Catastrophic success is the upshot of nearly everyone's gambits on this episode of The Wire.McNulty and Freamon's fraudulent case of serial killing of homeless men in Baltimore get ever more attention, and ever more promises of support, from the mayor on down the hierarchy...but no more actually humanpower or technological resources, leaving them slightly hobbled in their real investigation, into the activities of Marlo's gang. Lester brings his Major Crimes underling into the conspiracy, and between them they manage to determine that the real business of the gang is being conducted through cell-phone photos rather than text messages or coded conversation, but that just taunts them in not having quite what they need to put Marlo and his enforcers away. As Freamon notes, when Assitant D.A. Rhonda Pearlman drops by about the investigation of Clay Davis, his "official" work, it's remarkable what one can do when no one's looking over your shoulder...a luxury that McNulty and Freamon a...
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Jamie Hector, The Wire
Fans of the fiery final season of The Wire (Sunday at 9 pm/ET on HBO) know that drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) is an ice-cold killer who, after one particularly dastardly murder two weeks ago, is hiding out from revenge-seeking stickup artist Omar (Michael K. Williams). Recently, though, Marlo's portrayer, Jamie Hector, did surface... for a signing of the new Wire soundtrack at the HBO store in Midtown Manhattan. At the signing, Hector told TVGuide.com that he'll be moving from street-corner killing to supernatural evil-doing — as the new "villain" on Heroes. (NBC reps, however, wouldn't confirm this casting news.) But the soft-spoken actor wouldn't reveal much about himself or his new character's superpower. "It's not good," he says simply. Sounds like his character on The Wire.
Hector's rig
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Parallel lines run throughout this episode, as people push themselves down similar paths for similar reasons, even if their circumstances are rather different.Marlo meets with the primary Greek importer, who shows him, as it turns out, how to send email with his mobile phone...we discover that's what he's doing only at the end of the episode, as Lester discovers the same thing, after all the travails and blatant fraud to get a "wire up" on Marlo's new phone. But that's not the only new trick Marlo's working on, as he and his most trusted crew attempt to lure Omar and one of Omar and Butchie's old friends into a trap...since the latter two have been staking out an apartment where Marlo's crew has been congregating off and on for days, waiting to make their own move. (It's taken me a while to wonder if it's any coincidence that take-no-prisoners Marlo and criminal-with-rules Omar's names nearly mirror each other's.) The crew manages to get Omar's partner, when the avengers break in...
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Lance Reddick by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com
Cheers to Lance Reddick for making himself omnipresent on TV. The quietly compelling actor lights up both The Wire (as Baltimore top cop Cedric Daniels) and Lost (as an Oceanic Airlines attorney — or is he? — who visits Hurley in a mental hospital). Plus, Reddick's landed a role as a Homeland Security chief in J.J. Abrams' X-Files-ish Fox pilot Fringe, and he's joined Kate Walsh and Sofia Vergara in Cadillac's sleek new ad campaign. He's certainly come a long way from playing a crack addict on HBO's Emmy-winning miniseries The Corner.
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Question: I just read your Dispatch about the 2008 SAG Awards (I didn't watch) and wonder if the powers that be of these awards shows will ever lavish the cast and crew of The Wire with anything resembling the worship showered upon The Sopranos? While I understand that the subject matter of the former is a mirror that most Americans don't want to gaze into (hence the lackluster ratings), the work being done there is at a minimum as good as what we've enjoyed from the latter. The thing that perplexes me is that the writing, the acting, the casting, the locations — the production — have turned this show into the greatest social commentary on TV and is as important a cultural television touch point as Roots was in the '70s. While a bit surprised that the viewing public doesn't seem to care, it's shocking that the cast's own guild, which is supposed to celebrate the talent among its members, refuses to acknowledge this fine ensemble. It is a crime that their work — in particular, that of ...
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You can feel the series winding up toward some serious payoff, with this episode if not before...there are only six episodes left, after all. And Prop Joe will not be returning. Nor, presumably, will be several key veterans at the Baltimore Sun...but their exits were less final.McNulty and Freamon, in their efforts to fake up a single serial killer focused on homeless men, enlist the aid of Freamon's old partner, an ex-homicide detective busted down to uniform duty, and spending most of night shifts sleeping so as to be ready for his daytime job as a realtor...he finds them one body to begin with, but it proves too far gone to make look like a homicide. Meanwhile, McNulty's research with the morgue opens his eyes to the extent of deaths among the homeless, particularly from narcotics overdoses; Freamon suggests a means of spicing up the serial killings with a set of false teeth, so that the "murderer" will be seen to have bitten "his" victims...McNulty has the thankless task of fa...
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Michael Kenneth Williams, The Wire
Call it karma, coincidence or a casting coup, but as Omar, The Wire's stickup artist extraordinaire, Michael Kenneth Williams steals every scene he's in. We got our first glimpse this year of the gay, gun-toting gangster in his island exile last week, but tonight (9 pm/ET, HBO) he's back in Baltimore — and looking for revenge.
TV Guide: Omar may be the most interesting TV villain since Deadwood's Al Swearengen. Michael Kenneth Williams: I still don't fully understand him. I think I can identify with maybe five percent of Omar, and the rest I did a whole lot of praying, "I hope they like it!" [Laughs] I was a little concerned with the backlash, because of his sexual [orientation], and the fact that he's not driving fancy cars and using fancy drugs. But Omar has resonated in a way that
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Question: I need some Wire scoop. Please tell me that Marlo and his two demonic sidekicks will get theirs by the end of this season, particularly at the hands of Omar. Watching them doing all this killing without any retribution is getting very tiring.
Answer: I don't know about by the end of the season. But by the end of Episode 7, Marlo is still very much in control — although there’s no question a gang war is going on, and both sides have traded casualties.
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Schemes, and how they don't always quite work out, on this week's installment.McNulty, having tampered with a corpse at the end of the last episode to make it look like the result of murder, researches similar deaths in the Homicide files and eventually plants evidence on the tampered-with corpse, in the form of a red ribbon tied around its arm, to bolster his attempt to drum up interest in investigating a potential serial killer. In purchasing the ribbon to plant at a convenience store, he crosses paths with and almost meets Alma Gutierrez (Michelle Paress), who is out trying to find a copy of the new Baltimore Sun, the first issue to feature a front-page solo story by her (that of the murder of three people by Marlo's henchpeople in the previous episode). Later, McNulty would call her to place the story of the serial killer (she's essentially the new junior Metro crime beat reporter), but McNulty's planted story is even more soft-pedalled than Gutierrez's front-page story was; b...
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Clark Johnson, Brandon Young, Michelle Paress and Tom McCarthy in The Wire by Paul Schiraldi/HBO
Cheers to The Wire for putting Clark Johnson back in front of the camera. The gruffly charming Homicide: Life on the Street vet has spent the past few years directing episodes of The Wire and The Shield as well as movies like S.W.A.T. HBO's brilliant urban drama gives Johnson the best role of his career as embattled Baltimore newspaperman Gus Haynes. That's good news.• Read and react to Bruce's opinions on CSI, Project Runway and more!• Share your own raves and rants about other shows on the Reader Cheers & Jeers discussion board.• We may feature your Cheer or Jeer on TVGuide.com or in TV Guide magazine!
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