Tag: Omar Little (Page 2 of 2)

The second episode of season five has come and gone, and you can officially color me worried. Not for the quality of the show, mind you – because that’s always remained first-class – but of the questionably slow pacing. True, previous seasons of “The Wire” have always taken four or five episodes before jumping into the meat of the story, but with three less episodes than usual this time around, doesn’t it seem like David Simon and Co. should be getting a move on? It seemed like that may have been the case with tonight’s show, but when all was said and done, I still felt like that there was something still missing from the big picture.

With Lester and Sydnor working on the Clay Davis case (who, as we all saw, is so worried about the upcoming Grand Jury hearing that he never once uttered his trademark, confidence-boosting phrase), and the rest of the Major Crimes detail back on Homicide, Marlo has been given the all-clear to get back to business (i.e. killing people). That includes hunting down Omar (who has yet to make his season five debut) and going behind Prop Joe’s back to make a deal with the Greeks. And who other than Avon Barksdale to help the kid out? Sure, Marlo declared war on the Barksdale clan when he was on the rise, but we all know how Avon feels about Prop Joe, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s chosen to side with a fellow West-sider.

What Marlo doesn’t realize, however, is that a lack of OT pay hasn’t stopped Lester from bringing the drug-slinging murderer down, and within days, he’s back on stakeout duty. When he discovers that Marlo, Chris and Snoop are already back to their sloppy tactics, Lester enlists the help of McNulty for the case, but without any financial backing from the BPD, the pair go looking for help elsewhere, including the local Feds. Unfortunately, not even the FBI wants anything to do with the hanging 22 murders (nor any other federal task force, for that matter). Bunk and Lester claim that it’s because most of the dead bodies are blacks, so what does McNulty do? He creates an imaginary serial killer by “strangling” an already dead (white) male with the hope of gaining the mayor’s attention. Will it do the trick, or just land McNulty in some serious Vic Mackey-type trouble?

There’s plenty more to talk about – like how Carcetti’s mayoral decisions seem to favor his upcoming run for governor (though is that a bad thing?), how Bubbles is clean but doesn’t seem happy about it, or how the Baltimore Sun scenes still don’t fit in with the main story arc (seriously, who cares about that whiny reporter, Scott?) – but it simply isn’t worth spending time on until it actually begins to matter. Here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later.

The premiere of the fifth and final season of “The Wire” is finally upon us, and while it doesn’t look to be as good as last year, the show continues to trump just about everything you see on TV. The biggest problem with the first episode was that not a lot really happened. It served more as a building block for the next nine episodes than anything else, and while very few new ideas were presented, we now have a good idea where Ed Burns and David Simon are going with their plans to interject the media into their stories.

And since we’re on the subject, I might as well begin there. Simply put, I wasn’t very impressed with the Baltimore Sun scenes that dominated much of the second-half action last night, but I also wasn’t a very big proponent of the political subplot at the beginning of Year Four, either. There’s definitely a few things to like about the new setting – namely actor/director Clark Johnson as City Editor Gus Haynes – but I can’t imagine anything of real interest being drawn from the concept that the newspaper is in danger of being downsized. Whether that threat was just motivation for the writers to dig deeper into the city’s corruption or if it’ll play a bigger role later down the line remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s definitely important to the story.

As for the rest of Baltimore, things are pretty much the same since we last left them. Bunk is still playing tricks on street thugs (how that kid ever fell for the photo copier “lie detector” is beyond me), McNulty and Co. are back on Marlo, Bubbles is still clean (and apparently working for The Sun selling papers), and Carcetti’s busy juggling the city budget between the schools and police department. This hasn’t made the new mayor a very popular man, either, as cops continue to work overtime without pay, and the Major Crimes detail is disbanded almost as quickly as it was formed.

There have been some changes, albeit minor ones. Carver is now a Sergeant (and in charge of the West district), Herc’s working as an investigator for a criminal DA, and Dukie’s taken off corner duties in order to play nanny to Michael’s younger brother. Oh yeah, and McNulty’s drinking again. As if you didn’t see that coming. Here’s hoping he doesn’t screw over Beadie in the process, because she was one of my favorite characters from season two. I’m also patiently awaiting the return of Omar, Cutty, Randy, Namond and the countless others I’m forgetting about, but with only 9 episodes remaining, I can’t imagine their absence going on for much longer.