The Wire - Season 5 premiere - 1/6/08 -- "More With Less"

What a great episode title. How many of us have heard we have to do “more with less” at work? Or even at home?

From the DirecTV episode description:

Sgt. Carver faces discontent of unpaid officers; Mayor Carcetti struggles with keeping a campaign promise; Proposition Joe and others meet to discuss dividing drug frontiers across East Baltimore’s county line.

Woo hoo! Two hours to go!

Don’t read this unless you’ve already watched the ep. I watched in On Demand, and I feel like I missed a lot due to cold medication and have to watch again to figure out exactly what happened.

Question:

Why did Chris Partlow want a picture of Sergei Malatov, the Russian muscle for the Greek from S2, now in jail for life? Maybe it was explained and I was too out of it to get it…

I’m still re-watching S4, but damn, I’m so happy Wire was done before the strike. Cheers to the last season of this magnificent bastard.

Rubystreak, I’m thinking Marlo wants to cut Prop Joe out. Marlo wants to pressure Sergei for information about the Greek. He can’t get rid of Prop Joe until he knows where Joe’s getting his product.

Why they’d need a photo, I don’t know. Don’t prisoners know each other’s names? Maybe not.

Well, we’re off and running.

Naturally it was too much to hope that Carcetti’s big plans and everyone’s grand hopes for change would amount to anything. And the main reason why shit happens is because people put their personal interests ahead of the real job. Last season Carcetti was too proud to take the (Republican) governor’s money because he was afraid of how it would make him look when he runs for governor himself in a year or two. And today he refused the (Republican) U.S. Attorney’s offer of assistance rather than give up his own state’s attorney’s case on Clay Davis.

(I’m going to go waaaaaayyyy out on a limb here and predict that at the end of this season Clay Davis, the smarmiest, crookedest sheeeeeee-ithead in the whole Wire world, will still be a free man.)

Is it just me, or does it seem like it’s not such a great idea if you’re police to be following criminal suspects in (two!) bright red vehicles? Or are they making a point of letting Marlo know that they’re on him?

Funny to have Daniels, Pearlman, and Bond standing there as Chris, their perp for the murders, walks by and actually talks to them!

Herc is working for Levy! Is it too much to hope that perhaps Levy will reap the “benefit” of Herc’s well-known professionalism?

Although I’ve always agreed with Herc that the council president is “hot as balls,” it was fun to finally see someone get her smug little panties in a twist.

Another great season off to a great start!

Mods, you may combine this thread with Auntie Pam’s.

Rubystreak: I agree with AuntiePam. At the end of S4, after Omar had ripped off the shipment (and then sold it back to Prop Joe), Marlo had one of his boys follow Vondas. Joe was worried that Marlo might want to make his own deal with The Greek.

Gotta rewatch S4. I remember nothing! What you guys say makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

I hit the Report button.

Yes it was! Daniels wasn’t in the unit when they were after Chris, was he? So he wouldn’t have seen the photo on the board.

The two “The Wire” threads have been merged.

It seems odd that Partlow, who clearly knows that he is being tailed, goes into a public office, requests a key piece of information, and then just leaves the folder there. Unless it’s all disinformation.

Overall, a good episode, although I always forget how incredibly dense The Wire is. One minor complaint: I always thought the business with the governor wanting to donate $50 million and Carcetti refusing rang kinda false. The assumption that somehow that would make him unelectable… I’d think the governor recording that he made that offer and Carcetti rejected it, and later on the governor can say “hey, he’s so partisan that when we offered $50 million of much-needed money for Baltimore schools, he rejected it” would be a LOT more damaging than him accepting it, when he had just taken over and clearly was not responsible for the pre-existing state of the budget. It’s like, they needed a crisis where he’d have to put his ego ahead of the city, so they just made one up.

The newspaper subplot holds much more promise than the school subplot, I think. My favorite so far was the dock workers, but this looked solid.

Nice start.

I like the newsroom. I’ve always been a sucker for newsroom drama.

I loved the dialogue about “evacuation”. All the old guys have their take on it, and the girl takes the lesson.

I’m interested in seeing how they’ll handle the douche who wants to work for the post or times, and the hard-working girl – in an obvious fashion, or with a twist, or whatever.

Agree, the dockworkers plot was great. Shipping the van around the world was hysterical.

I enjoyed the photocopier/BS detector homage to Homicide life on the streets!

anyone know who did this year’s theme song?

I thought I heard it was Steve Earle (who played the reformed junkie from S2 that was trying to help Bubbles kick.)

Steve Earle, I think.

MaxtheVool, I wondered about that too. Does Partlow think he’s invincible? Doing 22 murders and still walking around after a year – maybe he is.

I watched twice last night and both times, the hour flew by.

I really like Gus, especially how he gave Jeff (Geoff?) credit for the story about Nareese and the property trade.

Yeah, he seems like a great guy. So how badly screwed will he be by episode 10? I don’t recall any riding-the-boat-like foreshadowing in the show.

Was anyone else momentarily confused by all the talk about “Hopkins” at the co-op and again in the newspaper meeting? I’m wondering who he is and then :smack: it’s Johns Hopkins the medical center. It looks like their plans for expansion will propel a lot of stuff.

The MU talk confused me too, until second viewing. Do newspaper people always talk in shorthand? Deseg? It’s almost as hard to translate as the corner slang.

So what are we set up for? Marlo moving on Prop Joe, the Clay Davis probe, and the hungry reporter maybe faking a story – seems like those might be the major plots.

Then we’ve got Bubbs trying to stay clean, Dukie finding his place, Beadie and McNulty’s relationship, Herc messing something up with Levy, and cops being broke.

What’s left to resolve from prior seasons? Rawls, maybe. I’m satisfied with the “Rawls sucks cock” on the bathroom wall. Daniels’ history, for sure. Officer Walker – that can’t be over. Vondas and The Greek? What else?