When the ten students for the University of Maryland study are selected – their teachers happy to see them exit class – Namond is on the list.
Though Randy Wagstaff is not part of the study, he is called into assistant principal Donnelly’s office about the rape of a classmate named Tiffany. Worried that the school will call his foster home, the boy allows that he has a card to play: “I know about a murder.”
When she takes the info to Prez, he convinces her to let him pass the info along to someone he trusts in the police department so Randy doesn’t “get chewed up by the system.”
Clay Davis knows that the momentum in the mayor’s race is steadily moving toward Carcetti and asks for a meeting with the councilman.
He can’t endorse Tommy this close to the election (indeed, Davis will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Royce on election day) but – for a fee – he can see that people in key precincts pull the right lever.
On election day morning, Randy gets a job handing out a box of flyers for $50 and recruits Dukie, Donut, and Kenard (Thuliso Dingwald) to help. Michael decides to go to Cutty’s gym, working a bag.
Namond, now with his own package of dope to sell (which his mother forced Bodie to give him) comes to the gym to ask Michael if he wants to work it with him. Michael passes (unfortunate for Namond, who has no idea what he’s doing) and remains cool to Cutty, whom he doesn’t trust.
Spotting a squad car outside a grocery, Omar hides his weapon behind a rack of beer and, once arrested on the say-so of Old Face Andre for the murder of the delivery woman, calls Butchie to let him know he’s going downtown. Once at Central Booking, among many bad men he has robbed, we see something rare cross Omar’s face: a look of fear.
He relaxes, though not at first, when a pair of muscular inmates are put in the holding cell. One of them ominously pulls a shank before telling Omar: “Butchie sent us.”
When Carcetti gets the news that he has won – that Royce has conceded – he is walking along the Inner Harbor tourist promenade with his wife, Jennifer.
“Are we happy about that?” asks Jennifer.
Her husband, the presumptive mayor-elect, thinks so.
DAVID SIMON ON JAMIE HECTOR AS MARLO STANFIELD
“Jamie Hector’s performance as Marlo Stanfield was so understated and restrained that there were many viewers who initially mistook the minimalist choices for a lack of range.”
“This was amusing to the writers, who had seen enough of Jamie’s work to know how good he is and how disciplined and self-denying a performance he was offering. At the end of [Marlo’s] arc, when his emotion finally breaks – not over any threat to his money, or even to his power, but to the authority of his name and reputation – he made everything perfectly and wonderfully certain.”
“That was the key to Marlo Stanfield. He represented the ultimate totalitarian impulse – beyond money, beyond power or the exercise of power for its own sake, but instead that strange combination of self-love and self- loathing that rarely dares speak its name openly.”
“Marlo wanted money and power not for their own sake, but so the world would know they were his and his alone. He defined, for the purposes of The Wire, the emotional end-game for any and every power pyramid depicted.”
“Jamie nailed that. A great, great actor.”
episode forty-four
UNTO OTHERS
“Aw Yeah. That Golden Rule.”
– BUNK
Directed by Anthony Hemingway
Story by Ed Burns & William F. Zorzi; teleplay by William F. Zorzi
In his cell at Central Booking, Omar is helped by Donnie (real-life stickup artist, Donnie Andrews, now reformed), and a second convict known as “Big Guy.”
For a protective vest, the pair strap books around Omar’s torso. When someone tries to stab Omar in the food line, he turns the tables, literally shoving the shank up his assailant’s ass.
A battle won, a message sent, but the price on Omar’s head is up to five figures, to be happily paid by Marlo Stanfield. Omar makes a call to a cop who owes him a solid, his fellow Edmondson High School classmate, Bunk Moreland.
Bunk, however, tells Omar that helping him find a policeman’s missing service revolver isn’t enough currency to get cut loose on a first-degree murder charge with an eyewitness.
Omar realizes not only that he’s surely been set up, but he isn’t sure how long he might survive lock-up.
“If I knew I’d be sharin’ quarters with all these boys,” says Omar. “I might not robbed so many of ’em.”
Bunk calls in a favor and gets Omar moved to protective custody.
Finding Spider on the corner, Cutty asks the kid – one of his best fighters now working the drug trade – where he’s been; only to be told, “You ain’t my fucking father.”
In Prez’s homeroom, now empty of Namond, the former cop uses lunchtime poker games to teach math skills. When he goes looking for a set of dice to teach them probability, he is amazed at what he finds: a cache of textbooks, video equipment, and a computer, all new and untouched.
With the election over, the cops have a green light to work the case of the dead witness – Braddock – the way it should be worked. The first thing Greggs and Norris do is bring in an inmate named Anthony Wardell for questioning.
As Namond works a corner, some boys down the block let him know they’re taking over his territory, showing a 9mm handgun to back up the threat.
One of the runners on the rival crew is Sherrod, Bubbles’s homeless, illiterate, and doomed surrogate son played by Rashad Orange. Sherrod, armed and all coked up, pushes and punches Namond near Cutty’s gym, demanding he give up the corner.
Though Namond will say it “ain’t no thing,” both Cutty and Michael – who claims it’s none of their business – know better.
In his own wanderings – trying to sell DVDs on the street – Bubbles is again hassled by “the Fiend” for dope or money, whatever he’s got.
Downtown, a nervous Pearlman meets her new boss, Rupert Bond, the freshly elected State’s Attorney for the City of Baltimore. He puts Rhonda in charge of prosecuting all homicides, saying with a nod to the subpoena caper: “I admire your courage, if not your loyalty.”
In his first meeting with the big shots at police HQ, Carcetti gets some hard truths from Daniels, who speaks freely in front of Burrell: murders are down but all other violent crime is up. The problem, Daniels says, is a policy of reducing statistics instead of doing fundamental police work.
Herc is desperate to get his spy camera back from Marlo, who has installed it at his pigeon coops. When Herc questions Randy about the murder he claims to know about, Randy does some big-league snitching: Little Kevin told him that Chris and Snoop killed Lex. With this, Herc makes a beeline for the pigeons.
Greggs goes to the scene of Braddock’s murder to re-enact the crime, theorizing over various trajectories, broken bottles on a dresser suggesting there may have been some target practice going on.
With some of the troublemakers like Namond gone from the class – and “Mr. Prezbo” earning their trust by being fair and consisistent – the kids begin working out number problems by shooting dice for pots of Monopoly money.
“You trick ’em into thinking they aren’t learning,” says Prez, “and they do.”
As fate somehow conspires to trick the City of Baltimore into electing Thomas J. Carcetti their new mayor.
It seems that the dead state witness whose corpse Carcetti was able to use to derail the Royce express wasn’t murdered at all: he was the accidental victim of someone shooting target practice indoors.
When Greggs brings Norris a.38 slug from the crime scene that matches one found during Braddock’s autopsy, the veteran detective says: “Our guy’s dead from a stray? And this fuck Carcetti gets to be the mayor behind the stupidity. I fucking love this town.”
episode forty-five
“CORNER BOYS”
“We got our thing, but it’s just part of the big thing.�
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– ZENOBIA
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Story by Ed Burns & Richard Price; teleplay by Richard Price
As Prez moves on from number problems to word problems in math class – he will later be told to “teach the test” so the schools aren’t taken over by the state – Jay Landsman tells the homicide unit that Carcetti will be coming around on a “fact-finding” mission.
Landsman also eulogizes recent cancer victim and colleague Raymond Foerster.
“The man served 39 years, obtaining the rank of colonel without leaving a trail of bitterness or betrayal. In this department, that’s not a career – it’s a miracle.”
Like the death of Detective Ray Cole the season before, Foerster’s on-screen passing reflected off-screen reality. Richard De Angelis, a former stand-up comic under the name “Richy Roach,” played Colonel Foerster with a pragmatic sense of resignation. He died on December 28, 2005 after a battle with prostate cancer.
In Bunny Colvin and Professor Parenti’s project class, the students finally settle down: they now understand they can throw as many tantrums as they wish, it won’t get them thrown out of school.
Colvin has come to see the school as the jail, and the teachers as the police: dress rehearsal for the corner. When he gets the kids talking about what makes a good corner boy, the discussion becomes lively.
When Herc pulls Marlo over and asks for his camera back, Marlo tells him: “You do me one, I’ll do you.”
The way things are with Marimow, Herc would rather trade horses with a ruthless killer than tell his boss he lost a piece of equipment that really doesn’t cost all that much.
Across town in East Baltimore, Chris and Snoop put the bodies of New York boys they’ve removed from Monument Street corners – as Marlo promised Prop Joe he would – in another boarded-up rowhouse.
Marlo then gives Herc’s business card, which he got in the little parley about the missing camera, to Prop Joe, who is grateful but points out to Marlo that if they “disappear” all of the bodies of the New York boys, what will be the message to others willing to take their place?
Enlisting Detective Vernon Holley to give him a hand, Bunk visits Old Face Andre’s store to go over the robbery-murder now pinned on Omar. Bunk again clocks all the signs of a stash house and Holley is now on board in thinking that Andre is full of shit. They will later return with summonses for the Grand Jury.
Namond, ever the braggart, tells Michael and Randy about a class in which they talk about what it’s like on the corner and then passes up going to the gym to put his dope in vials, sell it with his crew on Fayette Street and re-up.
Later, his mother – the worst kind of stage mother for a corner boy – tells him not to bring the dope into the house: “That’s what you have a lieutenant for.”
Carcetti, having gone on a drug bust ride-along after his visit to homicide, complains to Rawls about all the manpower going into busting people for $20 worth of dope.
To show that arrests are up, Rawls answers, they have to make arrests, even bullshit arrests. He lays this policy at the feet of Burrell, saying he would be very interested in the chance to do things a new way.
The opinion of Major Cedric Daniels will also be sought by Carcetti, and Pearlman tells her lover – one who has treated her so much better than that dog McNulty ever did – to unload on Rawls and Burrell; to tell all he knows about the manifold dysfunctions of the Baltimore Police Department. When Daniels gets his meeting, Carcetti offers him Foerster’s job as CID commander under Rawls.
“How for real are you?” asks Daniels, to which Carcetti replies that they’ll figure that out as they go along.
At home, Michael’s mother has sold all of the food in the house – “out of our mouths,” the kid says – to buy dope. It only gets worse for Michael when his stepfather – Bug’s biological dad – is released early from prison. Mom promises that they won’t be on social services anymore because her man is “gonna take care of all that for us.”
Back in “special” class after being chastised by De’Londa for making the mistakes of a rookie drug dealer, Namond is told, along with the others, to make a list of laws one must follow to be a corner boy. Colvin makes it a group project.
Herc, Dozerman and plainclothes drug cops Colicchio and Carrick show up at Marlo’s open-air hangout and search everywhere for the missing camera, with Herc promising they will do it “every day” until the camera is returned.
Herc’s obsession extends to Partlow and Snoop, whom he pulls over for a car search. All the cops see is lime and a nail gun, overlooking a trap door in the dashboard where they stow their firearms.
Next stop on this merry-go-round: Little Kevin.
Making the suspects sit on the curb, Herc fires a nail from the gun into the street near Snoop’s leg, saying: “I want my fucking camera,” before giving the nail gun back.
Following Prop Joe’s suggestion to Marlo that he leave calling cards while clearing corners, Partlow and Snoop shoot a New York boy in the head and leave him where he falls.
When Michael shows up at an after-school rec center to pick up Bug, he’s told that the boy’s father already collected him. It is heavily suggested, though never said outright, that Michael, was molested by the man. The fact that Bug is alone with him sends Michael into a panic and when he finds Bug doing homework with his father, he orders the kid to come with him immediately.
And it seems that Bunk and Holley did their homework too well, handing in a report on the dead delivery woman murder for which Omar is already in custody. Landsman chews them out for “unsolving” a murder.
THE FOUNDATION OF A FREE SOCIETY
Early in Season Four, a school secretary sums up The Wire’s views about the Baltimore school system.
“Not a goddamn thing up in here works like it should,” she says about a malfunctioning door. Indeed, precious little works at fictionalized Edward Tilghman Middle School.
Classrooms and hallways are chaotic. Girls pull razors on each other. And students shout, “Fuck you!” at teachers with impunity.
Jaded administrators roam the neighborhood each fall to round up students for a single day of school – just enough to ensure state funding is preserved. Teachers worry more about “teaching to the test” than about actually teaching the students anything. And multi-million-dollar budget screw-ups cause momentary heartburn among the politicians though nobody pays a real price.
Along the way, the schools again and again short-change young people at perhaps the most vulnerable junctures of their lives. The season paints an unforgiving portrait of educational dysfunction.
And yet, many Baltimoreans – teachers, administrators, students, and parents alike – can only nod in recognition, no longer shocked by bad news coming out of the schools. They know that the system can and does lose countless good kids like Randy and Dukie.
Those of us who are involved in the system take heart in the occasional success stories it manages to produce. But overall, it remains a failure, with shockingly low scores on standardized tests and graduation rates.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, as The Wire made clear. Burned-out teachers lack the spark to meet the intense demands of the job. And administrators avoid risk-taking, choosing instead to persevere long enough to retire with a comfortable pension.
But the bigger problem – one that is beyond the control of educators – is that many thousands of Baltimore children are sent to school poorly prepared to learn.
Poverty, crime, and drug abuse define many of their lives, and financial instability forces many families to move through the school year, disrupting kids’ educations. Students arrive from homes without books or a sense of reading, much less a love for it. In many cases, the parents themselves struggled in school and don’t appreciate the value of education.
Can an urban American system like Baltimore’s find a way to educate the real Dukies and Randys of Baltimore?
Only with a revolutionar
y infusion of money and commitment.
•
Brian White saw something of himself in The Wire’s Roland Pryzbylewski – Mr. Prezbo, based on the experiences of Wire producer Ed Burns when he became a middle-school teacher after retiring from the police department.
White decided to become a teacher in the early 2000s after losing a job in banking. He received a mere three weeks’ training and was thrown into the toughest of assignments – middle-school math in an aging school in a neighborhood surrounded by public housing.
With little mentoring, he learned on the job. Breaking up fights, he was kicked in the leg and bitten in the arm. Students cursed him, mainly, he figured, to get a rise out of him. Many students simply failed to show up for dozens of days a year; others wandered in a couple of hours late without consequence.
Even some of his fellow teachers often missed school, their students foisted on the teachers who did show up, making already crowded classrooms all but un-teachable.
Although the school required uniforms, gang-bangers in training sported gang colors – shoelaces, undershirts, bracelets, and earrings – red for the Bloods and blue for the Crips.
Students often couldn’t stay after school for activities or required detention sessions because they had to pick up younger siblings and watch over them. Like The Wire’s Michael Lee, they were already parents themselves.
Over time, Brian White came to understand the poverty and family trauma many of his students endured. Students confided in him about a mother strung out on drugs; in other cases, the dirty clothes or lack of hygiene made clear that kids were not being cared for.
“It’s so rough at home that a lot of these kids are raising themselves. They were 12 going on 20,” White says. “They’ve got other things to worry about than a teacher saying, ‘Where’s your homework?’
The Wire Page 28
