S02.E10: Storm Warnings

[Rinaldo]

Story by David Simon & Ed Burns. Teleplay by Ed Burns. Directed by Rob Bailey.

 

Ziggy gets fed up.

[Jordan Baker]

I am watching this show years after it aired, and, yet, I am still flummoxed as to how it wasn't awarded multiple Emmys every year.

 

This episode, particularly the moments before, during, and after Ziggy loses it, is just unbelievably good. You feel Ziggy's uncontrollable rage, the lifetime of being humiliated and thought less-than, even as you are yelling at him to stop. And the aftermath, with Ziggy in the car, is as close to perfect a moment on a TV show as I can remember. What a bravura performance.

[ToxicUnicorn]

He's great.  I didn't appreciate the performance as much at the store, but my heart broke when Ziggy was at the police station, editing his confession to be more truthful.  (He begged me not to shoot him.)

 

Nick was pretty great at the playground, as well.  

 

This episode wasn't as much of a game changer as the season 1 finale, but I liked the fact that it ended just as events were starting to heat up.  A cliffhanger without any cheesy build up, just the natural culmination of many episodes of build up.

 

I also loved it when Prez decked his father in law.  It's nice to have a feel good moment on the show.

[Rinaldo]

One of my very favorite cold opens of the whole series. Prez turns on some Johnny Cash, starts pinning up a chart of connections, we see the progress of the investigation step by step, old files to surveillance to GPS to phone taps, until finally he (and we) can look at the whole web with satisfaction. “Fuckin’ A.”

 

And oh, Prez loves his software. When McNulty did his tracking demo it was like Christmas for him... (I'll also join in the appreciation for the moment when he socked Valchek.)

 

Lovely little moment when FBI enters the offsite building for the first time, Bunk and Lester growling out cop-show threats at the invaders -- and then everyone laughs and shakes hands.

 

For me, the most memorable part of Ziggy’s big eruption was afterward. He’d boiled over and followed his impulse, and now... We see it play out almost in real time, realization and awareness flooding into him. What have I done, what’s going to become of me, my life is over.

 

Typical passing moment of brilliance: after all the triangulation and investigation to recover the text message -- it’s in Greek characters. (Of course they end up getting it anyway.)

 

Ziggy and Nick's childhood friend Prissy (already mentioned once in a previous episode when Ziggy got pranked about having gotten her pregnant) is played by Merrit Wever, now an Emmy winner for Nurse Jackie.

 

And then the moments at the end that we hardly ever get on other shows: the midnight raid, and having to lose the time in which you might have recovered the evidence, because everyone has to type out all the necessary reports. And so it goes.