The Wire: Collateral Damage (S2:E2)

“…so they’re cargo”

                Human trafficking is a funny phrase. The word “traffic” conjures up the incredibly mundane image of delay, of too many cars on the road. The odd thing is that it is appropriate, because human trafficking as a phrase performs the same work as the act of human trafficking. It dehumanizes. It makes them into the objects they are being treated as (and not always “objectification” in a gendered sense. I refer to the literal use of people as commodities, with no trickery intended by the phrasing). Of course, there’s another word for human trafficking that perhaps serves as a better descriptor, one we rarely bring up nowadays: slavery.

The 13 dead girls (“Jane Does” might work better to prove this point) aren’t murder victims; they’re cargo. The Greek is upset because he lost his cargo, the cops don’t designate it a murder because it was a cargo malfunction that ruined the shipment of girls, and even McNulty, the guy who forces others to label the investigation “homicide,” equates them more with shots of alcohol than with people. They were objects to be traded, and when one of them malfunctioned (by refusing to have sex), they were thrown off the boat. It’s slavery, right down to the use of boats, and it’s still going on. And although the labels that allow one to launder the horrors of the act into mere business transactions have changed, not much else has changed.

Even God himself seems like he can be bought (and, like slavery, it’s not like that idea is anything new). Valchek, still miffed about Sobotka’s window at the church, begins to abuse his power and starts, well, abusing the stevedores of the docks. Without warning, they are all ticketed. Frank agrees to meet with Valchek, only to cuss the Deputy out after he makes it clear he is targeting the docks only because of the window Frank donated. Valchek might very well be the pettiest of all the careerist policemen we deal with on the show, and his subsequent DUI arrests (at 8 AM) and surveillance of the docks shows how easily power corrupts those on the force. By the damndest stroke of luck, however, Valchek’s spurious conclusion that Sobotka is on the take turns out to be 100% correct.

Frank gets to do a lot of righteous yelling this episode, later going to see Spiros to demand an explanation for the 13 Jane Does. Spiros is upset too, although for different reasons (like any good trafficker, he understands that dead people means a worthless product), and so goes to get the information out of a crewman by a little torture. The Greek manages to flesh out what actually happened: the crew were using the girls for sexual favors, and when one of them got killed while the rest witnessed, he killed all 13 to get rid of the evidence. Spiros makes sure he meets a similar fate, which proves a perhaps ironic counterpoint to the message of our epigraph of the week:

“They can chew you up, but they’ve gotta spit you out” – McNulty

Observations and What-Have-You’s

n  Meanwhile, the drug trade! It’s still happening, even as we spend little time outside of prison this episode. Wee-Bay is getting harassed by a prison guard whose cousin Bay murdered (probably: he may very well have just taken the heat for it). Avon tries to sort it out, but realizes that he’ll need Stringer to apply some pressure, as direct appeals don’t exactly move the man. D’Angelo is on drugs (as happens to all the broken souls on the show), and Avon realizes that his mental state may very well be a concern.

n  McNulty also manages to accidentally screw over his old partners Bunk and Freamon, as although they theoretically shouldn’t receive the murder he forces on Baltimore PD Homicide, Landsman gives it down to them. Although I think Landsman’s compliments are meant to be taken with a grain of salt (after all, he is screwing the two over), they also seem authentic: Bunk and Freamon are, probably, the two best detectives in homicide, and he really does need their help. Sweet, almost.

n  Ziggy is still a screw-up, trying to peddle drugs from a connection he has only for the connection to laugh because he’s messed up the last two times.

n  Eggs and beer: the breakfast of champions (and early-morning DUI arrests).

n  Man, a lot of male nudity this season, right? First Ziggy’s barroom show, and now McNulty and the tortured shipman’s ass.

n   Rhonda isn’t happy about her and McNulty’s relationship direction. This shouldn’t be news.