The Wire, 11/26

Cafe Society
1

With only a couple of eps left, things are heating up.

I liked the way the Mayor got the city departments in gear by walking in and saying “Fix it!” without providing any details. And his move to free the police from the burden of “the stats” certainly is welcome. Daniels putting Freamon in charge of Major Crimes was another great move.

It would be nice to hope that Carcetti is really going to help clean things up in the city, but us cynical viewers know that the main lessons of The Wire are “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” and “No good deed goes unpunished.” Sort of like Yes, Minister without the laughs.

We can see the trouble coming as Lester looks over the returned subpoenas of the major campaign contributors while the mayor hobnobs with them.

Finally someone figures out where all the bodies are. What will the political ramifications be of dozens of new unsolved murders?

One thing about Lester’s revelation that bugged me was that Prez knew where the bodies were kept and there’s no reason he shouldn’t have told Bunk and Lester. But then we would have lost the great final scene of this ep.

I loved the scene in which McNulty sits down and has lunch with Bodie.

I don’t know how things are were you are, but the sudden post-election revelation of a huge deficit in the education budget is depressingly familiar. So Colvin’s program, which would improve the schools for everyone at little cost, will die with a whimper in the name of “not rocking the boat.”

Will Omar be able to carry out his plan of ripping off Marlo while maintaining his pledge to Bunk of not dropping any more bodies. (I think not.)

I’m a little surprised that we didn’t see more of Herc in this episode. I was expecting him to give Bubbs a beating for the bum tip.

I just started re-watching Season 1 again, and noticed the following things:

[ul]
[li]Stringer tells Avon that McNulty “tried to pin Gerard [presumably a hit] on Little Kevin.” [/li]
[li]Bunk takes a call to investigate a decomposing body in an abandoned apartment.[/li]
[li]Rawls is wearing a wedding ring.[/li]
[/ul]

Also, I was reminded of the fact that Daniels has a cloud over him. FBI agent Fitzhugh told McNulty that

2

Crap, I hit Submit by mistake.

FBI agent Fitzhugh told McNulty in Season 1, Ep. 2, that Daniels has “a couple hundred thousand more in liquid assets than any police lieutenant should ever have.” Burrell knew about the FBI’s investigation back then and did nothing. He reminded us a couple of eps ago that he still knows. The question is, does Rawls know, and will he use it to keep Daniels from leapfrogging over him to the commissioner’s spot?

3

Actually, I don’t this is really a mistake. Prez sent Randy to tell Herc, and Herc was SUPPOSED to bring Randy over to Bunk afterwards, but he didn’t. So it’s just another example of Herc falling down on the job, because Prez reasonably assumed that Randy would tell the whole story to Bunk.

I already watched the next episode on-Demand and it’s just SO good. I can’t believe the season is almost over.

4

What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone who’s seen it agrees that The Wire is the best show on TV, and yet we go weeks here with no thread on the show, and those that are started (the day after or later) are relatively anemic. (Nothing personal, Valerieblaise. You’ve done your part here and before.)

OTOH, the thread about this week’s ep of The Amazing Race was started before the show aired and now is up to two pages. Sheesh!

Don’t get me wrong, I watch TAR, and I like it, but I was looking forward to some interesting conversation about The Wire with my fellow Dopers.

grumble, grumble, grumble

5

Holy shit I just watched next week’s episode.

The opening is a bit of a fake out and didn’t really ring true to the realism of the series.

[spoiler] Naymond falls apart and Michael turns hardcore and Randy’s home is destroyed.

Duqon might be the only one who gets through unscathed.
I really thought Carcetti was going to have to back off on the pay raise for the cops to cover the school money shortage. He’d alienate the cops which was the one thing he wanted to avoid.[/spoiler]

6

I think part of the problem is that you can watch ahead using On Demand. That means that there’s not the same anticipation, and everybody is watching the show on his or her own schedule. You loose the sense of watching it together, the community feeling of sharing the show.

7

Good episode.

My wife said “why didn’t prez just tell him?”

I was thinking that he wanted to still hold out that he wasn’t rolling over for them, and also didn’t want to be the “snitch”, but he was SECURE IN THE KNOWLEDGE that Lester would piece it together.

The mayor is still following the real world model set up by our current mayor. When he got in, things like vacant lot clean up, and pot hole repair became higher priority. They set up a 311 line in the city for non-emergency services. You can still get a pot hole fixed in a day.

I think that some parts of the show do have that element of “no good deed goes unpunished” but I also like to think that there’s an element of David Simon putting forth alternate theories of policing and governing to the real world audience. And not just Baltimore, but any other city with similar problems.

The McNulty-Carcetti exchange was great, as was the McNulty-Brodie sit down. I liked how McNulty silently asked if it was all right, adn Brodie responded in kind.

Herc is SUCH a fuck up. He’s a classic example of someone promoted above his competence level.

8

I watch it on Mondays now. Earlier in the season, I watched it on Fridays, so by the time I watched it, everyone was watching the next episode.

I also forgot to mention how good the Omar stuff was this week. I love their brand of spanglish (e.g. “yo siento” is wrong). They kept saying “at the casa”.

I’ve no idea how that is going to play out. Who knows where Prop Joe will go, or where his loyalties lie. Is Marlo even aware at all about Omar, and his desire to control more action?

You need to admire the patience of Omar.

This show stands in stark contrast to a show I’ve been bitching about this season: “Lost”. Whereas everything in that show that seemed significant has turned out to be meaningless, and clearly introduced without a purpose, in “The Wire”, everything that seemed insignificant at the time has turned out to come into play later on.

Not to mention that “The Wire” has the guts to kill off popular people, and the confidence in their writing to end storylines, knowing that the next ones they introduce will be as good.

aside: I have a friend getting a new dog pretty soon. One name in consideration: “Stringer”.

9

okay so I am so late with this but I just caught this show and its so good…man I can’t believe i was missing this!