We’ll be hosting a running season-long discussion of the final 10 episodes of HBO’s incomparably dope drama ‘The Wire.’ G.D., who works at a major American newspaper, handles this week’s episode. Spoilers, obviously.
Wow.
So I guess we kinda have to start with that crazy last scene, huh? The end of the episode sees a drunken McNulty finally cross the Rubicon, as he compromises a crime scene (after a quick prayer!) before the forensics unit can show up to make the victim of an overdose look like he was murdered. This scene played like a photo negative of the famous “Fuck!” scene in the first season, where Bunk and McNulty almost telepathically work out the timeline and logistics of a woman’s murder. This time, Bunk watches McNulty tamper with the victim and his immediate environment with horror on his face. “I’m gone,” he says to his partner. “I don’t want a part of this.” When the blowback from this comes later in the season — and we all know it’s coming — I can’t imagine how Bunk will find a way out of being implicated in this. I’m still not sure why McNulty did this; is he thinking that the “murder” will be investigated and covered more extensively because the “victim” was white? I love this show for stuff like this: the episode’s most dramatic moment didn’t come from a suspenseful killing or a heated confrontation, but from a serious ethical lapse from one of the show’s major characters. The scene before, where McNulty is mulling over what he’s about to do, is to me one of the strongest moments in the whole series.
Not that this week’s installment wanted for ethical lapses or dramatic moments. Scott Templeton, the disgruntled and ambitious reporter for the Sun, pitches a story about Orioles opening day, but he can’t find anyone who is an Orioles fan (or even a baseball fan for that matter). He comes back to the office and offers up a fake story to city editor Gus Haynes about a wheelchair-bound kid named E.J. who wanted to get into the game but couldn’t afford a scalper’s ticket and was forced to listen from outside the stadium. Templeton’s story is pretty thin, and there’s no photo of the kid or contact information, which raises Gus’s antennae. When Gus airs his reservations to Templeton about the story, Templeton say he resents the implication that the story is a fabrication, and Whiting, the executive editor and apparently a big Templeton supporter, comes to Templeton’s defense. The story runs.
A lot of folks I know have been asking me about my take on the newsroom stuff, and I’m not sure where I stand on them just yet (not that I’m some great authority on newsrooms). Some of the banter is spot-on, like the “evacuate” moment from the copy desk in last week’s episode (although reporters usually don’t take correction from the copy desk so easily). I remember being on the metro desk once and listening to a bunch of copy editors go back and forth on the wording of a quote from Shakespeare that was being used in a story, before one of the more crotchety old guys corrected everyone on the substance of the quote and, annoyed, informed them that the quote was from Dickens.
I really like the Gus Haynes character (real newspaper people aren’t anywhere this cool, I promise). But he’s almost too good and decent. I’m not saying that’s not plausible or that I would ordinarily have a problem with that. But since Whiting and Templeton are drawn so starkly — they’re the asshole bad guys, in case you didn’t notice — Haynes is the crusty herald of All That Is Good About Newspapers, down to the insomnia brought on by fears that he got the numbers mixed-up in a story on the ports. Simon is usually a lot less black-and-white about his characters than that. Whiting’s assertion that he wanted a story about the “Dickensian lives of city children” (a nod to the many, many, many reviewers who’ve compared The Wire to Dickens) without all that fussy stuff called nuance seemed to play a little bit too broadly. I did like Haynes’s retort about how every story needs a lot of context, as obvious as it was. We’ll see.
I also don’t have a problem with the fabricated story angle that a lot of people do. The way those scandals play out, from a narrative perspective, is pretty compelling (read the timeline of the Jayson Blair scandal if you don’t believe me). I sort of get why he’d go there. We know Whiting is based on former Sun editor Bill Marimow, who makes Simon very, very angry, but I couldn’t figure out who the lying journalist for the Sun that Simon keeps oliquely referencing in his angry attacks on Marimow could be. (It turns out it was Jim Haner.)
Also, while I feel Simon on how soulless out-of-town types (*cough*MediaNews*cough*) buy up local papers, lay off their staffs, and run them into the ground with all kinds of cost-saving initiatives (The Miami Herald, which is owned by McClatchy is actually outsourcing some of its copyediting), it seems like it’s a big omission to leave out the effect of the internet on declining newspaper revenues.
Okay. Back to the show. Marlo has Snoop and Chris go after Junebug for his brief reluctance to take the 60/40 split on the package, before Marlo told him what awaited him if he didn’t capitulate. (Snoop: “We will be brief with all you muthafuckahs. I think you know.”) He instructs them to go after Omar who famously stole an entire shipment of drugs last season before selling it back to the co-op. Chris tells Marlo that Omar is retired and out of the game, and Marlo tells Chris and Snoop to lure him out of retirement, which almost certainly means that somebody is gonna get murked.
(Aside: who are these cats who decide that Omar is a good boyfriend? When they inquire about how his relationships with his previous boyfriends ended —- grisly butchering at the hands of drug kingpins and torture at the hands of a renegade Fruit of Islam — what exactly does this dude say?)
Michael asks why Marlo ordered Junebug killed. Snoop tells him that someone heard Junebug call Marlo a dicksucker. Michael wonders why a baseless, unsubstantiated rumor constitutes grounds to murder Junebug, to which Chris responds, “It don’t matter if he said it or not — people think he said it. Can’t let that shit go.” Snoop tells Michael, in her inimitable Snoop way, that he needs to shut up and stop asking questions. Michael is charged to go around back and kill anyone who comes out that way. When the bloodbath starts, the only escapee is a little boy about Bug’s age. Michael slowly lowers his gun, with a mixture of shock and disgust on his face, and turns around.
We learn that Marlo has been putting money into the commissary account for Sergei, the muscle for Vondas and The Greek, in order to circumvent Prop Joe and the co-op for the Greek’s high-grade heroin. But instead of Sergei meeting Marlo, Marlo is greeted by Avon Barksdale(!), in a great “oh, shit!” moment. Avon apparently still wields a lot of clout in prison, and agrees to help Marlo set up a sit-down with Sergei out of kinship with a fellow West Side boy (and on the condition that Marlo hits his sister Brianna off with $100,000). The meeting happens, with Marlo insinuating to a recalcitrant Sergei that The Greek might be displeased with Sergei for not hearing Marlo out. Sergei consents after the threat, and Avon throws up a “West Side” sign. Ha.
We find Bubbles in an addict’s support group, and his fight to stave off his demons is every bit as tortured as McNulty’s slow devolution. This ain’t the talkative Bubbles of seasons past, and he still clearly hasn’t recovered from Sherrod’s death. He looks haunted and extremely cautious; seeing him clean this way is almost as heartbreaking as seeing him drugged out and getting robbed by that crazy basehead who sounded like Big L.
Test score for third graders are up 15 percent, but Carcetti isn’t happy. He has to run solely on the bump in scores since crime hasn’t fallen because, well, Carcetti ain’t paying the police. Of all the storylines we’ve seen this season, I have no idea where this one is even heading. Carcetti may get swept up in the Clay Davis mess (Lester Freamon, who is secretly Batman, and Sydnor, who is secretly pointless, are about to indict Davis on all kinds of corruption charges). One thing is I’m certain of the more we see of City Council president Narese Campbell, the happier I’ll be. There’s a female character I wouldn’t mind seeing more fully explored. I mean, because she’s powerful. Yeah. That’s it.
(BTW: Slate’s David Plotz completely ganked my comparison of the “Fuck” scene from season one with McNulty’s meltdown this week. Mmmm-hmm. I see it.)
Words to live by this week:
Marlo: “You know, the crown ain’t worth much, if the nigga wearin’ it always gettin’ his shit took.”
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Haynes: “You ever notice how a ‘mother of four’ is always catching hell? Murder? Hit-and-run? Burnt up in a row house fire? Swindled by bigamists?
Price: “Tough gig, ‘mother of four.’”
Twigg: “Innocent bystander’ is worse. He’s always getting the short end.”
Haynes: “Not a lot of them around anymore. Not a lot of innocents anymore, you ask me.”
Phelps: “You know who there’s less of? ‘Statuesque blondes.’ You don’t read about ‘statuesque blondes’ in the newspaper anymore. Buxom ones, neither. They’re like a lost race.”
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Snoop: “In B-more, we aim to hit a nigga, you heard?”
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McNulty: “The guy leaves two dozen bodies scattered all over the city and no one gives a fuck.”
Freamon: “It’s cause of who he dropped.”
Bunk: “True that. You can go a long way in this country killing black folk. Young males, especially. Misdemeanor homicides.”
McNulty: “If Marlo was killing white women…”
Freamon: “White children.”
Bunk: “Tourists.
McNulty: “One white ex-cheerleader tourist missing in Aruba.”
Bunk: “Trouble is, this ain’t Aruba, bitch.”
Freamon: “You think if 300 white people were killed in this city every year, they wouldn’t send the 82nd Airborne? Negro, please.”
