Wednesday, August 22, 2012

THIS MAN HAS MY FULL SUPPORT:  That's what Odell Watkins scribbled on the back of his business card handed to Marla Watkins for use in expediting Cutty's bureaucratic needs with the new gym, and I'm sure both Robert Caro and the Institute for Justice could have a field day with the Cutty scenes ... but we're not here to talk about that.

Because at the heart of The Wire's season three episode, "Slapstick," are a series of consequential, if very human mistakes which seem bound to doom characters who had it all on the right path. We'll start, as we must, with Prez.



Oy vey. You could almost forget that this was the same guy who accidentally shot a wall in the unit's office, who (before the series started) had shot up his own squad car. He found the thing he was good at, and reveled in it. He was not natural street police, and the harbingers of doom circled this episode -- the mention of his family, the casual, why-are-they-showing-this? late night trip for Chinese food -- making me prepared for Prez himself to be the victim of violence. Not showing the shooting puts the audience in the same frame as his fellow officers; we don't know what motivated Prez, or whether he was acting reasonably. Oh, sad.

And, of course, the Sunday truce. Omar thought "ain't nobody in this city that low down to disrespect a Sunday morning," and as Avon said, "Sunday truce been there as long as the game itself ..... I mean, you can do some shit and be like what the fuck, but hey, never on no Sunday." Yet here we are, and Omar is on a mission again to avenge the torn-up church crown of a bonafide colored lady who thinks he's working at a cafeteria at BWI.

We see this week the continuing fallout from Bernard's sloppiness in how he purchases the new burner phones, too much in bulk, and too set a pattern. Now, there's the little problem of the wireless company's lack of cooperation, but this may be leading somewhere. Meanwhile, Hamsterdam seems doomed: Carver went too far (and too sloppily) to try to preserve it, but how much longer until Herc (or my prediction: Colicchio) was going to make this kind of stink about it? Bunny's appeal to the crew chiefs actually turns up a shooter, but time is running out.

Finally, Jimmy McNulty, shitty parent. The Guardian counts his booty call as his seventh lousy parenting decision of the series, but I'd rather highlight a mistake of his I once made back in the day: you don't admit to someone on a date that you don't find her line of work interesting or meaningful. Duh.

10 comments:

  1. Prez breaks my heart every time I rewatch. His scene with Daniels is so well done for what Daniels does and doesn't say, and wonderfully acted by both. "Tell Lester I'm sorry."

    I've quoted "The job will not save you" many times. Often to myself.

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  2. Anonymous11:21 AM

    To put aside for a moment the heartbreak of Prez's story - everyone knows you don't eat the cookie first; it's bad luck.

    I finally figured out the name of one character, whose voice had always caught my ear, and it's Slim - who if imdb is to believed is "the lead singer of a Go Go band."  Huh. Ok.

    And bless McNulty's naive little heart for not realizing that he was just her piece of rough and if he wanted the booty he should've left well enough alone.

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  3. <span>To put aside for a moment the heartbreak of Prez's story - everyone knows you don't eat the cookie first; it's bad luck.  
     
    I finally figured out the name of one character, whose voice had always caught my ear, and it's Slim - who if imdb is to believed is "the lead singer of a Go Go band."  Huh. Ok.  
     
    And bless McNulty's naive little heart for not realizing that he was just her piece of rough and if he wanted the booty he should've left well enough alone.</span>

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  4. I think David Simon talked somewhere about how they liked the little ambient sounds that the beads in Slim's hair made -- so much so that they sometimes amplified or enhanced them. That little factoid made me much more aware of him and his character this time through the series.

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  5. isaac_spaceman5:01 PM

    Funny that they try to use only music that the characters would hear (other than the credits and the season-ending montages), but they'll amp up the hair beads.  I do love Slim Charles.  That is a voice that one can remember. 

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  6. isaac_spaceman5:05 PM

    The Sunday Truce stuff is some of the funniest black humor in the show -- not ha-ha funny (like some of the recurring jokes from the next season), but always-makes-me-smile funny.  And it does a very subtle thing in showing one way in which Omar and Avon are more alike than Stringer and Avon or than Omar and Stringer (who sometimes get lumped together in the its-just-business and thinking-man's-criminal sense).  A man's got to have a code. 

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  7. Anonymous5:31 PM

    My mom gave me a book titled Crowns a few years back and it had pictures and interviews with women talking about their church hats.  From some of those interviews, all I can think is the shooter better be glad Omar's grandma wasn't packing a pistol in her handbag. Those ladies were SERIOUS about their hats.

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  8. Anwan Glover (Slim Charles) is a go-go musician.  Go-go is a DC area club music genre that's primarily funk with a blend of r&b/hip-hop influences.  Just another local guy that Simon pulled in to the show.

    It's not what the rest of the world thinks of when they hear "go-go" and think of dancers/strippers.

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  9. Yep. Think of E.U,'s "Da Butt."

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  10. Watts3:15 PM

    I was hoping, actually, for Go-Gos cover band. And getting really geeked about hearing him sing "Our Lips Are Sealed"

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