"Conscience do cost.”

Clarifications

“There are some things that happen, you don’t ever fuck with them.” – Terry, the homeless vet

RIP Omar. I knew he was going to die but didn’t expect it to be from a head shot delivered like a sucker punch from little Kenard. I was hoping the hunt would continue till the very end.

And yet challenging audience expectations has always been a hallmark of “The Wire.” His death reminded me of how one of the characters dies in “No Country for Old Men.” The movie (my favorite of the year) proceeds as if it is leading up to final a showdown between two men. That is what the audience is expecting… and then (I'm editing this post so as not to give it away to those who have seen it - my apologies), it doesn't quite happen that way.

Similarly, we were watching this season with anticipation for the “High Noon” moment where our hero surprises some combination of Chris, Snoop, Monk and Marlo in a Baltimore alley and dispenses the justice the police can’t meter out.

I didn’t notice it till the second viewing but Kenard was one of the kids torturing the cat in the alley. Makes you think of that dismissive line Omar said last season when he was watching Michael talk to Marlo: “He just a kid.” His death mirrors that of Jesse James or Wild Bill Hickock – fearsome gunslingers gunned down by marginal figures they never would have thought to fear.

In a way it was his old-school sensibility that did him in. “Marlo Stanfield is not a man for this town,” he says, betting that people may respond to his invocation of honor. Omar went after more established muscle, the shady folks in the game. What he either didn’t realize or accept is how pervasive the game is now, how even pre-pubescent, entry-level hoppers like Kenard see themselves inextricably a part of it and want to move up. Kenard knows as well as anyone how violence commands the upmost respect in the wretched world he lives in: it’s easy to see how he would see shooting Omar as the most rational thing he can do to get ahead.

The death scene happened very early in the episode. It took me aback, like when Nate Fisher dies near the end of the last season of “Six Feet Under.” But after hearing the Michael K. Williams interview on “Fresh Air” in which he says, “It’s Baltimore baby, everybody dies!” you knew it was inevitable. And his death doesn’t even warrant making the Sun.

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Ever since the wire was surreptitiously launched a few episodes ago, this season has had legs. It dragged a bit before as we watched McNulty painstakingly set up the lie of the serial killer. There was too much focus on the horrors of budget cuts, the resulting low morale and what is perhaps the central theme of “The Wire” – the dysfunctional mechanics of institutions.

But now that’s changing. A lot of the key characters are coming back with fresh missions: Greggs and Carcetti especially. The producers seem to have finally settled on who the important characters are at the Sun and aren’t throwing all these extraneous characters at us who we don’t know or care much about. We just saw Fletcher, Haynes and Scott this episode with minimal exposure to other Sun characters. By and large, that whole world and plotline hasn’t sung so well and part of the reason “Clarifications” was so great is that the Sun felt in the background to the developing police investigation of Marlo.

When you’re watching all of Carver’s people drive around in their Enterprise cars, it reminds you of Season One and why you first liked the show so much to begin with. It shifted the focus away from selling the con of the homeless murderer to building the case against Marlo. And the truth is starting to come out little by little and I’m just disappointed there’s only two more episodes to explore this. I wish this episode had come one or two in the past.

Everyone is eating right out of McNulty’s hand. “The king of fucking diamonds,” as Bunk told him. He’d grin like a Cheshire cat if no one were around in that police room using Compstat to con everyone.

But McNulty doesn’t seem to have the emotional stability of Lester to be able to deal with this. Out there on that porch talking to Beadie – the guy looks positively lonely. He wants to be understood so badly. He wants to be appreciated, he wants someone to validate him. And this keeps him spilling the beans and you know it’s not going to end well.

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It looks like it’s going to end well for Carcetti. He’s getting traction on the homeless thing and making all the necessary deals. This was a very good political episode (Oh yeah, PG is Prince George County, I believe). The conversations at the hall are always strategic. How can we play this? How is this going to advance my own ambition? However, he runs into a problem that Kerry did in ’04, taking the black vote for granted. Ah, when will the Democrats learn?!?

As one reader remarked last week, Carcetti is now a full-blown political hack. “New Day” does seem far away. He keeps leaving money on the table just so he looks good. That scene where he’s watching TV at home while his wife meekly looks at him showed this better than any other. She’s not even asking him to do the right thing any more.

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One gets the feeling that Michael is too independent for what’s he’s doing – he’s a leader. My bet is the series ends with him ascending to Marlo’s place. And the importance of the Omar and Michael scene is not what it said about Marlo but what it made Michael think about Marlo. Marlo had cultivated this image of the invincible one and it looks like Michael is questioning it (and by next week’s preview doing something about it). He doesn’t think he’s for real any more. The kid just can’t seem to stand anyone being in a position of power over him. I wonder why…

Surprised Snoop and Chris don’t do more than lightly push him in the scene where he’s mouthing off at them about what Omar said. Chris doesn’t seem happy with Omar’s death. Professionally disappointed? Wish he had pulled the trigger?

And yet, it’s Bunk who is going to bring Chris to jail. “No shuckin’, no jiving. Just good old police work,” he tells McNulty. He’s going to do what McNulty or Omar couldn’t do, and he got it done by being resourceful.

“Good old honest work,” he says. And Bunk is joined in his work ethic by Dukie and Fletcher. By contrast, there’s McNulty, Scott and Clay Davis. I’ve never watched a show that pays as much attention to work ethic as this one is. Simon and Burns’ take on it feels almost Calvinstic in its morality.

- One thing that the producers seem intent on pushing across time and time again: Federal authorities are pompous, egotistical and unhelpful. But this time they’re right on in their description of the suspect… only it’s McNulty. Amazing how they describe him so perfectly. “Trouble with lasting relationships” authority and likes alcohol. As they leave the building McNulty says, “They’re in the ballpark.” Classic.

- Hey, Fletcher used my term, calling Bubbs a “tour guide.”

- Good line: “Playing that race card, shameful.” Clay. Wasn’t quite sure what Lester was wanting Clay to do by confronting him in the bar.

- Who thought Sydnor would have broken the code? He’s always been the real salt-of-the-earth guy on the show. He’s never shown us any flashes of intelligence nor any idiosyncracies to really attach ourselves to. He’s not a memorable character, but he gets it. “That’s police work son,” Lester tells him.

- I liked Poot’s cameo. He’s the only one from the orginal S1 crew in the low-rises that got away. “Shit got old,” he tells Dukie. And he broke his own prophecy, “world going one way, people another,” by getting out of the game.

- The first time, I didn’t understand the identity switch by the OCME guy in the last scene. Then I saw: they were switched to begin with. It’s a scene I think that just shows the notoriety of Omar and how everyone knew him.

- That line I put below Omar's photo comes from something Butchie said in S3.

- Lastly, I want to thank everyone who leaves a comment on my blog. If I had more time I’d respond to people’s comments but I get a lot of out reading them.

Took

“Shame on ya’ll. And I mean it.” – Bunk

I had a lot of déjà vu in this episode: it reminded me so much of Season One, particularly the episode (“The Hunt”) where the cops search for those who shot Greggs. They even had the same surveillance shot from the helicopter with the date visible.

The first two seasons put a lot of emphasis on police work, how it’s done, how cases are built, and “Took” was a return to the basics of the show. I thought it was one of this season’s best with a brisk pace that didn’t get bogged down in very long scenes which has been a weakness this season.

Speaking of “The Hunt,” even Savino was back (he was the one who set up Orlando and Greggs to get ambushed by Little Man and Wee-Bey), albeit he was only around long enough to become Omar’s third Stanfield causality (speaking of which, whatever happened to O-Dog?).

The juxtaposition between Daniels and Haynes both dispatching their troops was very effective. They’re both trying to do the right thing, too bad what they’re trying to make right is just a scam. But Daniels is different than Burrell. There’s no “dope on the table” speech from him (I don’t know what the equivalent is when you hunt after a serial). It was a vintage “Wire” scene, showing how institutions react to a crisis.

Fitting that McNulty was in the opening scene since Dominic West (McNulty) directed the episode. Crime novelist Richard Price wrote the script. I was very impressed by the directing in the episode. I liked the way he shot certain scenes.

My favorite was where Landsman tells Bunk to come upstairs to join the hunt for the fictitious homeless serial killer. The whole time, the camera sits on Bunk with Landsman blurred in the background. You see how his rage building and building until he unleashes a tirade at his boss without looking at him. “Fuck your stripes and fuck McNulty!” he finally says. Landsman leaves him be.

I was disappointed that Bunk’s scene with Michael didn’t last longer. I thought they cut it short. I wanted to see if Michael was gonna break when confronted with the murder of the “baby bumping motherfucker.” You didn’t see him stonewall or anything.

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Scott, McNulty and Lester all seem to have created the same problem for themselves: they don’t have an exit strategy. They didn’t foresee things getting carried away the way they are now. Scott almost trips on his own lie when grilled by his editors. That scene with McNulty had my favorite sequence of dialogue:

“He’s just using you,” McNulty says. “He needs you.”
“I kind of resent that,” Scott says.
“I don’t know. Kind of working well for both of you.”

How true it is. Characters are just using the tools in front of them to manipulate the public for their own agenda. Scott and McNulty are the same in that way as is Clay Davis.

The courtroom scenes with Clay were great. Isiah Whitlock, Jr. plays the character so well. What’s particularly impressive is how he is able to switch emotions so easily and quickly. He can go from talking like a preacher, to showing real fear and anger without a blink.

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I do think that the producers have made some odd decisions about the Sun. Here we are, four shows from the end of the season and Fletcher is finally introduced to us as a real character. Now Fletcher is a good character, his gentleness and human touch set him up as the heir apparent to Haynes, but why did they wait till now to do this? It’s especially strange when you see that Alma – who got a lot of exposure the first three episodes – hasn’t had a worthy line in a while. But he’s to Scott what Bunk is to McNulty, the professional working patiently and honestly to find the story and do right by that.

I like the scenes with him and Bubbs. This episode was a big one for him. He’s not washing dishes any longer, he’s serving food and next we see him helping out Fletcher. Bubbs is doing for him what he did for the police: helping someone with a benevolent goal navigate a world they otherwise would not understand. He’s like a tour guide or something. Bubbs doesn’t seem calculated enough to have any alterior goal for himself, he just likes to help people out. “Write it like it feels,” he tells the cub who follows his bosses advice to “just spend a day being with people.”

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- I guess I can't finish without mentioning Omar. I don't quite get why he surprised Michael like that. He's already put the word out that Marlo is a bitch if he doesn't come after him on the street; he's already dropped three of his muscle and harmed his business. Aren't the speeches getting a little old? I'm anticipating the Chris-Snoop-Omar showdown with the greatest anticipation.

- The final scene was one of the best ever on this show. Greggs talking to her child telling her a nursery rhyme of sorts about nighttime Baltimore - saying good night to all the illegal elements in the city. You look at her with her baby and Fletcher pounding the streets like an honest man and you have hope.

And you know, I get like that too when I have to assemble Ikea stuff too (like the desk I’m currently writing on).

- Carcetti dialing for dollars. It’s so easy when you’re Mayor.
- I’m hoping to see Prez make a guest appearance next episode and break the code of the clock. I’m assuming Vondas made it up since he’s the one who gave Marlo the original phone. In that scene in the park he shows Marlo something with the phone just when the camera cuts away. I'll be damned if I know what it means.

The Dickensian Aspect

“Homelessness huh? I’ll be damned.” – Carcetti


A good Carcetti episode. He has been one of my favorite characters on the show, simply because he’s changed so vividly and convincingly through every season. He may come across as a conniving politician interested in advancing his own career of late, but that homeless speech was fun to listen to. It did have a lot of pep. With his short height up on the podium, he seems like Paul Wellstone with a Baltimore accent.

But of course, in the back room, he transforms a social problem into one that could lead him to the Governor’s mansion. And then he doesn’t back up his words with more police surveillance. But still, to his defense, what can he do without the money? (“He just don’t want the cost,” Rawls says.) I think that he’s always been largely a sympathetic character. He does good with what he has. He could go the extra mile on things, like taking the Governor’s money for the schools.

The irony is, if he did that, he would not have had to cut police funding which might have lead to Marlo’s arrest which would have averted the fictitious “homeless serial killer” which is giving him his signature campaign issue! So, in a twisted, circuitous route, he helped himself in his gubernatorial run by not taking the money from the Governor, though not of course how he saw it happening.

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One thing I scratch my head about over at the Sun is the disappearance of Alma as a character. She got “a lot of play” (as she would say) over the first few episodes but now is relegated to Scott’s shadow. Much like we see Bunk serving as McNulty’s moral foil on good police work, I think it would be effective to see her pounding the pavement generating honest journalism to serve as Scott’s foil. But she’s barely been there.

Still, I gotta give credit where it’s due. The scene where Scott interviews the vet seemed a little superfluous at first but it came together when Haynes was commending it back at the Sun. He is capable of doing the grunt work, of making it happen. But then, he creates – what one would presume – to be another lie about the woman’s sister from a previous article who died did not gambling away the charity money but making up another story. It seems so insignificant now but I’m thinking this will be the small little crack that will unravel the whole homeless murder bullshit. And then heads will role.

There were a lot of really long scenes in this episode. Scott interviewing the Iraq vet, the press conference about the homeless murders, McNulty taking the homeless man to the shelter. If this were a network show, these would have been edited way down.

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Above all, “The Dickensian Aspect” saw the emergence of Bunk as a moral force. He’s always been one of the most likeable characters on the show but he never seemed as dedicated as McNulty nor as intelligent as Lester. But here he comes into his own. He’s not going to rat out McNulty so he’s going to lead by example. “I don’t fuck with no make believe. Work it like I’m supposed to,” he tells a non-plussed McNulty.

And he makes headway. “The Wire” likes to have good and bad examples in every section of society. It’s a little predictable now that you watch every episode. Towards the end of every season, the police make headway after initial frustration, and it seems like Bunk will lead the way this season on this.

Loved the scene of McNulty talking to the statue. Shows how truly, the man is just plain lonely. He can’t talk the way he wants to with anybody it seems save Lester. And that look on his face when Landsman rejects his call for surveillance: he’s more hurt by anything Landsman says than anything Beadie or his ex-wife ever says to him.

Lester's speech to Sidnor was great. How he saw the decision to abandon the Marlo investigation as "illegitimate." He and McNulty both seem emotionally pained by what happened, their dedication to their work is so great. He is so much more thoughtful than McNulty. And yet he's linked his fate to his. I'd hate to see him fall in this show, but when your partner is as much of a loose cannon as he is, it seems all but probable.

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A few of you wrote about how Omar seemed a little rusty. He got it back in this episode. His tactics are curious however. He keeps trying to appeal to Marlo’s sense of masculinity – one could say, an old-fashioned masculinity – by telling people “he ain’t man enough to come at me.”

Now, it’s ironic that a gay stick-up boy would accuse the drug lord of Baltimore of not being masculine – one could say he’s talking a page out of Bush’s book when he attacked Kerry for not being an authentic war hero – but I have my doubts that it will work.

Besides the time when he shot that girl who Barksdale set him up to have sex to arrange his murder in S3, Marlo’s never done anything so menacing as wave a golf club around. He has no incentive to meet Omar’s threats. His credibility as a man in this community comes from his ability to have his muscle make people disappear and take over drug real estate. That’s what real power is, when you don’t to raise your voice to re-alter the landscape. It looks more and more like Omar’s sentiments don’t fit in with the new landscape of the Baltimore drug trade. And we’ve seen what happens to characters on this show who don’t fit in as old-school codes are abandoned in favor of the zero-sum game of self-advancement and results.

Meanwhile, Marlo thinks that the best way to lead is through fear. “Bring it to me, or sit on that shit,” he tell the co-op. He rules like a king. I see a revolt brewing.

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- Randy got big. That sweet, wily boy with the great smile seems long gone. He’s been socialized to learn that tough makes right, that you only gain credibility through intimating violence. Watching this scene, you can see why the police can’t make inroads in this community, and why people like Marlo and Chris turn out the way they do.

- Loved how they got Nancy Grace up there acting like Nancy Grace.

- The boys of the dock live on! Good to see them. At least they haven't changed.

React Quotes

“How do you get from here to the rest of the world?” – Dukie

A juicy thickening of all the plotlines in this episode. Everybody gets deeper into what they’re doing and it doesn’t appear that there’s a way out for many of them. Lester, McNulty, Marlo, Chris, Scott, Omar… there’s no shortage of people on this show who are completely committed to what they are doing. You have to admire their dedication, no matter how twisted their agenda may be.

Something I picked up on a little in previous episodes was more apparent in “React Quotes”: Chris is not happy with Marlo. He’s more prudent that his petulant boss. He seemed skeptical about going after Bodie at the end of last season and doesn’t appreciate how the targeting of Omar – which is totally unnecessary from a business perspective – is screwing up his life. But he’s gotta be as ruthless as his boss demands (but hey, at least we saw Marlo smile in this episode as he saw Chris play with his kids. Had no idea he was a family man).

What’s so scary about him is how coldly professional he is. I didn’t understand until the second viewing that Monk was set up as bait for Marlo (of all the actors on the show, Jamie Hector – Marlo – is the most difficult to understand). Chris is always thinking a step ahead of his opposition. Besides the murder of Michael’s father, he has always executed people with a dispassionate efficiency. He even cautions his boss away from living the high life in the AC.

Outsmarting Avon wasn’t too hard but he’s ahead of Omar here and nearly ends his life. That jumping out the window though, that felt too much like it was out of a Batman or superhero flick. Can a guy jump out of a four-story window and just walk away?

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During the first four episodes, the Sun mostly ran a largely self-contained plotline. I think that’s why the whole world of the newspaper just doesn’t have the same gravitas and appeal that the world of the docks, the streets, the police or the school had. The Sun doesn’t have a mission that feels as vital or as important compared to what characters from previous seasons went through.

There’s a coldness, a distance to all the characters at the paper. None of them, save Haynes, I have found especially likeable. Scott is just an ambitious brat whose lack of idiosyncracies makes him wholly unlikeable. Alma doesn’t take enough initiative for us to want to root for her. We rooted for McNulty is Season One, the boys at the docks in Season Two, Bunny Colvin in Season Three and the kids in Season Four but who are we rooting for this season? The show lacks a hero now, which I suppose one could argue, is Simon’s point.
The central plot premise of the season – will McNulty get away with his serial killer story to boost the police budget to apprehend Marlo – didn’t really come into vogue until last episode but now, in the words of Scott, it’s got “juice.”

Great scene where McNulty calls his bluff in the newsroom. Scott now knows that McNulty is lying. My guess: Scott will ultimately get trapped in his own lie and will take McNulty down with him. McNulty didn’t have to second him at the meeting. He could have just let the reporter stand alone. Both are committed to perpetrating the small con to bring about the larger con. They’re the same but they just don’t know it.

Scott’s lying gets more elaborate. The homeless woman he interviewed “couldn’t stop stroking her daughter’s blond hair.” Classic.

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So far, I’ve found the Clay Davis plotline pretty straightforward. But this episode gave us something we haven’t seen too much of – if at all – on “The Wire”: the invocation of the race card.

Listen to Clay’s defense of himself on the radio show. He calls the host “my brother” and talks about “the people” and invokes “they” who are “pulling the strings” and “prosecuting, no, persecuting” him. He adopts the language of a Black Panther member from the sixties to beef up the “us vs. them” story to cover up his sizeable transgressions. He hopes this cloaking of himself in the narrative of the aggrieved minority standing up to the powerful white political establishment will get him off the hook. This is what Marion Berry attempted. Identity politics has long been a staple of African-American politics, and watching this scene makes you appreciate the breath of fresh air that people like Obama and Corey Booker, the Mayor of Newark, have breathed into this world (The New Yorker has made the link cold, but the article in the Feb. 4 issue about Corey Booker was fantastic).

Next, we see him standing next to Royce on Calvert Street who wears a tie to match his “Marcus Garvey” campaign approach from last season. It reminds me of something one of my professors said a few months ago: if you get people to buy into your metaphor, you get them to buy into your solution.

So, in this episode, we saw McNulty using sexual manipulation to get his non-story on the front page, Royce and Clay Davis using racial manipulation to defray their own corruption, and Scott using the pulpit of the press to advance his own career. “The bigger the lie, the more they believe,” Bunk said. Amen.

- Levy the lawyer. It seems pretty obvious he’s using Herc to try and incriminate Marlo and get “some business for the law firm.” He’s not a dumb man.
- Great music in this episode (seeing Donnie, sing along to those Motown songs in the car) was a good character window.
- It was great to see Cutty back. That was a good, long conversation between him and Dukie. They both seek an alternative to the world they live in. “World is bigger than that,” Cutty tells his new disciple. “At least that’s what they tell me.” But what is the alternative to the world they live in and how do they get there?
- What will Daniels do with his frustration? If Carcetti had just took the money from the governor at the end of last season, much of all this could have been averted.

I'm behind the eight-ball on a few things today so I won't be able to post about "React Quotes" till tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out this link on the Freakonomics blog to what "real thugs" think of the show. It's very interesting, written by the guy responsible for the "Why Drug Dealers Live With Their Mothers" chapter in Freakonomics, the book (hat tip to my man at NY Magazine).

Damn, what a Bowl!