"The Wire" notes and analysis for Episode 58

“The Wire” notes and analysis for Episode 58 – “Clarifications”

Please note that this episode is available only at HBO On Demand and has not yet aired; it will premiere on HBO on Sunday, February 23rd. Also be forewarned that as “The Wire” contains adult language and themes, my post will reflect these elements; reader discretion is advised.

Finally, this post contains spoilers about episode 58; please do not read further if you have not yet seen it and do not want details about this episode.

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Episode 58, “Clarifications,” takes it name from the “Corrections and Clarifications” that appear in the newspaper, usually on an inside page, addressing errors or omissions from previous editions. Here, the word refers to individuals clarifying their actions or intentions (McNulty to Kima, McNulty to Beadie, Scott to Gus), clarifying their futures (Carcetti, Duquan), or unexpectedly bringing clarity to an otherwise muddy and frustrating situation (Sydnor, Kennard, Bunk). It had some shocking content, so I’ll say again that if you don’t want to know, stop reading now.

[A note: on the Wire message board early today, it was alleged that as of this episode, “The Wire” had “jumped the shark.” This phrase, derived from the “Happy Days” episode when Fonzie literally jumped the shark on waterskis, refers to the moment when a previously hip or outstanding program becomes irretrievably cheesy or poor. I’m not sure why folks may be feeling this way, though a couple of developments in this episode will be upsetting to many. A show like this, which depends on a vast ensemble of writers, directors, crew, and actors, cannot easily “jump the shark.” I think there have been plot contrivances that stretch credulity (homeless murders, among others) but over all it’s been a solid season and has not diminished my love for the program.

In fact, in another strain of discussion on the message boards, someone brought up the question of how “The Wire” stacks up against the greatest works of literature in the history of human expression. It’s apples and oranges to get into comparing “The Wire” with Richard Wright’s Native Son, or any written work, really. But I think the thing about the show that gets people thinking along these lines is its universality. “The Wire” is about Baltimore, but it could be about any city—or really, any time, or any place. It’s about hypocrisy, cynicism, thirst for power, change, violence, incompetence, passion, apathy, corruption, despair. It’s about life, and the skill with which it’s all wrought places it in the pantheon of artistic achievement for me.]

Episode 58 opens with McNulty briefing an array of police brass, including Rawls and Daniels, as well as Carcetti. Though he is clearly nervous—nearly everything he has to tell them, after all, is a fabrication—he handles himself pretty well. Rawls has a nice little snarky comment: “I mean, I’m all for a little kinky shit now and then, but chewin’ on a homeless fella?” The ensuing laughter seems a little knowing—as if some in the room may actually know that Rawls really is “all for a little kinky shit.” McNulty takes his opportunity to ask for surveillance teams (organized by Carver) to keep an eye on the “persons of interest” questioned at Pier 5, as well as sex offenders.

Carcetti asks, “What are we doing to protect people?” and McNulty further sees his opening to ask for undercover cars, since the fleet they have is not being repaired in a timely manner. Carcetti’s response as he leaves the room is, “Go to Avis if you have to … Hertz. I don’t give a shit. People are disappearing—they’re dying, for chrissakes. You do what you have to do.” We get the sense that now Lester is going to finally get the sustained surveillance he needs to crack Marlo’s code.

Rawls closes the meeting after Carcetti’s departure with another of his wry observations: “Bad news, gentlemen, is that we’re actually gonna have to catch this motherfucker. Good news is, the mayor finally needs a police department more than he needs a school system.”

Opening credits roll (I still don’t like Steve Earle’s version of “Way Down in the Hole” and fast-forward through it); tagline is “A lie ain’t a side of the story. It’s just a lie.” – Terry Hanning. Hanning, the homeless Marine that Scott profiled in The Sun, will make an angry return later in the episode.

But the tagline calls to mind one of the great fallacies of journalism: the “both sides” approach. Since news reporting is always supposed to be objective—free from bias or agenda of any kind—it is often said that a reporter must represent “both sides” of an issue equally (presenting pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints in an article about abortion laws, for example). But there are two problems, as I see it, with this approach. First, it assumes that both sides of an issue are equally valid, and that reporters have no right or ability to favor the more reasonable or widely held of the two. (This is the case in articles about the so-called “intelligent design” theory of biology, which is but a baby step beyond creationism. When some religious zealots begin pushing ID on a school district, as they did in nearby Dover School District in York, PA, the attendant coverage is obsessively “fair” in covering both the ID and evolution “sides” of the issue. But evolution is widely accepted and supported by overwhelming evidence, while ID is a trick of fantasy supported by no evidence, but rather by faith. When a reporter, in seeking to be “objective,” affords equal coverage to both evolution and ID, he or she lends undue credence to the weaker of the two positions.) The other problem with the “both sides” approach is that it implicitly assumes that there are only two sides to any given story. This is a short-sighted and parochial point of view that limits the breadth of coverage that can be applied to an issue or event.

Back to the episode, though…we see Duquan wandering around the city throughout the episode inquiring if any positions are open and coming up mostly empty. His first stop is Foot Locker, where he encounters Malik “Poot” Carr (Tray Chaney), who has apparently given up slinging for the black-and-white stripes. “Yeah, I just got tired, you know?” Poot explains of his decision to ultimately leave the game. “Shit got old.” Duquan’s turned down repeatedly throughout the episode until finally he sees a junkman, helps him out, and lands $10—it’s not the best prospect he’ll have, and it certainly doesn’t utilize his brainpower, but it’s keep him out of a drug game for which he’s sorely underequipped, and he seems like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

On to McNulty, who is obviously the feature player this season. It’s been nice to see him back at the center of the Wire universe after being a peripheral player last season. He’s meeting with Carver about the surveillance he needs, and when he closes the door conspiratorially, I think at first he’s going to spill everything to a sergeant, which would be a wildly risky move. Carver predicts that it’s going to be “some fucked-up McNulty shit,” but McNulty limits his disclosure, telling Carver only that so much has been allocated to the homeless murders, McNulty can’t use it all. Carver seems uneasy at first, but eventually admires (what he knows of) McNulty’s ability to work the system. When Carver asks about vehicles, McNulty replies, “Departmental account at Enterprise downtown.” We later see some detectives in a new rental car on surveillance, fiddling with the GPS unit and satellite radio like kids in a candy store.

Health Care for the Homeless (an actual organization that’s been around for more than 20 years, as we’d expect from “The Wire,” built as it is on authenticity) has asked the mayor’s office for permission to use city hall’s steps for a candlelight vigil for the homeless victims of the serial killer, and to raise awareness of homelessness in general. The mayor’s office agrees, on one condition: that Hizzoner can then use the event for political gain, giving a speech during the vigil.

Carcetti is running into trouble from “P.G.” (mostly black Prince George’s County) because he has not been meeting with black leaders; now an African American contender or two may be emerging for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. “I gotta kiss a ring, don’t I?” Carcetti asks Norman, who replies with a grin, “More than a ring, actually.” Later in the episode Carcetti finds himself meeting with Nerese and Clay Davis, damn near begging for their support. “Maurice Dobey? For governor? Of my state?” demands Clay. “Sheeeeeeeeeit. That’s some cynical politics right there.” Clay also laments the “shameful” fact that Dobey was playing the “race card,” a statement whose irony is so thick it scarcely needs comment.

Out by the loading docks of The Sun, Gus is having a smoke with Bill Zorzi and Jeff Price (Todd Scofield). “It’s weird shit, I gotta say,” Zorzi muses to Gus. “Talking to a psychopath like that.” Price quips, “I interviewed Dick Cheney once.”—great line.

Zorzi asks Gus, “Are we hyping this thing, or is Templeton writing it as it lays?” His question derives from a golf term “to play it as it lays,” meaning to hit the ball based on where it lands, and not where you might have liked it to land. He’s asking whether Scott may have been massaging the facts or inciting some of the events, but Gus, despite the reservations we know he has, says it all plays pretty well. “I guess we’ll have homeless stories till December,” Zorzi says. When Price asks why they’ll stop in December, Gus reminds him (surely he’d already know this, having been to journalism school) that Pulitzer Prize submissions are for the calendar year. “Anything a newspaper cares about at Christmas, they give a fuck about by New Year’s,” Gus cynically observes.

Michael is seen meeting with Chris and Snoop; he’s clearly anxious about Omar’s rampage and still reeling from his narrow escape in the confrontation on the stoop in the previous episode. Chris and Snoop are preoccupied by Omar’s actions and even seem a bit worried, as is evidenced by their snippy responses to Michael’s questions. “That nigga gonna get got,” Snoop assures him, but there seems to be more anger than confidence in her voice.

Omar , for his part, is continuing his campaign of upsetting Marlo’s world by raiding his corners, his stash houses, and dropping the drugs down the sewer. He even approaches a surveillance team (sitting in a rented car) and tells them the location of the drugs and money at a corner down the block. “You workin’ a Stanfield corner,” he shouts at one point after chasing away the corner boys and robbing the stash house, “which means you workin’ for a straight-up punk. You feel me?” But no matter how vociferously Omar tries to call out Marlo, it doesn’t seem likely that Marlo will respond.

While Omar walks through a vacant lot, we see (but he hardly seems to notice) a group of boys apparently torturing an alley cat. As the boys see Omar, they all scatter—all except Kenard (Thuliso Dingwall), who gives Omar the stinkeye as he continues to pour an unidentified substance on the yowling cat. After last episode, which Kenard was clearly unimpressed with the mythical Omar, this seems like further foreshadowing that Kenard may go after Omar.

Back in the Homicide unit, Bunk prepares paperwork for DNA analysis of the murder of Michael’s father and presents it to McNulty for his signature—he’s finally going to avail himself of the glut of resources being thrown at a nonexistent case. He’s clearly not happy he has to resort to this, which is clear when McNulty grins sheepishly—but triumphantly—up at him. “Just sign the motherfucker and shut the fuck up,” he says. Soon he’s down to the medical examiner’s office asking for Lowenthal and presenting him with the order for DNA analysis. Near the end of the later scene, Bunk’s phone rings, and the ringtone is “You’ll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)” by Lou Rawls, whose voice is actually rather similar to Bunk’s. I love these revealing little touches on “The Wire.”

In the next scene, we see Omar buying a pack of Newports (“soft pack”) at a Korean-run grocery store. The pedestrian nature of the scene gives it a sense of foreboding—why else would we need to watch him buy cigarettes? And then it happens: Kenard comes in (obviously dismissed with barely a glance by Omar, who only sees a little kid) and drops Omar with one shot to the back of the head. Kenard, who seems shaken by what he’s done, drops the gun and flees at the Korean shopkeeper screams desperately. Omar is gone. (And the internet rumors, based on an apparently leaked video clip, were right in both the timing and manner of his death.)

I gasped and froze when Omar was shot—it just didn’t seem possible. As I digest it, I wonder if he had to die in the service of the story (and we know that “The Wire” and David Simon have always elevated story over character, hence the earlier deaths of popular characters like D’Angelo and Stringer). His reckless pursuit of vengeance against Marlo certainly cried out for repercussions. Flushing drugs down the toilet and dropping them down the sewer is not going to affect Marlo; he controls the flow of drugs to all of Baltimore now. And Marlo is too smart and well-insulated to allow himself to be drawn down into a street battle with Omar. But I so enjoyed him driving off into the sunset with Reynaldo last season. Perhaps he could have hobbled into the path of Lester or McNulty and helped bring Marlo down (which he still might, from the grave). As much as I am devastated by Omar’s death, I can see why it happened—and why it happened the way it did.

In terms of upsetting scenes in the history of “The Wire,” I would put it just below Wallace’s murder at the end of the first season. Omar, after all, had dodged this fate with increasing improbability throughout the series; Wallace was a relative innocent, a child, and it was one of the first murders of a character on “The Wire” we had gotten to know well.

After Bunk gets the news of Omar’s death, we head to the paper’s conference room and a meeting between Terry Hanning (the homeless Marine who had been the subject of Scott’s article) and Scott, moderated by Gus. Hanning insists that Templeton invented additional details about a firefight surrounding the circumstances of Hanning’s story in Fallujah. Scott, who is getting quite agitated, asks to be permitted to tell his side of the story. “A lie ain’t a side of the story,” Hanning corrects him, providing the show’s tagline. “It’s just a lie.” Scott tries to mollify Hanning by saying, “I believe that you believe,” but his attempt at conciliation is nakedly patronizing. “I wrote what Mr. Hanning told me,” Scott tells Gus.

Outside the meeting room, Gus tells Scott to call Hanning’s Marine unit, reach out to the guys he served with and see what can be confirmed. “If it went down the way you said, we’ll let it be,” meaning his original piece will stand. “But if not, we’ll chalk it up as a misunderstanding.” Despite his suspicions, Gus is admirably protecting his reporter. But he’s also protecting his own ass, and the collective ass of The Sun: either way, the paper will print a correction. Scott is incredulous.

Bunk, who has been summoned to the crime scene by Norris and Crutchfield because Bunk “knew this mope,” is intrigued by the killing. He seems to well up as he looks at Omar’s body, and when watching this I was reminded of the two really powerful scenes Omar and Bunk shared in previous seasons. Bunk has to be feeling like everything is changing—two fixtures of the game, Prop Joe and Omar, have now died, his best friend Jimmy has gone apeshit and made up a serial killer, and even the level-headed Lester has gotten himself involved. According to the Korean shopkeeper, Omar was shot by a “short little fella with a big gun.” Bunk pulls a list out of Omar’s hand—why hadn’t it been taken by the area hoppers who raided his body looking for souvenirs?—of members of Marlo’s crew. Each name—Marlo, Chris, Monk, Cheese, Snoop, O-Dog, Cherry, and Vincent—was accompanied by an intersection. “On the hunt again, were you,” Bunk mutters.

The next scene illustrates how much can be accomplished with the right equipment and manpower: Sydnor gives instructions to a group of eight or nine police, each of whom will be assigned (some in pairs) to various members of Marlo’s crew.

Marlo summons Chris and Snoop to a meet, and when the two arrive, Marlo is all smiles. “I thought you were going to tell me,” he says. Omar is “bagged up.” Chris and Snoop, for their part, are stunned.

Gus is hard at work line editing Fletch’s homeless article (“in at 30 inches”). On his computer is taped a headline: “Many are Trapped for Hours in Darkness and Confusion.” It’s a headline that was used for an article about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but it’s unclear why he has the headline taped there; perhaps it’s to remember an event he covered when he was a reporter, and perhaps it’s because it describes the climate of the newsroom on many days. Fletch talks to Gus about his “tour guide” under the bridge, who is named Reginald Cousins (and nicknamed “Bubs”). It’s strange to know his full name, but it is hopefully a sign of good things to come for him. Fletch feels as though Bubs is the story, and he wants to do a profile on him. This has the potential to make Fletch’s emerging career and at the same time allow Bubs to purge some of his guilt and shame about Sherrod’s death and move on with his life.

Gus is wrapping up the Metro Digest, an area in the Metro section in which several briefs (blurbs of three or four paragraphs each) appear, usually focusing on mayhem (fires, traffic accidents, murders, robberies, etc.). He calls to Dave Ettlin (a former Sun reporter playing himself, apparently) that “we’re shy one brief in the Metro Digest. Four paragraphs should do it.” Due to space restrictions, the murder of a 34-year-old black male in a convenience store will be scratched. Despite being the talk of the Black community—and despite its importance to city and us, the viewers—Omar’s death will likely never merit even a passing mention in The Sun.

Kima and McNulty have traveled to Quantico to discuss the personality profile on their serial killer. On the way, they talk about their respective relationships, and Kima admits that it was her own fault that the relationship died, not Cheryl’s. Kima also says she’s got “too much dawg” in her to settle down!

The scene in which the FBI agent reviews his profile is a classic. The serial killer is a white male in his late 20s to late 30s who “has never been to college, but feels nonetheless superior to those with advanced education.” He is “likely employed by a bureaucratic entity” like civil or public service, has a problem with authority, and harbors a “deep-seated resentment of those who he feels have impeded his progress professionally.” Finally, he has a problem developing lasting relationships and is probably a high-functioning alcoholic. Jimmy is openly squirming during this litany, since it actually describes him with cutting precision. As they’re leaving, Kima asks McNulty what he thinks of the profile. “They’re in the ballpark,” he says, unnerved.

Speaking of McNulty’s character flaws, he comes home to a note from Beadie, who has taken the kids and left him. Her note reads: “Jimmy – One possible future. Be back tomorrow or the next day. Or not. Think about it. B.” He’s upset by this—but could he reasonably be surprised? His own out-of-control actions, he obfuscations, his absences have virtually guaranteed this result.

Dismayed at the relative ease with which Clay Davis slipped the charges brought and prosecuted by Bond, Lester takes the case to the FBI hoping for a Federal prosecution. He runs into the FBI special prosecutor who’d had a run-in with Carcetti earlier in the season, who says, “After you city sons of bitches have managed in a single week to transform Clay Fucking Davis into Martin Luther King Jr., you now come to me with this?” A “whiter” jury in a Federal case would likely have been less readily swayed by Clay’s playing of the “race card,” but his answer in an unequivocal no. Lester will have to “come at” Clay another way.

Speaking of coming at things a different way, Bunk’s DNA analysis is back—and Chris Partlow’s blood is all over the crime scene in the killing of Michael’s stepfather. Bunk shares this news with McNulty and also gives him the paper listing Marlo’s people found on Omar. Could Omar actually end of helping to catch Marlo and his crew posthumously? In the coming attractions, Marlo appears to be in the “box,” so it could be so. (I’m staying away from spoilers and rumors on Ain’t It Cool News and other online locations that purport to have definitive information about the last two episodes. This is the last time I’m ever going to have the opportunity to be surprised, shocked, and moved by new “Wire” episodes, and I’m going to leave that potential intact.)

Kima has gathered information about sex offenders and is about to review their case files and begin canvassing—work that will take her away from her own triple murder for days. McNulty, who cannot bear to see this happen, takes her into the “box” and tells her about what he’s done. “It ain’t right,” she tells him. “You can’t do this,” she says several times. She is clearly not fine with any of this. Coupled with a scene later when she chastises Lester and Sydnor for going along with McNulty’s fabrication, I’m beginning to wonder if her conscience may prod her to reveal this to someone.

On the flip side, as Sydnor orchestrates his far-flung surveillance, he has to consult a Baltimore city atlas (or is it southern Maryland, since it includes places outside Baltimore?). While looking up a street, he breaks the code Marlo and his crew have been using to communicate. On the clock faces, the second hands represent the page of the map (for example, 35 seconds is the east side, and indicates that Cheese will be involved in the meet), while the hands correspond to the points on the grid where the meet will take place.

At the Health Care for the Homeless vigil, Carcetti gives an incendiary speech about the scourge of homelessness and how it demands our attention. As a result of the current Republican gubernatorial administration and its policies, he asserts, “more and more of our fellow citizens found themselves living life at the broken edges, in the street.” The connection is clear, and wholly benefits his gubernatorial campaign: the current governor doesn’t care about ordinary folks. “Well I say that this is not only tragic, it is unforgivable,” he adds to thundering applause as we see Scott Templeton taking notes. The homeless, Carcetti insists, will no longer be invisible.

Lester sees Clay in a bar-restaurant and decides to blackmail the senator with the threat of a Federal probe Lester knows is never going to materialize. It seems Lester is hoping Clay will either provide further information that will enable Lester to bring him down, or—more likely—that Clay will lead Lester “up the chain” to see who is really behind all the dirty dealings.

Meanwhile at the newsroom, Scott has filed his piece covering the homeless vigil and Gus is discussing Scott’s lead with Metro editor Steve Luxenberg (Robert Poletick). Both Gus and Steve agree that Scott’s anecdotal lead is inappropriate, and Gus calls Scott over to tell him that he’s “spiking” (deleting, reworking completely) the lead because it contains anecdotal material attributed to an anonymous source. At such an event, where the homeless in attendance have come voluntarily and could reasonably expect media coverage, Gus argues that there should have been plenty of homeless individuals who would have allowed The Sun to use their names. But “it’s a perfect quote,” Scott whines. “Better than I could ask for, and that’s my concern at this point,” Gus replies.

When an editor is seeing perfect quotes over and over—polished, insightful, and succinct—from anonymous sources, an editor has every good reason to worry. The vast majority of real quotes a reporter gets from real people are in some way inarticulate, meandering, or coarse, but Scott’s a spot-on every time, fitting wonderfully into the narrative strain he’s created.

Scott angrily replies, “To hell with you if you think I made it up.” Gus, who remains calm and eminently reasonable throughout the exchange, states, “We have a standard that we follow here. And I’m gonna follow it.” Scott stomps back to his desk and punches his desk chair, which attracts the attention of the fawning Managing Editor, Thomas Klebanow (David Costabile). Soon Klebanow is heading over to Gus to demand answers: “You’re retopping Scott’s vigil piece?” he asks, referring to Gus’ planned replacement of Scott’s lead. “Anonymous attribution in a public setting – there’s no need for it,” Gus says, as if he’s reading out of The Sun’s style manual. “We have a sourcing policy here and I know it, and I do not feel comfortable bending the rules in this instance,” he informs a silenced Klebanow as Gus gathers his things and leaves for the evening. Those in the newsroom who resent Scott’s hot-shot style, the favoritism shown by the editors toward him, and the suspicious elements of his work, are impressed with Gus’s outburst. The matter is unresolved as the scene ends, and the viewer is left to assume that once again, Klebanow will move to support Scott and reinstate the anecdotal lead.

At Beadie’s house, Beadie finally comes home and informs McNulty on her doorstep that next time he’s out, because after all it’s her house. She asks him who is going to be at his wake—surely not the buddies he drinks with or the women he sleeps with, since they don’t know his last name. It’s family that’s most important, she says. She’s clearly gotten to him because he tries feebly to explain himself, then blurts out that he made up the homeless serial killer. His meandering explanation of this indefensible act mentions his uncontrollable anger, the good it’s doing in diverting resources to other departments, etc. “How dare you?” asks Beadie. “This is my life too.” McNulty stammers, “You start to tell the story, you think you’re the hero; and then when you get done talking, you—” and he’s cut off by Beadie, who has gone inside and slammed the door.

The show’s final scene is a bit cryptic, but I think what happened is this: someone in the morgue notices that the ID tags on Omar’s body and that of an older white man who died have been mixed up, and corrects the error. Omar Little’s body bag is zipped up, and that chapter of “Wire” history is closed, or seemingly so.

It may have been deliberate, but when Beadie asked McNulty who would come to his wake, that question lingered with me when I was watching Omar be zipped into the body bag in the morgue. Who will come to his funeral? Butchie and Donnie are dead, having been killed by Marlo’s crew. Reynaldo? It’s not clear where he is. Who else does he have? I’d say it’s a sure bet that Bunk will be there, and it’s bound to be a poignant scene.

The previews for Episode 59 look pretty intense, and everything’s coming to a head. Does Michael commit a murder? Is that Marlo in the box?

Speaking of speculation—which I’ll engage in more fully before the final episode—I recall hearing at some point during production that there was a police funeral near the end of the season, perhaps in the last episode. (If anyone else recalls hearing that, let me know.) I’ve been wondering who that could be—McNulty, particularly given what Beadie said to him about his wake? Bunk, brought down somehow mistakenly by McNulty’s bullshit case, and McNulty has to live with that? Kima, same thing?

I can’t wait for the final two episodes…

END OF EPISODE 58 NOTES

Monsoon's "The Wire" notes and analysis for Episode 57

“The Wire” notes and analysis – episode 57, “Took”

Please note that this episode is available only at HBO On Demand and has not yet aired; it will premiere on HBO on Sunday, February 16th. Also be forewarned that as “The Wire” contains adult language and themes, my post will reflect these elements; reader discretion is advised.

Finally, this post contains spoilers about episode 57; please do not read further if you have not yet seen it and do not want details about this episode.

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This episode (Tagline: “They don’t teach it in law school.” – Pearlman) was directed ably by Dominic West and features a few surprises and even a rare “Wire” throwaway cameo, but mainly bridges previous and future episodes, building suspense for the final three installments of the series.

Episode 57 opens with Lester connecting some wires and whispering conspiratorially with McNulty. It soon becomes clear that McNulty, with the help of voice modulation equipment, is poised to place his first call to Scott Templeton at The Sun from the “serial killer.” McNulty delivers a rambling statement (he’s been admonished by Lester to “stick to the script”; I can only imagine the twisted fun the two of them had coming up with it) about biting and the like to a flummoxed Scott, who bumbles through the office in search of witnesses and guidance. (After all, this is the first actual call he’s gotten from the “killer.”) A picture message is then sent through of the old homeless man (his real name is Lawrence Butler, I believe), with a red ribbon tied around his wrist.

In the ensuing meeting, Scott is genuinely shaken by the call he’s received—real life tends to be jarring when it intrudes upon our carefully crafted and maintained fantasies—as he is briefed on what to do next. “Oh Christ, that was … that was him,” he stammers, and hastily adds, “again.”

Meantime out by Pier 5, Sydnor stands with the cell phone that actually placed the call, rerouted through Lester’s sham wiretap in a manner I do not even fully comprehend. Soon police have converged on the area after the signal is traced, confiscated cell phones and demanding cooperation of folks enjoying a leisurely afternoon on the waterfront. The camera pans back to reveal that a helicopter and a boat have also joined the hunt for the killer. It’s a brilliant shot—unusual for “The Wire,” which typically focuses on the minutae and leaves us to construct the broader picture in our own heads—and underscores the scope of the fraud that’s been perpetrated by McNulty. The media, the mayor’s office, the police have all been taken—or, in the colloquial construction of the episode’s title, “took”—by an elaborate ruse that’s by now spiraling out of control.

A great McNulty moment happens when Landsman and the detective who was present when the call came through, along with some six or seven others, are having an animated discussion about what to do next. A supposedly unknowing McNulty looks wide-eyed at the flurry of activity and asks, “Hey—what’d I miss?”

The Clay Davis fiasco turns in another brilliant bit of guest casting when Clay goes to see Billy Murphy, the prominent and controversial Baltimore criminal defense attorney who has been referred to as “Johnny Cochran east” by admirers and detractors. He’s well-known for successfully defending boxing promoter Don King in a Federal fraud trial and winning multimillion-dollar verdicts for (frequently African American) clients suing the likes of Wachovia. More recently he sued the city of Baltimore on behalf of an African American man who was paralyzed while in police custody when his head was slammed into a wall, winning the largest police brutality verdict—$44 million—in American history.

In the “Wire” universe, Clay is begging Murphy to represent him. Murphy insists on a $200K fee and, well knowing his new client’s slippery reputation, warns Clay, “Don’t fuck me.” Clay opines that for all the front-page coverage Murphy’s firm will get should make him jump at the chance to represent Clay: “For all that profile, sheeeit partner, you should be payin’ me.”

Back in the conference room of the newspaper, McNulty is there again, this time meeting with Whiting, Klebanow, Gus, the publisher, and Scott Templeton. McNulty asks Scott, “Was it the same voice as before?” Scott replies, “Oh, right – yeah. No, actually. I mean yeah, it was the same, but this time I noticed he had a real thick Balmore accent—real thick.” Gus looks sidelong at Scott, seeming to note how odd it is that Scott, who was relatively blasé about his first contact with the killer, seems shaken to his core by this, supposedly the second contact. Klebanow wants to run the photo sent by the “killer,” which plays right into McNulty’s game. Before he leaves, Jimmy tries to reassure Scott: “I wouldn’t worry—he’s just using you. He needs you.” Scott says, “I kinda resent that, actually.” McNulty takes a subtle, winking jab at the cookery in which he knows the self-aggrandizing Scott has been engaging: “I don’t know – it’s workin’ out pretty well for both of you, right?”

Omar makes several appearances in this episode, some with his crutch, and some without. In his first “appearance,” he doesn’t actually appear, but two of Marlo’s soldiers stumble upon Manny and Vince in the stash house. Manny seems to have been killed, but Vince (I think that was the name I heard; I think he’s from the rims shop) was merely tied up and given another message to relay to Marlo: That Omar will not rest until he successfully calls out Marlo to the streets. Omar also flushes lots of the product (was it four kilos?) down the toilet to punctuate the notion that it’s not about money anymore.

Carcetti is busy making fundraising calls for his gubernatorial campaign and seems to be raising record cash. Soon Norman rains on his parade by informing him of the call that came in to The Sun from the purported serial killer; Carcetti springs into action, determined not to let the opportunity embodied in this story pass him by.

Judge Phelan authorizes the additional computers so picture messages can be tapped, and so McNulty’s charade rolls on.

As the mayor gets involved, it quickly becomes clear that it’s a full “red ball”—Balwmer police lingo for a top priority case that has everyone available working on it. Bunk refuses Landsman’s order to go meet with Daniels about the case, and his rage about McNulty’s shenanigans is close to boiling, as it does a bit toward his boss. I’m beginning to see the possibility of Bunk reaching a point at which he must “blow the whistle” on what Jimmy and Lester are doing. Later, while Lester and McNulty are discussing the case and Bunk learns that Kima has again been pulled off her triple murder, he hisses, “Shame on y’all, I mean it.”

The ensuing scenes are fascinating in the way that they are intercut: Daniels addresses 15-20 Homicide detectives and other officers while Gus Haynes addresses some 12 to 15 reporters in the newsroom. Gus says that Alma will stay with the investigation and that Scott should not “go home before checking for updates before the e-dot and double-dot editions.” (These are the next-to-last and final editions, as noted in an earlier post discussing Episode 51.) In additon to Alma and Scott, Mike Olesker will be writing a column on the case, Fletch will be in charge of homeless react (reaction quotes and reporting from the homeless regarding the case) as well as “interviewing advocates and experts talking up the problem.” Melody is to get “on the phone with the white coats at Clifton T. Perkins or some place” for a sidebar about “why a wack job would kill people” and then talk to a reporter about it. Perkins is a mental hospital outside Baltimore. A sidebar is a smaller article that accompanies a larger piece and explains some aspect of the topic, providing context or elaboration where needed. For example, an article about a man who was killed after being stung 100 times by bees might well feature a sidebar about beesting allergies, how common they are, and how they work.

As for Scott, Gus acknowledges that he’s “in the middle of this” because the killer is contacting him, and Alma will be interviewing Scott for a separate piece. As such, Scott’s article will necessarily be in the first person (i.e., using words like “I,” “me,” and “my” that would typically be absent from a straight news piece). Gus concludes by emphasizing that the reporters “need to be on the street” and that doing reporting by phone “won’t cut it.” “For once I am assured that they resources we need to work this story will be there for us. So let’s surround this mess and report the hell out of it.” Scott remarks to Alma as they scramble to work, “This one’s got legs.”

Daniels in the squad room is echoing what Gus says in a typically self-conscious “Wire”-ish attempt at parallelism: they need to be out on the streets, canvassing; McNulty will be heading things up and choosing staff; keep the media as part of the equation; and investigate thoroughly to make sure it’s not a hoax (at which point McNulty looks around nervously). He ends with a statement that, according to the mayor, there will be “no overtime restrictions or staffing limits on this.” Kima remarks to McNulty as they’re dismissed, “Police work – whaddaya know?” The key here with both settings is that this single case is galvanizing the institutions that had been falling apart, cutting back, and making excuses. The dramatic irony (which occurs in the theater when the audience has information certain characters do not) is that this is all being brought about thanks to the prevarications and manipulations of two men, primarily: Jimmy McNulty and Scott Templeton.

Duquan has seemingly given up trying to fit in on the corners and is scouring the classified section of The Sun for jobs, only half-jokingly. Carver swings by to pick up Michael Lee, who is delivered to Bunk for questioning in the murder of Michael’s stepfather. Bunk ushers Michael in to the first interrogation room and shows him photos of his stepfather’s badly beaten face, which we know was carried out in a blind rage by Chris (with Snoop looking on, mystified). Michael is stoic, though, and refuses to give Bunk anything useful.

Next we see Kima arriving at the home of one of the “murder” victims, outisde of which broadcast media outlets are set up. “Vultures,” she mutters. Inside, Kima conducts one of many interviews with the parents of the “murder” victims. They had let their son go because of his persistent problems, but were horrified to learn what had happened to him. Later in the program, Kima returns to the office exhausted and demoralized after having completed interviews with all of the families of the “murdered” homeless men. As she describes the turmoil these families are undergoing, these parents who have often been estranged from their troubled children, McNulty’s face reveals that he realizes what he’s done—despite all the “good” that has come from his charade, like fully funded policing, he’s inflicted needless harm on families who otherwise would have learned the truth about their loved ones’ deaths. His actions, though unintentional, were careless, and the burden of that is clearly beginning to weigh heavily on him. Based on the previews of Episode 58, it seems that McNulty may ultimately be forced to bring Kima in on his charade—I wonder how Kima will react to all that?

Fletch (full name Mike Fletcher, played by Brandon Young) is reviewing his piece with Gus and acknowledges that there’s a formulaic quality to it: “anecdotal lead, nut graph, desk quote.” An anecdotal lead is often used in a complex feature article as a way to lure the reader in. It shares a brief story, personalizing the issue, then gets into the “meat” of the story by presenting the nut graph or a sentence or two containing the main idea. In a “hard news” piece the nut graph and lead are often one and the same, but anecdotal leads are used as alternatives to this formula. I’m not sure about “desk quote”; I might have heard him wrong…

Gus urges Fletch, a young, eager reporter he has clearly taken under his wing, to spend time with his topic without always looking for quotes or anecdotes. “Sometimes the weakest stuff in a story is the shit with quotation marks around it.” He wants Fletch to learn to “tell the story in moments” and get to the essence of the subject. “I’m not interested in what can be quoted … I’m interested in what feels true.” Meanwhile Alma’s produced 30 column-inches and Scott, who tells Gus he’ll have his copy ready in five mintes, is warned of the approaching first-edition deadline and adjusts the time frame to three. The newsroom is humming, people are working on a story with “legs,” and Gus is clearly invigorated by all this activity.

Soon, though, Gus seems deflated by the extent to which Scott seems intent on placing himself at the center of the story—and the extent to which Klebanow and Whiting seem to be congenitally unable to find fault with anything Scott turns in. “First person is one thing,” Gus concedes as he scans Templeton’s copy, but he’s bothered by Scott’s implication that he’s “sharing the darkest corners with [the homeless].” Whiting corrects Gus that “he’s writing more as an essayist.” This signals a dangerous blurring of the lines in journalism—is he a reporter, a columnist, a memoirist, or what? Though it hasn’t been mentioned, sales of The Sun have to be experiencing a significant jump since the homeless serial killer story broke, and Whiting giddily allows his star reporter—now nationally known—to shine as brightly as he cares to.

“We’ve got a column from Olesker,” Gus insists, that will be on the front page of the Metro section. “It’s pretty powerful without being purple.” Purple prose is writing that is overly sentimental or manipulative in its use of pathos or flowery language. The implied contrast he’s drawing here is that Scott’s piece is, in fact, purple. “But this stuff that Scott’s written … makes it sound like he’s been living with the homeless for weeks,” when in reality he spent an evening talking to them, and an afternoon at a soup kitchen, Gus notes. “It ain’t exactly Studs Terkel,” he remarks dryly. Studs Terkel, of course, is the broadcaster and folk historian who is most readily associated with his work in compiling massive, sprawling oral histories by exhaustively interviewing people who had experienced the Great Depression.

Gus’s problem with Scott’s article is that the reporter is too much in it, implying that he’s been pounding the volatile streets of Baltimore mining for these stories. “This is my city,” Gus insists, “not Beirut,” referring to the war-torn capital of Lebanon. Klebanow says he “respects” Gus’s opinions—when your boss tells you that, he’s about to overrule you—and says he’ll take personal responsibility for editing it. He’s going to run it “as is.”

Later, when Gus sees Scott’s piece in the paper, he is utterly disaffected. The article, featured on the front page above the fold, is headlined “To walk among them…” and has a subhead of “The street odyssey of the reporter who has provoked the rage of a serial killer.” It’s accompanied by a picture of Scott. The phrasing here—“among them”—is particularly demeaning, insinuating that “we” (the comfortable readers of The Sun) and “them” (the homeless) might as well be two different species. Gus tosses the paper in the trash.

Next we see Daniels and Pearlman at home; Rhonda is going over the Clay Davis case file to make sure she can support the state’s attorney, Rupert Bond (Dion Graham) in court. It’s a brief scene, but it’s nice to see that the two of them are still together, and apparently happy; it also shows us the extent to which Rhonda takes here job home with her—literally.

At the trial, it’s evident from the start that it’s going to be a circus. Clay steps out of his car with Billy Murphy in tow. Bill Zorzi from The Sun is covering the trial and spots a book in Clay’s hand. He asks, “What are you reading, Senator?” and touches off a response that I think is one of the funniest scenes ever on the show. Clay, who is conspicuously holding the book Prometheus Bound (that’s pronounced pro-ME-thee-us) written by Greek dramatist Aeschylus (that’s ESS-ke-lus) about 2500 years ago, replies that he’s reading Promathis Bound (as he pronounces it) and explains, “This book by Asillyus is about a simple man horrifically punished by the powers that be for the terrible crime of trying to bring light to the common people. I cannot tell you how much consolation I find in these slim pages.” Clay finally pronounces the moral of the tale to be—as if he’s quoting directly from the text—“No good deed goes unpunished.” Clearly this would depend on the perspective, and an oversimplification of the moral here. (This martyrish statement, by the way, is attributed to twentieth-century politician and socialite Clare Booth Luce.) Zorzi looks on, amused.

Prometheus was a titan, and an exceedingly clever deity who, in Aeschylus’ version of the tale, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. Zeus, who had forbidden that humans be given fire, chained Prometheus to the rocks as a result of what the titan had done. Though he knew well what he was doing was a transgression, he argues strongly that this punishment is excessive considering the crime. The implication here is clear: Clay Davis was simply taking money from the wealthy and distributing it to his people, and he’s being persecuted for it. This line of thinking clearly informed their defense as well.

McNulty is anxiously talking with Lester in the illegal wiretap room again, fretting about how unwieldy the case has become. Other homicide detectives have gotten wind that McNulty’s case has brought in a windfall of manpower, resources, and overtime—more than he could possibly use for the homeless case. At first, Jimmy is pleased to share the wealth and help detectives bring in real cases; soon, though, the demands wear on him and he begins to resent it. “This thing’s bigger’n I ever thought it would be,” McNulty laments, then implores Lester, “Get me out of this, Lester. As fast as you can.” The first message Lester intercepts from Marlo’s phone is a picture of an analog clock set to 5:50. He sends Sydnor out to observe Monk’s movements at that time, but comes up with nothing. Later in Episode 57, Lester is seen with an array of pictures taken from Marlo’s cell—all analog clocks set to varying times. Lester is determined to crack the code, but the image symbolically stresses the fact that the little ruse he and McNulty have been enacting is quickly running out of time—and they may be running out of luck.

Back to Fletch, who is visiting the soup kitchen where Bubs works, just as Scott did. Bubs strikes up a conversation with the young reporter and seems genuinely interested in helping him. It was thrilling when he introduced himself to Fletch—like two pieces of the puzzle just fit together, and the outcome can only be good. After Bubs takes Fletch to talk with some homeless folks he knows, Fletch offers to pay Bubs for his help, but Bubs refuses. “It ain’t about that. Just … write it like it feels.” Meant to echo Gus’s advice (“what feels true”), Bubs’ guidance here is both gentle and prodding, and the viewer is left with a strong sense of hope that Fletch is becoming the kind of reporter the entire community can be proud of.

At a local bar, we’re treated to a cameo by Munch (Richard Belzer), who has now played the character in eight different television series since originating on “Homicide: Life on the Street.” As amusing as it was to see Munch chastising the bartender and talking about how he used to own a bar, it also kind of shatters the “Wire” illusion: the show is such a hermetic little universe that a throwaway cameo endangers its mystique.

The real reason for the scene is Gus’s chat with Mello (he’s Carver’s boss, Lieutenant Dennis Mello, played by the “real” Jay Landsman) as Gus begins to unravel Scott’s lies.

Toward the end of the episode, Omar sends another series of messages, this time stronger. First he limps up to Savino (Chris Clanton) who is one of Marlo’s “muscle,” and has a brief but vital conversation with him. Savino, whom Omar recalls from Savino’s days with the Barksdale organization, assures Omar that he wasn’t there when Butchie was killed, but Omar asks him what he would have done if he had been there. When he hesitates, Omar—who had been simply planning to send another message for Marlo—decides to pop Savino. It seems Omar is becoming more reckless in “calling out” Marlo.

In his final Episode 57 scene, Omar hobbles (this time using a crutch) up to Michael’s corner and plants his gun in the nape of Michael’s neck. It’s striking that Omar still induces fear even when clearly debilitated by a severe injury from his fall. His message this time is, “I’ma drop all his muscle” and that he wants to confront Marlo one-on-one, which Marlo is unlikely to allow to happen. (It’s also worth noting that “Ayo,” a Baltimore house tune by Bossman that appears on the “Wire” soundtrack CD, plays in the background in this scene.) When Omar leaves, Michael is relieved that Omar did not recognize him from the apartment shootout; otherwise, Michael may have been his next victim. Kennard, the little, foul-mouthed hopper, though, is unimpressed by the mythical Omar. “That’s Omar?” he asks incredulously (but quietly) as Omar approaches Michael. As Omar walks away, Kennard derisively observes to the others—still clearly shaken by Omar’s visit—that Omar is “gimpy as a mu’fucker.”

But the real surprise of the show, and one I didn’t necessarily see coming, is the trial of Clay Davis. I should have known something was awry when Lester testified about Clay’s transactions on the stand but Murphy declined to cross-examine him. When Clay gets on the stand, he is a virtuoso, portraying himself as a community hero, a man of the people. The money he gets from a variety of sources goes to individuals in the community who need help with everyday expenses, he insists, and it’s impossible to account accurately for all that. He says that when he leaves his office with cash, by the time he’s made it through the neighborhoods he represents, his pockets are empty (which he illustrates by standing up and turning them inside out, causing a minor uproar). At the end of his slippery testimony, Clay receives applause from those observing the trial in the courtroom, and is quickly acquitted by the jury on all charges. As a broadly smiling Clay emerges from the courthouse to address his loving supporters, Pearlman and Bond stand to the side, agape. Bond asks, shellshocked, “What the fuck just happened?” Pearlman’s reply—for she seems far more savvy than he, but still surprised—provides the show’s tagline: “Whatever it was, they don’t teach it in law school.”

The very next scene is Gus in the newsroom gleefully sending the article he’s copyedited—presumably Zorzi’s—to the desk: “45 inches of Clay Davis playing not just the race card but the whole deck, coming atcha!” Gus sees things for what the truly are and seems less and less able to be surprised. A female reporter (or is she a copyeditor?) comes by his desk to commiserate on Scott’s above-the-fold article. Gus laments, “I understand the hype, but I just can’t trust the guy” and she wonders if Scott is manipulating his information to “make a story better than it ought to be.” Gus can’t shake the feeling that Scott’s article about the African American kid sitting outside Camden Yards in a wheelchair just doesn’t add up—he’s a fan of baseball, not basketball; he only gave a nickname. But Gus insists, and I believe, that “I don’t want to call another reporter a liar. … I really don’t.” Gus still views himself as a reporter and has the utmost loyalty for those who ply his trade, even when he suspects they’re unethical. When considering the previews of Episode 58, in which Scott’s article about the homeless former Marine seems to fall under scrutiny, it seems obvious that things are heating up for the serial fabricator.

This frenetically paced episode concludes with a touching and reflective scene in which Kima holds Elijah, who can’t sleep. “Let’s say goodnight,” she says as the look out the window. The lazy litany begins much as Margaret Wise Brown’s classic children’s book, but quickly takes a turn that makes it both more poignant and more authentic:

Goodnight moon…

Goodnight stars…

[a squad car, sirens blazing, drives by]

Goodnight po-pos…

Goodnight fiends…

Goodnight hoppers…

Goodnight hustlers…

Goodnight scammers…

Goodnight to everybody…

Goodnight to one and all…

END OF EPISODE 57 NOTES

Monsoon Martin's "The Wire" Episode 56 notes and analysis

“The Wire” notes and analysis – Episode 56, “The Dickensian Aspect”

Please note that this episode is available only at HBO On Demand and has not yet aired; it will premiere on HBO on Sunday, February 9th. Also be forewarned that as “The Wire” contains adult language and themes, my post will reflect these elements; reader discretion is advised.

Finally, this post contains spoilers about episode 56; please do not read further if you have not yet seen it and do not want details about this episode.

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The episode (tagline: “If you have a problem with this, I completely understand.” – Freamon) opens with someone from the Medical Examiner’s office carrying a body away from the apartment building where the shootout in the last episode took place. For a fraction of a second my heart sank because I thought it may have been Omar, but then I realized it was more likely Butchie’s friend Donnie, who had been killed in the shootout. This becomes even clearer as both Chris and Snoop hunt all over the city for Omar—Snoop visits every ER in the city, figuring Omar must have injured himself and sought care at a hospital, but comes up with nothing. Nothing is found in the Dumpsters or sewers in the area, either. There’s even a besuited young man whom I don’t recognize posing as a detective and asking questions, who also comes up empty. Omar seems to have quite literally vanished.

Chris reluctantly goes back to Monk’s apartment building to meet Marlo, who is incredulous not only that they let Omar get away, but the manner in which he did so: “Don’t seem possible … some Spiderman shit there.” On closer inspection it seems Omar jumped from the 5th or 6th floor balcony (I had guessed 3rd floor in last week’s post). Marlo also has a sense of the enormity of their failure, and shows real exasperation and perhaps even worry for the first time I can remember in the series: “We missed our shot. Now he gon’ be at us.”

In the first scene after the credits we see Omar in a janitor’s closet, sobbing in pain as he tries to tend to his right ankle or leg, which seems to have been badly broken in the leap from the window. As he uses a long-handled mop as a crutch and makes his way out of the janitor’s closet and outside the building, we realize he was in Monk’s apartment building the whole time. It’s difficult to imagine how Chris and Snoop could have been so hyperopic that they would have searched all over the city for Omar and missed the fact that he had dragged himself back inside the building.

Bunk, who is reexamining the 22 bodies case (now 25, given that the triple-murder from earlier this season has now been linked to Marlo’s crew), utters a line to McNulty a line that he’s said at least three times before, in a variety of situations (it even appears as a dialogue clip on the Wire soundtrack CD): “You happy now, bitch?” McNulty replies, “I am content, yes.” Bunk guesses that Jimmy has called the reporter, but Jimmy corrects him: “No, actually – that asshole’s making up his own shit.” This is the first time we get confirmation that McNulty realizes Templeton is cooking his stories.

Cut to The Sun, where Executive Editor Whiting and Managing Editor Klebanow are thrilled with the ongoing homeless murder pieces by Scott Templeton. Scott is busy admiring his all-caps, banner headline appearing above the fold, “SERIAL KILLER PREYS ON CITY HOMELESS,” when his bosses come up to give him an “atta boy” and ask about where he’ll be taking the story. Scott’s idea is to spend the night with the homeless and “see what they see.” Klebanow also notes that the national news and cable outlets have been calling to try and secure comments and appearances from the star reporter; Klebanow advises Scott to avoid local media but that he should feel free to make national media appearances “in a responsible manner.” Scott, who cannot possibly mean what he says, says, “I’m just not all that comfortable having myself in the center of the story like this.”

This bit of unmitigated bullshit, given his fabrications, is all the more incredible since we know Scott has a “hot nut” to get out of Baltimore and secure a more prestigious job. I have an updated prediction for the end of the season: Scott’s fabrications will become obvious to only a few at the paper (Gus, for sure, and Alma and Fletch, perhaps) but he’ll receive such accolades from his series on the homeless murders that his bosses will remain oblivious—or in denial. Templeton will land a job at The Washington Post will Gus and the rest of the staff are left to pick up the pieces.

Soon thereafter, Whiting pulls Gus aside and lets it be known that the coverage of the homeless murders should “reflect the Dickensian aspect of the homeless, the human element.” The look on Gus’s face says it all—he is tired of the buzzwords, tired of the paper being run by people who wouldn’t know real news if it was sitting on their faces.

The story moves to Lester and Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson), who were on the Stanfield case. Lester is preparing to tell Sydnor about the deceptions that are being orchestrated in the name of securing wiretaps. The cynical opening of Lester’s speech prompts Sydnor to ask if Lester’s going to retire, but he assures Sydnor that he’s not retiring (“yet,” possibly a bit of foreshadowing). Lester says, “When they took us off Marlo this last time, said they couldn’t pay for further investigation, I regarded that decision as illegitimate.” As a result he’s going to press the case “without regard to the usual rules.” Lester has enough gravitas and experience to make such radical statements and still sound reasonable, and Clarke Peters has been doing an outstanding job in a role that has seen more focus this season than perhaps any other.

Lester comes clean on the illegal wiretap and uses the show’s tagline, “If you have a problem with this, I completely understand,” as a way to offer Sydnor a clean exit, but Sydnor is in.

In explaining the wiretap to Sydnor and later McNulty, Lester begins to unravel the import of the “silent” or seemingly scrambled phone calls: “When they talk is bullshit, but there are calls when no one says a thing,” which he later determines, with the help of surveillance, to be picture messages.

Bunk, who has found Randy Wagstaff’s (Maestro Harrell) name and photo in a file about one of last year’s murders, decides to pay a visit to Randy at a Baltimore group home and see if he can extract any new information or cooperation. He finds there a young boy who has ensconced himself within walls of sullenness, posturing, and anger. Randy, whose foster mother was killed in a fire set by those who suspected him of snitching, was lost the moment he walked into his group home and saw “snitch bitch” written on his bed, then desperately tried to fight off the beat-down that ensued. Randy refuses to be manipulated, coaxed, or coerced by Bunk, as he’s been failed by police before: “That’s what y’all do, ain’t it? Lie to dumb-ass niggas?” He’s been hardened utterly, and one wonders if it’s too late for him to be “saved.”

Carcetti, whose news conference opening a new, upscale harborside condo complex is attended by scant few—save for a disorderly Nick Sobotka (Pablo Schreiber), who shouts “Fuck you!” at the mayor and is quickly arrested—must now hold a press conference about the homeless murders. It’s not lost on Carcetti that this press conference if far more well attended than his earlier one, even drawing national media: “It would appear that media attention is always focusing on the negatives when it comes to Baltimore but you guys aren’t around when we’re making real progress.” The harbor story—which assuredly is good news for a few, but certainly not for the dock workers and many others—will now be buried in the Metro section because of the front-page homeless coverage.

Carcetti then delivers an impassioned and apparently impromptu speech that surprises even Norman. He notes that his administrative tenure will be judged most correctly by how the weakest and most vulnerable citizens are treated, and states that the killer will be found. Carcetti hands it over to Rawls, who quickly hands it over to Daniels, the commissioner-in-waiting. Daniels is smooth, composed, and confident: “a natural,” according to Rawls.

McNulty and Pearlman (who used to be an item, way back in season one, I believe) go to see Judge Phelan (Peter Gerety of “Homicide” fame) and get a wiretap on Scott Templeton’s phone. After noting that the reporter’s First Amendment rights might be violated by such an act, Phelan explains the reason for his hesitation in challenging The Sun: “Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrelful,” a long-held maxim that perhaps reflects a bygone era in newspapers in terms of primacy and might.

Back to The Bunk, who is being chastised by Kima for his tentativeness in handling the Medical Examiner’s office, who have still not provided lab analysis of the evidence in many of the vacant murders. “Well, what would the Bunk do? Take no for a fuckin’ answer?” Soon Bunk is down talking to Ron, who is spewing a litany of excuses and woes that led to the ongoing delays, including staff shortages, malfunctioning equipment, and much more. Bunk responds, “My heart pumps purple piss for you,” a marvelously alliterative rejoinder and an example of the colorful and delightful language that makes “The Wire” the gem it is. In truth, the Medical Examiner’s office is a shambles. A temporary worker (or “temp,” which I have been more than a few times in my life) has been hired to catalogue evidence and do paperwork. In a fantastic twist of fate and an example of the bureaucratic absurdities that often prevent even the most pedestrian of progress from being made, the temp didn’t understand the abbreviation “et al” (short for the Latin “et alia” plural meaning “and others”) and the evidence on the murders can no longer be differentiated. The budget crisis, along with mismanagement and good, old-fashioned human error have collaborated to create a five-alarm clusterfuck—and in encountering it, Bunk and Kima are exasperated, but sadly, not surprised.

At the co-op meeting, Joe’s chair stands empty, so Marlo takes it upon himself to address the group. He admits he is responsible for killing Prop Joe, thereby establishing himself as the de facto leader of the co-op—and as a target for anyone who is loyal to Joe and would dare come at him. Marlo also doubles the bounty on Omar: “100 large for a whiff of that dick-suck; 250 for his head.” And in this briefest of meetings, Marlo decides to suspend the meetings indefinitely—no big surprise since his intense dislike of them, and of the co-op in general, has been all too evident from the start. (As a man who would generally rather set my own head on fire than attend a meeting of any kind, I am right there with him.) “Anybody got a problem from here on out, bring it to me or sit on that shit.” He doesn’t want to manage anything but his own organization, and doesn’t want to hear about petty squabbles or turf battles. And finally—the price of the product is going up. So far, Marlo’s tenure in leading the co-op does not seem destined to be a popular one. With his attention distracted further by Omar, it seems likely that he’ll be brought down by the end of the season.

Back at the newsroom, the guys are watching Scott Templeton’s appearance on the CNN Headline News show “Nancy Grace.” The odious Grace guest-starring on “The Wire” is ironic and rather brilliant given the conversation among Lester, Bunk and Jimmy earlier in the season that yielded the tagline, “This ain’t Aruba, bitch.”

Her obsessive coverage of the Natalee Holloway case and sensationalistic style of “journalism” are a symptom of the problem of being dead “in the wrong zip code,” as Fletch put it earlier in the season. On the show, Grace calls Templeton the “Jimmy Breslin of Baltimore,” alluding to the Newsday columnist’s correspondences with the “Son of Sam” killer in the 1970s. Breslin once famously observed, “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

Templeton plays the ostensibly spotlight-shunning professional perfectly, insisting that “as a reporter you expect to be in harm’s way at some points. It’s what we do.” Gus, it should be noted, walks away from the television screen dejectedly, rejecting the attention that is being lathered on his reporter. Gus is fed up with the dropping of the Pulitzer-baiting schools piece, the undeserved celebrity of Templeton, and the erosion of journalistic standards. At some point, will he explode?

Meanwhile, McNulty and Lester are reaching an impasse in their fabricated serial killer case. “They need another body, don’t they?” McNulty asks, which is going to be more difficult than it seems. When Rhonda visits Lester in the former Stanfield investigation headquarters, Lester needs to usher her out quickly to protect his illegal wiretap. His comment that “you’d be surprised what you can get done when no one’s looking over your shoulder” is brilliantly offhand and captures one of the essential themes of “The Wire”: the near-futility of trying to escape the suffocation of bureaucracy to do important, vital work.

Omar spends much of the show’s last half sending strong messages to Marlo that he is not to be trifled with. He points a gun at Rick’s head and delivers the message that he doesn’t believe Marlo has it in him to go after Omar. Later, the still-limping Omar robs one of Marlo’s corners and demands the bag full of money—today’s haul. But instead of taking it—“it ain’t about the paper”—he dumps it in one of Marlo’s SUVs and torches the vehicle. Omar sends a similar message to the corner boy he has shot in the leg: tell Marlo “he ain’t man enough to come down to the street with Omar.” I am left wondering if it’s wise that Omar continues to bait Marlo in this manner. I almost can’t bear to think it, but it seems as though Omar has placed himself a path that can only lead to his destruction. (In the “Next on The Wire” montage: is that Omar sticking a gun into the back of Michael’s head to send another message to Marlo? Is that Michael in the “box”? Stay tuned!)

Bunk, having struck out with inscrutable Randy Wagstaff, is going to work the murder of Michael Lee’s stepfather, whom we know was brutally bludgeoned to death by Chris. He meets with Michael’s mother, who puts Bunk onto Michael, and reveals that Michael is running with Chris and Snoop now.

Carcetti, meanwhile, has found his core issue in homelessness; his impassioned speech at the press conference kicked it off, and it resonates in a potential gubernatorial campaign because of the current Republican governor’s failure to address homelessness. The irony here, of course, is that the entire issue is based upon a series of lies: McNulty’s fabricated homeless murders case, picked up by the serial fabricator Templeton, is now informing the mayor’s campaign strategy. “The bigger the lie, the more they’ll believe,” said Bunk in the opening scene of the first episode this season, and the theme is carrying through.

Back to the ongoing homeless murders story, which clearly has “legs,” or ongoing appeal, we find Scott wandering awkwardly under a bridge looking for the true “homeless experience,” running away from a charging German shepherd, and generally looking out of place. My feeling initially was that he’d simply go home and make the story up, but later we see him doing actual reporting, talking to a homeless Marine vet. The man describes the shell shock he still endures from his time served in Fallujah, Iraq; when his vehicle was hit by an IED (improvised explosive device) and the driver’s hands were blown off, the driver laughed and said, “look, ma, no hands!” He is clearly haunted by the experience and clearly knows the lingo and terminology of the armed forces, but because it’s Scott, I just expect it to be made up (by the interviewee, in this case) or otherwise hinky.

Once the story is filed (or submitted to by copyedited), some of the editors—including Gus, notably—are gushing over the piece. Gus calls Scott over and says, pointedly, that it “feels like the real deal” because he didn’t “overwrite” it. To overwrite is to write with too much elaboration, to use superfluous details, to employ too many adjectives; it’s a problem faced especially with younger journalists who are used to writing flowery English papers with meandering and sophisticated explications. Good journalistic writing is simple and direct but impactful—and hard as hell to do. Gus praises Scott’s use of “no extra color, no puffy adjectives” and his reliance instead on “tight, declarative sentences” to tell his story. “No extra color, no puffy adjectives” means that Scott doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time padding his story with unnecessary descriptions of setting and context. “Tight, declarative sentences” are sentences with very few clauses or commas that are designed to convey information or make direct statements. While most of my sentences here are declarative—as it is by far the most common type of sentence—most of them would not be described as “tight,” since they contain myriad clauses, em dashes (the double dashes that crop up frequently in my writing), commas, and ornate, copious adjectives.

Speaking of Scott, he is questioned by Gus about a piece he wrote a few weeks earlier about a woman who died due to a seafood allergy; Fletch had been told something by a community member that called the facts of his article into question. A bit later, when pressed on the matter by Gus, Scott insists he made some calls and confirmed that his article was sound—but Gus seems to remain unconvinced.

By the end of the episode, McNulty and Lester seem to have reached another level of depravity in their fabricated serial killer case: they’ve kidnapped a disabled homeless man, whom they’re calling “Donald,” but whose name may or may not be Donald, and stowing him in a D.C. shelter. It’s very confusing and very troubling, and seems certain to land one or both of them in serious trouble. The plan, it would seem, is to take cell-phone pictures of the homeless man, bound and with a ribbon on his wrist, and send them to Templeton, who will think they are from the killer. Once a warrant is approved to surveil and/or decode cell-phone picture messages, Lester will use this illicitly to crack or access Marlo’s picture messages. Judging from the scene shown in “Next week on The Wire,” in which McNulty says to Lester, “Get me out of this, Lester, as fast as you can,” it’s all going to go horribly wrong.

There’s an interesting scene near the end that was almost brief enough to overlook, but which seems destined to have serious repercussions in the final four episodes. Assistant state’s attorney Rhonda Pearlman visits the state’s attorney (Rupert Bond) and presents him with sealed affidavits taken from the desk of Prop Joe; Rhonda had gotten them from her boyfriend Daniels, who had gotten them, I believe, from Bunk. “We have a leak,” she said.

Over all it was an exciting episode, and one that makes me feel both a sense of anticipation and one of impending loss for the final four episodes of the series.

END OF EPISODE 56 NOTES

Monsoon's "The Wire" Notes - Episode 54

“The Wire” Episode 54 – TRANSITIONS

Notes and observations

Please be advised that this episode of “The Wire” is available only HBO On Demand and will not air on HBO until Sunday, January 27^th at 9pm. The material below includes spoilers, so please do not read further if you do not want to know what happens in episode 54.

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Episode 54 (tagline: “Buyer’s market out there” – Templeton) is one of those Wire episodes that is more about setting up explosive scenarios than actually depicting explosive action. (Though the ending is certainly haunting and startling.)

It begins with Tony Colicchio (Benjamin Busch) and another narcotics detective staking out a corner observing a young boy openly placing a lunch bag under a stoop, which they assume is filled with drugs for sale. They roll up and make everyone present get up against the wall. Soon Tony (the hot-headed police with the faux-military jackbooted flat-top) retrieves the paper back and sticks his hand inside, only to find that there is actually feces inside, and he has been the butt of a childish prank. In his anger and embarrassment, Tony begins slamming the boys against the police van and wantonly arresting them for little apparent reason. Soon Carver arrives and questions why it is necessary to block traffic in all directions with this police action. Just then an African American motorist asks insistently—but politely—that one of the police cruisers be moved so he can get where he’s going. Tony attacks the motorist, pulling him halfway out of his driver’s side window, before being restrained by several other officers. Most troublingly, I was not surprised by such openly unethical and racist conduct.

Later in the show, Carver tries to coach Tony on how to write up the report and informs Tony that he had been beating on a teacher who was trying to get to an after-school program. When Tony asks why the teacher hadn’t said that, Carver snaps back, “He didn’t have a chance.” Tony’s anger again boils to the surface when he says of the teacher, and the idea of writing a report explaining his actions, “Fuck his ignorant ass.” It’s difficult to think of a more poignantly ironic statement in the history of the show—an African American teacher trying to get to an after-school program is beaten by an unhinged cop, but the teacher is the ignorant one.

As a result of his actions and lack of contrition, Carver informs Tony he’s going to write him up for “excessive force” and “conduct unbecoming.” Toward the end of the show, Herc comes by to have a beer with Carver in the squad lot and tries to intervene on Tony’s behalf. Herc—who is predictably friends with Tony—tells Carver that Tony is facing suspension and all but asks Carver to reconsider. Carver then tells Herc about the situation involving Randy from last season, when Herc was supposed to deliver him the boy as a witness, with tragic consequences. Carver sums up how dramatically different his and Herc’s paths have diverged by saying, “It all matters. I know we thought it didn’t, but … it does.”

On to the newsroom, where Scott Templeton is discussing with Alma whether he should take the “Preakness piece” or the one about a firefighter’s death to his interview with the Washington Post. While Templeton is focused on his interview, Alma is excited by rumors she has heard that Mayor Carcetti will be firing Burrell today. Again a contrast is evident here: Scott is dedicated to furthering his own career, while Alma is focusing on doing good journalism.

Since the show is constantly being compared to a novel, I’ll apply a literary term here: foil. Foils are characters that are opposite in nature, and whose contrasting characteristics highlight these traits in one another. An example from the literature I teach is in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: while Hamlet is pensive and unwilling to take action—he thinks but does not act—Laertes is hot-headed and rash—he acts before he thinks. Laertes’ impetuousness serves to underscore Hamlet’s lack of action, and vice versa. Foils in “The Wire” off the top of my head include Carver and Herc (one dedicated and responsible, one not); Scott and Alma (one a career-focused fabricator, the other an eager and passionate journalist); Gus and Whiting (one of whom yearns for the days when journalists were allowed to do their jobs, the other a corporate automaton with his head up his arse); the examples are many. The idea with foils is not that one character is all good and the other all bad, but simply that there is some aspect of their behaviors and natures that provide a striking contrast. This topic might be an interesting one to parse further on the message board.

Templeton’s interview at the Washington Post is a disaster. In it, we learn that he started out at the Wichita Eagle, then went to the Kansas City Star for three years, and has been at The Sun for two years. The interviewer (I’m unsure of his position at the paper) says of his feature article, “Your feature work is a little raw, language-wise,” meaning that Scott’s writing is too colorful, peppered with colloquialisms and flowery adjectives. Scott says that his editors encouraged him to write that way, but that “I prefer to write it dry,” meaning just the facts, with plain prose. We know this to be utterly false, of course; not only does Scott like to write florid prose (referring to Oriole Park at Camden Yards as a “Colosseum”) but that he also likes to invent quotations and perhaps even people altogether. Scott also shoots himself in the foot when the interviewer notes that “The Sun’s a fine paper” and Scott replies, “Before the cutbacks, maybe,” after which the interviewer notes that The Post is still scooped by The Sun on occasion. Bashing one’s current employer is unattractive in interviews—and seriously diminishes his own value: if he works at what he thinks is a shitty rag, what kind of experience will he bring to us? Scott is told his résumé will be kept on file and sent briskly on his way. (When Alma later asks him how the interview went, he delivers the episode’s tagline: “Buyer’s market out there” and adds, somewhat unconvincingly, that “The Sun’s not so bad.”)

In the ensuing newsroom scene, one of the reporter’s chairs has an “I’m union and proud!” sticker on the back, which was a nice touch. It’s the attention to detail, as always, that makes this show what it is. (The “Fill-It-In” puzzle books on Prop Joe’s table later in the episode are another one of these seemingly throwaway touches that enhance the show’s naturalism.) Alma and another reporter are struggling to get comments or confirmation (even off the record) from police and government sources about the commissioner’s imminent firing, again underscoring the value of veteran reporters and their well-cultivated sources. Twigg, who is packing up his desk on his last day, gives the younger reporters a “gift” by placing a call to one of his sources (was it Stan Valchek?) as the e-dot deadline approaches.

At Carcetti’s “grip and grin” press conference, with Burrell and Daniels standing behind him, the mayor pays bureaucratic, politically prudent tribute to Burrell on his “retirement” while Gus, watching in the newsroom on television with a group of other reporters, “translates,” giving up the true meaning behind Carcetti’s pedestrian statements: “He feared and hated me, and I merely wanted him dead,” which sounds like Gus is quoting someone, but I can’t figure out who. When Carcetti talks about Burrell’s having played a role in “making Baltimore a safer city,” Gus quips, “don’t stray from the Inner Harbor,” and finishes off Carcetti’s speech with “It took a while, but I finally put his ass out to pasture.” When the mayor presents a plaque to Burrell at the end of the news conference, Gus says, “Plaques for hacks – prerogative of any big city mayor.” Gus Haynes is every bit the world-weary cynic, and Clark Johnson plays him with aplomb.

Soon, Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow, who has observed the tail end of Gus’s remarks, asks where the paper is with the story. Gus tells him that Twigg was the one who could “work department sources” and that a “veteran in the cop shop is what gets us over on a story like this” but, he adds sarcastically, “fuck if we didn’t buy ours out.” Klebanow’s response, which manages to be condescending while seeking to defuse the employee’s anger, will be familiar to anyone who has dealt with a hard-headed, perpetually-missing-the-point member of middle management: “I understand you’re disappointed with the cutbacks, but civility is important. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your profanity. … A collegial atmosphere is essential.”

Immediately thereafter, the local news shows Clay Davis’ “perp walk,” orchestrated by the state’s attorney, leaving his Grand Jury testimony. (His comments to the assembled television reporters are vintage, oily Clay Davis, who composes himself quickly after being badly shaken when Rhonda reveals some of the evidence they hold against him.) Gus is dismayed to see a story on TV that his own paper has missed completely. When he calls over Bill Zorzi, who covers the Federal courts for The Sun, Zorzi reminds Gus that the paper no longer has daily city court coverage. Zorzi tells Gus facetiously that he’d be happy to take on the city courthouse coverage as well. “In fact,” he generously offers, “why don’t you just stick a broom up my ass and I’ll sweep the floor while I’m at it?” Great line, oft-repeated, can’t find its origin for the life of me.

Scott’s going to help Zorzi run down the Clay Davis story and play “catch up.” Gus closes the scene by lamenting the fact that when the state’s attorney leaked the fact that Clay Davis would be leaving his Grand Jury testimony (“setting up a perp walk”), the newspaper did not get a phone call. “All they care about is the video,” he grumbles.

The next newsroom scene is in the tradition of the “evacuate” scene in episode 51, and is one of the reasons I’m loving this season, as someone familiar with the journalistic profession, as an English teacher, and as a lover of language. A copy editor asks Gus to take a look at the “fifth graph” (paragraph) of Alma’s article about Burrell. It reads, “The mayor, incensed by the commissioner’s performance,…” Jay reads the copy and says “to incense is to inflame with wrath; it speaks to obsession. Is that the mayor’s state of mind?” Jay suggests they use “galled, vexed, annoyed—safer still, displeased.” This sort of back-and-forth banter and debate was more common in newsrooms of old, but is increasingly rare at today’s understaffed, overworked newspapers with high turnover. Gus admiringly says to Jay, “You’d take the crab out of crab soup,” by which I think he means that he’d cut anything unnecessary or errantly cited.

Gus also gives Scott a rare “atta boy” for his work on the Clay Davis piece, which is not likely to be his choice of words when it comes out that Scott has been cooking his articles.

(A possible error I noticed, which doesn’t happen often on “The Wire”: I thought Alma had the byline on the Burrell article, but when Landsman is reading the paper, it’s difficult to read but I think it’s Roger Twigg on the byline.)

Near the end of the episode, Prop Joe brings Marlo to meet with Levy to discuss his finances (namely, laundering and hiding them more effectively, it would seem). Sitting in Levy’s office reading the paper is Herc, now an investigator. Marlo looks at Herc and asks, “you ever find that camera?” and Herc replies, “it cost me the job.” Herc is such a clueless dolt that I actually enjoyed the fact that Marlo needled him here. As Levy meets privately with Marlo, Herc then makes small talk with Prop Joe about the fact that Burrell is out as commissioner. Prop Joe says, “Ervin was a year before me at Dunbar. He was in the glee club.” Pressed further, Joe says Burrell was “stone stupid.” “Dunbar” refers to Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, named after the African American poet (the school’s sports teams are even called the Poets).

Continuing with Prop Joe, who had a strong presence in this episode… He begins the episode in a flower shop, purchasing a funeral arrangement—foreshadowing if I’ve ever seen it—for Butchie. The card, according to Joe, should read, “Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil. Your true and loyal friend, Proposition Joe.” It’s an approximation of Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Who to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight!” Aside from its obvious implications to “The Wire” universe, sending that card to Butchie’s funeral not only sent a message to Omar that Joe was not involved in Butchie’s murder, but also sealed his fate with Marlo.

At the end of the episode, Prop Joe thinks he’s going to go away for a while to get out of Omar’s path, but Chris and Marlo emerge and it becomes clear to Joe that he is to be killed. In true fashion, his final words are, “A proposition, then…I’ll just go away, and you’ll never see me again.” Marlo assures Joe that he could no more change what he is that Marlo could. Then, in one of the most chilling scenes on the show, Marlo speaks in almost soothing tones to Joe, who sits before him at the table: “Close your eyes, relax. There now, breathe easy,” at which time Chris points a gun at the back of Joe’s neck and pulls the trigger. Marlo’s eyes—cold, remorseless, soulless—gaze dispassionately at Proposition Joe’s body, and the episode ends.

Judging from the previews—was that Snoop and Omar having a shootout, with Omar ducking behind a couch?—the next episode will be breathtaking.

END OF EPISODE 54 NOTES

Monsoon Martin's The Wire - Episode 52 Commentary

“The Wire” – episode 52 (focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the show’s journalism-related content)

Please note that this episode has not yet aired on HBO (it is available only on HBO On Demand) and therefore contains spoilers for most viewers. Please observe the spoiler space below to avoid gaining unwanted information about a show you haven’t yet seen.

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The tagline on episode 52 is again from Bunk, who says “this ain’t Aruba, bitch.” The statement occurs during a barstool conversation among Bunk, Lester and McNulty about why the 22 murders of African American Baltimoreans now are not being investigated, and why the media have not made more noise about that fact. The conclusion is that the bodies were “the wrong color” and that if 300 white folks were killed each year in Baltimore (or wherever), the National Guard would be brought in. Finally, McNulty makes a reference to the Natalee Holloway case in which a southern teen on vacation in Aruba disappeared, earning the media’s (led by the likes of Nancy Grace) fixation, prompting Bunk’s apropos comment. I couldn’t agree more.

My first observation from this episode deals with the scenes involving Steve Earle and Bubbles (whose first name, apparently, is Reginald). Now, Andre Royo is a breathtaking actor who can convey volumes of feeling, of experience, regret, guilt, weariness, etc., all with a shrug of the shoulder or the dizzying, herky-jerky delivery of his lines. Steve Earle, who plays Bubs’ sponsor and the leader of a twelve-step group of recovering addicts, is not an actor. He’s a singer, and he’s not even very good at that. Earle’s lines are delivered with a distracting woodenness that strikes a discordant note in otherwise moving and successful scenes. He’s one of the very few Wire actors I have ever felt were miscast (the others being Anwan Glover as Slim Charles and Aidan Gillen as Councilman—now mayor—Tommy Carcetti). Given the sprawling nature of the story and the hundreds of faces that have appeared and spoken onscreen, that’s not a bad ratio, I suppose…

There is a sense of foreboding with McNulty in the opening scenes of the show, in which he makes angry, misdirected comments at Rhonda Pearlman and Kima observes after his departure, “he’s a pissy little bitch today.” (A comment that could be—and has been—said of me on more than one occasion.) It doesn’t help matters when his car has a flat so he nearly breaks his foot kicking the car, then has to take an MTA bus to the crime scene of his homicide investigation. I have to say I’m glad McNulty (played by Dominic West) is being featured more prominently this season. He’s the perfect example of the working class in a postmodern city—stuck in the system, yet smart enough to know what parts of the system are screwed. McNulty’s impotent anger—hitting out at the wrong targets because the problems are bigger than can really be addressed—is the driving force of this show. It’s telling that even Bunk, who has abetted many of McNulty’s misadventures both on and off the job, is horrified by his partner’s actions at the end of the episode.

In another memorable scene out by the loading docks of The Sun, where Gus and some other veterans go for smoke breaks, Gus tells the oft-repeated story of a young reporter in a news conference with 1950s Bawlmer mayor Tom D’Alesandro who meekly (and rather spinelessly) says several times that “the city desk wants to know” this and “the city desk asked me to clarify” that. Without a word, the mayor finally puts his ear to his own desk, looks up and says, “My desk tells your desk to go fuck itself.” The old-timers agree that the story is too good even to verify, but it has been repeated and printed in several sources.

The Sun’s Executive Editor James C. Whiting (played with oily corporate aplomb by Sam Freed) begins a meeting in the conference room by stating that he wants The Sun to go for its Pulitzer. The Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism have been awarded for more than 90 years from an endowment left by famed newspaper publisher, editor, and pioneer Joseph Pulitzer. The most prestigious awards in the field of journalism, Pulitzers are awarded annually by Columbia University in 22 categories including reporting, editing, criticism, feature writing, and editorial cartooning. When Whiting says he wants the paper to go for its Pulitzer, it’s the equivalent of a studio head insisting that a Holocaust drama be made starring Meryl Streep in the hope of snagging Oscar nominations. It’s a craven and short-sighted statement that subverts the art it purports to celebrate, and Gus Haynes quite understandably rolls his eyes.

Whiting’s big idea is to produce a “Dickensian” series about the lives of city children—which will show “clearly and concisely where the school system has failed them.” The wording and construction here are priceless for both fans of “The Wire” and those who have spent some time around the field of journalism. First of all, “The Wire” has itself been called Dickensian by critics, who praise its resemblance to a nineteenth-century novel by Dickens like Bleak House in which the socioeconomic realities of the day are explored in a sprawling narrative, sweeping in disparate segments of population and experience. (A recent NY Times article on the last season of “The Wire” was even headlined, “No Happy Ending in Dickensian Baltimore.”)

Whiting’s statement is absurd because he is simultaneously calling for the Pulitzer-baiting series to be both “Dickensian” (passionate, thorough, expansive, detailed, naturalistic) and “concise” in focusing only on how the school system has failed children. To be truly Dickensian, the series would have to focus on children, parents, institutions, and everything in between—which “The Wire” does but newspapers almost never have the courage or dedication to do. Because Scott Templeton, the young hotshot reporter who wants to work at a “real” paper like the Post or Times someday, agrees with Whiting that context isn’t that vital to telling such a story—and thus earns himself the lead on the series. Whiting says they need to “limit the scope, not get bogged down in details” and an unnamed reporter pipes up and says, “There’s more impediments to learning that a lack of materials or a dysfunctional bureaucracy.” Whiting’s response: “But who wants to read about that?” Again, The Sun is pandering to the lowest common denominator, which has been the case for the field of journalism in general. Reporters are instructed on most pieces to assume their readership is at a sixth grade reading level, a short attention span, and little initiative or natural curiosity. And the product reflects that.

The meeting ends when Whiting asks what the “budget line” (the “pitch” line in the budget, or roster of articles, that summarizes what the article will be about) will be and Gus responds, “Johnny can’t write ‘cause Johnny doesn’t have a fuckin’ pencil.” Whiting angrily insists the paper does not want “an amorphous series detailing society’s ills” (god forbid) because “if you leave everything in, soon you’ve got nothing.” This kind of double-talk is reminiscent of the managing editor’s statement in episode 51 that “you’ll just have to do more with less.”

The storyline here is intriguing on several levels. First, it’s another example of an institution that is set up to do good (journalism is designed to keep a public well-informed about its world) getting dragged down by short-sightedness, lack of funds, arrogance and incompetence. Second, it provides another point of entry into the schools, which were the focus of last season (will we see Prez this year?). And finally, it ties the whole thing up nicely; as Simon himself said in one of the introductory shows about this season of “The Wire”: if we’ve gotten any of this right, why are we the only ones paying any attention to it? In other words, where and why have the media failed?

That night, Gus has a “deadline nightmare” which occurs when one has put a piece “to bed” but later questions whether he or she might have made an error. Once the ink hits the page, it’s difficult to take the words back; the “Corrections and Clarifications” portion of a newspaper is usually buried on page A2 and seldom read. Gus is worried about the fact that he may have transposed (inadvertently switched) some numbers on a port article and wants to copy editor to check his “nut graph” (sometimes spelled “nut graf”). A nut graph is a usually the second paragraph in an article, and it details what the piece is about. Some reporters “bury” their nut graphs (put them too deep within the article, obscured by quotes, background, or set-up) and have to be reminded to let them breathe.

The managing editor soon singles Scott out for his loyalty by awarding him a leading “color” piece in a story about the opening day of the Baltimore Orioles’ baseball season. A color piece (from “local color”) is a human interest story that provides a personal angle on an otherwise straight-ahead story. Scott says, “I’d really like to find some chaw-chewin’ old timer who’d rather die than miss an O’s opener.” What he finds, however, are only cynics and casual fans: one older man laments the steroid scandal and says the sport is in disarray, another disinterestedly says that his son kinda likes baseball, and another punctuates his failure to get usable material by saying “Fuck baseball!”

The problem arises for Scott when he goes into his assignment with an idea of what he would find when he started asking questions. Journalists should go into any story well-informed, but otherwise wide open to the possibilities of the story’s path. When one starts an interview with an idea of what’s going to come out of the subject’s mouth, one begins to ask “leading questions” or those designed to elicit a specific answer. Then you’re “putting words in someone’s mouth,” as the dreadful Lesley Stahl does week after week on “60 Minutes.” (An example of a leading question that stands out in my mind from a Stahl interview: “And that made you feel really resentful, didn’t it?”) Because Scott knew he wanted a chaw-chewin’ old timer, he couldn’t use the material he did get from the cynics and casual fans, and therein lies the problem.

Scott magically arrives back at the newsroom and tells Gus about the story he did get—about a 13-year-old kid in a wheelchair (put there, evidently, by a gunshot would, though details are sparse) who did not have a ticket to the game. The boy would only give his name as “E.J.” (ostensibly because he was truant from school) and there is no art (no photograph to accompany the article) because a photographer was unavailable. Gus’s journalistic instincts cause him to question the piece, and rightly so. The background is shady, they don’t have a last name so there’s nothing to verify or fact-check, and Scott’s claim that there was no photographer is questionable (wouldn’t there have been at least one at the ballpark for opening day?). Moreover, Scott couldn’t locate the boy when he went back to try to get “art.”

None of this matters much to Whiting, though. He sees it as a solid piece that captures the disparity of the city—the upper crust, enjoying a ballgame, while a 13-year-old gunshot victim is stranded outside, pitifully listening to the roars of the crowd. He awards Scott the “lead” (it will appear front page, despite the lack of “art”) and Gus must capitulate.

I have a feeling I know where this storyline is going: Scott made the whole damned thing up. He wandered around outside the ballpark, failing to get the story he wanted, and finally got desperate and concocted this young boy out of thin air. In future episodes I think it’s going to come out gradually: there never was a boy named “E.J.” shot in Baltimore; the schools have no record of this child; the photograph never received a call requesting “art” for Scott’s article. The end result is a scandal—and I don’t think Scott will stop there. In his Pulitzer-baiting series on the failure of schools, he’ll fabricate information, pipe quotes (invent or embellish direct quotes from sources), and the like.

It may be surprising to many outside the field that reporters could or would make shit up; we assume that every word we read in the paper is precisely as it went down. But it happens far more than one might think. Milder examples include quote piping (cleaning up, rearranging, or even creating out of thin air, supposedly direct quotes from a subject so it fits more cleanly in the piece). More extreme examples are the cases of Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, and Stephen Glass. Briefly, Janet Cooke was a reporter for the Washington Post in 1981 who had to return a Pulitzer she won for a piece on an eight-year-old heroin addict who did not exist. Jayson Blair invented interviews, quotes, and places for the New York Times in the late 90s; he submitted expense reports for trips that never happened, and described places he’d never been. He also plagiarized (took pieces of other people’s articles without crediting them). His actions were a serious “black eye” for the newspaper and several editors resigned in the wake of the scandal. Finally, Stephen Glass was an associate editor and writer for the New Republic magazine who was perhaps the most audacious fabulist of them all—he invented people, corporations, commissions, and conventions, and created a sloppy paper trail to back it all up.

How could this have happened? Aren’t reporters’ articles fact checked? Yes, they are, but there’s at least one huge hole in the process. In cases like those cited above, the fact-checkers are relying mainly on the reporter’s notes for confirmation, because they involve privileged or fleeting conversations, confidential sources, or the like. And this is, I’m afraid, what’s going on with Scott.

END OF EPISODE 52 NOTES