"Took"
In an episode more given over to relatively leisurely setpieces than usual this season (and marking the return of scriptwriter Richard Price to the series, and a cameo by Richard Belzer as Munch, another reference back to
Homicide: Life on the Streets), this one was all about the misallocation of resources. Of course, every episode of
The Wire deals with that, but rarely so completely.
For example, McNulty and Freamon fake up a call from their fictional serial murderer to Templeton, the reporter who is their unwitting partner in the fraud (or, more correctly, is running his own parallel fraud to theirs). This leads to both precisely the kind of unlimited funding Lester and Jimmy were hoping for in police department funds and humanpower commitment, and an embarrassment of riches (and the looming threat of close oversight scrutiny) that might hinder their real investigation...even as it allows McNulty to quietly fund and fold in the pet cases of many of his fellow homicide detectives. Among the less pleasant side effects is Kima's detail to speak to the parents of the most recent "victim," an addict whom McNulty had driven down to a Richmond, Virginia, shelter in the previous episode...with both Kima and the parents having to deal with their anguish over their son's apparent murder. Even as Jimmy finds himself able to sponsor "real police" work under the cover of his investigation, Bunk's outrage over the fraud continues to grow, as he sees it interfering with actual work (and not seeing any useful payoff between the investigation of Marlo's gang and Bunk's own work on the muders they'd committed the previous year).
Meanwhile, at
The Baltimore Sun, Templeton and his colleagues and bosses are thrust ever more into the limelight, as the corporate owners also shake loose extra money and commitment of other resources to allow for as much coverage of the murders, and Templeton's peripheral involvement, as possible...even as Gus's doubts about Templeton become ever more solid, not helped by Scott's self-glorifying Page 1 account of the events leading up to the phone call from the "killer." Meanwhile, at least some good reportage is likely to come of this, as Bubbles helps one of Scott's colleagues cover some of the same ground as Scott did, only in a more informed manner.
Clay Davis, having engaged good counsel and knowing his audience both in and out of the court, manages also to paint his own misappopriation of funds as a virtue, leading to his acquittal when he claims that essentially all the graft he was taking from his community projects was actually filtered out into informal constituent service by him.
Mayor Carcetti is also playing to an appreciative audience, gathering commitments from donors and other political backers for his imminent run for the governorship; the news splash over the phone call just makes their Robbing Peter plans to make the hunt for the serial killer that much more urgently in need of results, both for budgetary and political reasons.
And, on a more one-to-one level, Omar's crusade against Marlo, which seems to be taking as much a toll on Omar as on Marlo's organization, is becoming a sort of misappopriation of Omar's talents, as he begins executing Marlo's henchmen more randomly than he might've in previous years. Meanwhile, Bunk's continuing investigation leads to his interviewing Michael Lee, whose service to Marlo was in part a result of a heavy sort of favor Marlo's thugs did for his family...and the results of that service not only put him temporarily under Bunk's thumb, but also under Omar's.
Kima, taking on some regular custody responsibility for her ex's son, makes the mistake of buying some furniture that requires assembly...failing to master it, she lets her ward take her bed, and when he can't sleep, she gathers him up and takes him to the window for a session of Goodnight, Moon...
Often a charming and funny episode, particularly in that last sequence and in the corner kids discussion of what sort of "straight" jobs they might be able to get. And I'm sure there's an accounting somewhere of all the series that Belzer has played Munch in, as a guest or regular (and occasionally not been named as Munch, but clearly playing the role, as in this episode):
Homicide, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Trial by Jury, The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen, The Beat, Friends, Arrested Development, The Simpsons...I'm probably missing something. (IMDb suggests Munch has been played by someone else on
Sesame Street.)
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