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 July 7, 2002/written by David Simon, story by David Simon & Ed Burns; directed by Ed Bianchi): Six episodes in, the series embraces its title, bugging the pay phones on the low-rise apartment buildings near the pit. However, the police need to ensure that the conversations they're listening to are pertinent to the investigation, requiring constant visual surveillance on the rooftops. Right away, they - and particularly Freamon, who is proving himself the brains behind the whole operation - are able to piece together some crucial information from this eavesdropping. They are able to link pager numbers and call times to the time and location of Brandon's murder, or at least the kidnapping that led to his brutal torture and eventual execution. They also have a new informant, willing to testify as a witness against Bird (Fredro Starr) for an earlier shooting as revenge for the Barksdale enforcer's role in killing Brandon. Omar is devastated not just by his boyfriend's demise, but the condition he's found in: an eye gouged out, cigarette burns and knife wounds all over his body, sprawled out over a car in a particularly squalid neighborhood. But he's not frightened by his own potential victimhood ("Omar don't scare") as much as he is determined to fight fire with fire.
The thief's role as a potential thorn in Barksdale's side is so important that McNulty (who has the kids on this particular night, after much frustration in not being able to see them) drives into Omar's area with his sons in tow and makes them wait in the police station as Omar identifies Brandon's body. Omar wails so loudly that the startling sound interrupts one of the boys' chirping handheld video game. It's clear now that this will be Omar's place in the narrative, at least for the time being. Will Bubbles become less necessary to the cops? If so, a diminished role comes at a very bad time for him - he could really use some help for Johnny, who is arrested while scoring more heroin with money earned from a stolen copper wire sale. If the effect of Brandon's death is rippling across many different areas outside of the Barksdale business, it has also created an impact within the gang. This is particularly true for Wallace, who not only placed the call that led to Brandon's capture but was also among the first to see his body outside the apartment where Wallace, Poot, and a whole bunch of early-school-age children are squatting. Wallace is greatly disturbed by the sight of his own action's consequences. D'Angelo tells him to put this out of his mind, but also shows sympathy for the shaken teen.
Even as, unbeknownst to himself, an old killing is attracting growing police attention, D'Angelo remains a calm at the center of the storm. He reassigns pawns rather than allow them to get beaten for some mild thieving on the side, and he even explains the withholding-pay scheme to Wallace, to whom he's becoming something of an impromptu mentor. Opening the season as a rash, foolish young man in over his head, whose savvy uncle intervened to protect him, D'Angelo now looks like the more shrewd, patient, and responsive leader while Avon descends into paranoia and showiness, sauntering into the pit to make an impression but too far removed from the action himself to really get what's going on inside.
My Response:
