[QUOTE=fiddlesticks]
We’ve seen the beat cop who robbed Bubbles before right? Isn’t he the guy who shook down one of the kids for the $200 Marlo handed out. I didn’t rewind my DVR, but they showed him missing his pinky, correct? Can anyone right me of the significance of that?
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We first saw him in season 3, shaking somebody down, although I can’t remember who. Bodie, maybe?
I’m not sure he has a missing pinky: I noticed what you were talking about in the rebroadcast, but it may have just been a trick of the camera angle. The point of the shot of his hands on the steering wheel is that he’s now wearing the gawdy ring he took off Omar when he busted him. Omar lifted it from Marlo in the poker game raid, and Marlo lifted it from the shop owner who couldn’t pay up after Omar hit him. I wonder how far that ring will go this season. Will it be on Carcetti’s finger in the last episode? 
I’m wondering if Herc is ever going to wise up. Carver got his act together, and is becoming a better cop, but Herc just keeps doing dumb stuff, while thinking he’s being smart.
I hadn’t realized until seeing the ep for the second time that the kid who roughed up Namond outside the gym was Sherrod.
I also noticed a couple of other points that slipped by the first time. When Herc goes to Carver for his help, he mentions that losing the camera is a big deal compared to the “Fuzzy Dunlop” incident. This is a reference to the time in Season 2 when the two of them put a wireless mike in a tennis ball (“fuzzy dunlop,” get it?) and left it on a corner to try and hear Nick Sobotka making a drug deal. Someone picked it up and threw it away, and Herc and Carver lost the expensive bug that they had borrowed from a police supply store. (They used Fuzzy Dunlop as the name of the fake CI they created to cover for using the unauthorized bug.)
A couple of little Baltimore things: Werner’s, where Tommy meets the old ex-mayor, is a real restaurant downtown. They’ve played a couple of scenes there before, but I’ve never been on that block and didn’t recognize the place. I may stop by for lunch sometime. (Minor nitpick about that old mayor character: if anyone in this show should have the classic Baltimore accent I’ve talked about in previous Wire threads, it’s him. He sounds like a New Yorker. It’s very distracting to a real Baltimorean.)
In the story the ex-mayor told about eating shit (great story, BTW), he said that the big silver bowls were “Stieff silver.” The Stieff Silver Company factory was located in north Baltimore for 75 years. More than just a major employer, it was a prestigious part of the community, and Baltimoreans were proud of the fact that people all over the world prized Stieff silver. Mentioning the Stieff name was a nice point that only a Baltimore native would have inserted into the script, and that has a special resonance for Baltimore natives of a certain age.
BTW, in searching for “Fuzzy Dunlop” I just came across the extensive Wikipedia pages on The Wire, including detailed pages on each episode. No surprise that they should be there, I guess. I just hadn’t thought to look. Now I’ve got lots of reading to do!