The Wire, "Final Grades": End of term

Spoilers for "The Wire" just as soon as I figure out who wrote the telltale graffiti in the Homicide men's room...

My God, where to start? So much happened to so many people, both in this extra-length episode and this magnificent season, that I feel the only way to do the finale justice is to go character-by-character and look at where everyone of significance wound up, followed by some other finale thoughts.

The boys: Look at that picture. Hard to believe that was from only eleven weeks ago, how happy and full of hope our four boys were. (Well, maybe Dukie wasn't so hopeful, but he also didn't know what Mr. Prezbo was about to do for him.) Now the season's over, and where are they? Michael's a murderer twice over, once as an accessory and once directly, running a corner and seemingly lost to the streets forever. (Or until he has a Cutty-like rebirth decades from now.) Dukie's a drop-out and low-level member of Michael's crew, not to mention Bug's new caretaker now that Michael doesn't seem to have much interest in his own brother. Randy's been swallowed up by the system, put in a position where, even if Carver follows through and gets certified as a foster dad in four or five months, that smile of Randy's is never going to shine quite as bright.

Only Namond gets out, completes the transformation from corner kid to stoop kid that Bunny and Dr. Parenti envisioned when they began their study. And that salvation only comes through Bunny going far beyond the call of duty, not to mention the availability and wisdom of Wee-Bey, who deep down knows his son could never be a soldier.

At the start of the season, or the mid-point, or even the end, if you were to ask me which of the boys I'd most like to see saved, Namond would have been my last choice. Randy had the smile, the generosity of spirit and the work ethic. (Like Gary McCullough from "The Corner," he's also the most relatable to this suburban white guy.) Michael had the loyalty and courage, not to mention that intangible leadership quality that brought out the inner mentor of every man he met And Dukie had the brains, not to mention the lousiest hand of cards possibly dealt any character in the history of this show. Namond? Namond was a spoiled brat at best, a bullying wannabe gangster at worst. Even after he fell under Bunny's guidance and started revealing his sweeter, more genuine side, I still had a softer spot for the other three, especially Randy and Dukie.

But I think that's the point. To quote William Munny in "Unforgiven," deserve's got nothing to do with it. In the world of "The Wire" -- and the real world it so eerily models -- good things, when they happen, come not to those who've earned them, but those who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Like Namond, Randy had a responsible adult trying to take him in; the only difference is that Carver had to wade through too much red tape and the inflexible child services system, where Bunny was able to go directly to Wee-Bey. Randy could have owned his own store, Dukie could have gone into computers (or, hell, policework like Prez), Michael could have become a fighter or something else, but it's probably too late for all three. And in the end, Namond's probably going to turn out okay so long as he has Bunny to kick him in the ass thrice-daily.

Is there a certain level of feel-good sentimentality to Namond's rescue? Yes, but it was important for two reasons. First, Simon and Burns had to illustrate the extraordinary efforts, not to mention good fortune, that can be required to get an at-risk boy into a stable environment. Second, it's one thing to tell a story of adults (say, the port guys) where everyone has an unhappy ending, but when you're dealing with 13-year-old boys, bleak endings across the board would have been too much to bear.

We're obviously going to see Michael and Dukie again next season (Michael even made his way onto the MCU cork board as "Unknown"), and the whole thing on the HBO website about Cheese maybe being Randy's father has me hoping that he'll turn up again, but I have a feeling we've said goodbye to both Namond and Bunny. They got their happy ending, or as close as a disgraced ex-cop and an unofficially orphaned corner kid can get, and better to imagine them enjoying that than to bring them back in for potential doom and gloom.

Tommy & Norman: Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. Morning in Baltimore lasted, what, two weeks? We can argue all day and all night about Tommy's motives going into the election, and even after he won -- I still say Tommy's good intentions narrowly outweighed his selfish ones -- but the woman from the DNC talking up the governorship is the worst thing that could have happened to Tommy, and to Baltimore. His weak-ass "in two years, I can do so much more from Annapolis" rings so false when we see how much terrible change can come to boys like Randy and Dukie in the space of only a few months, let alone two years. How long before he starts blindly chasing stats and getting deep into bed with Clay Davis?

As for Norman, this season's best addition, Non-Juvenile Division, I would have more trouble with his disbelief at Tommy's feet of clay if the show hadn't established that he usually runs campaigns, not administrations. Easy to only see the good in a candidate when you get to walk away before he has to make any real decisions.

The MCU: The need to fold the election story into the show proper instead of doing a separate miniseries gave short shrift to a number of regular characters, none moreso than the Major Crimes Unit itself. It was gutted in episode three, populated by dimwits and petty bureaucrats for most of the season, and only started returning to its former glory in the last three episodes. While the boys' stories all received some form of closure, the MCU's pursuit of Marlo has barely begun. The amount of danglers from this story put the lie to any attempt on Chris Albrecht's part to suggest fans wouldn't be upset if the show ended without a fifth season.

Fortunately, we'll get to see Lester and company (including, despite last week's "Are you happy here?" scene, Kima) try to put the wood to Marlo and his people. They have more juice with command than ever before, thanks to Daniels' ascension and the headlines generated by all the bodies. But as I asked last week, how the hell do you get a crew as cautious as Marlo's? They kill anyone who even might be snitching, they don't use phones, meet only in public places with guards who can spot anyone trying to plant another camera like Herc's, and now they're in the practice of disposing of every weapon used in any murder. This seems an even taller task than closing the murder of the dead girls in the can from season two.

Ah, well, at least they again have access to the powerful mind of...

McNulty: If you've watched this show long enough, you know that a character's about to be in a whole lot of trouble right around the time they give a big speech looking ahead to their future. Kima did it while out drinking with her friends and got shot. D'Angelo found a parallel to his life in "The Great Gatsby," then got strangled. When Jimmy began telling Beadie about how things would be different this time, how the love of his good woman would keep him straight even as he went back to the job that made him into an alcoholic bastard, I wanted to tell Beadie to politely ask him to leave and immediately change the locks. Does anyone here honestly believe Jimmy can have his cake and eat it, too? At least he has a nobler motive this time than his usual "Let me prove how much smarter I am than the rest of the world" approach, because of what he owes to...

Bodie: Son of a bitch. That's how a soldier dies, for good and for ill. He wouldn't live on his knees, wouldn't die on them, either, the first man all season to not roll over and let Chris and Snoop walk him to his death inside a vacant. I used to look at Bodie without much affection. He was the hot-head always in need of a lecture from D'Angelo or Stringer, not to mention the killer of Wallace. But while he wasn't as mistake-free as he tried to suggest in his speech at the arboretum, he did learn from all those lectures -- he was the only victim of Hamsterdam to recognize entrapment when he saw it -- and if Stringer had lived and stayed on the street, Bodie had a chance to move on up and become, if not a king, then a knight like Slim Charles. Instead, he goes down, guns blazing, on the pathetic piece of real estate he turned into a thriving concern, and leaves Poot, of all people, as the last free and surviving member of the Barksdale empire. (I don't count Slim, who was a mercenary.) RIP, Preston Broadus.

And for the record: Michael did not -- I repeat, did not -- kill Bodie. I know it's a dark scene, and there's some resemblance between Bodie's killer and Michael, but it wasn't him. Per David Simon, "Michael does the murder in the montage. One of the other kids who was training with Chris and Snoop is the shooter of Bodie." When Marlo suggests that Michael be the one to take out Bodie, don't forget, Chris says it would be better for Michael's first kill to be a stranger, and Marlo agrees.

Bunny: If I'm right that we've seen the last of the ex-Major, then at least he went out well. He couldn't bring some sanity to the War on Drugs, or to No Child Left Behind, but he was able to save one child -- and as we learned over and over this season, that's no easy feat. And, in a way, Hamsterdam Jr. made its mark. Zenobia and Darnell joined Namond as kids who seem capable of being students again, and the dead silent response to Albert's "your worst nightmare" joke in Prez's class suggested that the kids not only have gotten used to life without the troublemakers, but may not be as willing to tolerate their disruptions in the future. Not the worst legacy for the show's resident unpopular truth-teller.

Wee-Bey & De'Londa: Bunny knew the right way to frame his argument for Wee-Bey, but I credit Wee-Bey for having the wisdom and lack of foolish pride to see the truth in Bunny's words. At the end of season one, he happily confessed to several murders he didn't commit, partly out of self-preservation (it likely spared him the death penalty), but mainly out of loyalty to Avon. Five years gone, and the reality of life in prison has made itself very apparent to him. He's tough enough to handle that weight, but he now sees that the family business is nothing worth pushing his son into.

De'Londa, on the other hand, continues to Not Get It on a massive scale, even assuming that Wee-Bey's interest in her would vanish the second her child did. Sure, some players in the game are like that (D'Angelo never had much time for Donnette outside her being his baby mama), but she clearly understands her man about as well as she understood her son. Feh. I understand why she is the way she is, but that woman can't be off my TV fast enough.

Cutty: He began the season having a fun, sexy time with every mother who wandered into the gym, not realizing the effect this was having on boys like Spider and Michael. He ends it with a bum leg but a less controversial love interest, courtesy of a character reference from Bunny. Is his story done, too, do you think, or will he play some kind of role in whatever's coming for Michael next season?

The Bunk: He bookended the season with the Lex case, and in between saved Omar from Marlo's clutches. The man continues to have a gift for taking people on a guilt trip, in this case getting probable cause out of Lex's mom by pointing out that it's her own fault her son's remains went undiscovered for so long. If I'm right that Jimmy's flying back to drunken bimbohood, then I'm sure Bunk will be happy to play wingman.

Carver & Herc: Carver's growth over the course of the series -- hell, even from the start of season three to now -- is amazing, but that maturity brings with it the price of a conscience. Herc has no idea what he did to Randy and Bubbs, nor would he care, while Carver is crushed by having failed Randy and Miss Anna, even if his only failure was in trusting Herc. (Randy trying to absolve him of any guilt as they entered the group home only made things worse, of course.) I wonder if he'll have the perserverance to actually get qualified to be Randy's guardian, or if he'll let himself be talked out of it with the passage of time and a whole lot of beers.

Herc, meanwhile, becomes that rare "Wire" character to get something close to the fate he deserves -- assuming that I read the disciplinary board scene right and that "conduct unbecoming" is a firing offense -- even though he's being punished for an entirely different crime. Those sergeant's stripes transformed him from lunkheaded comic relief into a very dangerous person, and the only thing I feel bad about is that he'll never really understand what he did.

Bubbles: Andre Royo breaks my heart on a regular basis, never moreso than in this episode. His confession to Landsman, and especially his breakdown at the mental hospital (in front of his AA sponsor from season one, in case you didn't recognize the shaggy biker guy), were just devastating. They say an addict can't quit until they hit rock bottom, and I can't fathom a rock lower than the one Bubbs is trapped under at the moment. We saw that he had a very fragile support system in place when he tried to get clean in season one; maybe Sherrod's death will be enough to keep him going forward this time, even if he suffers a setback like he did when Kima got shot. God, I hope so.

(And why am I sitting around expressing so much hope about the future of fictional characters? Why does this show do this to me?)

Omar: As a poster in last week's thread put it, "Omar and Renaldo are the real Major Crimes Unit this season." With some old-fashioned surveillance techniques, they acquired high-level intel and put the kind of hurt on the Baltimore drug trade that Lester can only dream about. But as Butchie said (shortly after flashing a Randy-level smile while contemplating what his adopted son pulled off), "This ain't over." Just as Bubbs' life has nowhere to go but up from here, I can't see Omar's fifth season arc traveling anywhere but in a downward direction.

Prez: As Ms. Samson says, he'll be fine. He's always going to have his awkward moments because that's just who Prez is, but he connected to his kids -- not just Dukie, but everyone -- much faster than he had any right to. He looked devastated at seeing Dukie on the corner (maybe also feeling guilty for taking Ms. Donnelly's advice too far and essentially blowing off Dukie when he came by?), so perhaps he'll find some tangential way to get involved in Lester's work next year.

Burrell & Rawls: Now that they're back in their relative positions of power, can I start calling them Beavis & Hack-Boy, or is it an insult to this show to drop any kind of "Studio 60" reference in the middle of it? As I said a couple of weeks ago, Burrell being Tommy's political operative isn't the worst thing in the world, but I worry that he's going to start sabotaging Daniels and the MCU to hang onto the throne. How long before Ronnie and Cedric get replaced with Burrell and Clay Davis at Tommy's lunchtable?

And, as I said at the top, any theories on who wrote the Rawls graffiti? I imagine whoever wrote it has no idea how true it was, but after all the wild-eyed speculation when we saw Rawls in the gay bar last season, I'm amused that this was the only follow-up of any kind this year.

Marlo, Chris & Snoop: Whenever an interviewer suggests that Marlo is a sociopath, Simon always points to his loyalty to his people. And so far, all of the murders we know Marlo arranged have been of people either on the fringes of his organization (Old-Face Andre, Little Kevin, Bodie) or outside it altogether (Lex, the security guard). But the simultaneous discovery of two dozen bodies is enough heat to melt even someone as ice-cold as Marlo; if faced with a choice between giving up Chris and losing his empire, what would he do?

Like everyone else, I had more empathy for Avon and, especially, Stringer than I have for Marlo. But as with De'Londa, I understand why he is who he is, and he's a worthier adversary for Lester and the MCU than I think any of us were imagining last year.

Prop Joe & Vondas: Well, here's a sight I never thought I'd see again on this show: The Greek's right-hand man, back in Baltimore. During my pre-season interview with Simon and Ed Burns, I expressed surprise that Vondas would be willing to come back to a city where the cops had paper on him, not to mention a photo I.D. Ed laughed, pointing out that paper doesn't matter much when the case is so many years removed, and when the subject of that paper is such a slippery character to begin with. That said, they told me this wasn't just a gratuitous call-back to season two, and that they brought Spiros back for a reason. It's not this show's style to tie everything up with neat bow, even with a series finale in mind, but I'm hopeful that Spiros isn't going to slip in and out of Baltimore without crossing paths with Lester or one of the other MCU cops from the port case...

...that is, if Marlo doesn't go all season three Avon and try to wage a war against a foe he can't beat. The Greek and his people are, if anything, even colder and more efficient than Marlo's crew, though the expansiveness of their operation gives them vulnerabilities that Marlo doesn't have. Could be an interesting irresistible force vs. immovable object battle, if that's where they're headed.

Either way, having The Greek in his corner is basically the only thing Prop Joe has going for him right now. Omar cost him a lot of money, but worse, he may have cost him the relative peace of the empire he and Stringer created with the co-op. The co-op is built on trust, and on the other members' respect for Joe; without that, how long before the east side gets very bloody? And yet Joe's still enough of a hustler to con Marlo and the others into paying 30 on the dollar when Omar sold it to him for only 20. Gotta admire that.

Landsman: I've compared him and Ms. Donnelly before as the two quasi-sympathetic guardians of a terribly flawed institution. Jay's not a bad guy, but in the past he's always chosen to protect The Board above all else, so it was stunning and more than a little heart-warming to see him throw away a gift-wrapped clearance because he recognized the pointlessness of it. Could this be a turning point for our favorite hardcore connoisseur? Nah; I just think, like the rest of us, Bubbs gave a stronger tug at his heartstrings than he could handle. Jay was back to his usual self by the time he saw that column on The Board so long it had to be extended with paper. (Who's primary on all these, by the way? Lester's technically not part of Homicide anymore, so Bunk?)

Some other random thoughts:

• You make the call: was the giddiness of Cutty's neighbor over hearing Al Swearengen say "cocksucker" a dig or a wink at HBO's other profane drama? I have to say that I got a bit of a dig vibe, especially over the way the guy seemed so excited just at hearing "cocksucker," regardless of usage. (Also, can anyone tell whether Cutty was watching "Soap" or "Benson" later on? I'm not that much of a Guillaume obsessive.)
  
• "Kids don't vote." Fuck you very much, nameless budget guy.
  
• Always interesting when we have more information than the cops. For instance, we know that the bodies found on the east side were the handful of New Yorkers that Chris and Snoop killed as a favor to Prop Joe, but the MCU is now going to waste time expanding the search to the rest of the city when all the other bodies are on the west side.
  
• Snoop and Chris cuffed at curbside was the first time all season that we've seen those two look even the slightest bit afraid of anything. A very weird sight.
  
• Another unexpected sight: the complete surprise on Marlo's face at seeing The Ring -- which, as far as he knows, Omar last had -- around Michael's neck. Michael wouldn't even take it off while losing his virginity. (And poor Dukie, having to listen to the headboard banging.)
  
• The season's final lesson: Chris arranges Michael's first kill, then tells him he can look anyone in the eye from now on. I know the two of them have suffered terribly in the past, but damn.
  
• It would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad: Randy offering to pay $235 for a foster placement. Interesting that Randy, who had always seemed softer than even Namond, was able to throw the first punch against his wonderful new roommates. Continuing to search for a silver lining: if these kinds of beatings continue, can't Carver get Randy out of there for his own safety?
  

Lines of the week:

• Landsman on Lester: "He is a vandal. He is vandalizing the board, he is vandalizing this unit. He is a Hun, a Visigoth, a barbarian at the gate clamoring for human blood and what's left of our clearance rate."
• Mello explaining the nail problem at roll call: "Listen up, you mutts, this is complicated. I mean it isn't complicated if you went to college or, I don't know, your mothers actually stopped drinking while they were pregnant, but for Baltimore city police, this is complicated.
• Bunk on hearing what Herc's in trouble over: "Son, they gonna beat on your white ass like it's a rented mule."
• Bunk & Snoop: "I'm thinking 'bout some pussy." "Yeah, me too."
• Kima on whether Bubbs' suicide attempt was a cry for attention: "Bubbs got some problems, but insincerity ain't one of them."
• Royce's ex-chief of staff, Coleman Parker, to Norman: "They always disappoint. Closer you get, the more you look. All of them."

Well, that's clearly enough outta me. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Wire, "That's Got His Own": Out in the cold

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode 12 just as soon as I hit Costco for a few thousand tissues...

"You gonna help, huh? You gonna look out for me? You gonna look out for me, Sgt. Carver? You mean it? You gonna look out for me? You promise? You got my back, huh?"

Fuckin' George Pelecanos.

Every damn season, the man writes the penultimate episode, and every time he absolutely destroys me. Bodie and Poot killing Wallace. Sobotka driving to his death. Omar and Mouzone taking out Stringer Bell. But none of that was a patch on the four punches to the gut administered in "That's Got His Own." There was another death tonight, poor Sherrod, but it's the fate of the living that really stung.

Randy? His trusted foster mom badly burned and himself bound for a return to the social services system that emotionally scarred him. Dukie? Exiled from the first real home he's ever known, and abandoned by his real family on top of that. Namond? Forced to confront his absolute unsuitability for the corner lifestyle, and kicked out of his mom's house as punishment. And Michael? Already lost, a willing pupil of Chris and Snoop's, a one-time protector who now has no qualms about savagely beating on a little boy not much older than his kid brother.

I say again: Fuckin' George Pelecanos. I know that it's Simon and Burns who come up with the arc of the season and Pelecanos who only serves as their hatchet man each year, but my connection to these characters is so strong that I start talking myself into a grudge against George for not standing up to his bosses and trying to protect these innocents. Maybe "The Wire" is an unchangeable institution like the ones it tries to dissect, one where bad things happen because no one can stop them even if they want to.

But if I can divorce myself from this unhealthy attachment to four fictional kids, I can marvel at the artistry that was used to depict each of them being cast out by the society that promises to nurture and protect them.

Since I first watched this season back in June, the scene that haunted me, not surprisingly, was Carver's endless walk down that Stanley Kubrick-looking white corridor as Randy's taunts echo behind him. (A nice parallel to the "Where the fuck is Wallace?" scene from the similar point in season one. Where the boy at, String?) But just as awful was Dukie's wistful last glimpse back at Prez's classroom (and also the look on his face when he realized his family left him behind -- again), Namond telling Michael he didn't want the package and, later, breaking down in tears at the realization that he's not capable of living his father's life.

But the one that stuck out at me on second and third viewing this week was Cutty turning down Michael's offer to wait for the ambulance. For all that Michael seems lost, taking shooting lessons from Chris, beating on Kenard, shoving Namond, etc., there was still enough humanity left in him that he was willing to wait with Cutty, the man he had feared and loathed from the moment Cutty took an interest in him. In that moment, Michael seemed to finally recognize that Cutty never wanted to hurt him, that if he hadn't been so afraid he could have gotten Cutty's help in dealing with Bug's father and avoided his new career path...

...and Cutty sends him away.

He does it in part because he's furious and in pain, but also because he thinks he's looking out for the kid. And what I saw on Michael's face when I watched this scene again and again is that he doesn't want to go. Again, he finally recognizes what Cutty was trying to do for him, and in this moment, his mentor is sending him away, just like Namond's mom kicked him out, Dukie's family left, etc. Cutty's intentions don't matter, not any more than Ms. Donnelly's good intentions when it comes to promoting Dukie. Michael's finally found an adult man he can trust to protect him, and Cutty doesn't want him there anymore. In that moment, I think, Michael still could have been saved, and Cutty didn't realize it.

And what I love about this show, why I watch it even as scenes like Carver's long walk bash me in the face, are the nuances like that, the fact that I could write pages and pages and pages about what happens to every character in every episode, particularly this late in the season. But since I'm going to write an awful lot about the fate of each boy in the finale, let's move on.

Lester's argument with Landsman, and then the ultimate decision made by Daniels, then Rawls, then Carcetti, represented the clash between the old way of doing business in the Baltimore PD and what Tommy wants to be the new way. Landsman is so terrified of the stats that he won't even run the idea up the chain of command, while Daniels and Rawls recognize a way to make the stats work for them, and Tommy declares that he wants the bodies out just because it's the right thing to do.

Tommy's still enough of a politician, though, to demand that all of them get removed by end of December. But the possibility of a few dozen corpses being pulled out of vacant houses is just a blip on Tommy's radar this episode, thanks to the $54 million shit sandwich the governor is asking him to eat over the school budget. As with so many things on this show, there's no one individual at fault for the missing money; it's just the broken system at work. I'm with Norman: Tommy has no choice but to take the governor's hand-out, 2008 be damned. Is he really that self-sacrificing?

A whole lot of other random thoughts:

• Because it's a Pelecanos episode, an innocent person has to die, and the short straw goes to Sherrod. Poor Sherrod, and poor, poor Bubbs.
  
• And did you catch the mention of Junior Bunk by the arabers? Their description didn't really track with the "Homicide" character; my guess is that there was a real Junior Bunk once upon a time, and Simon liked the name enough to use it twice.
  
• The return of Omar's nursery rhyme whistling! Proving once again that he's more than just the man with the biggest gun and biggest guts, Omar outthinks Prop Joe and takes off his entire shipment from The Greek. (Nice little callback to season two.)
  
• To repeat a point I made in my review of "Unto Others," it's just staggering the number of inadvertent things that had to happen to put Randy in his current predicament: He had to be out in the hallway when the two boys needed a lookout for their blow job party. The boys had to be so cold to the girl the next day that she called the cops. Prez had to take Randy's problem to Daniels instead of Lester. Carver had to feel guilty for having outgrown Herc, instead of just calling Bunk directly. Omar had to call in his chit with Bunk and Bunk had to piss Crutchfield off enough that Crutch threw out Carver's eventual phone message. Prop Joe had to tell Marlo to steal Herc's camera. Herc had to frustrate Sydnor so much that Sydnor walked out of the Little Kevin interrogation before Herc gave away Randy's identity. Bodie had to convince Little Kevin to come clean to Marlo. And Snoop had to speak up to convince Marlo to reverse his decision about letting Randy off clean. And, on the bitter irony scale, Randy had to be so terrified of losing Miss Anna that he turned snitch, which set off this whole Woody Woodpecker chain of events that led to him losing Misss Anna.
  
• Great little moment: Prez fighting back a smile over "Tickle my nuts!"
  
• Is Norman the political equivalent of The Bunk? Stylish, suave, funny and he knows how to get the job done more than his boss often does. Given his work on "The Corner," kind of amazing it took Simon and company four seasons to find a part for Reg E. Cathey, but it was worth the wait.
  
• Inside joke: the security guard who tells Tommy and Norman that the governor is finally ready to see them was played by Bob Ehrlich, the real-life Maryland governor who was recently defeated by Martin O'Malley (who many view, despite Simon's protests, as the inspiration for Carcetti).
  
• Of course DeLonda considers herself a great mom because she always made sure Namond got his Nikes. I quote Mr. McCartney: I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love.
  
• Ms. D has a point about the endless supply of Duquans, but Prez has an equally valid point about this Duquan. Abstracts are nice, but here's a kid who's not equipped to be on his own; what does it hurt the school to keep him in the same grade as his friends for an extra semester?
  
• Nice moment seeing an indignant Marimow get his. And for all of Herc's complete inability to Get It (see his whole bit about pretending the orders come from him), he at least was stand-up enough to not drag Sydnor and Dozerman down with him when IID showed up.
  
• How do you wiretap a crew that doesn't use phones at all and only meets in well-guarded public places? Laser mics?
  

Lines of the week:

• Lester, on the return of the old MCU lieutenant: "That, Sgt. Hauc, is one of the most effective supervisors in our police department."
• Norman, inventing new lyrics to 'We wish you a merry christmas': "We won't go until we get some, we won't go until we get some..." (EDITOR'S NOTE: Okay, so he wasn't making up new lyrics. Where are you Gentiles to proofread when I need you?)
  
• Daniels to Rawls: "Lester Freamon is not in the habit of selling woof tickets."
• Bunk on Landsman: "That John Goodman off his diet motherfucker was clear."
• Cheese on Omar and his crew: "He had this one ho pulling guns out her pussy. This shit is unseemly!"

Don't forget: the finale runs 90 minutes, so if you're recording with a VCR (I know, I know), program it accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

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The Wire, "A New Day": Tomb raiders

Spoilers for "The Wire" just as soon as I geek out and do a complete Wire/Lord of the Rings character parallel flowchart...

"This is a tomb. Lex is in there."

Well, halleh-damn-lujah! Finally, finally, finally, Lester figures out about the vacants. And it was so much sweeter because we had to wait so long for it -- through Lester spending several episodes wondering where all the bodies are, through him looking everywhere in town but the vacants, through Herc putting his hands on the nail gun and still not getting it, etc., etc., etc. You have to be extraordinarily patient to love this show, but Simon and company understand the virtues of delayed gratification.

While Omar, Bubbs and Bunk are flashier, slightly more obvious choices, Lester has always been at or near the top of my favorite characters list. It was a pleasure to see him using that great brain of his for something other than assembling dollhouse furniture. You could tell that he had mentally checked out during his most recent stint in Homicide, and then Daniels went and gave him a reason to care again. Two beautiful nearly-silent Lester sequences: him reopening the MCU (along with the intercuts of him opening the subpoenas with the people in those files being introduced to Tommy), and, obviously, him walking through that vacant lot, walking stick in hand like some kind of Biblical wise man, finally figuring out what Marlo was doing with the bodies. (This was punctuated beautifully by Bunk's "Ah, fuck me!" Lester's the smarter member of that team, but not by very much.) It pains me to think of how much progress he could have made on Marlo, Chris and Snoop if it wasn't for Rawls and Marimow.

This being "The Wire," of course, we have to get about 17 bad developments for every good one. So while Tommy and Daniels are sprinkling fairy dust through the city, Michael is going more fully to The Dark Side, Randy's secret is out in the open, Dukie is about to be expelled from the safety of Prez's class, Bunny's class is being shut down, Bubbs and Sherrod continue to take beatings from their nemesis, Burrell is weaseling his way back into power, and Tommy is getting hit with a $54 million dinner check from the school board.

First, we have Michael snatching The Ring from Officer Walker, and in a manner that even Namond considers reckless. (Namond wouldn't have the nerve to try anything, but he'd talk like he did.) I'm assuming he got the gun from new mentor Chris, and you could see how dismayed Chris was to learn that his protege had stuck up for snitching Randy.

Meanwhile, Randy and Dukie are both good and rightly screwed, just in different fashions. It nearly broke my heart when Randy whimpered, "I'm not a snitch" after his beating, and especially when he asked Prez if calling the cops would make things better, when Prez's face showed that it wouldn't. (I know Carmelo Anthony -- he of the infamous cameo in the "Stop Snitching" DVD -- is a big fan of this show; maybe witnessing Randy's plight will make him and others realize that treating snitching as a crime far worse than murder is completely insane. But probably not.)

Poor Dukie, who was finally blossoming in Prez's class, gets banished from the place where his friends are, where his own mentor is, where his computer is, etc., as some kind of unwanted reward for getting good grades. Is a teacher at the high school going to let him sit at the computer all day? Give him a spare lunch? Launder his clothes? Maybe, but the look on Dukie's face suggests that teachers like Prez are rare indeed.

And how's Namond supposed to deal away from Bunny's guidance? The move to shut down the special class isn't a shock, given how characters on this show are so afraid of any change in the way of doing business, but damn. With Bunny, Namond almost seems like a normal kid who's never so much as walked past a corner; away from him, and with the pressure from his evil mom, he could be heading Michael's way.

Over at City Hall, Carcetti has one of those two steps forward, eight steps back episodes. He may be getting short-term results from some of the city agencies (and not to Ervin Burrell: that was actual "quality of life" improvement happening there), but that kind of trick doesn't have any ongoing currency unless he can weed out most of the complacent management. And despite the sales pitch to McNulty, Santangelo and the rest of the Western, I don't know that he has the stones or political muscle to really do it. He's already inching towards keeping Burrell in power. If they can work out some deal where Burrell handles the political stuff and leaves everything else to Rawls, and eventually Daniels, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it's a sign that Tommy's plans for reform only can go so far.

After the two big Lester scenes, the highlight of the episode was the latest confrontation between Omar and Prop Joe, complete with another theatrical exit gesture by Omar. (If I thought I had the coolness to pull it off, I do believe I would be throwing around, "Now go ahead and write my ticket so I can tip on out" at the dry cleaner, restaurants, etc., etc.) As bored as Renaldo has looked doing surveillance the last couple of weeks, he was eating up his man's showiness in that scene. That's why they get up in the morning -- and why they occasionally have to go to the bathroom in a stolen cab.

Some other random thoughts:

• Those scenes where Bubbs' nemesis beats on him were hard enough to watch the first time, but going back and revisiting every episode for the purpose of these reviews, I keep having to resist the urge to just fast-forward through them. It's like the guy doesn't even exist; he's a nightmare come to haunt Bubbs and Sherrod. Just brutal.
  
• Il Returno de Cheese! Good to see Method Man back in action. Really hard-core fans may notice that Cheese and Randy both have the last name Wagstaff, and Randy's bio on HBO.com begins with this: "Having lost his mother to the streets at a young age and having never known his father, reputedly an eastside corner boy who later became a major drug trafficker..." Hmm is all I can say for now. Hmm.
• How much of Bunk and Lester's good cop/bad cop routine with Herc and Prez was genuine anger on Bunk's part, and how much was play-acting? I lean towards the latter, especially with the way Bunk was able to turn on the charm and get Prez to give them the info they needed on the way out the door.
  
• Good: Tommy quotes "Bull Durham." Bad: he quotes the "announcing my presence with authority" line, which implies he identifies more with Nuke than Crash. Maybe it's one of those short guys envying the tall guy things.
  
• Another hmmm: McNulty and Bodie are suddenly lunching together, talking shop, realizing they share a hatred of Walker, etc.
  
• Hell hath no fury like a Rawls scorned, does it? Tommy would have been much better off not stringing him along quite so much, methinks.
• Carver looked especially pained at learning the results of giving Randy to Herc instead of Bunk.
  

Lines of the week:

• Donut and Randy on planting condoms in Walker's car: "That'll send a message." "Yeah, but what kind?"
• Tommy after meeting with the ministers: "Yummy! My first bowl o' shit!"
• Omar offering toilet paper to Renaldo: "Whether you squat in an alley or sit on a porcelain throne, don't really change the moment, now, do it?"
• Bunk telling Daniels what Homicide needs: "More women! Loose women!"
• Dukie surveying the aftermath of Michael's brawl: "Guess them books are good for something."
• Kenard, on the subject of Namond's new 'do: "Man, do I look like a faggie?"

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The Wire, "Misgivings": Revenge of the Bubbs

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode 10, "Misgivings," just as soon as I hide my open container...

Once upon a time, Bodie and Poot had to murder their best friend Wallace. Once upon a time, Jimmy McNulty was a great detective an a crap human being. Once upon a time, Ervin Burrell ruled the Baltimore PD with a time-tested formula of stat-juking. Once upon a time, someone did something very bad to Michael, and someone else did the same to Chris Partlow. Once upon a time, Michael still had all of his soul.

If life on "The Wire" travels a circular path, with the same events happening over and over, then "Misgivings" followed the backwards arc, with one character after another confronted by something they either did or had done to them in the distant past.

Bodie used to think he had no choice but to kill Wallace. Now, having inadvertently sent Little Kevin to his death, you can see him beginning to doubt that act, even as he tries to defend it to Poot. That shot of him alone on the corner after Slim Charles told him the news spoke volumes. Bodie once dreamed of advancing to the end of the chess board and becoming a king. Instead, he's a soldier with no army, little future and a past he's beginning to regret.

Also talking one way while his mind is going another is McNulty. In by far his biggest showcase of the season, he keeps extolling the virtues of being a simple beat cop, of having "the one true dictatorship in America," but man, did he look pleased to be doing detective work again, even on something as minor as a series of church burglaries. But as he told Daniels at the end of last season, the same thing that made him a good Homicide police also ruined him for any other kind of human interaction; if he gives in to the obvious temptation, will he stop being the responsible grown-up who inspired such lustful regret from Elena?

Much higher up the food chain, we have Burrell and Clay Davis trying to backdoor Carcetti. For two men who are such political survivors, these guys can't read the new mayor at all. How many times has Tommy said that he wants to move away from chasing stats and towards quality arrests? And what's Burrell's big idea of "some police shit" to impress the new boss? An initiative designed to do nothing but pad the stats through an ironically-titled series of "quality of life" arrests that don't improve the quality of anything. The sad thing is, with Clay, Council President Campbell and the ministers on his side, Burrell may have the juice to survive even though Tommy and Norman have him and Clay completely figured out.

The heart of the episode -- or lack thereof -- came in the advancement of Michael's story. You don't come back from arranging for a murder, even the murder of your own molester. That look he flashed his mother as he went to bed was the look of a man enjoying the power of death. That way leads to becoming another Chris Partlow, and as we saw, Chris and Michael have a whole lot in common. A long time ago, some man -- maybe a father figure, maybe a prison inmate, as the conversation with Bug's dad alluded to -- hurt Chris so deep down that he has turned himself into an ice-cold killing machine, just as Michael threw himself into the boxing to protect himself. Chris' gentle professionalism with his victims -- his desire to not cause any more pain than is absolutely necessary -- also makes far more sense in this context. Chris' savagery with Bug's dad was so out of character that it not only jarred Snoop, but made them both abandon the efficient, untraceable corpse disposal method they've been using all season.

And now Michael's bound to these two. Damn. Damn.

While Dukie has receded to the background lately, Randy, Namond and even Donut continue to find trouble. Poor Randy was a half-second away from escaping Herc's incompetence scott-free, but then Snoop had to remind Marlo of the evils of snitching. By the end of the hour, word of his alleged sins had already spread back to his own math class, and if the cold shoulder is the worst Randy suffers, he's going to be indescribably lucky.

Namond, meanwhile, finds an unlikely ally in Bunny, while his mom continues her bass-ackwards Mother of the Year campaign. She's angry that he didn't have to spend a night in jail! Given what we know about the both of them, it's not surprising, but still horrifying. Chris and Snoop are practically saints next to De'Londa. It's sweet, though, to see how far Namond and Bunny have come since the alluded-to days of "Mr. Colvin, sir? Fuck you!" I can almost -- almost -- see the school board's point about the merits of a program that would, at best, prepare less than half of its students to return to regular classes in a year's time, but just look at the progress being made by Namond (and, to a lesser degree, Darnell and Zenobia). And what good is it going to do to throw the unteachable part of the group back into GenPop? They won't learn any more and they'll just go back to disrupting everybody else. Sigh...

On roughly the same despicable level as De'Londa is Officer Walker. We already knew he was a thief and a bully, but breaking a little kid's fingers? Even a little kid who just stole a car and crashed it into a dozen parked cars?

(Side-note, and feel free to skip if you're in a hurry: I asked Simon whether Walker was deliberately written as African-American, and if so why, and he said, "Walker was conceived as black because tellingly, when Ed and I were on the Corner in West Baltimore, we noted that many of the more brutal, more shady patrolmen were actually black. Why is this so? Hard to say, but perhaps a mercenary or brutal patrolman is camouflaged in some sense if he is African-American. A white officer engaging in predatory practices in the ghetto would be subject to all kinda of racial, us-against-them stereotypes and stigmas. With a black officer behaving so, the racial politics are rendered moot. And from the perspective of some black cops, many of whom have working class roots and who have reached their newfound authority by having to eschew the temptations of the street and keep to a moral code, there is often, I have found, a contempt for the black underclass that some white cops would not dare exhibit. It's perhaps easier for a black cop, having reached his station in life, to heap contempt on those who have not done so, saying to himself, I did it, why the hell can't they. White cops, as outsiders, may not be subject to the same self-conscious judgments... (Walker) is more a function of class-consciousness, then race-consciousness. I get a sense that people who still think police brutality is linked to racism, rather than classism are about ten years behind the street.")

And I realize I've gotten through the bulk of this review without even mentioning the event which provided its subtitle. Bubbs' payback of Herc is really the bare minimum that our resident MCU lunk has coming to him. The minimum. But it sure was nice to see, wasn't it?

Some other random thoughts:

• Language parallel #1: Bodie and Sydnor essentially give the same advice to Little Kevin and Herc: get out in front of your mistake if you want to survive. Little Kevin goes through with it and dies for his trouble; Herc half-asses his confession and takes the out Marimow gives him.
  
• Language parallel #2: Herc gets upset when the minister calls him "son," just like Spider did with Cutty back on election day. Something tells me Herc wasn't raised in the most nuclear of families.
• Omar's practically turning into Lester Freamon with all this patient surveillance of Marlo's crew and Slim Charles -- which, I suppose, makes Renaldo the Herc of this Bizarro-MCU. I don't even want to picture the full implications of that. Moving on...
  

Lines of the week:

• Burrell & Clay Davis: "'Police shit'?" "Well, whatever it is y'all do for a living."
• Bunny threatening to take Namond's balls: "I'll cut 'em off, give 'em to Dolly in a jar. Don't doubt me, boy."
• Namond & Bunny: "Eddie Haskell? Who dat?" "You are, son."

What did everybody else think?

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The Wire, "Know Your Place": Childhood's end

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode nine, "Know Your Place," just as soon as I throw away my cell phone...

"Maybe it's changing. The city, the way things work, or don't. Maybe we're turning a corner here, and it's not going to be so unbelievably fucked up anymore." -Cedric Daniels

Oh, Colonel. Have you watched this show before? Haven't you realized by now that "unbelievably fucked up" is your universe's default operating mode, and that small changes like a new mayor or a new CID commander can't really change that?

For all the progress that's happened in last episodes, we can see how hopeless the situation remains. We can see it in Herc screwing over both Bubbs and Randy and being too dumb and self-interested to care. We can see it in Prez having to abandon all the progress he's made with his class in favor of "teaching the test." And most of all, we can see it in Michael deciding that the only person who can help him save his brother is Marlo, the devil his own self.

From our universal point of view, where we know how bad Marlo is and how relatively good people like Prez and Cutty are, we know that Michael's about to sell his soul without having to. But when you're Michael Lee and you live an existence where your mom's boyfriend molested you with impugnity, where your close friend Randy bears the scars of being "helped" by social services, where you see how dysfunctional and useless The System is, and where being molested has conditioned you to be afraid of any man who gets too friendly, where else are you going to turn?

As we've heard and seen all along, Michael's smart. He knows he's damning himself here. You can see it in those looks he keeps throwing Dukie as he walks away from him and towards Marlo. When Omar, taking the God's-eye view from a vacant apartment, sees Michael, he tells Renaldo, "He just a kid." Not anymore. Not anymore.

Really, the only way that Michael's situation could be worse was if he was in some way connected to bull in a china shop Herc, who gives up Randy's identity to Little Kevin in a pathetically futile interrogation, then goes back on his word to Bubbs, leading to his worst beating yet from the bullying fiend. (A pipe? Damn.) And poor Randy doesn't even realize how badly he's been screwed over, basking in his applied math homework at the dice game and getting Prez to buy him candy at dot.com cheap prices. Watching the episode again, knowing that the Little Kevin scene was coming up, Randy's oblivious smile at Prez just killed me.

Prez, meanwhile, is starting to understand the futility of the school system. I know some people have accused the scenes where the teachers gather to be too blatantly didactic, but I don't think they're any more obvious than, say, Bunk tearing into Omar last season for his influence on the kids or Bunny delivering Ed Burns' paper bag theory to the troops. I particularly liked Prez beginning to apply police and corner concepts (points on the package, juking the stats) to the situations confronting him in school. (Note also that the 10-point bump the school board wants is the same as the crime rate reduction the DNC people asked Tommy to get.) That teaching the test scene was just brutal, especially the moment when Dukie sums up the story correctly but Prez feels like he has to keep going until someone phrases it exactly as it's written in the answer key.

And while Prez tries to drill meaningless answers into his kids' heads, Bunny and Prop Joe both get some schooling in how limited life on the west side can be, Bunny with his disastrous field trip to the steak house, Joe in his dealings with Old-Face Andre.

I felt awful for Namond, Darnell and Zenobia; Bunny might as well have taken them to a place where no one spoke English, for all they could understand of what was happening in that place. (In hindsight, there's probably a stepping-stone between McDonald's and Ruth's Chris where the kids would have been impressed but not completely intimidated.) The kids began the night on their best behavior, down to Namond grooving to Billie Holliday, but by the time that dinner was finished, they were so worn down that they all retreated to their familiar troublemaking patterns. Of course, it's perfectly in keeping with corner culture in general and Namond's personality in particular that the next morning, their shell-shocked trip had been transformed into an amazing night to make the other kids jealous.

Prop Joe, meanwhile, tries to school Andre, both on the fungibility of mid-level drug operators and the need to get the hell out of town. But as we saw in the past with Wallace, if West Baltimore is the only place you've ever known, the outside world -- even another nearby city like Philly -- is, again, like a foreign country. Andre's not even a likable character and I felt terrible for him as he begged Chris and Snoop to kill him at home instead of the vacants.

Speaking of men who don't want to leave Baltimore (even though he did just that between seasons one and two), a few weeks ago, Omar showed how well he understood Bunk when he guilted him into looking into Andre's story. Tonight, Bunk returned the favor by forcing Omar -- the only character on this show whose belief in keeping his word is absolute -- to promise to stop killing. A non-lethal Omar is a very different fellow, though so long as only he, Bunk and Renaldo know about the promise, he can still put the fear into the corners.

And getting back to the futility of effecting change, Tommy starts to run into the realities of trying to reform an entrenched city government. In one corner, he has Burrell, who may be a bad cop but is one hell of a survivor. In another, he has the president of the city council and her jealousy over Tommy and Tony cutting in front of her to replace Royce. But the question, as it always seems to be for our resident politician, is how much he even cares about effecting reform versus effecting the advancement of Tommy Carcetti. The line about running for governor could have just been to mollify his new opponent, but that meeting with the DNC last week has given Tommy eyes bigger than his stomach. Exactly how much can Daniels' new hero accomplish if he intends to be out of office in two years?

Some other random thoughts:

• One of the most telling bits of throwaway dialogue: when Carcetti is meeting with the real-estate developer to find a project he can slap his name on, the guy mentions that the marine terminal "unfortunately is still a working enterprise." Of course he would say "unfortunately." In his worldview, places of blue-collar employment exist only to be converted into expensive homes and playgrounds for white-collar people.
  
• Some nice "everything's connected" edits this episode: the female teacher realizes her car was stolen, followed by an immediate shot of her parking sticker on the bumper, Donut getting out of the car and walking past Bodie and Namond; or Omar and Renaldo driving away from Old-Face Andre's, and as the van recedes into the background, Randy and Dukie walk past, brain-storming about how to raise the money for the on-line candy buy.
• Poor Kima. Tries to finally do right by Cheryl and the kid she never wanted, only to find out that she's been completely replaced and the kid reacts to her like she's a total stranger. A deal's a deal, but unlike Omar, Kima's been known to break her word a time or two; how long do you suspect she keeps paying?
• The return of Poot didn't come with a lot of fanfare, did it? It's amazing how he and Bodie seemed like kids themselves only four seasons ago and now look like grizzled veterans compared to the likes of Namond, Donut and, especially, little Kennard. ("He don't think I can jail? Sheeeeeit!") Of course, J.D. Williams (Bodie) is close to 30, so the more impressive feat was him seeming so young in the early days; don't know how old Tray Chaney is in real life.
• Anyone recognize that cover of "Don't Leave Me This Way" playing in Prop Joe's shop when he meets with Andre?
• It wasn't until Cutty mentioned it to Carver that I made the Wee-Bey to Namond to Cutty connection. D'oh! And here I had just been thinking that Cutty tolerated Namond's presence because he was friends with Michael. I'm really not that bright, sorry.

Maybe my note-taking wasn't as thorough this week, but there weren't a ton of great stand-alone Line of the Week candidates, so instead I present this dark but funny exchange between Andre and Slim Charles:

"I thought you was my escort out."
"In a manner of speaking, that be true."

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The Wire, "Corner Boys": It's their thing

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode 8, "Corner Boys," coming up just as soon as I bone up on Baltimore club music...

The biggest challenge of doing these weekly reviews is offering analysis that's not too colored by what I know is coming, and Michael's story has been the toughest example of that. For weeks now, I've been struggling to find ways to discuss Michael's distrust of adults in general and Cutty in particular without giving away the reason. Not that it was some M. Night-level twist -- some people here and elsewhere guessed that he had been molested -- but when you see the fear and hatred burning in Michael's face when Bug's father touches him, everything clicks into place: why he's into boxing, why doesn't want to be alone with adult men, why he's so protective of Bug and Dukie and Randy, etc., etc., etc. And the hell of it is, what's been done to him means that he won't get help from people who are offering it, like Prez, because in Michael's eyes, every man is someone who can hurt him, and he won't let himself be hurt ever again.

The education theme picks up a head of steam with visits to three different classrooms: Prez's math class, Bunny's Corner Boy 101, and Chris and Snoop's Soldier 103b. Every time it seems like Prez has his kids acting like any average middle school class (I had a friend in junior high who absolutely would have taken advantage of the dinks on the chalkboard), he has to witness someone having a nervous breakdown over fractions. Just as Bubbs was told weeks ago why Sherrod couldn't be placed in a grade appropriate to his skill level, Prez is starting to realize how few of his kids are qualified to be studying 8th grade math. The problem is, No Child Left Behind is designed to do exactly that, to focus on stats ahead of actual teaching.

(Here's a question for anyone more knowledgeable of public education than me: why is it considered such a horror for the state to take over the school system? When Prez suggested that maybe it would be a good thing for the kids to fail the test so the state would take over, Ms. Sampson and the others looked like he had just suggested feeding the kids to a pack of dogs.)

Stats are also an issue for Carcetti, who witnesses Baltimore's finest at their lamest, especially the entrapment-esque arrest of the guy on the bike. And yet even as he's meeting with Rawls and Daniels to find a way to move the department away from stat-driven policing, his new pals from the DNC are telling him that one of his top three priorities has to be reducing the crime rate by 10%. That way lies Clarence Royce.

Bunny's classroom continues the deconstruction of the corner lifestyle that the series began with Hamsterdam. Yet even as Namond is trying to claim that the corner lifestyle is no different than Enron or Big Tobacco, he's threatening the life of his new lieutenant, who's so young his voice probably won't drop until the next mid-term elections. (And, yes, we've long since established that Namond's all talk, but the little kid doesn't know that.)

On the policing front, we get to see what happens when the extremely resistable force (Herc) meets the immovable object (Marlo and company). After days of his usual threats and head-busting, Herc winds up giving Marlo the info he wanted and spooking Chris and Snoop into throwing away the dreaded nail gun and other evidence that would be useful if a more competent investigator was on Marlo's tail -- someone like, say, Bunk, whose shredding of the Omar frame was a complete 180 from Herc and Dozerman's bumbling.

There have been complaints that Marlo, Chris and Snoop don't have the personality of Avon and Stringer. I think that's part of the point -- that they've spent their entire lives among the corner culture, and it beat everything else out of them -- but we got a few glimpses of color in this episode, particularly Chris' attempt to school Snoop on the local music scene.

Learning is everywhere. Hell, Rawls even soaked up all of Daniels' lectures about high-level investigations -- if not as something he personally believes in, then as something he knows will be useful in making his move to leapfrog over Burrell. Poor Erv looked even more poleaxed than Royce did when Tommy sprung the dead witness on him in the debate.

Some other random thoughts:

• Omar fans may be aware that Michael K. Williams has a recurring role on ABC's "Six Degrees" as the limo driver's brother, but in the original version of the pilot, the role was played by Cyrus Farmer, aka Bug's dad. Guess the "Six Degrees" people just wanted a "Wire" actor in the part.
• I liked seeing the Homicide detectives' utter disdain for Carcetti, especially Kima getting her small measure of revenge by making him brew a new pot of coffee.
  
• The Irish wake for Col. Forrester was, much like Ray Cole's wake last season, the result of the actor (in this case, Richard DeSantis) passing away in real life.
  
• Boy, Prop Joe and Slim Charles were going out of their way to not offend Marlo when they complained about the disappeared New Yorkers. They're working all the way on the other side of town and they're still scared of the guy.
  
• Prez and Dukie bond over cheat codes. Of course they do.
  
• When Michael goes to pick up Bug from that rec center, he talks to a Miss Ella. That's an homage to one of the most memorable figures from "The Corner," Ella Thompson, who responded to the murder of her 12-year-old daughter by taking over a neighborhood rec center and turning it into a safe haven for the stoop kids. According to Simon, the real Ella died of a massive stroke (while driving a car full of donated computer equipment to a rec center), so as a little tribute to her, he wrote a Miss Ella cameo into the script and cast Denise "NeeCee" Preddy, who was one of the girls at the rec center when he and Ed Burns showed up in the neighborhood in '93.
  

Lines of the week:

• Crutchfield on Omar: "This ain't the motherfucker who came up with 62 ways for the peanut!"
• Bunk on McNulty drinking club soda: "Why don't you suck a dick and get it over with?"
• Snoop's prayer: "Here we lay a couple of New York boys who came too far south for their own fuckin' good."
• Prop Joe using an alias: "This is Sidney Handjerker, with Handjerker, Kevin and Bromberg..."
• Namond to his mother: "Ma! Let me build! Ma!"

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The Wire, "Unto Others": Getting better all the time?

Spoilers for "The Wire" just as soon as I finish making a potato silencer...

“Unto Others” is the literal halfway point of season four (show 7 out of 13), and it represents a kind of turning point. After six episodes of Murphy’s Law reigning supreme -- of Marlo killing with impunity, Prez bumbling around the classroom, Burrell and Rawls marching to Royce’s CYA beat – things are getting better. At least, better by the grim standards of “The Wire.”

The subpoenas that Rhonda thought would spell her professional doom have instead catapulted her into a top position under the new State’s Attorney. Daniels’ competence and vision have caught the eye of mayor-in-waiting Carcetti. Omar has The Bunk on his side. Prez is mastering ways to teach his kids (and finding lots of great new supplies gathering dust in the book room). Cutty has started to learn the error of his player ways, even if he hasn’t totally won Michael’s respect. Kima earns her Homicide stripes with an unexpected solution to the Braddock case. Hell, even Royce himself seems like a changed man without the weight of the election and the office. (Some of that, no doubt, was an act to protect his pride, but not all of it.)

This being “The Wire,” I don’t think any of us expects these halcyon days to last – especially since it’s still not all flowers and puppies. Bubbs has lost Sherrod to the corners and is being routinely menaced by that hulking dope fiend. Bunny and company are having a hard time getting through to Namond and the others. Carcetti may not be able to get rid of Burrell right away. And the only people going after Marlo are the members of the gutted MCU, led by Herc, who personifies the kind of functionally illiterate street cop Daniels was describing at ComSTAT.

Especially troubling is the fact that Randy’s future is now in Herc’s clumsy hands, through a chain of bizarre events beyond anyone’s control. Forget what Randy himself did to get in this mess (and if he had kept to the code and avoided snitching, he’d be home-free since the girl recanted). Just consider how things might be different if Prez had taken the case to Lester instead of Daniels, if Carver hadn’t felt so guilty about having outgrown Herc, if Prop Joe hadn’t told Marlo to steal the camera, if Omar hadn’t called in his chit with Bunk, if Crutchfield wasn’t so pissed off at Bunk for interfering in his case, etc., etc., etc.

While Herc is still struggling to differentiate between his own bodily orifices and various holes in the ground, Bunk and Omar have resumed their duet from season three's "Homecoming." Bunk tries to act above it all, like the job is just a job, the murders don't affect him, and all he's about is the wardrobe and the booze and the ladies. But Omar, who grew up on the same streets and even went to the same schools, gets to him, forces him to confront his own choices in life and views on crime. And Omar knows the man well enough to know the right card to play -- not the literal one from Ilene Nathan, but the one that points out that Bunk is letting the killer of a citizen walk to punish Omar for killing dope slingers. Very strong scene between the two of them.

When I interviewed Simon and Ed Burns before the season, one of the things I was really hung up on was Prez finding the new books and computer untouched in the book room. I wasn't naive enough to think that couldn't have happened during Ed's teaching days; I just assumed that there was a reason they kept the stuff down there, that they didn't trust the kids with nicer books, an expensive computer, etc. No, he told me: the administration just forgot they were there. (The middle school he taught out also had a locked-up, abandoned room full of tens of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. It was designed to use a specific type of software to communicate with schools around the world, but the system also had a firewall that prevented it from connecting with any computers outside the state, and only one other school in Maryland had compatible software. Whoops.)

The smile on DuQuan's face when he got the computer up and running was almost heartbreaking, in comparison to the usually guarded, downcast expression he usually sports. And Prez is learning how to reach out to the entire class, and not just Dukie. It was only a matter of time, I think. Prez's gift has always been problem-solving (see his breaking the Barksdale pager code), and while his students aren't just an abstract concept, there are certain universal methods of dealing with them. Tricking kids into learning is a method I've seen work just as well in a rich suburban white school as it did for Michael and Randy and the rest.

Things are moving at a much slower pace in Bunny's special class, but then, it took half a season to get Hamsterdam up and running, and he got an earlier start on that than he's had here. Beyond the segregation, we're seeing Bunny and his team changing another fundamental element of these corner kids' school lives: one-on-one guidance counselor talk instead of suspensions. And the kids seem just as baffled by that as the hoppers were by the idea of Hamsterdam.

But for now, at least, progress is being made, in City Hall, at Tilghman Middle, in the Homicide unit, etc. Optimism is such a rare emotion on this show that I'm a little afraid of it. But for every bit of hope, Simon and company were sure to throw in an equal dose of realism. Tommy may have grand plans for this city, but how much time is he going to have to pull it all off if, as the former mayor explains, he's going to spend all day, every day, eating shit?

Some other random thoughts:

• I forgot to note last time the journey of Old-Face Andre’s gawdy ring, which Marlo took as punishment for being robbed, which Omar then took during the poker game heist, and which Officer Walker now proudly wears after taking it off Omar during his arrest. The last segment of this season's credits features one circular image after another -- the pass-through at Andre's store, a kids' merry-go-round, a spare tire, etc. -- as a way to illustrate the endless loop of these people's lives, that the same events, the same mistakes, will happen again and again, no matter how much people like Tommy or Prez or Bunny try to change things. Keep an eye on this particular circle; its travels aren't over yet.
  
• Dammit, I actually feel some affection for Clarence Royce after he invited Tommy to sit in his chair. Any thoughts on how much of his behavior in that scene was saving face, how much was relief at not having the job anymore, and how much was simply a realization that this was just business, not personal?
  
• Was I the only one who didn't realize the angry kid in the camo jacket was Sherrod until Bubbs went to talk to him? Between the absence of his familiar white t-shirt, the hat obscuring his features a little and the fact that he rarely talks, I had no idea it was him and wondered why we were spending this much time with a random unaffiliated corner crew.
• Sherrod is seemingly out of Bubbs' life, but he left behind a nightmarish legacy in that giant dope fiend who keeps treating Bubbs as his personal ATM. Definitely a no good deed goes unpunished situation: if Bubbs hadn't tried to help Sherrod against this goon (and if he wasn't trying to better himself with the shopping cart business), none of this would be happening to him.
• I love it when this show just steps back and shows people doing their work, whether it's Bunk and McNulty in the famous "fuck" scene from season one, or McNulty studying navigation charts so he can stick Rawls with the dead hookers case, or, here, Kima using "soft eyes" to figure out who really killed Braddock and why. Two and a half minutes of screen time may not seem like a lot, but I can't imagine any other show on television devoting that much time to a silent sequence of someone just looking and thinking.
  
• While Bodie's crew is still selling Pandemic, Namond's junior bunch (including Donut and that little kid, Kennard, who looks to be about nine) are slinging around the Big Yellow Bird. I'm not sure I can watch "Sesame Street" with my daughter anymore without cringing. If someone introduces a Snuffleupagus brand-name, I'm out.
  
• After all her career-threatened whining about Lester's subpoenas, it was nice to see Rhonda acknowledge, even under her breath, that the man in the reading glasses is responsible for her fancy new job.
  
• If Cutty was still holding out any hope of getting back with Ms. Sampson -- and, given his fondness for the neighborhood ladies, I don't think he was -- that awkward encounter at Tilghman Middle should have put the end to that dream. "Be well" is just a polite way of saying "Smell ya later!," isn't it? But I'm glad he seems to have learned some lessons from what happened with Spider, even if Michael still doesn't seem that impressed by him. Also, interesting to see Cutty's soldier instincts come out as they did when he saved Namond from Sherrod; Chad L. Coleman can pull the crazy eyes when he wants.
  

Lines of the Week:

• Omar to Big Man #2: "They got Honey Nut Cheerios in here?"
• Big Man #2 to Omar: "Sheeeeit!"
• Landsman contemplating Freamon’s lucrative dollhouse business: "Fuck me. I need a hobby."
• Namond trying to be polite: “Mr. Colvin, sir? Fuck. You.”
• Herc, re: Carver calling them an enabling relationship: "Enable me, Carv. Enable me to find my camera."
• Herc on the sum of his intelligence on Marlo: “I know he’s a drug dealer. I can’t prove it or nothing.”
• Crutchfield: "Fuck The Bunk!"

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The Wire, "Margin of Error": Primary color

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode six, "Margin of Error," just as soon as I find my Curtis Mayfield CD...

Once upon a time, back before it looked like HBO needed to be shamed into ordering a fourth and, especially, a fifth season of "The Wire," David Simon had plans for a miniseries called "The Hall." It would follow Tommy Carcetti, Clarence Royce and Tony Grey in their race for mayor, possibly include some other "Wire" characters in small roles, then have Tommy in office to start season four.

"The Hall" obviously never happened, and so Tommy's miracle victory had to be folded back into the show proper, bumping up against the four boys, the rise and fall of the MCU, Marlo's ascendancy, Bubbs' new business, etc. That's an awful lot to squeeze into 13 episodes, but Simon and company have managed it.

For this one episode, however, Tommy's story dominates, leaving a little wiggle room for Namond's forced entry into the family business, Randy folding like a card table for Ms. D, Marlo getting one over on Herc, and Omar trapped in an episode of "Oz."

But let's start with Tommy. Because of this show's cynical worldview, not to mention Tommy's philandering and narcissism, it would be easy to peg his campaign as one massive ego trip. Maybe that's what it was at the beginning, but he definitely cares now about trying to fix the city, and his victory over Royce was a rare "Wire" instance of the good guy coming out on top. (It's not a spoiler to say that Tommy will win the general election, since even the show treats that as an afterthought.) Now, whether Tommy can actually accomplish anything in the same broken system that rewards the Burrells and spits out the Bunny Colvins, I don't know. But the moment when he got the call and told his wife the good news was really quite moving -- especially because it was the first time Tommy realized what he was in for.

Again, if you want to be cynical, you could say that Tommy turned Theresa down simply to avoid a potential scandal now that he's on a bigger stage, but I think there was more to it than that. He wanted to sleep with her, even began kissing her a second time after he initially broke away, but the weight of running an entire city -- not to mention his intimate moments with Jen in the days leading up to the victory -- has him thinking that maybe it's time to be a better person. By the way, I like that Theresa was enough of a grown-up to both understand and not be offended by the rejection.

And speaking of behaving like grown-ups -- sort of -- I loved the scene with Clay Davis at the victory party, yukking it up about how he went easy on Tommy and Norman. It's easy to laugh about that stuff when you've won, but Clay is also like the scorpion from the fable about the frog. What do you expect when you give money to this guy? Being a greedy double-dealing sleaze is just his nature, you know?

Clay ripping off the campaign also neatly paralleled Dukie and Donut blowing off mailbox-stuffing duty once they realized that Randy had already been paid. Randy was my favorite of the four boys going in (the smile when he thought up the piss-balloon gag was what did it), but the moment when he watches Dukie head off to Lake Trout, then turns around to finish the job won me to his side forever...

...which, of course, makes it even more painful that Ms. Donnelly has put him into such an awful position. Snitching on kids for tagging is bad enough in the world Randy lives in, but snitching on a murder is practically a capital offense. You could see how terrified Miss Anna was at the possibility of other kids finding out what Randy did. But Ms. D is a guardian of the system, albeit a well-meaning one, sort of the school board equivalent of Sgt. Landsman. In fact, the scene where she got Randy to break down felt an awful lot like seeing Munch or Pembleton get a confession in The Box. ("How do you know? You weren't there.") As always happens on this show, it's little moments that wind up having unintended consequences; if Paul and Monell hadn't been so dismissive of Tiffany when they and Namond passed her in the hallway, she doesn't go crying rape to the cops and Randy doesn't wind up getting squeezed like this. Poor, sweet kid, but Cutty saw it coming when he shook his head at Randy giving up the graffiti artist a few episodes ago.

Simon said that Cutty was one of the characters who got the shortest shrift when he had to incorporate the election back into the series. I imagine, for instance, the writers could have done a better job establishing how lousy it was that Dennis' wham bam thank you ma'am lifestyle chased Spider away from the gym and back to the street. Instead, it was used mainly to illustrate one of the reasons why Michael is so uncomfortable around him. Cutty's "Yo, boy, I love the women!" comment to Michael seemed out of character the first time I saw it, but after going back and watching the scene at the boxing match where all Michael could talk about was girls, this was just Cutty's clumsy way of trying to bond with a kid who's being resistant to the mentoring idea.

As bad as I felt for Randy, the kid who has the worst plight at this moment is Namond. Yeah, he talks a lot of crap and is easily the least likable of the four, but when he has a mom like De'Londa, how else was he going to turn out? The money fawcet gets shut off by Brianna (given her feelings towards Avon, I'm surprised she kept paying this long), and rather than getting a job or anything else that a responsible parent might do, she shoves her 14-year-old son out onto the street and orders him to start moving drugs so she can maintain her blinged-out lifestyle? Awful, awful woman. You have to get up early and work really hard to make yourself the worst parent in a scene involving Brianna, but I think she pulled it off. (Brianna may have talked her own son into taking a 20-year sentence to avoid destroying the family business, but at least D'Angelo was a grown man more capable of making his own decisions.)

Finally, we have Omar trapped in a hell of his own making. Sure, Chris set him up for the jail stint, but Omar's done plenty over the years to merit a humble or twelve, yet he's gone and pissed off practically every drug player in the city. If he didn't have Butchie -- and, through Butchie -- those two gigantic (and, I'm guessing, gay) trustees, he probably wouldn't survive a single night in lock up.

Some other random thoughts:

• Herc is finding new and different ways to be a screw-up. He couldn't possibly be so dumb that he believed Marlo would pick up a package himself, could he? Oh, that's right: he could. Sorry, must have been thinking of somebody else.
• Welcome to day one of the U of Maryland pilot program. Nice confrontation between Namond and Bunny, though Namond's solitary metaphor wasn't quite right. This isn't prison; this is Hamsterdam. They're separating the troublemakers from the rule-abiding kids, and then going to work to see if the troublemakers can conduct themselves in a healthier way.
  
• Hey, it's McNulty! Who knew he was still on the show? Nice bit with him offering Omar the phone, especially Santangelo's "You some kind of Democrat or what?"
  
• In the review copy, Norman suggests countering the slumlord ad with a doctored photo of Royce in a motel room "with a dead girl and a live boy." Did that survive to the air version? With the Foley scandal, I had a sliver of doubt that it might get cut, less for being tasteless than for being a distraction.
• Simon insists on using music rarely, and only if it starts off from a real source, like Prez listening to "Walk the Line" while documenting the MCU's progress in the port case, or, here, Cutty jogging through a whole lot of election day business while he has Curtis Mayfield on his headphones. A very apropos choice for old-school Cutty, since the young pups who don't want to listen to his stories about how things used to be probably only know the song as the sample Kanye West used for "Touch the Sky."

Lines of the week:

• Reverend to Tommy: "Moses will do for now. We'll save Jesus for your second term."
• De'Londa to Namond: "I ain't take no for an answer!"
• Namond to De'Londa: "You just did."
• Det. Crutchfield on the anxiety brought by a visit from command to the Homicide office: "I need a minute just to unclench my asshole."
• Rawls to Landsman: "American democracy. Let's show those third-world fucks how it's done."
• Namond figuring out the purpose of the pilot program: "Ready for GenPop. This is prison, yo. And we in solitary and shit."
• Norman (entirely for the delivery): "'Moolies'?"
• Bodie to Namond: "Damn, boy. Your mama's what niggers call a dragon lady... Gave me some insight, though... Why you is what you is."

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The Wire, "Alliances": Dead is dead

Spoilers for "The Wire" episode five, "Alliances," just as soon as I see Rawls' car turn round the corner...

Someone's been wearing out the grooves in their "Stand By Me" DVD, no? From the ghost stories around the fire in the teaser to the field trip to see the body at the end, the boys' journey in this episode played out as a cracked mirror image of the journey traveled by Gordie Lachance and company. The difference is that, in "Stand by Me," the trip represents the beginning of the end of their innocence, where Namond, Randy, Michael and Dukie barely have any innocence left. As they're standing around the fire, gunshot go off a few blocks away, and Michael can identify the caliber just from the sound. And for Randy, the notion of "special dead" was the last thread he could hold onto without falling deep into a pit of guilt over his role in Lex's murder.

Chris and Snoop, meanwhile, make an overt sales pitch to Michael, and he's obviously considering it, pocketing the same kind of money he refused weeks earlier, because now it seems less like a hand-out than a salary advance. And, in an attempt to have every adult male character on the show offer to mentor him, we see Prez trying to encourage Michael in his classwork, and in dealing with Bug, but Michael doesn't seem interested. When I was at this stage of watching the season, I thought to myself, "Some grown-up really let Michael down when he was little, to have his shields up this hard."

And as Michael continues his trajectory towards the corner life, Namond continues to pretend like he was born and raised on a corner. He talks trash in Prez's class, brags to his dad about a willingness to fight it out with Marlo's people (as if there wouldn't be a clean square inch of his shorts at the first sight of Snoop's guns), even cusses out Dr. DeLuca, yet the moment when he seems most sincere all episode is his apology to Prez. The rest is a front, one he puts on because it's expected of him.

Prez is taking baby steps towards being an effective teacher. Letting Namond out of the initial detention wasn't a bad move -- it showed the kids his rules would be fair -- but once he let all the detention kids bolt early, I just shook my head and muttered something about giving inches and stealing miles. But he's also taking steps to help out Dukie, both with the clothes and the extra lunch, and it's the kids are warming to him, judging by how many were casually eating lunch in his classroom. Nice moment when Randy called Donut over to Slim Jim Prez's locked car for him; this is still very alien territory for our resident puzzle expert, and cracking the secrets of adolescents, no matter their color or social class, is going to be a hell of a lot harder than figuring out a beeper code or deciphering the lyrics to "Brown Sugar."

As we careen towards the election, Royce is losing a lot more than his facial hair -- though it's a sign of how complacent and detached he's become that he thinks this is going to get his momentum back. He's shaving, and Tommy's out pressing the flesh. He's bullying his inner circle, and Tommy is snatching up the support of Odell Watkins. When you can inspire Odell, who seems like the sort of guy who has a swear jar in his kitchen, to repeatedly throw F-bombs at you, well, sir, you've earned it.

Gold star to Bill Rawls, by the way, who has just made him a favored son of whichever man wins the primary. And here I thought all he was good for was vendetta. That position seems to have been filled by his henchman, Lt. Marimow, who, like Lt. Daniels before him, is realizing that buy-busts and old intelligence won't get him anywhere close to his target. Two key differences: 1)Daniels changed his tune on the Barksdale investigation because Jimmy and Lester convinced him it was the right thing to do, where Marimow just wants to get back at Marlo for such a public humiliation; and 2)Daniels had Lester and Jimmy as his top investigative minds, while Marimow is relying on Herc. No way Det. Lester Smooth sets up a surveillance system that's both legally questionable and easily detectable like this.

Marlo sniffed out the camera, but only a blind, deaf and dumb man in his position wouldn't have had somebody guarding or watching his favorite hangout for just such an event. Herc seems to have inadvertently done a favor for Prop Joe, since the card game robbery alone didn't seem like enough to push Marlo into the co-op. Still, this is a "be careful what you wish for" situation, since Marlo always considers himself top dog in any relationship. Given how much more slickly he's dealt with the Omar situation than Avon and Stringer ever did, maybe he deserves to be top dog. At first, I assumed Chris was going to kill Old-Face Andre, but then I realized that he needed a witness who would lie about Omar's presence. This is now two citizens clipped in two weeks by Chris. The guy is very, very cold.

Some other random thoughts:

• In the no good deed goes unpunished department, we have Bubbs taking a beating while trying one last time to get Sherrod back to school. And for Bubbs, losing his dignity was obviously much worse than losing the money in his shoe.
  
• Even though she cussed out Prez over the small pencil, I felt sorry for Zenobia. You could see in the expressions on her face throughout that scene that she really would like to do well in school, but her temper and whatever crappy hand she's been dealt at home stirs her to act out and sabotage herself. When Namond talked about the evil taking him over, I felt like that applied better to Zenobia than him.
• Anybody else feel incredibly frustrated watching Lester looking in all the wrong places for the bodies? Proof of how much this show engages me: I actually started shouting out "Check the vacants!" during a few of those scenes.
  
• When Landsman made the reference to Maj. Forester getting unsuccessful chemo, it was a reference to the fact that actor Richard DeSantis was very ill in real life, and died either during production of this season or not long after it ended.
• Liked watching The Bunk grooving to some R&B (the Temptations?) while Lester talked to the sewer workers.
• Randy's not exactly Mr. Grace Under Pressure, blurting out about his hall pass without Bunny even asking.
  

Lines of the week:

• Norman: "I'm a devious motherfucker once I get going."
• Bunny on Namond as a corner kid example: "Yeah, they do step up when you need them."
• Donut breaking into Prez's car: "No problem, chief."
  
• Royce chewing out Burrell: "What's next? Your officers gonna shoot a couple of tourists? Maybe fly a helicopter in the harbor place?"
• Principal Withers: "Thank you. It'll be the only time anyone in the system thinks to say it."
  
• Mrs. Donnelly: "Principal Withers just went out on a limb for you, and in this system they know how to handle a chainsaw."
• Advice from Lester's cadet instructor: "We're looking for one body in particular. If you go grabbing everyone you see, we'll be here every day."
• Norman watching Rawls drive away: "Wait until he turns the corner..."
  

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The Wire, "Refugees": No one (bleeps) with him now

Thoughts on "The Wire" episode four, "Refugees," just as soon as I check in on the methane probes...

One of my favorite DVD commentary lines of all time comes on the "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" disc (trust me, this is going somewhere). We get to the scene where Vice-Principal Rooney is pulling up to a pizza joint in part of his Ahab-like search for Ferris, and John Hughes deadpans in a way that always makes me laugh, "Okay, here he's clearly gone too far. He's left the school."

Marlo having the security guard capped is Ed Rooney going off school grounds. I'm not saying it's going to lead him to the equivalent of being kicked in the crotch, attacked by a dog, loss of his car and a humiliating ride on a school bus next to a girl with warm gummy worms, but killing the guard is the moment, to me, where Marlo goes way over the line.

Every other killing in this show's history, no matter how heinous, at least served some purpose for the killer. Wallace had talked to the police. So had Sobotka. D'Angelo could have complicated Stringer's affair with Donnette. The security guard was no threat to Marlo. He wasn't going to cause him any problems, wasn't even going to go around bragging about how he stepped to the west side's drug kingpin, was just going to return to his crappy minimum-wage job and his strapped family.

This show generally treats the concepts of good and evil as childish, but this was the closest I've felt a character on the show has come to pure evil. David Simon, naturally, disagrees:

"The security guard spoke to Marlo's utter indifference to the outer world's perception. 'I'm living in this world, and this man tried to assert himself with me.' I didn't see it as being utterly evil. he wasn't enjoying the evil of it. It wasn't Snidely Whiplash. This is, 'The place where I occupy in the world and what my world demands, this guy talked back. And that was foolish.'"

And on that level, I can understand where he's coming from, but after a minute Simon admitted that this killing was extreme, even for a character on this show.

But it fit one of the key motifs of this episode: Marlo doesn't play by the rules. He won't join the co-op, barely even listens to Prop Joe's sales pitch, and then only as a formality. He has Snoop and Chris taking out anyone who troubles him even in the slightest, takes Bodie's corner because he can, even has only so much patience with his attempt to learn poker from the old men. (At the rim shop, he tells Chris, "Maybe I get bored, send you to take 'em.")

And with Avon gone and the rest of Baltimore's drug muscle bunched up in other parts of town, Marlo can afford to make up his own rules. But it's poetic that Prop Joe, hoping to teach him a lesson about the need for assistance, sics Omar -- the one man on the show even less bound by rules or structures -- on him. And Marlo did not look happy at all. Omar took something worse than Marlo's money; he stole Marlo's rep as the one man in Baltimore who can't be touched.

I love watching Jamie Hector just stand. Not stand around. Stand. There's an intense stillness to Marlo. No wasted motion or energy. He may not enjoy the evil of killing the guard, but he doesn't enjoy much else. The piece of him that's missing that allows him to be so hard and cold also keeps him from taking much pleasure in his reign. He does everything because he knows he can, and because he feels he should. And Felecia Pearson and Gbenga Akinnagbe are just as scary great playing Snoop and Chris, hired killers as total pros; their conversation as they shifted from trailing the guard to taking over Bodie's corner.

Michael, Marlo's other interest in Bodie's neck of the woods, wasn't around when Snoop and Chris rolled up, but he doesn't look especially comfortable around potential mentor Cutty. He practically sprinted to the other side of the ring when Dennis put a hand on him and couldn't get out of the van fast enough once Justin went home.

Our other kid in the spotlight was Randy. Behind that huge smile is a boy terrified of going back to a group home. When he said "You don't need cats to make you crazy" when you're in a place like that, you could see the other boys all shudder a little at the thought of what their friend must have gone through before he got his foster mom. Hell, Dukie shuddered, and we know what kind of a hellpit he lives in. And it was Randy's deep fear of angering his foster mom so much that she would send him away that made him turn snitch for Vice-Principal Donnelly. We already know how snitches get treated on a higher level (again, Wallace), but you could see the shame on his face when the other kids talked about the tagger getting suspended. What a lousy situation to be put into by an authority figure, even a well-meaning one like Mrs. Donnelly.

Mrs. Donnelly is doing her best, but she's stuck trying to make a deeply-flawed system work. Sherrod has absolutely no business being in the 8th grade, and if social promotion weren't a necessary evil, he might have been willing to stay in school. Probably not -- his discomfort was about more than being illiterate -- but at least he would have had a reason to stay. Prez's class has nothing to offer someone who's so far behind in the learning process. And the truancy policy Cutty gets hired to enforce -- make sure all the kids do one day in September and one in October and the school keeps its funding -- is a joke. But if there aren't resources to properly teach the kids who want to go to school, how can there be resources to perpetually corral the ones who don't? Even after the crash course provided by Cutty's ex, Grace Sampson, Bunny and Professor Parenti are going to have their hands full trying to make any sense out of this insane place.

Some other random thoughts:

• I'll say this for Marlo: at least he's making an effort to master the game of poker, instead of just sitting at a table full of flunkies who are too afraid and or indebted to do anything but lose to him. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'm looking at you. And did you catch Delegate Watkins realizing that Royce went back on his word and put Eunetta Perkins back on his ticket against Mrs. Daniels? Meanwhile, Carcetti's came damn close to winning a no-win situation with the ministers. Again, if race wasn't a factor, Royce would be something getting scraped off Tommy's shoes.
  
• If there were spots where the episode dragged, it was in the scenes with Kima and Lester. Homicide hazing is a long-standing tradition of this show, and most of the pranks pulled on Kima are straight out of Simon's original book. But I don't know that we needed this much time devoted to them, what with everything else to cover. Note, by the way, the second mention of "soft eyes" this season, which Bunk told Kima she needed to see a crime scene. And you definitely needed some set-up for Kima having the Braddock case dumped in her lap, but it still felt like that stuff could have been tighter.
  
• Poor Bunk. Lester is a pitiful wingman compared to the old McNulty, who appears to have had one of those Regarding Henry/My Name Is Earl-type personality transplants. And if Lester still has Shardene (the stripper from Avon's club in season one) waiting for him at home, what's he doing carousing with The Bunk anyway?
  
• I did like Jimmy's shaky hand bit, which was straight up Steve McQueen circa "The Magnificent Seven."
  
• Four episodes in, and each hour has closed on one of the four boys: Randy contemplating Lex's murder, Namond playing video games, Dukie with his fan, and now Michael walking home from the fight.
  
• So the school board administrator tells Bunny, "Just make sure there's no fuss. Nothing that gets anyone upset." Does she not realize she's speaking to the man who legalized dope in west Baltimore?
• Boy, do Herc and Marimow deserve each other -- and yet even Herc can tell what a jerk-off the new boss is. Dozerman seems to have recovered nicely from getting shot and losing his gun last season.

Lines of the week:

• Marlo: "You want it to be one way... but it's the other way."
• Cutty to Deacon Melvin: "You hang around, you can see me preach on some young'uns. Solemn left and sanctified right."
• Landsman to Kima: "Marimow does not cast off talent lightly. He heaves it away with great force."
• Lester to Bunk: "Nature don't care. Nature just is."
• Snoop, re: Michael and Bug: "Fucking Huxtables and shit."
• Omar to Marlo: "Man, money ain't got no owners, only spenders."
• Omar to Marlo again: "Boy, you got me confused with a man who repeats himself."

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