Chris (Low Ceilings)

In America, a hardware store called Harbor Freight. I walked in to buy one roll of black electrical tape. Seventy-nine cents. At the register, a bearded clerk named Frank scanned my tape, reached beneath the counter, and placed a massive red five-gallon plastic bucket between us. "Free bucket weekend," he said. I looked at the price tag on the bucket. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents. I looked at my tape. Seventy-nine cents. I stood before the register while basic arithmetic died in my hands. "The vessel costs six times the tribute," I informed him. "If you do this for every customer, your house will fall before winter." "Been doing it for years, chief. Take the bucket." In my land, when a lord grants you a vessel larger than your purchase, you are expected to fill it in his service. I held the wire handle with both hands and asked Frank what a man does with such a bucket. He looked at me the way a monk looks at an uninitiated boy. "Everything," Frank said, "except carry water." I thought he was speaking in riddles. He was speaking the literal law of the land. I have now inspected four garages on my street, and I must report that the entire residential infrastructure of the United States rests upon five-gallon plastic buckets. Nobody puts water in them. The first bucket holds rusty bolts from machines that died during the Bush administration. The second bucket is inverted so a man can sit on it while staring at a lawnmower he has no intention of fixing today. The third bucket is an emergency step-stool so a father can stand fourteen inches closer to a smoke detector that will not stop chirping. I carried my red bucket home and set it beside my garage door. On Saturday morning, my seventy-four-year-old neighbor Walt walked past my driveway with his coffee. He stopped. He looked at the red bucket. Then he looked at me. Without a word, Walt walked back to his own garage, returned sixty seconds later, and dropped a brand-new yellow sponge and a brass hose nozzle into my bucket. "Saw you finally got your bucket," Walt said, tapping the plastic rim twice. "Welcome to the street, kid." I spent seventy-nine cents on tape. They gave me a throne, a toolbox, and citizenship on my block.

Besides THE WIRE, THE SOPRANOS and GAME OF THRONES, what’s one HBO series everyone needs to watch at least once? Looking for those underrated gems and all-time greats that deserve to be in the conversation.