Alliances

“No special dead, just dead.” - Dookie

I liked this episode quite a bit. It was written by one of the show’s big guns, Ed Burns, and it really flushed out the personalities of the kids. They seem more age-appropriate, more innocent than in the past. In a word, more believable.

Another solid opening scene, a clever send-up on the classic teens-sitting-around-the-campfire-telling-zombie-stories routine. These kids aren’t at some well-supervised summer camp, they’re in a derelict alleyway sitting on crates and discarded lawn chairs guessing the caliber of the guns that produce shots in the distance, wondering the fate of real (not imagined) bodies that they’ve seen disappear. It’s a scene very familiar and yet almost incomprehensibly foreign at the same time. And very sad when you think about it.

Their personalities are coming more into focus: Namond the loud-mouth trouble-maker who’s force of character makes him the apparent leader; Randy who’s wiliness hides his immense fear; Dookie appears to have low self-esteem but he’s the most even-headed and self-controlled of the group and would be my odds-on favorite to grow up the least scathed.

Michael is still a bit of a mystery. He obviously has issues with authority but we don’t know quite why – the show’s writers haven’t given us a reason for why he is so mistrustful. Whether it’s Cutty, Marlo, Monk or Prez, he just doesn’t want to deal with anyone. He cares about his friends and his little brother and boxing. He’s got a certain sensitivity about him, patting Randy as they see the dead body. But what’s his story? He doesn't seem to evolve episode-to-episode like his three buddies.

The scene with Namond talking to Wee-Bey would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. It’s amazing how acceptance of the criminal lifestyle is so ingrained in this community. Selling drugs and being a cold-hearted gangster is not looked at as a way to make a living and win respect, it’s looked at as THE WAY. The nostalgia in which Wee-bey speaks to his son about the glory of gang-banging in the old days and the ways in which Namond wants his father’s approval are something to behold. It’s all over before it starts. You can blame the schools, but the problem here is more societal: no viable sustainable lifestyle is presented to these kids as an alternative to a life of crime. Namond will follow his Dad, it seems to be foreshadowed, because... what else will he do?

But the “Stand By Me” moment at the end where the boys journey to see the body was the show stealer. The way they reacted to it shows their personalities: Randy scared, Michael comforting and unabashed, and Dookie the great realist making sense of it for everybody. If unknowingly sending Lex to his death riled Randy, what will seeing a body do? He seems the most fragile of the bunch.

Walking up to the house in the rain, the first signs of winter all around them, it all felt like a Poe story. Perhaps it is a Poe story, “The Cask of Amantarillo(?)” but this time the body is not in the crypt of a decaying aristocrat’s house but covered in tarp in a long vacant home in a long suffering part of the city. Just a gruesome scene but very, very powerful and instructive. What's amazing about it is all the things that aren't said, that are showed on the faces of the children (and, remember, that's what they are, children).

Two tidbits:

Marlo and Chris continue to prove that they’re smarter and more cunning than Barksdale. True, he breaks the rules as Wee-Bey says, but his cold-hearted approach to business and the streets seems to be working.

One disappointment to me is Daniels. He had a great presence in the first three seasons. Principled about police work and yet always calibrating the best way he could work around the incompetent do-nothing leaders at City Hall to give his unit what he needs. Now as the number two at the Western he’s been relegated to an office. It seems strange to me why he doesn’t stand up to Marimont. He could couldn’t he?

And yes, I waited to post this till Wednesday afternoon. Unacceptable. Last time.