Welcome to my viewing diary for The Wire. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.
Story (aired on June 2, 2002/written by David Simon, story by David Simon & Ed Burns; directed by Clark Johnson): Baltimore Homicide Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is noticing a pattern. He has recently seen a murder rap result in an acquittal, and now he's watching it happen again - one witness (Ingrid Cornell) changes her story while another (Larry Hull) sticks to his, but also hesitates nervously when eyed by Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) sitting in the back of the court. McNulty recognizes Bell as a member of the Avon Barksdale crime organization, and the defendant who gets off, D'Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.), as the boss' nephew. Judge Phelan (Peter Gerety) notices McNulty in court, and asks him why he attended a case he had nothing to do with. McNulty never quite answers this question, other than implying curiosity based on what happened to his own previous case, but he does share everything he knows about Barksdale, who pushes drugs in most of West Baltimore's projects. Actually...that's pretty much all he (or anyone in law enforcement) knows about the mysterious kingpin, who has never been photographed and keeps a low enough profile that even McNulty's peers seem unfamiliar with his name. That won't last.
The conversation with the judge opens up a can of worms and McNulty finds himself on the hook (to mangle a metaphor). He's assigned to a detail run by the Narcotics Division, led by Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) and staffed by gung-ho detectives Herc Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Ellis Carver (Seth Gilliam), the more by-the-book Det. Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), and - also dragged along from Homicide as an unwilling victim of McNulty's loud mouth - McNulty's erstwhile partner Det. Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce). Their superiors are furious that McNulty spoke out; they want to rush through this Barksdale investigation as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, D'Angelo is facing the heat despite beating his case. Wee-Bey Brice (Hassan Johnson) rakes him over the coals for his impulsive shooting, and he is demoted from selling drugs in a high-rise to supervising a group of youngsters in a low-rise yard. There he catches a junkie (Leo Fitzpatrick) trying to use fake bills, and the other dealers beat him so badly he winds up in critical condition at the hospital. This is a helpful turn of events for the detectives, since the junkie's friend Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins (Andre Royo) is a former informant and tells Greggs he wants to inform again for revenge. Speaking of revenge, D'Angelo eventually discovers the price of his escape in the episode's final minutes. The security guard who identified him in court lies dead, and D'Angelo looks a bit stunned to see what a moment's indiscretion has wrought: not just one corpse, but two - including someone who hadn't even been in the game to begin with.
My Response: