S03.E02: All Due Respect

[Rinaldo]

Story by David Simon & Richard Price. Teleplay by Richard Price. Directed by Steve Shill.

 

Omar is going after the Barksdale stash houses, and the district commanders are feeling the heat. Ex-con Cutty tries to find a new life.

[ToxicUnicorn]

Pitbull fighting and Bunk and McNulty trying to extract a confession about the killing of a dawg from an obviously hardened guy who has this irrational soft spot for his pet.

 

Kima not adjusting to parenthood and going out on the prowl.  Cedric and Ronnie getting together.  Bunk playing wingman for McNulty.  I am happy to see these little slices of personal life return to the show - I really missed them last season.  I love how The WIre manages to show so many facets of its characters without making much of a fuss about any of it.  Like the fact that Bunny's growing a conscience, even though he's close to retirement, it feels completely natural and not preachy because he's been quietly going about his business for an episode or two already.  It doesn't have that night-time soap feel of, say ER, which seemed to abruptly cut between professional life in the ER and the Personal Relationships of the doctors, where both arenas were fraught with high drama.  The cast of The WIre seem to be people who have lives all day long, rather than only existing when the plot needs them to exist.

 

It cracks me up that there's this new woman detective (the one who can listen to the wire conversations and translate) who does not seem to be especially noble, dedicated, or clever, and who wasn't introduced with any sort of real explanation, but who we are supposed to take for granted that she clearly belongs in the detail's offices as a regular part of their landscape.  

 

My favorite scene in this episode , easily, was the one where Herc and Carver and their dates meet Bodie and his crew (and dates) at the movies.  That scene could have gone terribly wrong; it could've come off as smarmy or preachy or implausibly contrived or thinking itself far too clever about setting up some kind of social commentary.  Instead, the actors just hit it out of the park, making it believable.  It was just pitch perfect how Bodie had a matter of fact, almost jubilant, youthfully accepting attitude toward the state of affairs, contrasted with the awkward, somewhat abashed acknowledgement by the cops that they really didn't have the upper hand.  That scene was sort of the message of the entire show in a nutshell.

[Rinaldo]

The movie scene was, if I recall right, taken from real life, via an incident reported in David Simon's original Homicide book. It's such a great scene, partly because they all play it so well, but also because it could (and did) happen. I personally don't think of it as potentially having a message (which doesn't mean it can't for someone else) -- it's hilarious because (especially in a smallish city like Baltimore, with not that many movie choices within city limits) the cops and criminals out for an evening's relaxation can bump into each other, and what's the etiquette? Pretty much just like the corner boys played it out: one awkwardly trying to be gracious like they do in movies ("this must be the lovely Mrs. Herc"), Bodie able to see the humor of it all just as we do, and everyone else more or less stunned into silence. In his commentary Simon likens it to bumping into your high school teacher away from school -- it just feels wrong that they do the same stuff you do.

[Rinaldo]

Again, we’re seeing “days in the life” for police and criminals alike, trying to keep going with the routine -- including two marriages breaking down because of the strain of one partner being a cop. Omar continues to have a flair all his own (“Do tell”), while Marlo remains enigmatic.

 

The scene of Carver/Herc bumping into Poot/Bodie at the movies remains a high point of the series for me: just an unexpected moment of random life, and what the hell do you do about that? Plus, hilarious.

 

I’ve never felt that the business about catching Cheese tearfully confessing to shooting his “dawg,” and the consequent questioning, really comes off as they must have meant it to. I can see that it sounded promising in the writing (especially with the detail desperate for some action), and maybe it’s a word confusion that even happened in real life. But as it plays out, half comic and half sincere, it kind of goes nowhere. I just move on.

 

McNulty going after D’Angelo’s death interests me very much, though. Not just because it ties in a plot strand one might have thought was ended, but because it’s so like Jimmy to grab hold of a case nobody else cares about and decide to solve it (as with the one dead hooker last year).His grudging compliment rang true: “All things considered, he wasn’t a bad guy.”

 

Colvin’s “paper bag” speech — and so Season 3 is launched.

[ToxicUnicorn]

McNulty going after D’Angelo’s death interests me very much, though. Not just because it ties in a plot strand one might have thought was ended, but because it’s so like Jimmy to grab hold of a case nobody else cares about and decide to solve it (as with the one dead hooker last year).His grudging compliment rang true: “All things considered, he wasn’t a bad guy.

 

”I liked all of this, also.  It was telling, too, how easily D'Angelo's death was passed off as a suicide when it took McNulty about a minute to figure out that it didn't make sense.  Either the guards were paid off, or they simply didn't give a damn.

 

I agree the writing of the dawg subplot was beneath the writers' usual standards, but I am willing to forgive them almost anything.

Edited December 2, 2014 by ToxicUnicorn

[Constantinople]

I don't care for dog fighting, but I didn't mind the oversall dawg subplot.

 

Somehow it seems fitting that the wire is blown because, for once, someone is speaking the literal truth about what he did and how he feels about it.  No code to translate, the detectives simply didn't understand the context in which the words were spoken.  It was interesting to see that some of BPD's best and brightest either didn't understand the people they're investigating as well as they thought they did, or in their own way, they can be just as much subject to tunnel vision as the commanders who constantly focused on stats.

 

In a way, it's simlar to Carver and Herc bumping into Poot and Bodie at the movies.  Carver and Herc can't imagine Poot and Bodie in a non-criminal context, so they don't know how to react.