S1:The Wire S01E07 - S01E08

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- WARNING: THIS THREAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET SEEN Season 1 -

Episode Title: S01E01 "One Arrest"

Episode Title: S01E01 "TLessons"

SPOILER WARNING:

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Season 1 Recap

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S01E07

"A man must have a code." - Bunk

Summary

Directed by: Joe Chapelle
Story by: David Simon & Ed Burns
Teleplay by: Rafael Alvarez

Prez, it turns out, has another unexpected gift: the ability to decipher the slurred, streetwise slang of the drug dealers. In the Detail Room, he's the undisputed champ of grasping the meaning of the wiretapped conversations, a talent he developed, he explains, from listening to the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar." "I used to put my head to the stereo speaker and play that record over and over."

Rawls presses Santangelo to come up with something negative on McNulty but Santangelo resists, saying, "It's not my job to **** another cop." Rawls says he better come through with something he can use against McNulty, and in the meantime assigns Santangelo to the unsolved Denise Redding murder case for him to close.

The squad lays plans to bust the Barksdale crew as they re-up the stash which, they've learned from the wiretaps, Stinkum and a runner will be carrying the next morning. The plan is to get the stash without revealing their wiretap. The bust goes down precisely according to plan, with Stinkum getting away and the stash — four packages of street-ready heroin — captured. Stink goes to a pay phone to inform Stringer of what's happened, a conversation that is taped at the Detail Room.

In a meeting with Judge Phelan, McNulty lays out the progress of the Barksdale case in order to convince the Judge to extend the wiretap authorization for another 30 days. The Judge is surprised to learn that Daniels went up against Rawls to prevent the investigation from being blown. And he assures McNulty that he's a friend, if he has trouble with his bosses, which McNulty assures him he does.

At the behest of Bubbles, Greggs rescues Johnny from drug court so that he gets probation instead of jail time, as long as he attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings. At a NA meeting, Johnny is bored but Bubbles is affected by the speaker, a recovering addict named Walon, and indicates that he'd like to straighten out his life. Later, however, he gets high again.

When D'Angelo visits Stringer and Avon at Orlando's, Stringer tells him he thinks D'Angelo has a snitch on his crew. After D'Angelo leaves, the Barksdale gang continues to mull over the bust and Stringer concludes: "Something is up; something is definitely up."

Later Stringer comes to the projects and makes procedural changes, ordering the project's pay phones destroyed and telling the crew if they need to make a phone call, they must walk a few blocks to a new one, and never use the same phone more than once a day.

Omar directs Greggs and McNulty to another part of town to find Bird, because, he explains that Avon won't have his men buying dope in the Towers. Sure enough, Bird turns up and is promptly apprehended. Forensics determine quickly that the gun Bird was carrying matches the bullets from the three murders. Unless he gives up Barksdale, Bird will likely face the death penalty. Bird however, remains hostile, prompting Daniels to enter the interrogation room and beat him severely.

In the Pit, Orlando approaches D'Angelo about going into business together and selling drugs, offering an even split. D'Angelo seems interested. Wallace has been scarce since Brandon's murder, coping with his guilt by snorting heroin in his apartment.

Omar, who is at police headquarters, explains that he ratted Bird out because Bird killed a regular citizen. "I do some dirt, too, but I never put my gun on nobody who wasn't in the game," he explains. "A man must have a code," Bunk replies, the irony lost on Omar. Bunk also asks Omar if there are any more murders he can help them with, and Omar coughs up details on another: the murder of Denise Redding. When Omar hears the beating Bird is getting, he observes: "Bird sure knows how to bring it out in people, don't he?"

Santangelo arrives at headquarters and he is given the solved Redding case, including two witnesses and the name of the shooter. Santangelo realizes that McNulty and Bunk saved his ass. Appreciative, Santangelo confides in McNulty that Rawls is out to bust him out of the department.

McNulty, distraught at the news Santangelo has given him, visits Rhonda Pearlman at home. "It's about Rawls. He's after my badge," McNulty explains. "They're gonna do me, Ronnie." She is sympathetic to his plight, knowing that the job means much more to McNulty then he would like to let on.

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S01E08

Come at the king, you best not miss." - Omar

Summary

Directed by: Gloria Muzio
Story by: David Simon & Ed Burns
Teleplay by: David Simon

Sleuthing apparently runs in McNulty's family. When the detective encounters Stringer Bell in a grocery store while shopping with his kids, he has his sons play a spy game in which one leads and one follows the target. The kids tail Bell to his car and write down his license number, but not before McNulty loses track of his boys in the market.

With both phones at the low rise ripped out, detectives continue surveillance there to determine which phones the drug crew is using. When the taps reveal that some sort of pickup is being scheduled, the team makes plans to intercede. After observing a bag passed to a man in a fancy car, detectives stop the car a few blocks away and discover the driver, has received $20,000.

They seize the money and apprehend the driver, Day-Day. Turns out that he drives for a Senator Davis. An angry Deputy Commissioner Burrell insists that the money be returned. Unnerved by the way the investigation is going, he demands that Daniels bring things to a close. "I'm shutting this down and you charge what you can and do it by the end of the week," he tells Daniels. When McNulty learns what has happened, he accuses Daniels of complicity and asks what Burrell has on Daniels. And when Judge Phelan learns of Burrell's plan to end the investigation, he phones the Deputy and orders him not to do so.

Avon's boys break into Omar's apartment and ransack the place when he is not home. On their departure, they set fire to Omar's van.

At the Pit, Wallace is still in a funk following Brandon's death, staying at home and using heroin. D'Angelo is invited by Avon's boys, Wee-Bey, Stinkum and Savino, to come celebrate their plan to open a new drug territory and he leaves Bodie in charge while he leaves for an hour. Over lunch, D'Angelo mentions Orlando's offer to move some coke through the projects and is advised to run it by uncle Avon before he agrees. Later, however, they tell Avon of Orlando's approach. Orlando is seriously reprimanded by Avon before being physically thrown from his office and kicked in the ribs in front of a few strippers, including Shardene.

That night, D'Angelo is invited to a wild party Avon's boys are throwing. He sees Stinkum and Wee-Bey getting high, in violation of Avon's rules, and later finds one of the strippers from the club unconscious — possibly dead — on a bed at the party.

Wee-Bey and Stinkum's plan to take over Scar's drug territory veers badly off course when Omar suddenly appears and shoots both of them, killing Stinkum and injuring Wee-Bey. From his perch in the darkness, Omar shouts to Wee-Bey: "If you come at the king, you best not miss." Greggs and McNulty are unhappy because Omar's actions cast doubt on his credibility as a witness in the murder trial of Bird for the killing of Gant. In a meeting with Omar, they urge him to cool it until they wrap up their investigation. His response: "I'll do what I can to help y'all, but the game is out there, and it's either play or get played." Later, he stands outside Orlando's, watching from the darkness.

Avon is enraged over Stinkum's killing and in a crew meeting at Orlando's, he exhorts his boys to find Omar and kill him. Stringer advises a more low-key approach, urging Avon to call a truce and hit Omar when he re-emerges. D'Angelo meanwhile is unnerved by all the action and confides to Shardene that he may want another job. She shares his feeling, saying, "I can't stay pretty forever."

Greggs confides in Freamon that she is having second thoughts about her conversation with Omar, the one in which she said they needed a witness for the Bird murder trial and Omar volunteered. Freamon tells her that interviewing technique is more art than science, and that Greggs should go with her instincts. To emphasize his point, he shows Greggs photos of the strippers at Orlando's and asks which one she would approach for information on Barksdale's operation. She immediately chooses the same woman Freamon has, based on her lack of a police record and on her face. "She looks like a citizen, right?" Freamon says. That woman in the photo is Shardene.