviews of Season 4.

"The breadth and ambition of "The Wire" are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season -- any season -- it's an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era."
Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle

"To me, what allows 'The Wire' to surpass 'The Sopranos' in the pantheon of greatest American TV shows is its ambition and its anger."
Aaron Barnhart, Kansas City Star

"This is TV as great modern literature, a shattering and heartbreaking urban epic about a city (Baltimore) rotting from within."
Matt Roush, TV Guide

"Brilliant, scathing, sprawling, The Wire has turned our indifference to urban decay into a TV achievement of the highest order."
Robert Bianco, USA Today

"When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few."
Brian Lowry, Variety

"They have done what many well-intentioned socially minded writers have tried and failed at: written a story that is about social systems, in all their complexity, yet made it human, funny and most important of all, rivetingly
entertaining."
James Poniewozik, Time magazine

"The Wire is one of the few times you'll watch TV and not feel like the people making TV think you're a fucking idiot."
Patton Oswalt, actor and comedian

At the end of the day, the best quote I can offer you is this, from Ms. Vickinson, being reminded of the significance of Dec. 4.

Couldn't have said it better myself.