I am finally working my way through it, I’ve just about finished Season 3, and I have lots of questions. Not least because even though I’m paying close attention I still can’t understand half of what is said.
I’ll be adding more as I think of them, I’m just adding the first that comes to mind:
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[li] Season 3- who was the girl who caught it in both breasts and the mouth, and why? Was it D’Angelo’s (then Springer’s) girlfriend? Was that supposed to stop further inquiry into D’Angelo’s suicide (murder)? [/li][li] What happened with that? Did his mother ever go down to the station? Did Avon ever learn of Springer’s involvement? (Not that it matters… I have one episode left, and I’m wondering what happened to Springer’s hit on Avon…) [/li][li] Season 2- If it happens in Season 4 or 5, don’t tell me - but did I miss something as far as the FBI guy telling the Greeks everything? WTF?[/li][li] I know I missed something critical, but why the fuck was[FONT=Fixedsys]Pryzbylewski out on the street AT ALL???[/FONT][/li][li][FONT=Fixedsys] Why does everyone hate McNulty? He doesn’t seem much worse than anyone else. [/FONT][/li][li][FONT=Fixedsys] What ever happened to that stripper chick from Season 1? [/FONT][/li][/ul]
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FTR: I loved Hamsterdam. I hope they make it permanent. I think we should do that in real life.
I hated D’Angelo dying, I liked him.
I loved Presbylewski, too, I loved that he found his place. So again…???
I love Omar. I’m pretty sure he dies in Season 4, I hope it’s not until the end. Omar rocks. And I especially love that he’s gay. But I don’t really understand how he could spend a decade fucking with drug dealers and not get killed, but whatever… fabulous character.
I’m blanking on which girl you are referring to? Do you mean, Devonne, the girl who Avon Barksdale hired to hook up with Marlo, his rival, to lure him to a trap?
D’Angelo’s mother was told by D’Angelo’s former girlfriend that McNulty said D’Angelo was murdered. Stringer and Avon lied by saying McBulty was lying. I think she believes her son was murdered, but isn’t seen much in season 4 & 5 anyway.
I don’t think you missed anything with the FBI guy and the Greek.We don’t know much more than the agent told McNulty: the FBI probably is protecting the Greek because he provides information about terrorism to the FBI, whatever that may be. We aren’t supposed to think the FBI did right by talking to the Greek.
The stripper is living with with Lester Freamon. That was mentioned somewhere in season 2. You won’t see more than a couple of seconds of her from here on out.
Yes, the girl that was shot was being used to lure Marlo into a set-up and he personally shot her when he found out. He didn’t usually get his hands dirty but he took that personally. He shot her up to send a message on the street, “Don’t fuck with Marlo!”
I haven’t seen it in a while but didn’t he feel a little extra betrayed because he liked her a little more than just another hookup?
He gives a damn when it’s not his turn to give a damn. That upsets the bosses, which can mean trouble for other people in his vicinity.
You have to consider that this is The Wire universe, people are selfish. Often in tv series, people are either unrealistically noble, or unrealistically evil. In the Wire there are some baddies, but the majority of the characters are just ordinary selfish people living in their institutions.
I think that this is very realistic, especially in a high-pressure society like Baltimore. But we are not really used to tv characters behaving this way, so it takes some getting used to.
I didn’t get that impression. If someone tries to take your life, you finish them yourself.
Prez did spend most of his time in the office. The night Prez accidentally shot the other cop, he and McNulty were only out to get lunch when they responded to an emergency call. The Wire is a hard show to follow the first time you watch it. You’ll want to give the show a second and third viewing to catch all the detail.
Also, I don’t think there was much to miss with the Greeks and the FBI agent - the agent was in the Greeks’ pocket, so every time McNulty’s FBI buddy faxed/e-mailed/called in about the case, the mole gave the info to his “employers”.
I envy you - season 4 is, IMO, the best season of TV ever aired anywhere.
No, different girl. She was hired to seduce Marlo so the Barksdale crew could find him and kill him. He figured it out and he was not happy about it and he killed her.
This gets resolved later.
Like others said, he was just getting lunch when shit went down. He was protected by his father in law, after the first season he should have been in a jail cell.
McNulty is an asshole. He’s self-serving and he doesn’t care about anything besides himself. That this lines up with doing the right thing on occasion is coincidence, look at his behavior in every other aspect of his life.
It’s been a while since i saw Season 2, but i don’t think that’s quite the story.
At the end of the season, FBI agent Fitzhugh (McNulty’s friend) talks to Daniels in the bar, and tells him that the leak to the Greek was from the FBI, and that he figures that it was something of a back-scratching operation. Apparently, in the post-9/11 world, the Greek had some sort of terrorism-related information that was useful to the FBI. So the Agent Koutris wasn’t employed by the Greek; he was doing favors for them in return for information. Not much different, in the end, but not a simple case of a corrupt agent.
As i said, it’s been a while, but i think that’s how they explained it.
I’m not sure I’d say asshole. McNulty is a lot like a little kid, in that he has very little impulse control, but he can to some extent charm his way out of trouble. The main problem is that this kid is 30 years old and has a gun and a badge.
I would also suggest you check out Alan Sepinwall’s episode by episode analysis of The Wire. He has two versions, one for people who are watching for the first time and one for people who had seen the entire series and were rewatching. Really great stuff. Half the episodes are on his personal blog What’s Alan Watching and the other half are on his Hitfix.com version of the blog.
He was the TV writer for my local paper and a huge fan of the Wire. The analysis is really well done and helped me learn the characters better when I watched the series a few summers ago.
ETA: I believe Mhendo is right. The FBI helped the Greek not because he was corrupt but because it was implied they were using him as a source regarding terrorism.
Disagree. If it were an officially-sanctioned back-scratching operation, the agent wouldn’t have given Sobotka over to be killed. The good FBI agent thinks it might have been an official back-scratching deal, but in reality it was just a crooked agent. The Greeks kept him loyal by throwing him an occasional bone (like the huge drug shipment).
