Sometimes the marketing guys do get it right. As fans of HBO’s The Wire pace back and forth, rabidly anticipating the January 6th premiere of the show’s fifth and final season, HBO and Amazon have teamed up and posted three shorts “prequels” on the Amazon page, where the show’s fourth season is available. These shorts offer brief back stories for the show’s most enduring and beloved characters: McNulty encounters Bunk for the first time, we witness the earliest incarnations of the bizarre combination of morality and terror that make Omar Little the most appealing character currently on television, and Proposition Joe earns his nickname at a young age. According to The Hollywood Reporter, more shorts will be shown at the end of each episode this season (as if we needed more incentive to watch) And in case you missed them, here are five more short promos for the show, each one centered around a different character. Is it weird that we’re more excited about the new season than seeing our families over the holidays?