I GOT THE SHOTGUN, YOU GOT THE BRIEFCASE. IT'S ALL IN THE GAME, THOUGH, RIGHT? Just like last week, this week's Wire episode, "All Prologue," (Sepinwall, Ariano) was satisfying and dramatic in ways that you've trained me not to expect the show to be. Whether it's the Omar-Maury confrontation or the overwhelming inevitability of what happened to Dee (really, flushing the drugs and looking at your kid's picture at the start of the episode, and he explains Gatsby ... stack the deck much, Mr. Simon?), it just felt a bit too predictable, even when we were seeing what we wanted to see.
So, yes, I'm happy to see Shardene happy with Lester, and I was delighted to see Prop Joe back in action and to see the police back together so easily applying season one's methods to the Sobotka detail. But overall, I feel like some shades of grey are being washed out -- other the Sobotkas, who receive the kind of 3-D empathy that the show is capable of at its best, the ambiguity's going away. No reminder of Dee's past bad acts when it comes to his death; no nuance with the Greek, Etan, and the new Big Bads the way there was last year with Avon and Stringer; everyone on the police seems clean and competent.
Still, there's half a season to go; let's see what happens next.
