It is Game Day in Baltimore for everyone. We've got a basketball game against Proposition Joe's squad; Omar's upping his game while Lester Freamon is upping the police's investigative game; Poot's getting some game over the phone; and Bubbs and Wallace may want out of the game altogether. (As to the latter, Tara Ariano notes: "D'Angelo looks at him wistfully, like he wishes he could quit the game and go back to the ninth grade himself. It's probably been ages since he diagrammed a good sentence.") A more action-packed and plot-filled episode than most, and entertaining as hell. Quote of the week goes to Lester:
In this country? Somebody's name has got to be on a piece of paper. A cousin, a girlfriend, a grandmother, a lieutenant he can trust...somebody's name is on a piece of paper. And here's the rub: You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's going to take you.
This show does SUCH an amazing job at being tragic and wistful all at once. I so want Bubbs, Wallace and D'Angelo to be able to get out and yet you just know that getting out is the impossible.
ReplyDeleteAnd DAMN, Omar. That is a risky play.
I'll get to these comments, I will. Swamped at work.
ReplyDeleteI love this episode. For one thing, it shows that Prop Joe is one step ahead of Avon. For another, it shows that Avon is not dumb enough to miss a pretty sophisticated tail. The confusion and realization in the follow cars is one of my favorite scenes in this season. I'm hitting the "relevant" button on this episode.
ReplyDeleteI loved this episode, too. I enjoyed how everyone just stopped down for a good game of ball, until you finally realize that there might actually be lives on the line. Prop Joe, man. That guy must be smart to have survived in the game this long.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to read Alan's review to refresh my memory, but for now, that's what I remember being struck by.
Perhaps my favorite part of this whole episode was the storyline with Herc and Carver. Not only did the show keep playing with my expectations, but that scene where they're ripping apart the car was beautifully played. I don't know why I found that whole set of scenes so elegant, but there's something about them being desperate to find that cash that showed me that it's not just that they don't want to get in trouble. It seemed to me to be a sequence about them realizing (and showing us) that they actually want to be part of this detail and respect the people they're working with. Once they decided not to take the money, they certainly weren't going to go down for it, but I just got the feeling that it was more than that. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
ReplyDeleteAll the scenes with Shardene about killed me. So trusting, and seems to be naive enough that she doesn't realize she's being played like a violin by the cops. Kima sure knows how to pick 'em.
I'm really loving the idea of the smart criminal, and, more importantly, the smart criminal syndicate. In real life, the criminals always seem to find a new way - the cops (or TSA) close one avenue, and they just find another. But on TV, this is rarely the case. You might see a genius serial killer here and there, but mostly criminals are dumb on TV. Seeing Avon outsmart the tail was fantastic - and especially so given that he didn't have to work particularly hard to do it. and it's not the first time - Stringer ripping out the pay phones, the pager codes, the conversation here about how to deal with Omar... you have to wonder what these guys could accomplish if they turned their skills and smarts loose on a legit business.
At this point in the series, I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of understanding. I don't yet know if this is the kind of show that can ever allow what we outside the show would see as a happy ending. Is this a show that intends to show us only that The Game is a dead end, and thus that Wallace will not complete 9th grade, and Bubbs can't stay clean? Is this a show that's willing to give a happy ending to maybe one character a season - either Bubbs or Wallace, but not both? Is this a show is going let the cops catch and convict Avon or one where the little bad guys get killed and the big bad guys suffer no harm? I just don't know yet. With most of the shows I've watched where bad things happen to good characters, I felt like I've had a handle on just how dark things would get - I knew Joss Whedon was going to kill off people close to Buffy, but I was pretty confident that no one important was ever going to die on The West Wing (Mandyville doesn't count). But we're watching a really dark show here, and I don't yet know how far they'll go. It makes for a really discomforting viewer experience, which is both very exciting and very tiring.
I think you are overstating the darkness of the show. I always felt the show had a twisted optismism to it.
ReplyDeleteAlso have to remember that in comparison, this episode would put you on roughly page 100 of a 900 page book. This is just chapter 9, there are 51 more to go. You've just begun to scratch the surface.
That's what I'm saying - It's too soon (for me) to know what they're willing to do and how dark it's going to be. Given what I know about this being "the greatest show evir," I can't guess at whether that's because they create these believable redemption arcs or because they're willing to kill everyone off. It's unsettling, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I just have no idea whether there's any hope for Wallace at all, and it makes me realize how rare it is these days to really not know what you're in for with a TV show.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much formula built into the TV industry, and so much calculation of plot and character that is based on who has signed a long contract and whether the show has been renewed that it's hard to just get immersed in the plot. Plus there's so much media news these days, and so many TV commentators and reviewers that we all follow. Can you imagine if M*A*S*H* were around today and they tried to to the Henry twist? We'd have known months in advance that Henry was leaving the show, there'd be spoilers all over the internet, and some promo department would be teasing "the last minute of this episode will be the most shocking in M*A*S*H* history!" Nowadays we know who showrunners are, so we know, for example, that Joss Whedon is willing to kill a character you care about, that you should only watch a David Kelley show for the first two seasons and after that it will get insane (in a bad way), and that Jason Katims is going to end most seasons with a wordless musical montage.
This is a longwinded way of complimenting the show. It's really rare that I have that "I have to know what happens next because I have no idea how this all plays out" feeling with a TV show any more, and I like it. Even though I'm dreading seeing what happens to Wallace.
No, I think it's more like page 600 of a 900 page book that is the first in a series of five 900 page books. There are arcs that cross seasons, but I think of each season as a single novel (though it's possible to think of part of 2 and part of 3 as a single novel, and all of 4 and 5 as a separate single novel).
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'll understand your comment when I'm done with the whole thing, Isaac.
ReplyDelete<span>So hard to comment on stuff -- or even just to read your comments -- without spoiling. But all I meant was that I think that Simon & Co. intended each season to be a separate novel; even with that intent, the way that it worked out was that there was a natural flow between some threads in Seasons 2 and 3 and some larger threads in Seasons 4 and 5, so that in retrospect those took on the feel of unified narratives. </span>
ReplyDeleteAvon wagging his finger at Daniels is one of my top ten favorite scenes of the whole series
ReplyDeleteAvon wagging his finger at Daniels is one of my top ten favorite scenes of the whole series
ReplyDeleteAvon wagging his finger at Daniels is one of my top ten favorite scenes of the whole series
ReplyDeleteDidn't mean that critically at all - sorry if it sounded that way. I really wish the veterans would come back - I clearly screwed up this whole experiment by driving off the veterans, which was never my intent. I'd much rather have a spoileriffic conversation here than no conversation at all.
ReplyDelete