#daniels

-Ahh, an "I'm just a gangster, I suppose" pre-echo:

LEVY: You can replace product and currency.

STRINGER: Yeah, he right. We gotta focus on what's real, here.

AVON: All of this shit is real. All of it!

-I love Levy and Stringer literally on the same side here:

Levy has thus far been at an arm's length from the business itself but here he's acting like an actual consigliere (i.e., lawyer who is the top advisor to the "Don," a la Tom Hagen in The Godfather). He essentially starts the discussion of who they need to kill, but when things get too explicit he leaves and passes the role off to String. Which, by the way:

Guys, are you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?! 😄

-Final note on this scene:

I think this is Stringer's first "shut/lock that door"! I'll return to this at the end, but it does feel like he's becoming his s2/s3 self over the course of this episode.

-Insane levels of evil stepmother here:

-Wow, the killing of Nykesha Lyles is revealed in a ten-second scene in the middle of this Shardene wearing a wire sequence. Absolutely brutal way to show us the stakes if this goes wrong for Shardene.

-Oh god, Wallace returning to the Pit is SO painful. Like a lamb happily walking right into the lion's den.

-Ahh, Wallace and Dee's matching orange and white, sometimes this show is not subtle:

-Just to say it, Bodie's friendliness toward Wallace here is 100% fake. He NEVER jokes around with Wallace like this in the whole rest of the season. Especially "but did you get some of that country ass?" - Wallace is not in the category of people Bodie talks sex with; the last time he joked about sex with Poot, Wallace was playing with a toy and Bodie threw a bottle at him!

-Also I'm laughing at Bodie acting like he can make personnel decisions:

Getting a little big for his britches after he got cell phone privileges. Of course, Dee overrides him immediately.

-Auggh Daniels saying if they find Wallace he'll have him sleep on his couch....not the first time a cop will impulsively want to save a kid by taking him home, and not the first time it will utterly fail.

-Oh god, D'Angelo's walk with Wallace. Dee starts out basically telling Wallace he needs to get out, but one line from Wallace about how this is his home, and Dee changes his tune to "okay just be really careful." NO Dee we are WAY past that point!!! Get him OUT of there!!!!

-Of course, the problem is that Dee likes Wallace and wants to see him succeed. And he can't quite accept that it is impossible for Wallace to succeed in his world, that his attempts at protection are not enough, that by indulging him and giving him another chance he is pushing him further into danger, that his own uncle is about to sign his death warrant.

-Anyway, hey it's Brianna!! I'll admit I LOLed at the meta "Is that your girl? / Nah, that's my mom!"

-Oh, well, that's reassuring! I'm sure we have nothing to worry about with Senator Clay Davis!

-Small thing that they do a good job conveying this episode is how much the detail have come to care about each other. Daniels and Lester laughing at Herc celebrating the exam results, Santangelo and Sydnor's goodbyes with Daniels, it's all very family about to go their separate ways.

-Oh fuck the PHYSICAL sense of dread I experienced when Bodie gets in that car with Stringer. Here we go.

-Stringer pulling up in the car to talk to Bodie parallels Brianna pulling up with lunch for D'Angelo a couple scenes earlier:

Putting Stringer in a paternal role to Bodie...

-Stringer's manipulation of Bodie throughout this episode is really amazing. In the earlier scene at the Pit, he indicates that he does not care about Bodie on a personal level (handshake snub), but he sees professional potential in Bodie (giving him phone privileges with Dee). Here, he obviously follows up on the professional side with a major assignment, but also presents a completely different approach personally. He's SO zeroed in on Bodie, really putting the full force of his charisma on him, but he's also so paternal and almost kindly. I mean look at this face:

It's a taste of the kind of personal attention, approval, and even affection that Bodie will be rewarded with (in addition to professional advancement) if he can become a "soldier." Of course it's irresistible to Bodie. (and to be fair, String does follow through on the promise!)

-There's a notable contrast here with Chris and Michael later: when Chris is mentoring Michael in becoming a hit man, he says that Michael's first assignment shouldn't be someone he knows. But Stringer has no problem making Bodie's first kill be someone he knows - I think because this isn't about making Bodie into a hit man. Stringer recognizes that Bodie's potential is as a dealer, and he keeps Bodie on that career track after this. This assignment is about testing Bodie to see if he's really committed to the game, and ensuring his loyalty to the Barksdales by making him a "made man" (a classic mafia thing, the idea being that once you've killed for the group you'll be loyal because they have dirt on you).

-Finally, things you notice after scrolling through this scene five times for this post: there's a subtle checked pattern on Bodie's shorts that matches Stringer's shirt!

-More fun with costuming, it's the debut of Bodie's one-arm-out-the-sleeve look, which I guess he breaks out when he's pumping up his peers to do violence:

-And then Bodie and Poot are unified in black/white/red/blue, vs. Wallace [cap from a later scene but it's the same outfit] with literal cartoons on his shirt:

Again, sometimes this show is not subtle.

-Anyway back to content. God bless you Mr. Williams and your ability to look so young in moments like this:

Before this rewatch I had forgotten that Bodie and Wallace are both stated to be 16 in s1; in my head Bodie was a year or two older than Wallace, with Poot somewhere in between. But I've come around on them all being the same age, and being distinguished only by their behavior. Bodie already earned more responsibility at the Pit prior to s1, and in this very episode he gets promoted by getting a cell phone along with Dee, while Wallace is potentially demoted to lookout, a job usually done by kids. Bodie on the surface acts older, but OTOH of course it's Wallace who is actually filling an adult role for the kids he's watching, while at home Bodie is still a child under his grandmother's care. (And on both axes Poot is somewhere in the middle: he tries to read the phone numbers over Bodie's shoulder but is told to stay in his place; he stays with Wallace sometimes but doesn't actively take care of the kids.)

-By the way, one more costume note: Bodie's bandana in the above scene recalls Avon's earlier, and of course Tupac, who appears behind Wallace (admittedly w/o bandana):

-Only thing I really have to say about the (extraordinary, devastating) shooting scene is that everything Bodie is saying to Wallace here (you're weak, you brought this on yourself, be a man) is for Bodie's benefit, not Wallace's. In other words, it's not that he wants to punish Wallace further by berating him before he dies, it's that he's trying to convince himself to do it by casting Wallace as an adult who made his own choices and deserves the consequences, rather than as a trapped child.

-It's impossible to cap, but thank you to the person on youtube who pointed out that if you look closely you can see Bodie wiping tears as he walks out of the room.

-Jesus fucking christ and we cut right to Wallace's mom. BRUTAL.

-Ahh I wonder if perhaps the "little bird" wasn't around this episode, hmmm 🫢

-Ok so Burrell was of course never in favor of the detail, but it's really pressure from Clay that makes him finally shut it down. Which does make me wonder if they could have got farther with taking down the Barksdales if they hadn't pursued the money angle. I get Lester's argument that you need to trace the money to get to the true source of the problems, but was there some middle way that could have actually accomplished more in terms of reducing the amount of drugs and violence on the streets of Baltimore...I know, I know, any time you're contemplating an "other way" on The Wire you've already lost.

-Anyway Daniels telling Burrell off here is incredible, he really has the arc of the season in terms of growth.

-Obligatory appreciation of how good Avon looks to get arrested:

-I feel like this episode is especially in conversation with classic gangster films. We've got:

Levy as consigliere

Bodie becoming a made man

And now a Tony Montana reference!

-Holy shit I did not remember that Avon and Stringer fully expected Stringer to also get arrested here. Look at the series of expressions when they realize he isn't: