S1:The Wire S01E09 - S01E10

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- WARNING: THIS THREAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET SEEN Season 1 -

Episode Title: S01E01 "Game Day"

Episode Title: S01E01 "The Cost"

SPOILER WARNING:

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Otherwise, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED - there shall be major plot details of the episode revealed and discussed below with no spoiler tags used!

Season 1 Recap

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S01E09

"Maybe we won." - Herc

Summary

Directed by: Milcho Manchevski
Story by: David Simon & Ed Burns
Teleplay by: David H. Melnick & Shamit Choksey

Avon and Stringer watch basketball practice at a local junior college and pay $10,000 to one of its players so he'll play for them in an upcoming game between the East and West projects. Afterwards the player leaves, they discuss Omar. Stringer again advises that they call a truce and wait for Omar to emerge. Avon is concerned about the message that would send about his standing in the community.

Wallace tells D'Angelo that he wants out of the game. At 16, he feels there's still hope for him, and he says he wants to go back to school and finish the 9th grade. D'Angelo gives him some cash, and Poot later observes Wallace buying drugs.

The wiretaps reveal that Wee-Bey will be picking up cash from the Towers shortly, so Herc and Carver follow him and take the money, which amounts to $22,000. "We don't have a charge," they tell him. "We just got your money. You want it back, you can explain to the state's attorney where you got it."

In the Detail Room, Freamon instructs Sydnor and Prez on the finer points of combing through corporate papers and public records to unearth Barksdale's hidden ownership in front companies. "It's a brave new world for you boys," he tells them. Freamon also collects campaign finance reports from the Board of Elections, to determine if Barksdale is supporting any candidates.

Bubbles, waiting to score at the low rise, is embarrassed when he encounters a speaker from the previous day's Narcotics Anonymous meeting, but again says he would like to get straight. He visits his sister, who is under-whelmed to see him. After he reiterates that he wants to get off drugs, she reluctantly gives him a backdoor key so he can stay in the basement.

As they unload the cash they seized from Wee-Bey, Herc and Carver discuss stealing some of it, but Carver points out the folly of doing so. "Say we turn in 20 and keep 10, and the bosses hear we took 30 outta that car on the wiretap. You didn't think of that did you?" But later, to their surprise, they are accused by Daniels of stealing some of the cash anyway. They deny it, now each suspicious of the other. When they go back to their car and find the missing money in the wheel well, Carver is relieved, and apologizes to Herc for doubting his word.

Omar swaggers into the low rise with a shotgun in plain view, demanding Avon's stash. The project residents scatter and he stands below a window insisting that he'll be back each day until he gets what he's after. Suddenly, a stash bag drops from a window. "Fair enough," he says, and leaves. Herc and Carver arrive shortly after and are puzzled by the empty project courtyard. "Maybe the whole thing's over and nobody bothered to tell us," says Herc. "Maybe we won." Carver senses something is up and suggests they go for a drive. When they do, they discover the basketball game in progress, being played in front of a huge crowd from the projects.

Greggs and Freamon pick up Shardene and take her to their office to talk. The show her the body of her fellow dancer and friend, who died at Wee-Bey's and Stinkum's recent party. She weeps when she sees her friend, whose body was rolled in a carpet and disposed of. Well spoken and forthright, she acknowledges that she dances at Orlando's but says she doesn't use drugs and isn't a hooker. Greggs and Freamon leave her for a moment and discuss flipping her. "I think she's a sweetheart," says Freamon, "and we push her hard enough, she'll tumble."

Shardene explains that she's involved with D'Angelo but, now horrified, says she realizes that she has to quit her job. Freamon presses her to stay on a bit longer and help him gather information. She packs her things at D'Angelo's apartment, and when he asks her why she's leaving, he's taken aback by her response: "Do I look like someone you can roll up in a rug and throw in the trash?"

Bodie and Poot turn up at the basketball game and encounter Herc and Carver, who then realize that Avon must be there too. Since they don't know what he looks like, they call the Detail Room to let the squad know, and Daniels and other crew members scramble so they can get a visual on Avon. Avon's team loses and he drops $100,000 in a bet with Proposition Joe Stewart from the east side. When Avon leaves, he's followed by several cars from the squad, leading them on a cat-and-mouse chase that ends when he drives by Daniels, wagging a mocking finger at him.

Omar shows up in the office of Proposition Joe Stewart, Avon's rival, and bargains with him. Omar gives him Barksdale's stash and says in return he wants two things: the number for Avon's pager and the code one of Avon's boys uses when he beeps. The deal is done. Later, outside Orlando's, Omar beeps Avon, and shoots at him when he steps outside to a pay phone to respond to the beep. Wee-Bey arrives at the same moment and shoots at Omar, hitting him in the shoulder. Avon is shaken but unharmed.

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S01E10

"And then he dropped the bracelets..." - Greggs

Summary

Directed by: Brad Anderson
Story by: David Simon & Ed Burns
Teleplay by: David Simon

After his failed attempt to kill Avon, Omar lays low, afraid even to go to a hospital because Avon's boys, he believes, will be waiting on him in the parking lot when he gets out. Avon at last seems willing to take Stringer's advice, and Omar receives word that Barksdale wants a truce. Omar agrees to meet Stringer in person to discuss the terms. Stringer meanwhile tells Avon he should give up his phone, not touch any drugs, make no money runs and replace his pager with a New York pager number. "We gotta build a wall around you, B," Stringer says to him.

Omar tells Greggs and McNulty that Barksdale has sent out a peace message to him. "If I stop hitting them in the head for their product, they gonna call off the bounty," he says. A wired up Omar then meets with Stringer Bell and asks for money as part of the truce. Omar tries to get Stringer to implicate Avon on the tap, but Stringer is too careful to make that kind of mistake. McNulty convinces Omar to play it safe by hiding out in New York City. McNulty sees him off at the bus station, giving him money and urging him to stay in touch. "We'll need you for the Bird trial," he says.

Judge Phelan is losing friends and political support because of his assistance in the Barksdale investigation. Pearlman shows McNulty a campaign fundraising flyer from which Phelan has been excluded. When McNulty asks why, she answers: "Maybe it's the company he keeps." Nevertheless, the Judge is willing to sign another 30-day extension on the Barksdale phone taps.

Bubbles makes a valiant effort to go straight. He meets with Walon, who urges him to "forgive your own self. Love yourself bro, and drag yourself to some meetings." Greggs is irritated when Bubbles summons her but listens sympathetically when she learns he's been clean for three days and seems serious about getting off dope. What he needs he says, is a couple hundred dollars to get a place, some clean sheets and new clothes. Greggs jokes with him, "What the **** am I gonna do with a clean informant?" but is willing to help and asks him to wait until tomorrow for the cash.

D'Angelo is less than thrilled when Donette, the mother of his son, makes plans to move back in with him. During a vist, she begins to list the things they're going to need, including a bigger apartment, a new bedroom suite and a new sofa. D'Angelo leaves without warning during her recitation of what she wants.

At the Detail Room, the squad has detected a beeper pattern they want to investigate further. When Barksdale's drug stash runs low, a call is made over one of the tapped phones to an unknown pager, and a call comes back from a pay phone in Pimlico. Staking out the Pimlico phone, the squad follows the caller back to a most unusual house. In a conventional middleclass neighborhood, the house has security cameras covering every angle and heavy window guards all around.

Daniels asks Prez if he's ready for street duty again, and sends Sydnor and Prez on the back of a garbage truck to Pimlico. When the truck picks up garbage from the house they're watching, the two detectives take it back to the Detail Room and sort through it, finding major drug related evidence, which they photograph.

Orlando, still determined to get in the game despite Avon's warning, is busted by a narcotics officer when he tries to buy four ounces of coke. In jail, his claim that he can buy weight from Barksdale gets the attention of Daniels' squad as well as Deputy Commish Burrell, but McNulty is skeptical. "He caught a charge and now he's talking out his ass," he tells Daniels. Burrell has also heard of Orlando's claims and pressures Daniels to set up a buy-and-bust using Orlando. Meanwhile, Attorney Maury Levy visits Orlando in jail, asking him to sign documents transferring his liquor license and the club to someone else. "A front has to be clean, and right now, you aren't that," Levy tells him. "You wanted to be in the game. Now you're in the game."

Wallace, determined to get out of the game, is collared by McNulty and begins immediately to tell what he knows. He picks out pictures of Wee-Bey, Stinkum and Bird and says all three were at the convenience store the night Brandon was murdered. He also says he pointed out Brandon to Stringer himself. Daniels wants to keep Wallace safe until a Barksdale trial but a hotel is impractical, so he drives Wallace to his grandma in the country.

D'Angelo waits in front of Orlando's for Shardene to come to work, but she rebuffs his attempt to talk. At work, she is all ears, even listening through Avon's office door after she delivers drinks to the boys there.

McNulty's wife is furious about the spy game he had the kids play with Stringer Bell, and is asking a judge to allow only supervised visits. McNulty asks Rhonda Pearlman to represent him in an emergency hearing in family court. The Judge is reluctant to comply with the visitation request and asks that the two parents try and resolve the matter while the Judge goes for lunch. McNulty's wife is incensed that he's asked Pearlman to represent him, since his affair with Pearlman was one of the reasons behind the breakup of the marriage. McNulty assures his wife that he not only loves the kids but he still loves her, too.

Daniels tells his squad that the DEA has lent them $30,000 for a buy-and-bust operation in which Greggs will pose as Orlando's girlfriend as they make a purchase from Avon's boy Savino. Pearlman reminds Orlando that his plea bargain is contingent upon his cooperation. The car is wired but the cops don't have visual contact and when Savino directs them to a dark neighborhood, Daniels' squad does not know where they are. Savino takes Orlando's money and says he'll be back, but instead, shooters appear and fire into the car, killing Orlando and injuring Greggs badly. Daniels and his team hear the violence over the radio, but lose precious minutes locating them. McNulty performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Greggs to keep her alive until an ambulance arrives.