Welcome back to my Virgin Diary of The Wire. If you’re just joining in, or are not familiar with our Virgin Diary series, I’m reviewing The Wire this season. I’ve never actually seen the show — gasp!!! — so if you’re going to discuss the show with me in the comments section of the post, please be kind and don’t spoil me (Fake spoilers, like Starbuck, Head Six and Head Baltar arrive in Baltimore to setup their own gang and take down Barksdale? Totally acceptable.).
Season 1, Episode 3, “The Buys”
“I tell you yes, I screwed up. I tell you no, I’m putting my men in the jackpot. Do you still want me to answer?”
I loved D’Angelo’s deconstruction of chess as an analogy for selling drugs. Truth be told, I love pretty much everything about chess, save for the actual playing of it: I’m not very good. But chess is comparable to a great many things, and can teach someone so much about strategy – one of my favorite chess references in popular television was The West Wing‘s “Look at the whole board” bit from “Hartsfield’s Landing.” Here, though, the thing that jumped out the most was the discussion of pawns, and what is “winning.” Bodie focused on the idea of a pawn being made a queen, ignoring that the act of queening isn’t winning. What that guy doesn’t see, though, is even the queen is sacrificable.
It’s interesting that the discussion of strategy at a high level occurs in the same episode where we see Omar Little for the first time. I’m a fan of Michael Kenneth Williams, but other than knowing that he appeared in the Wire, I didn’t really know when, or as who. Omar’s theft of Barksdale’s product is not going to be something that’s taken lightly. I would have liked to have followed up on that particular story in this episode, but I’m guessing that’s one of the idiosyncrasies of The Wire: We get back to story threads on its time, not ours.
One storyline I’m neither surprised, or excited, to see is the FBI telling McNulty about the previous investigation in Daniels’ personal finances. This is actually the first time I thought The Wire presented anything approaching a weak storyline. The audiences has already seen Daniels’ house, and we’ve met his wife. Considering we’ve only met the significant other of one other cop this far, the chances that his wife is relevant to the storyline is pretty high. So far, he’s come across as the opposite of a cop on the take, one beholden just a little too much to the Deputy Ops. I could be completely wrong about this – thus the danger of sticking your head out in a Virgin Diary series when everyone else reading can laugh at you for how wrong you are – but it really seems like this is likely an unnecessary red herring.
Episode 4, “Old Cases”
“Thin line between heaven and hell.”
It’s interesting how similar the lives are of our heroes and villains. An additional peak into McNulty’s personal life shows just how miserable his life is. When Bubbles can look at your life and feel sorry for you, you know things are bad. On the flip side, D doesn’t really seem to like his life either. We’re supposed to believe that the cold case that McNulty and Bunk caught was the same murder D was telling his crew about. I’m not entirely sure why he felt the need to share that; while it might gain him some respect from some of the team, I’m not sure it will come from all of them.
I liked that McNulty was surprised by Freeman’s police skill. We’ve seen how lazy the cops are on the team – mostly via Detectives Mahon and Polk … and the absentee Santangelo – and how stupid they are – via Herc, Carver and Pryzbylewski. While the focus of the team has remained on McNulty, Kima and Daniels, Freeman proves that they’re not all bad.
Nothing more on the “Daniels might be dirty” storyline, but I guess that is to be expected. Welcome to The Wire, eh?
I barely — and by barely, I mean “not at all” — recognized Callie Thorne was McNulty’s wife. Bad guest star spotter work.
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Jun 13, 2012 @ 12:30 EST5EDT
