(Season 2, Episodes 5-7)
Well, I’m more than halfway through season two at this point and things are just starting to come together. The jigsaw puzzle isn’t quite done yet, but I’m pretty sure that all the pieces are on the table and all the edge pieces have been put together. Now that tricky middle portion needs to be figured out.
This season has definitely been slower than the first. So many more characters are involved, but luckily I am finding them engaging and interesting. Watching TV on DVD is a much different experience than watching it live, waiting a week or more for a new episode. I could definitely see myself getting frustrated having to wait in-between episodes during this slow-developing season. Luckily, I don’t have that problem, so I really don’t have anything to complain about.
“Undertow”
In this episode, we got a good look into just how big of a screw up Ziggy is. Aside from messing up his work on the docks, he’s also messed up all his “extracurricular” activities. Too bad for him that meant pissing off some Baltimore drug dealers. As season one taught us, that’s never a good idea.
It was great to see the details actually forming and starting to investigate the case. It’s a shame that McNulty seems destined to spend most of the season on the outside. I was hoping that his stint in the Marine Unit wasn’t going to be that permanent. Oh, well, knowing him, he’ll find a way to get involved.
The highlight of the episode for me had to be McNulty taking Omar shopping for court clothes. Genius.
“All Prologue”
As I was watching this episode, I noted to myself that there were a lot of laughs, and at the end of the episode it was very clear why. Seeing Omar on the stand in all his unabashed glory was priceless, especially when he tore into Maury, the Barksdale lawyer. That was a great moment, and that slimy drug lawyer had it coming to him.
I really liked the scene of the jailhouse book club with all the inmates discussing The Great Gatsby. When I first saw it I chuckled a bit, but then quickly realized what a perfect novel that would be for drug dealers. Jay Gatsby was, after all, pretty much the closest thing to a drug dealer in his day. D’Angelo also made the connection, noting that, as the book says, you can never escape your past, no matter how much you may want to.
I certainly wasn’t expecting D’Angelo to get killed in prison, and it was a tough scene to watch. Stringer Bell is a pretty ruthless man, but as they say, “It’s all in the game.”
“Backwash”
During this episode, the case really started to come together. Beadie and Freamon, along with the rest of the detail figured out the pattern of the “lost boxes” on the dock and ended up trailing one to the Greek’s warehouse. Greggs even managed to snap a few photos of Proposition Joe driving into the same warehouse. Things are going to get juicy!
Meanwhile, Herc and Carver have Nick tied into it all as they gathered a bunch of evidence of his drug dealing. The stupid, greedy Sobotkas. They couldn’t be happy with money from the Greek, they had to go and take the heroin. I have a feeling that this is going to end very badly for Nick. It’s my guess that he’s going to be the scapegoat this season, much like D’Angelo last season … and we see where that got him.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Jan 06, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Great recaps once again. I have to say that you are an impressive first time viewer. You are really catching alot of things, for a virgin and all. I admit that, and it’s obviously part of the beauty of the show, I still pick up multiple new little detials every time I re-watch. With the arrival of the new complete series dvd, I’m watching again myself. Another thing that is beautiful about this show is that, really, everything is important. By the end of the season when you look back at everything that happened in those early episodes, when things seems to be moving slow, you realize that in reality tons of important things were happening – you just didn’t know it yet.