Was that really Nancy Grace? I thought maybe it was an impersonator. Fitting though – Templeton sharing a screen with that skank.
Four episodes left, I believe.
She was credited at the end. I’m thinking the only way McNulty can escape this one is to pin it on Marlo if he ever catches him. It’s got national media hype, and the season is being built around it.
**Don’t read this. Series Spoiler. **
The whole Kenard scene has to be a canard. It’s right there in the name.
Admiral Crunch:
Did you watch the footage in the link? It seemed real. Grrr. I watched it in the hopes that it would look obviously faked but it didn’t.
I watched it last night to see if it was a joke. Obviously not. I’m just hanging onto a shred of semantic hope. Omar certainly deserves better, but so did a lot of people. I wouldn’t put it past HBO to film multiple endings.
Back in the clean world, next week’s episode is directed by Dominic West.
Does anybody know why law enforcement officers refer to Devar Manigault (Bug’s dad) as “the stepfather” at one point, as if referring to his relation to Michael? If no one remembers this, I will try to pinpoint where this happens when I watch the episode again.
I don’t think any apology is necessary, Rubystreak. I think that threads titled “open spoilers” about a single episode of a show has always meant spoilers FOR THAT EPISODE. Anything else would be chaos beyond belief, and we might as well discard any notion of being courteous to those who want to avoid seeing spoilers. So, Ruby, it’s not your fault, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Now, can we confine this discussion to the episode in question? 
I heard stepfather as well, and I assumed that the victim was Michael’s stepfather.
So maybe I shouldn’t be too miffed that no one paid any attention to the thread I apparently simulposted with Rubystreak. Because I may now be the only Wire regular here who didn’t read the feverish spoiler of the season. Ignorance is bliss! (For the time being, at least.)
So Omar hid out in the janitor’s closet in Monk’s building? And Chris and his people, who saw him go out the window, and knew he had to be seriously injured, didn’t bother to check anywhere inside their own building? Yeah, right.
I think the point of that incident was that Templeton had sold Whiting on a clichéd story but couldn’t find anyone to fit that, or any other feel-good cliché. Since he couldn’t come back with an interview of the guy complaining about the state of baseball, he made up a heartwarming story.
But the business with the vet is intended to show us that he actually could be a decent reporter and writer if he worked a little harder, and maybe didn’t spend so much time at self promotion. And when he writes a real story, his writing is the straightforward, non-florid style that the editor at the Washington Post wanted. (Meaning that the stories Scott showed him were made up.)
Jimmy’s kidnapping of the homeless guy just continues his over-the-top descent into madness, and he finally seems to realize that he’s gone too far. The friend with whom I watch the show every week expects that when he puts out the faked message that the killer has kidnapped “Donald,” the woman at the Richmond homeless shelter will recognize him and remember McNulty.
BTW, here’s who Jimmy was talking to early in the ep: Major General Samuel Smith. (I’ve never heard of him, either.)
I have to say that, sadly, this season is clearly the worst of the lot. My friend is just incensed by the notion that Freamon would willingly go along with Jimmy’s fake serial murder scheme. And I have to admit that the couple of lines of explanation he gave to Sydnor last night didn’t strike me as adequate justification for what seems like a betrayal of his character by the writers.
The show has sunk to a level only slightly higher than the average network crime drama. It’s lost most of the subtlety that we had come to expect. There have been a few nice touches here and there, like the scene last week between Beadie and Bunk. Nicely acted, written, and directed. Unfortunately, that kind of quality, which was the norm in seasons 1-4, has become the exception in S5.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
This is such a great series and I’ve been watching, but I have taken advantage of HBO on Demand so I haven’t been posting many comments. I don’t want to risk slipping something that would be considered a spoiler by those not peeking ahead.
Which brings up the question - Why is HBO doing that? They’ve never done it with any other series that I know of.
Yes, they have. I recall them doing it with S4 of The Wire and later seasons of Deadwood. You’ve got to put something on On Demand, I guess.
commasense, I’m okay with Marlo’s people not looking in the building. They searched based on what they would have done – get as far away as possible. They wouldn’t have thought to hide in the building.
I’m also disappointed in McNulty’s scheme, but I guess the writers needed another fraud as a counterpoint to Templeton’s lies. Resources wasted on both sides. It’s a bit more obvious and contrived (not to mention just plain crazy and out of character) than the counterpoints of other seasons though.
There had to be another way to go and I’m still sorta shocked that they chose to have McNulty go off the deep end.
My other disappointment with this season is that we aren’t really getting much insight into the newspaper business – not like we got with the docks and the schools. Or maybe there isn’t much more to show us – I don’t know, I’ve never worked on a newspaper.
Probably. But still worth it.
But this doesn’t bother me much. Freamon and McNulty aren’t even two sides of the same coin - they’re the same side. Both are utterly obsessive “good police.”
Freamon’s drive got him demoted and packed away in an administrative post for x number of years, during which time he learned to not give a shit, accomodate and develop an outside life ( his little Louis XIV furnituire et al. ). Eventually the same thing with McNulty - forcibly removed from investigative work he became a happy, semi-normal human being.
Now McNulty is regressing, becoming the stressed-out obsessive with no life that he once was. And so is Freamon. It just has taken him longer, over the course of the series rather than half a season, as he was out of commission for a decade or two to McNulty’s couple of years. But it is happening, just the same. When was the last time Freamon played around with his doll furniture?
Freamon is a bit smarter than McNulty ( not more clever as McNulty is very sharp, but smarter ). He isn’t as blindly self-destructive ( affairs, booze ) - more stable, better able to compartmentalize his stress. But he is JUST as obsessive about his investigations. The series has showen him getting steadily more and more disillusioned with the same old bullshit that once side-lined his career decades ago. As far as I’m concerned this latest move is completely within character, or rather seems like a perfectly natural progression of his character.
No, I knew that, I just wasn’t clear on why (or how) they knew to refer to him as that.
Watching this episode again last night, and correlating with HBO’s episode guide, it becamse clear to me what happened.
Bunk’s talk with Kima about her investigation and her mention of a witness naming Chris, Snoop (and presumably Michael), lead him to try typing Michael Lee’s name (I was trying to figure out the numbers below) into the database. This pulled up the “H-file” for Devar Manigault, Michael’s stepfather.
Subsequently, they said “his stepfather” out loud, having found out from the file Michael had a stepfather who’d been murdered.
This is key because it leads to the second time someone (Kima’ witness, Michael’s mom) has named Chris and Snoop directly in connection with any murders.
After finding out how the evidence from the vacants was screwed up, Bunk starts entering all the names in the old files into the BPD database, looking for other connections. He enters Michael’s name (you can see this on screen) and finds an “H” file (homicide) for the murder of Bug’s daddy, where DeVar would be listed as Michael’s stepfather.
ETA: If only I would read the posts fully, instead of jumping back to the quoted post and answering that, I could save myself some time. :smack:
And doesn’t that make you wonder why Bunk (or someone) didn’t go through the database sooner?
Still no mention of the little boy who ran out of Junebug’s house. I suppose he could have been a friend, not related, so the cops wouldn’t know to look for him. And if he went home and told someone what happened, they might not want him to talk to the cops. But still – it’s a loose end.
TOTALLY ABOUT THE REMOVED SPOILER:
Also may be based on info from upcoming episodes that have been leaked (I’ve seen through ep 7)
I’m serious! But it’s part of the Omar topic in this thread.
If anyone has seen episodes 5, 6 and 7, feel free to read:
I actually believe the posted spoiler, even though I didn’t watch the clip. Somewhere in episode 5, 6, or 7 Omar comes up to Michael and his gang and Kenard, being Kenard, is all “I’m gonna kill that dick smoker” or something. I got an inkling right then that the end of Omar would be this nasty little boy, and that’d be an appropriate ending to the show because it shows that the game continues.
They showed the poor kid getting interviewed unsuccessfully about the murders, right? Also, last week I remember that he was mentioned, that he was the son of Junebug. I think it was Bunk and Kima talking, saying that they were pretty sure it was Chris and Snoop who killed Junebug, his woman, and his muscle because he was talking shit about Marlo. So they are making the connections.
Different kid. That’s the one Kima found in the closet. AuntiePam’s talking about the one who ran out the back door, and who Michael didn’t shoot.
As I suggested upthread, I think the connection is that this is the first time someone in addition to Chris or Snoop has been named by a witness regarding a murder, so, since Chris and Snoop were already on Bunk’s radar but couldn’t be linked to anything, Bunk just played a hunch and typed in Michael’s name.
Finding Devar’s H-file is important because, as you suggested a few weeks ago, the apparent trace evidence from Chris’ beatdown of Devar will probably be the key to linking them to anything they’ve done, up to but not necessarily including the murders in the vacants. If this happens, it will definitely be the carelessness of Chris’ crime of passion that gets them caught.
I’m wondering if they even know about the kid who ran out the back door, since Kima interviewed the kid from the closet but not the runner.
I’m glad I skipped the spoiler mess.
To those who don’t believe in McNulty’s madcap plan, can I ask, why? He gave some pretty clear indications in this episode about how he’s the victim of the 'nother inch plan. He cut one corner for his purposes, then another was needed, then another, and now he can’t control it. I imagine this happens to a smaller degree all the time.
(“Oh what a tangled web we weave…”)
Or is the writing/acting bothering you, cause those are subjective, and I’m happy in my Wire-niverse of “There are no true good guys/bad guys”.