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Episode Recap: "More with Less"
The Wire's back, and as sharp and real and densely packed as ever. Most nights, it's the best television drama on now, and this episode does nothing to lower that average.
This fifth season will, sadly, be the last...and in ten episodes, another major player is taken on as a partial focus, the press, most notably creator/producer/writer David Simon's old stamping ground, The Baltimore Sun, and other local news outlets (such as also-real upstart competitor The Daily Record)...along with the continuing story of what has become known as the Major Crimes squad, and their ongoing attempts to rein in major players in the West Baltimore drug trade. Amid so many other threads that even bare-bones notes on this season premiere episode fill a page.
David Simon wrote this episode, and I believe that it's more than simple nostalgia that has the first vignette harkening back to a gag, one we first saw in the previous brilliant Simon series Homicide: Life on the Street, wherein a young, not too bright suspect is convinced that a photocopier, prefed with "True" and "False" sheets, is a highly sophisticated lie detector. As homicide detective "Bunk" Moreland (Wendell Pierce) notes, "The bigger the lie, the more they believe [it]," and this becomes this episode's legend/quotation (every episode has one). It's more than nostalgia in that this season will have a lot of threads to weave together, and Simon acknowledges this in several ways.
As the Sun staff is introduced, one of the veteran staff who are taking a smoking break out back at the loading dock wonders "what it would be like to be working at a real paper"; by the end of the episode, with the Major Crimes squad disbanded as a result of budget-tightening among other political factors, Det. Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), perhaps the closest this series has to a single protagonist, similarly if somewhat more angrily wonders what it would be like to work in a real police department.
Between these, we see the Baltimore police disgruntled by receiving chits in lieu of payment for their overtime; the Major Crimes squad being manipulated in their attempts to keep tabs on the operation run by Marlo (Jamie Hector), the would-be Napoleon among the city's drug lords (who are otherwise mostly content with a status quo administered by old hand "Proposition Joe" [Robert F. Chew]); ambitious new Mayor Carcetti (Aidan Gillan) finding he won't accept the terms of the local FBI office any more than he would last season's strings-attached offer of aid from the Maryland governor; and the Sun editors and sub-editors finding some stories quashed (in one case by a senior editor playing old boy games on behalf of an influential friend) and others falling into their laps, as when the City Council president Naresse Campbell (Marlyne Afflack) is found to be cozily trading city properties with another criminal boss, one who's also contributing heavily to her campaign funds.
But it's in the small details with which The Wire takes on much of its heft; vignettes about former informant and junkie "Bubbles" trying not to burden his suspicious sister too much, while trying to keep "straight"; the cascading outrage (occasionally tempered by resentful glee) down each level of the city hierarchy as the only vestige of the Major Crimes squad which is allowed to continue to work is the pair of detectives investigating State Senator Clay Davis (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), so the squad has to ignore both their drug gang targets and the slew of murder victims they suspect are related; and threads within threads, such as how Marlo's lieutenant Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe) steals a photograph, of imprisoned murderer Malatov (not seen since the second season), from a police file, just after coincidentally asking characters from another thread, who happen to be talking in the lobby of City Hall, where exactly the criminal records office is. For that matter, Councilwoman Campbell sees the Sun story about her unsavory connections in a copy she buys from Bubbles, making his money from newspaper sales in the morning traffic jams. And McNulty, falling prey yet again not only to his alcoholism but also to his weakness for one-night stands, after a certain point forgets that a woman with two young children to worry about can't yet quite decide whether he's worth leaving the front door light on for, or not.
Perhaps the most sinister return from the past in this episode was the discovery that embittered ex-cop Herc (Dominick Lambardozzi) is now working as an investigator for the same lawyer who was the primary criminal-trial mouthpiece for the Barksdale drug gang in the first season...
And this only touches on most of what was going on in the episode, which, by the way, HBO made available through On Demand on Monday of the week before the official premiere date of January 6; they'll continue with these early offers, along with previous-season episodes and a host of short promotional documentaries and vignettes providing amusing glimpses of some of the characters as children (those characters, that is, who aren't still children, themselves).
By the way, this season's version of the theme song, written by Tom Waits, is a pretty straightforward reading by Steve Earle.
*Can't of get enough The Wire? Please check out our Online Video Guide.
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Jan 7, 2008 1:00 AM
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The copy machine trick was first given a brief mention in David Simon's book, and was then used in season 1 of Homicide, 15 years ago (Wow). Here's the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhxZ4BWeBQ
Glad to see that TVGuide.com is finally covering The Wire.
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Jan 7, 2008 1:17 AM
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Thanks, ALynch! I was pretty sure it was Homicide, and that it was meant as a linkage between the two series (Bunk and his older colleague in the scene are having a laugh about how many years they've been doing this, while a younger homicide detective listens)...not too surprised to learn it was mentioned in the nonfiction Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I've been meaning to read all these years. Wow, indeed.
I might well be wrong, but I suspect the blogs weren't yet up and running when the last season of The Wire ended.
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Jan 7, 2008 1:31 AM
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Well this is arguably my favorite show on tv. I thought TV Guide was not going to blog on it. I am glad I was wrong. The first scene with the copier was classic. I did not know the connection with Homicide. But it was still pretty funny. I wonder which police force will try that today. Anyway good solid episode with solid hints into this the Wire last season. I will be here to the end.
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Jan 7, 2008 7:11 AM
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Todd the blogs were up and running, but there wasn't one for the Wire. I have to rewatch this episode, I missed alot of things that you mentioned that happened tonight.
I really miss Homicide. Seeing Clark Johnson as one of the reporters, makes me reminds of how good Homicide: Life on The streets was.
It sucks that we only get 10 episodes for the last season. And I know this season is going to be good.
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Jan 7, 2008 7:20 AM
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Question - when Marlo's man took the picture from the police report, does anyone know whos picture it was? I read that it was someone from the 2nd season but I didn't recognize the pic. Also, did anyone catch why he was sent there to get the info? Thanks
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Jan 7, 2008 10:01 AM
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Racskater--the photograph, as I've shoehorned into the recap now, was of the anticly-named Malatov, one of the thugs involved with the human trafficking (iirc) in season two. Inasmuch as Marlo's been trying to get at/to the Eastern European gangsters who've been importing the dope for Prop. Joe, you can draw your own conclusions as to why Chris would want a photo of this guy...and the Coming Next Week teaser suggested this would be dealt with in the episode that became available today on On Demand, and will be cablecast on HBO next Sunday.
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Jan 7, 2008 10:33 AM
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I won't complain that TV guide took until the final season of The Wire to blog about it, but I'm glad that you decided to add it to your list of blogs. I've loved this show from the beginning; from Avon Barksdale to my all time fave, Stringer Bell (I still miss him). The characters are compelling and each season brings a memorable character that ties into the new storyline (this season, the media). The Wire is a treat and I can't wait for each episode, and I'm even more excited that the episodes will be made available to viewers in advance of the Sunday night airing. I love the authenticity, self-deprecating humor and undercurrents of rage that have always run through this show and this season is proving to be no different. I will be looking forward to reading the comments from other Wire fans this final season. 
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Jan 7, 2008 5:49 PM
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Regarding the photo taken from the courthouse, I was under the impression that this was a setup/red herring for the police. Marlowe knew the police were watching them talked about it with Chris just before Chris went to the courthouse. I figured they were just messing with the police and sending them on a wild goose chase by requesting the file and leaving it out on the counter for McNulty to find. Only time will tell, I suppose.
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Jan 7, 2008 10:41 PM
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I doubt it. If Chris was just looking at the file to confuse the cops, there wouldn't have been any reason to pocket the photo. Marlo is definitely up to something.
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Jan 8, 2008 4:30 AM
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The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly has a very interesting background piece on David Simon and The Wire. Check it out at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire
Also, by any chance was the woman that Jimmy McNulty apparently picked up in the bar the same one who gave spoke at the recovering addicts meeting? It was just a quick shot in a dark bar, but I wondered if this was one of those brilliant now-you-see-it moments for this program.
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Jan 14, 2008 10:28 AM
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