Wire - S2- Episodes 8 &9 . Duck an Cover

[shadowkat]

Got my DVDs finally, apparently downstairs neighbor lifted one by mistake on Tuesday night and returned it to me by Wed morning.

The Wire really does an excellent job of critiquing infrastructure and how people enable one another to lose themselves in dope.

Episodes 8 and 9, Duck and Cover and Stray Rounds...or Character is where it's at.



* Ziggy does elicit a few laughs with his pet duck. He buys a duck, puts a diamond bracelet around its neck as a collar, and takes it to the local hangout bar - and has it drink Jameson Whiskey to the laughter and applause of his co-workers, who previously had been treating Ziggy as a joke. A little bit of Ziggy admittedly goes a long way. What's interesting is you know the duck is going to die from alcohol poisoning eventually. The Longshoremen basically kill him, not intentionally, and when it happens they shift the blame onto Ziggy. "That Duck couldn't hold its liquor" or "Why would anyone (meaning Ziggy) feed a Duck Whiskey?" Apparently they weren't around? They didn't participate?
Or enable it? It's an apt metaphor for alcoholism and drug abuse - which we see throughout..in Jimmy McNulty who drowns himself in booze in the beginning of the episode, and almost kills himself in the process. And when he runs out of booze - he retreats to sex, losing himself in that. Or Brodie - doing coke on the sly. Or the Longshoremen gettting blissfully drunk.

* Go Lester and Bunk! The buddy cop team to end all buddy cop teams! They go to Daniels and basically beg him to put McNulty on their team. Daniels states that he tried, but Rawls hates him. Try again they plea. Yes, McNulty is a fuck-up, but he's eating himself alive without a case to solve, and fuck-up or not, he's good police, real police - and no one can track down and solve a case like he can.

*Daniels decides to play that ace in the hole with Rawls. "You told me, you'd give me whatever I wanted, no bullshit, no arguments." Rawls - "When I said that I meant, give you a kiss, maybe let you play with my tits - I did not mean McNulty." Daniels - "Do you want those 14 Jane Doe's cleared or not?" Rawls - "Fine, but you better clear them." Poor Rawls.

*So McNulty comes aboard...and I love how subtly they play it. Daniels calls him, we don't hear Daniels end of it, just see McNulty's expression. Then Daniels' hanging up the phone with a smile.
Next scene McNulty comes in on the crew discussing a wire tap - they need to get a guy in the brothel to tickle the Wire. Herc volunteers, as does Carver - but Daniels wants a more subtle approach. Both Bunk and Kima are out due to domestic issues. In walks McNulty and they all look at him. Kima glances at Daniels - "Who better to trap a whore than a whore?" (Hee. She's so right, McNulty is such a whore.) McNulty - "What the fuck did I do?"

There's some rather cool character bits. McNulty takes Beadie home...and decides not to have an affair with her after he sees all her kids things and her life...she doesn't deserve his shit and he knows it. (The fact that he almost makes a play for Beadie and decides at the last moment not to, makes me like him even more. ) Also Beadie's quiet resolve and determination regarding the Wire - makes me hope she sticks around past this season. Wonderful actress. There's a quiet pain in her eyes and disappointment, which I can identify with.

Stringer is still trying to play CEO to a bunch of uneducated street toughs and it is not going at all well. Brodie takes it upon himself to go after the local corner street gang - which results in a gun-fight with a stray bullet killing a nine year old kid. They set that one up well too - although it was almost too predictable - realistic but predictable. Realistic in that this thing happens all the time in NY - a month doesn't pass without some kid or innocent person being killed by a stray bullet from a gang fight or drug fight - not everywhere - just certain neighborhoods. East NY and
Crown Heights - are places you might want to stay away from. Brodie is told by Stringer to get rid of the gun - this results in a rather funny series of events. Brodie puts the guns in a backpack which he throws off a bridge - only to have them land on a passing barge. But he lucks out - because Moe (Cole) and Curly (whatshisname) - the two dumbest cops in homicide and the only one's Rawls seems to like and doesn't ship off to The Wire or to the marine yard - interrogate Brodie. Seriously, Rawls, you got to get over yourself long enough to realize that in order to clear cases you need smart cops on board not brown-nosers. Anyhow - this results in a funny scene - where Cole tells Brodie they have a gun with his prints on it. Three guns sit in front of Brodie and the cops in plastic bags. Really, says Brodie, which one? Cole clearly isn't sure and randomly picks the wrong one. Brodie calls for a lawyer.

Poor Stringer goes to Prop Joe to orchestrate a deal. A deal even Prop Joe knows won't sit well with Avon. Stringer ain't muscle or a solider, he's not a force to be reckoned with, the way Avon is.
But Prop Joe is right - Stringer has the territory and Prop Joe has the product. Which is the difference between last season and this season - last season the cops went after the dealers/the territory and the money flowing out from it, this season they are closer to the product or where it originates from.

And the corruption..is as insidious here as it was last season and is color blind. We have a San Diego FBI agent who allows The Greek to get away with smuggling in return for providing him with the capture of over 20 million dollars worth of crack cocaine in front of news cameras. Frank Sobotke smuggles stuff for the Greek in exchange for money that he can use to lobby legislators for his union cause - which is admittedly a good cause. But as his brother states - he is doing the wrong things to get what he wants and diggging himself and his family into a hole, and his brother's family for that matter. Frank insists he has no choice. His brother corrects him - of course you do. But I'm glad I don't have to make your choices.

Meanwhile McNulty is discovering it's not as easy to go under-cover in a whore house as he thought.
Lester and Bunk coach him - stating you need an accent or a story - and you've got to be way out of town. So McNulty decides to try an English accent. This part is hilarious - because the accent is horrible. And the fact that both Dominic West (who plays McNulty) and Clark Peters (who plays Lester) hail from England and are doing American accents makes it even funnier. There's nothing more humorous than a Brit playing an American attempting to do a British accent - they are sort of making fun of how American actors attempt British accents. How this show plays with language is brilliant. Few shows do this. I can only think of maybe four that have - Buffy, Farscape, The Wire, and possibly Game of Thrones...

McNulty does however finally get in - which is also quite funny. McNulty I love you, but you are such a whore. When Kima and Bunk pop into the room - they find McNulty nude underneath two whores - who have totally stripped him and fucked him. "You were late," he says sheepishly. The poor guy just can't help himself. [As an aside - I can see why some people may despise this character - it's a character trope that let's face it - you either like or hate. And there's a poor woobie trait to McNulty that I know for a fact rubs quite a few folks the wrong way. I happen to like this trait. The character trope I've come to despise is the arrogant, he-man, oh-so-noble, male provider, holier-than-thou, SOB - who stoically broods, showing no pain, and treats women like they are children. That trope rubs me the wrong way. (And thank god it's no where to be seen in The Wire, amongst the few shows that it doesn't pop up in.) But other people seem to love it to pieces. I think so much of what we like is so personal to us that it is almost impossible to explain to another person or even share sometimes, nor do we quite understand it ourselves, plus highly mood driven, just as what we despise is based on well all of the above. Arguing over it, I've decided is pointless, so I won't any longer. Life being too short and all that.] Later, in another hilarious bit - McNulty is trying to figure out how to write up the report of his undercover at the whorehouse without a)lying and b)putting himself on probation. Rhonda Pearlman couldn't be more annoyed.

And the ploy works they tickle the Wire. The only problem is Major Valcheck is furious that the target has changed from Frank Sobotke to The Greek. Frank - the cops see as being a low-level player and not that important (they aren't wrong), and possibly just a pawn. The cops are after the major players - Prop Joe, The Greek, Serge. But all Valcheck cares about is his pride and getting Sobotke.
Is it just me - or does anyone else wonder who the real bad guys are here? It's like Ziggy and the Duck - sure Ziggy brought the Duck to the bar, but the barmaid and the regulars enabled Ziggy to give the Duck the Whiskey, they even encouraged Ziggy, made him feel popular. Ziggy wouldn't have done it if they'd not encouraged him, if they had either said no or stopped him in some way. Same deal with Burrel, Valcheck, and even Rawls - they are enabling the crimes around them. They've become so complacent, so burned out, and so bureaucratic. Although of the three Rawls is by far the most sympathetic - he's show again in a psuedo-sympathetic light in Stray Rounds - where he faces the death of a nine year old and the corralling of the perps. Knowing full well that the exercise is meaningless but ultimately necessary. Burrell and Major Valcheck are the true villains here, at times comical, but at others scary in how well they enable the corruption that sprouts around them. The complacency. Carver and Herc are examples of this - coming up with a fake CI in order to make 150,000.
Which more than covers the expense of that bug they lost. The bug that got them Nick. In truth they are working around the system to get reimbursed for the bug they never had permission to obtain.

The Wire is a tough show to watch. It unlike everything else...requires constant rewinding. Or you will miss something. Each line, each scene counts. It's referred to later. Building on itself.
And the social criticism is on target - I've worked within infrastructures of cities and in agencies - more than one type of city, and various agencies, currently working within an agency now - and I interact with other people who do. Co-worker's sister who is a probation officer just got laid off along with 15-20 others, leaving their supervisors behind, to save costs. We need those probation officers. But we don't want to pay for them. Baltimore is a poor city with a high level of corruption, the poorer the city, the higher the level of corruption - just look at New Orleans.
Although Chicago has it's moments. As does New York.

But what I love most about the Wire is the characters. It really just comes down to the fact that I love almost all the characters and find them all interesting. That's why I'll watch a show or read a book - there has to be something about the characters that intrigues me. If I don't like a tv show, film, or book - it's usually, not always, but usually because of the characters and how well I think they are written. But mileage varies...

Have to admit? I'm missing Omar more than I thought I would. He has definitely become my new favorite character, slowly jumping above McNulty, Lester, Beadie, and Kima...go figure.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

The characters of The Wire really became actual people in my mind. I remember there were times when I'd hear something on the news and think, oh that's going to affect ____.