A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THIS MAN HAS MY FULL SUPPORT:  That's what Odell Watkins scribbled on the back of his business card handed to Marla Watkins for use in expediting Cutty's bureaucratic needs with the new gym, and I'm sure both Robert Caro and the Institute for Justice could have a field day with the Cutty scenes ... but we're not here to talk about that.

Because at the heart of The Wire's season three episode, "Slapstick," are a series of consequential, if very human mistakes which seem bound to doom characters who had it all on the right path. We'll start, as we must, with Prez.



Oy vey. You could almost forget that this was the same guy who accidentally shot a wall in the unit's office, who (before the series started) had shot up his own squad car. He found the thing he was good at, and reveled in it. He was not natural street police, and the harbingers of doom circled this episode -- the mention of his family, the casual, why-are-they-showing-this? late night trip for Chinese food -- making me prepared for Prez himself to be the victim of violence. Not showing the shooting puts the audience in the same frame as his fellow officers; we don't know what motivated Prez, or whether he was acting reasonably. Oh, sad.

And, of course, the Sunday truce. Omar thought "ain't nobody in this city that low down to disrespect a Sunday morning," and as Avon said, "Sunday truce been there as long as the game itself ..... I mean, you can do some shit and be like what the fuck, but hey, never on no Sunday." Yet here we are, and Omar is on a mission again to avenge the torn-up church crown of a bonafide colored lady who thinks he's working at a cafeteria at BWI.

We see this week the continuing fallout from Bernard's sloppiness in how he purchases the new burner phones, too much in bulk, and too set a pattern. Now, there's the little problem of the wireless company's lack of cooperation, but this may be leading somewhere. Meanwhile, Hamsterdam seems doomed: Carver went too far (and too sloppily) to try to preserve it, but how much longer until Herc (or my prediction: Colicchio) was going to make this kind of stink about it? Bunny's appeal to the crew chiefs actually turns up a shooter, but time is running out.

Finally, Jimmy McNulty, shitty parent. The Guardian counts his booty call as his seventh lousy parenting decision of the series, but I'd rather highlight a mistake of his I once made back in the day: you don't admit to someone on a date that you don't find her line of work interesting or meaningful. Duh.