“Who’s my daddy now”
“It may be
the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re going to have to serve somebody”
sang Robert Zimmerman (also known as Bob Dylan), and the man knew his way
around an insight. The head honchos control not only what decisions you can
make, but also what information gets to you. Take D’Angelo and Bodie at the
low-rises. They don’t know anything about Wee Bay and Little Man’s shooting of
Orlando and Kima, and don’t know why Savino is being looked at. But when
Stringer calls, D’Angelo beckons, even if it seems like Wee-Bay is about to
execute him in his own home. Orders are orders, after all.
Satan may
be evil, but at least his orders seem rational. The police department’s orders,
meanwhile, serve only the most shallow of interests. They’re concerned more
about looking like progress is being made in the War on Drugs than actually
making progress. It’s about the PR storm coming, which is clear from the moment
the commissioner confuses Lieutenant Daniels with a detective investigating
Greggs’ shooting. At the highest level of the police department, it’s (nearly)
all politics.
But I’m
getting ahead of myself. The episode starts off with an equally great extension
of the last episode’s conclusion (the continuity a rarity for “The Wire”), with
the police officers baffled by what they can do after Greggs’ shooting. McNulty
is in covered in Kima’s blood, clearly in shock, and it’s not hard for the
“blood on his hands” idea to turn from literal to metaphorical. He thinks his
passion for the case has cost Greggs her life; when he hears the tape of her
shooting, he vomits out of shock. Grace
comes from unexpected places, and Major Rawls, of all people, makes sure
McNulty knows it’s not his fault. Rawls reminds us, “if it were your fault, I’d
be the asshole telling you it was.” (As a side note, Rawls is a character who
improves greatly over the first season. He’s clearly an ass, but his
machinations make more sense as we see more of him. He’s not someone you root
for, certainly, but his assholery seems much more…true, I think?)
The real
tragedy of what happens now isn’t that the police department is ineffective, as
is normally the case. Indeed, it’s the opposite: they’re too good. Bunk and Landsman are very effective crime-scene
detectives, the city coordinates a massive raid that rounds up tons of cash and
drugs, and everything is done quickly. The tragedy is that this one time
they’re effective, even less thought than usual is given to what they’re doing.
As always,
there are side effects, and side effects to the side effects. The police forget
to concentrate on Wallace’s return to Baltimore, and McNulty is too preoccupied
to notice Bubbles’ attempts to explain his sobriety. Worst of all, much of the
investigation falls apart. Savino will receive just 3 years, for distribution
of false narcotics, and the raids have sufficiently spooked the Barksdale
organization. Kima lies comatose, and Cheryl lies weeping in their now lonely
apartment. All of this is intercut with the press conference honoring the
police’s noble drug raids in Det. Greggs’ name. The irony is obvious,
certainly, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.
“Dope on the damn table” – Daniels
Big Miss
n
Another thoroughly consistent episode, but
Detective Holley’s beating of Bubbles seems a little weaker than the rest. Yes,
he’s clearly mad about the shooting of a cop, but that he would just beat up a
random person paging Greggs within a minute of bringing him in seems a little
rash (especially considering who he’s dealing with).
Big Hit
-- For the sake of spreading the wealth, I’ll view the
opening scene as an extension of last week. I’ll go with the episode’s
conclusion, where the press conference is intercut with the non-functioning
Barksdale investigation and Kima in the hospital. Ironic juxtaposition just
gets to me (see: The conclusion of The Sopranos Season 2 finale, “Funhouse”)
and this is a great use of it.
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