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« The Wire
Episode Recap: "React Quotes"
Parallel lines run throughout this episode, as people push themselves down similar paths for similar reasons, even if their circumstances are rather different.
Marlo meets with the primary Greek importer, who shows him, as it turns out, how to send email with his mobile phone...we discover that's what he's doing only at the end of the episode, as Lester discovers the same thing, after all the travails and blatant fraud to get a "wire up" on Marlo's new phone. But that's not the only new trick Marlo's working on, as he and his most trusted crew attempt to lure Omar and one of Omar and Butchie's old friends into a trap...since the latter two have been staking out an apartment where Marlo's crew has been congregating off and on for days, waiting to make their own move. (It's taken me a while to wonder if it's any coincidence that take-no-prisoners Marlo and criminal-with-rules Omar's names nearly mirror each other's.) The crew manages to get Omar's partner, when the avengers break into Marlo's apartment, but Omar himself seems to make a miraculous escape, perhaps jumping from the several-stories-high balcony to the ground...at least, Marlo's crew (including young Michael) can't find any trace of him.
Previously, Michael had been trying to help Dukie find a way of dealing with his antagonists...but neither learning how to fight nor how to handle a gun seems to be working out for Dukie, who's clearly tired of being told he has other strengths...that might mean something for him if he could get out of ghetto streets.
Meanwhile, with Alma's help at the Sun, McNulty and Freamon's planted evidence pays off for their attempt to get Major Crimes up and running again...except it doesn't pay nearly well enough. The evidence of a serial murderer is alarming enough to get McNulty unlimited overtime for himself and a partner out of Homicide, rather than a detail as he and Lester had hoped...and the other Homicide detective assigned to Jimmy's case is Kima, which pulls her off the home-invasion slaughter she'd been working. This pushes Bunk past endurance, and he pulls McNulty aside and chews him our for his various sorts of irresponsibility; something his ex-wife Elena (Callie Thorne) will do later in the episode, after Jimmy has blown off seeing one of his adolescent sons in a school play. Both Bunk (onscreen) and Elena (off) have heard from Jimmy's soon to be ex Beadie (Amy Ryan), a uniform cop who sees the handwriting on the wall and is more than inclined to speed the process along. McNulty, while dealing rather haphazardly with his personal business, at least tells Kima to continue working on her triple-murder case, and that he will cover for her in terms of paperwork.
Ethically-challenged careerist Scott accompanies Alma to a meet with McNulty, as the detective carefully dribbles out what he wants to plant in the stories; this leads to editor Gus detailing Scott to gathering reaction quotations from the homeless, as a sidebar story to Alma's continuing coverage of the apparent serial killer. Scott, finding it difficult to find lucid homeless people to interview, fakes up quotations from a mythical father and husband who shares the real name of one of the stranger actual people he's spoken with. Scott also attempts to gain leverage by placing a call to himself from a pay phone, and pretending to interview the murderer. McNulty is sent down to the newspaper to debrief Scott, and Jimmy soon realizes that Scott's fraudulent phone call makes Jimmy's planned fake call unnecessary.
One of the places Scott had canvassed for reactions from homeless people was the soup kitchen where Bubbles has been volunteering; when Bubs is asked to consider serving food there, he seeks out his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor to accompany him to a free clinic for an AIDS test. When the test comes back negative, Bubs can't bring himself to believe it.
Clay Davis, while still making all the public noises of a man falsely accused, is getting the Dutch Uncle (or Aunt) treatment from his colleagues in their Baltimore political machine; City Council President Nareese Campbell lays it out plainly for him (and she isn't the last to do so in the episode): He should take the fall for his corruption quietly, and if he does so, the other members of the machine will see to it that he's financially taken care of, to at least some degree, even if he has to serve some jail time first. (The ruthless efficiency with which Campbell particularly manipulates and excises her colleagues seems to me to resemble nothing so much as the white collar version of Marlo's depredations.)
And Marlo's cell number reached Lester via Ellis, from his old partner Herc...who, while willing to work as an investigator for Levy the lawyer, won't even pretend to tolerate Marlo, who lightly taunts him in turn. Levy, like the Greeks, seems quite content to swap the late Prop. Joe's business relation for Marlo and his crew's...though unlike the Greeks, Levy seems smugly confident that their less cautious nature will simply mean more business for him.
How Scott could even begin to volunteer to spend a night in a homeless encampment, as the teasers promise for the next episode, is something I very much look forward to learning about...
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Feb 5, 2008 1:30 AM
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I believe it was Monk's condo, not Marlo's, that Omar staked out, and where the gunfight took place. Omar is not going directly for Omar, he's planning to take out some of his underlings first.
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Feb 5, 2008 9:06 AM
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You're right twblues - that wasn't Marlo's condo. LOVE LOVE LOVE this show. Can't wait to see what happened to Robin Hood..I mean Omar. I have to rewind the last few seconds - took me a while to figure out that those were text messages going over the wire. BRILLIANT!!!
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Feb 5, 2008 2:14 PM
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When did Maury Levy change his name to "Klein"?
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Feb 5, 2008 4:24 PM
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He didn't, that would've been my fried synapses doing so, Are-Tee; thanks. Thanks also, CCherry1974 and TWBlues, for correcting the apartment misattribution.
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Feb 7, 2008 1:08 AM
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Lightly taunts Herc?
The "you find your camera yet" line was priceless
Loving marlo
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Feb 8, 2008 10:09 AM
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