Letters to the Editor
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No you're not crazy.
That was Nick Sobotka.
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Donald
I didn't think McNulty was going to kill him, but I did think he was going to follow around until he died and not do a thing to help him. And then choke, denture-bite, and beribbon his corpse, of course.
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@Hepola
No, you are not crazy, one of the guys heckling (the one who was being cuffed when we last see him) was in fact one of the lead characters from season 2 on the docks. I can't remember his name, but he was the cousin of the nutsy young guy. It was his uncle who was the union boss who got whacked.
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Dock workers
"By the way, I'm surprised none of you bastards have mentioned that the guy yelling at the ribbon-cutting ceremony sure did look like one of the dock workers from season two. Commenters, am I crazy?"
That WAS one of the dock workers--specifically Nick Sobotka (played by Pablo Schreiber). His character fled the witness protection program. Check IMDB--he's back this season.
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Great cameo for the season two dockyard survivors
Yup that was definitely them yelling and cursing about the port - now I'm watching the ep again, I find that you have to watch these at least twice to get everything.
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Wow, just wow.
Warning: Serious fan wanking and wild speculation ahead.
I feel like Omar just shot me in the gut.
Jimmy, what are you doing?? The wheels are coming off so quick, can't you see it?
Omar. Fucking ghetto batman for reals. He may be dead by the end of this thing, but he goddamn-well will take everyone else down with him.
Real reporting. Too bad the right-wing noise machine is going to have a field day ripping everyone to shreds once it comes out that half the stories are made up. And that means that the poor ex-Marine and the war that made him who he is now will just keep marching on. "We don't need to invest in the poor, poor people don't exist, it's all made up. That reporter made it all up."
Jimmy.. seriously? I thought I was going to cry at the end of the ep.
Randy. The heart breaks. He's gone, and Michael may as well already be dead. Somehow this is all Herc's fault.
Chris. Chris is gonna put a bullet in Marlo, I know it. And Snoop will put a bullet in Chris.
Nicky Sobotka! How I missed you! College kids ain't shit!
Somehow, in the future of the Wire Universe (damn! only 4 left?), Carcetti will spin all this to end up in the White House. Baltimore's own Bill Clinton.
David Simon, if we can't have another season, can we at least have a book?
Also. Jimmy. Shaking head, facepalm. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.. sigh.
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listen to the music...
The song playing as McNulty drove "Donald" down to Richmond was the Pogues' "Turkish Song of the Damned."
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veering off the rails
I am a charter member of the "The Wire is the best show that has ever been on television; it is a travesty that it hasn't won every single award for everything ever invented" club, but I have to say that this was the first episode where I felt things weren't quite right. I mean is there anything more hackneyed than the piss drunk guy confessing to a statue scene? Except maybe the fabulist reporter who thinks he's going to spend the night with some homeless to fake out his bosses and finds a real story to take home with him scene? And what's up with all of the exposition as dialogue? Do I really need another conversation explaining the intricacies and legalities of wiretaps? And finally is Dominic West even trying to hide his accent anymore?
Yes there were some choice moments: the scenes in the lab were great. Bunk finally getting to interview Raymond was heartbreaking, and how could I not mention the Omar bandaging his leg scene and Marlo calling it "some spiderman type shit."
I know that this is the last season and there need to be some closure, and I'm not turning in my membership card for anything. I just want each of these last episodes to be as good as I keep telling everyone The Wire has been.
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Toe the line!
Heather, I love your writing, but the phrase properly is "toe the line" -- as in "toe the mark" -- and not "tow the line."
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The Presser at the Docks
In addition to Nick Sabotka screaming at Carcetti, the "suit" telling Carcetti not to mind the disruption, was the lobbyist/developer who was taking Stringer Bell's money on the condo/loft development. It was the lobbyist developer who suggested Stringer put money into Clay Davis' to get some assistance with the building permits, etc.
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the statue
McNulty's rant at the statue is not pretty, not poetic. But it's at the foot of Lord Baltimore himself. A kind of prayer.
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Gus Is Setting Him Up
Anyone else get the feeling Gus is setting Scott T. up to catch him in his lies? The request to make the follow up calls on Scott's old story, Scott reports some elaborate story as confirmation that his work was well done again? Gus sees through this guy's lies.
Marlow basically disbanding the Co-Op was a good scene. Slim may team up with Omar. Cheese will meet the wrath of Omar. "Omar coming!" '
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Esquire article
In response to the criticisms the of the portrayal of the Sun writer Scott, I will share a fresh article by Simon himself that touches on a dishonest co-worker at the Sun who shares a striking resemblance...
www.esquire.com/features/essay/david-simon-0308
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Nick Sobotka
It doesn't require an embarrassing Trekkieesque zeal for The Wire to recognize Nick Sobotka from Season 2. My wife and I are casual fans at best and we were both pointing at the screen when he was still in the background shot.
Hepola was trying to showoff and looked worse in the process.
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Barriers to Entry
"Hepola" -- Come on! Can't we have the people talking about the show for our benefit at least having done their homework? It was clearly Nikky Sobotka, surrounded perhaps still by his witness protection muscle (along with fell dockworker Nat) yelling at the demolition of the much needed (for the docks at least) grain pier. And your "fabulist" character is Templeton. At least learn the names, makes it look professional. Deputy loves names.
Is McNulty's use of Donald more reprehensible then Carcetti's use of the homeless as political talking point? It's easy to be viscerally opposed to the immediate callousness of kidnapping a homeless man and using him for an ends to a mean -- but isn't this the same thing Carcetti is doing -- albeit on a much more abstract level.
As for "bleakness", I think it's hard to to say that this season has given us anything worse than last season, or any season for that matter. Running through the show's core is a fear and loathing of contemporary control structures, in whatever form: the corner and the ghetto, the tentative middle class of the Police uniform and the union, the upper crust of the DA, Police command and City Hall -- no matter what strata of society individuals are still tragically beholden to the institutions they serve: is Burrell still not a pawn? Is Gus still not emasculated and humiliated every day from behind his editor's desk?
The Wire has always argued that what you're born into means far more then personal "virtue", I don't see this season departing from that them, instead it continues to reinforce it. There is no individual morality on the Wire, only a collective and thoroughly modern acquiescence to the diaphanous puppeteer.