Another excellent episode. The first one ever to not feature McNulty at all?
Freamon is such a badass.
The kids and their interactions and the way Marlo is giving them money is very interesting, although I wish I could do a better job of keeping them straight. The campaign is very interesting., and I honestly have zero idea what’s going to happen. Is the blow job somehow going to become a scandal?
This is the first season I’ve watched week by week, as every previous one I watched on DVD or on demand, and MAN it seems like forever between episodes.
How many of the kids are distinct characters?
-Dookie, small and seems gimpie and always being picked on
-Michael, didn’t want to take Marlo’s money, didn’t want boxing lessons
-Randy, last week, was trying to sell candy, ended up accidentally killing Lex
-Wee-Bey’s son, with the ponytail
-The kid who stole the car?
Unfortunately for discussion purposes, I go to bed at 10:00.
And, HBO’s replay schedule for this show SUCKS. They advertise that it plays on one of the HBO’s every night of the week. Yeah, if you count midnight and 2am and HBO-Latino.
It doesn’t play in prime time until HBO Signature on Thursday night, and then regular HBO on Friday at 10:00.
So, anyway – I finally saw Ep 1. It was great. The kid buying the nail gun was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on this show. “27 caliber nail throwin’ mayhem”
The season will focus on the first four you mentioned. (Wee-bey’s son is Namond.)
When Prez was fixing up his classroom, he was listening to “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. I’m pretty sure that was the same song he was listening to when he was organizing the bulletin boards of suspects in season 2.
I’m glad to see Cutty’s back – and he certainly is getting the attention from the women.
Bubbles has his mobile store going, with an intern.
As far as replays go, you’re in luck if you’ve got HBO Video On Demand. In fact, they show the next week’s episode early on On Demand, so you can get a jump on everyone else seeing it.
Man, how did I miss this series??? I just popped in here to say that I’m half-way thru Season 1 now on DVD, and I can’t believe how freakin’ good it is. Great writing, great acting… the whole deal. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do! Maybe I’ll be up to speed w/ you guys by the time Season 5 starts.
After being stuck in that shit detail for years, he’s out for blood now. I hope he gets satisfaction. Wonder if Perlman has the balls to follow through.
The blow job is probably going to be Herc’s ticket to ride, if nothing else. I thought the Major was funny, giving him advice, as if this is something that happens often.
Looks to me like his parents or whoever he lives with are a bunch of junkies. This kid never has clean clothes or money for food. I also think he’s bright and clever. I’d like to think school is a way out of the bad life for Dookie. I hope Prez reaches out to him.
A proud kid. He sticks up for Dookie, won’t take money from Marlo. Old-school Barksdale kid, IIRC, working for Bodie. I hate to say it, but this might be the guy who turns into another Marlo. He’s got the brains and the heart. Someone needs to pull him back and soon.
He didn’t kill Lex-- he was a tool. He is an entrepreneur for sure, but he also has compassion for Dookie. His mother seems to be on the ball, so maybe he’ll be OK.
Namond, not the nicest kid in the world. His mother is ghetto-fabulous and a total enabler of the gangsta lifestyle. I don’t see how this kid has a hope of not winding up a corner boy.
I think his name was Donut or something, but he’s not one of the main kids we’re following.
Just caught the replay of this episode. This is a show that needs rewatching – you pick up new stuff each time.
One of the great things about the series is how it shows parallels between the different worlds – the street, the police, the docks, city hall, now the school. I noticed some pretty explicit ones in this episode. One was the scene between Cutty (Dennis) and his boss saying they could cover twice the territory if Cutty got his own truck. A couple of scenes later, Bubbles says pretty much the same thing to his “intern” Sherrod that they could cover twice as much if they Sherrod could get his own cart.
Another parallel is between Marlo handing out money to build goodwill and the mayoral campaign. In the first scene where Monk is handing out money to kids, you see campaign poster behind Marlo. Later, when Senator Clay Davis is complaining to Mayor Royce about the subpoenas for money laundering, he says he’ll take any man’s money if he’s giving it away. Davis used almost the exact same words as Namond when he accepted Marlo’s money ealier.
I loved Deadwood, and Rome but I have to say this is my all time favorite show.
The characters and writing are just amazing. I keep wishing something good will happen to Bubbles, but I don’t see it happening. I hope McNulty is back soon and it looks like we’re going to see Omar next week! I wonder if Barksdale will be around this season at all?
I miss Stringer Bell!
I totally agree-- I think the difference between a Stringer Bell or Marlo Stanfield and a Clay Davis or a Royce is strictly circumstantial. One could even see Herc or Carver as corner boys pretty easily. It’s just a matter of what world you come up in-- the rules and sentiments are awfully similar.
Caridwen, I’m happy to see “Member” under your name now!
Slate did a salutory article last week for the season premier and called it Dickens-ian. I can’t think of a higher praise, nor a label more apt to what is amounting to be the best writing/storytelling in any media, this side of Y2K (remember that ‘acronym’?).
I just watched 4.02 and was blown away. This show will be in college curriculums pretty soon and surely 50 years from now. We’re witnessing the birth of a *Citizen Kane * of this time in pop culture/culture history.
I was hoping someone else would ask this so I wouldn’t be the one sounding stupid. Oh well:
Why does Marlo give money to all the kids? I can think of several reasons but I don’t want to prejudice your answers so I’ll keep them to myself for now.
Marlo is trying to be (in the words of Kima) “the little king of everything.” He wants to be The Man on the west side, now that Avon is out of the picture.
I caught this episode at Midnight on Monday. Great ep. The kids are going to make an interesting story.
I think the New York Times also called this the closest thing to a novel that television has ever produced.
Aside: the scene where they’re having target practice is basically right behind my house (a 1 minute walk). I can’t remember if you could see the water or not, but they’re basically standing in a stream. You could see the bridge, and the side-walls under the bridge. I let my dog walk around in there to cool off during the summer.
We saw them shooting down there 12(?) months ago, maybe, so I was keeping an eye out this season.
I think the next episode will show that Carcetti will make a lot of hay with his debate point about the informer getting killed. Not enough to bring him ahead of Royce in the polls, but enough that he’ll be re-energized about his chances. Recall that last season, Carcetti first got his name into the papers by grilling Burrell & Rawls about the PD’s lousy informant protection program, so its been established as his pet project. It’s a tough life being an informer in Balitimore.
He is somewhat obviously based on Baltimore’s current Mayor Martin O’Malley, who was head of city council (IINM) and ran against two black guys in an election and won.
Some said O’Malley was trying to be the benficiary of vote-splitting, but he still wound up with over 50% of the vote.
Keep in mind, this was the Democratic primary for mayor. That’s the race the determines who the mayor will be (no repub is going to win the mayor’s race here), not the general election in November. He wasn’t running against an incumbent, though, like Carcetti is.
So, if they follow that story line, I expect Carcetti to win. Also, I don’t think they would have given us so much Carcetti over the last season just to have him lose the election.
I was away and didn’t see the ep until Thursday night. I just want to mention that Namond is mistaken, and Howard County, where I live, **does not ** have an active Ku Klux Klan.
