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The Wire, Season 2, Episode 12 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-20 01:05:48
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Port in a Storm

Files

Previews only

Wire2 12

Comments

trenton gragg

Sad to end season two, but season three brings in some “big”characters, more Bunny Colvin, Marlo Stanfield and Tommy Carcetti. I’ll leave the both of you with this one word for season three, reform. Homicide, on NBC, was the show before the The Wire.

Ed

Homicide: Life on the Streets

Mithroch

As I've said... I love season two... the tragedy of it. My friends mostly didn't like this season on first watch. However... so many of them have a different feeling on rewatch. I think it's because it's so different from the first season... it's catches a lot of people off guard.

JENNIFER E

The Wire could very easily be a well written and well acted but reductive show about cops chasing Black drug dealers. S2 expanding to the docks and the suppliers sets the template for how they could grow the world building and shifts the viewers idea of what a criminal can looks like.

JENNIFER E
>>165305607

It is a pretty standard police procedural but Andre Braugher is beyond amazing in it.

nj

the wire is long-form storytelling at its best. looking forward to y'all starting season 3 next week. unzfgreqnz! (for the spoiler chat)

MrRuss50

What nationality is "The Greek"? This is one of the questions The Wire nerds love to get into. Cypriot I think is the most common guess I've heard if he's really not Greek. He speaks mostly Greek and English but also Turkish, Farsi, and Portuguese. They made a point of showing him reading Greek newspapers multiple times and enjoying Greek food, coffee, Ouzo. Gotta be something pretty close to Greece you'd think. Feels like this shows Pulp Fiction suitcase if you think on it too much.

dys
>>165302763

Bunny Colvin has been briefly introduced but the other two haven't, maybe not much of a spoiler to just say the name of a character without any context of who they are or who's playing them but still best to avoid it.

dys

Glad you guys loved this season so much. It's fantastic television and it's only a testament to how incredible this show is overall that it's still my least favorite! But now my favorite season is coming up...

Roland Cooke

The Greek is getting a pass in return for cooperation on international terrorism (smuggling of weapons of mass destruction and the like).

Roland Cooke

15 million "thollaria" = 15 million dollars. That's iron discipline right there.

Jonathan

The thing that set the wire apart, I think is that David Simon wasn’t a TV guy. He was a journalist who had spent years writing, repetitive stories about murders and drugs and politics in Baltimore for the Baltimore Sun. When he got burnt out, he wrote the homicide true crime book that the show is based on and from that they started using him as a resource and then as the homicide team split apart to go make Oz, they used him more and more in running the show in the later seasons, which is where he learned television.

Jonathan

Movies that have been cited as influences on the show are French connection, prince of the city, blue collar, and And Justice for All which was a Baltimore set legal thriller, written by a young Barry Levinson, while he was working as a comedy writer for Mel Brooks. On the TV side, I can definitely see the influence of Hill Street blues, which was sort of the original darker cop drama, but with a dark comedy streak running through it.

Ingemar Svensson

If you ever check out The Deuce, which is David Simons show about 42nd street in NYC spanning from the 70s to 90s over 3 seasons then Chris Bauer plays a central role in the show as well along with a lot of other Wire alumns. It doesn't have the same cult status as The Wire but it does have a lot of the same realism in David Simons writing.

Jonathan

They have tried many times to make a wire type show but they were more strictly a cop show and if they planned to expand, it didn’t happen before the shows were canceled, but writers were definitely influenced by the show and the biggest influence I think is how sought after cast members were as guest characters on other shows. Even while the show was filming the cast were getting movie jobs. That’s why some people will disappear for long periods of time.

Jonathan

Season two was a bit fresh in my mind from the collapse of the key bridge not just for the location but because they set up a command area in the area where Frank got killed, and the dredging that Frank had wanted to happen all throughout the season, finally did happen in order to reopen the shipping lanes.

Roland Cooke
>>165302763

Y'all gonna flip out when you see who's playing Carcetti... :D In fact I'd recommend not reading the cast list until you see Carcetti for the first time. :)

Kevin L

You want more Clay Davis? Sheeeeiiit!

Pam Nail

Spiros *is* Greek, but "the Greek" is not.

Roland Cooke

The montage song is by Steve Earle (Walon).

trenton gragg
>>165305607

Another “prequel” to The Wire is The Corner. A 2000 HBO six episode mini series directed by Charles S Dutton based on the book by Ed Burns with a screenplay by Burns, David Mills and David Simon.

John Marnell

"He knows my name, but....my name is not my name." Holy shit, The Wire. Well fuckin' played.

Youtalkingtome
>>165315578

Okay, I wonder what nationality he is. I'm sure it will remain a mystery but I would love it if he returned.

Youtalkingtome
>>165314700

I need to check out And Justice for All. One of the only Al Pacino performances I haven't seen. Plus this channel has really turned me into a Barry Levinson fan

Youtalkingtome
>>165308701

I love that we don't know! That's so cool. I wanna hop on Reddit so bad, but I won't in case I spoil the show.

Rozenn Keribin
>>165302763

I was so funny because when I rewatched the show recently and saw the character I was like... I know this guy, he played in something else, what are those feelings I'm having - I know some of them are from this show because I do remember him but it *feels* like they also come from somewhere else but it can't be, he's so distinctive-looking, I'd remember if I'd seen him somewhere else... Then I remembered and went OH SHIT

prolifik5

Regarding Koutris: Alan Sepinwall did an amazing series of reviews* on every episode several years ago (it will pop up if you Google his name and The Wire). He spoke to David Simon who confirmed that Koutris wasn't "corrupt" in the traditional sense, more operating in the very murky moral waters of law enforcement having working relationships with criminals. One of the commenters pointed out that Koutris was just doing a larger-scale version of what the detail did with Omar in Season 1. They know he's murdered Stinkum, as he tacitly admits it when they pull him in, but they allow him to walk free because he's central to their case against Bird. Similarly, the Greek was an asset providing information on "terrorism" (remember how he set up his troublesome Colombian clients to be busted by pretending they were narcoterrorists), and in the post 9/11 environment, Koutris probably has broad institutional support to protect that asset at all costs. Notice Fitz blames himself when he finds out and suggests HE may be in trouble for telling Daniels, rather than trying to go after Koutris. * Those reviews are worth reading not only for Sepinwall's excellent analysis, but also because he was in contact with Simon and was able to get direct confirmation on a number of matters, like the one I referenced above. Simon himself even shows up in the comments a couple of times (as does Michael Kostroff who plays Maury Levy).

Rozenn Keribin

I love all those scenes around Nicky testifying so much, from his father telling him "it's time to go", to them trying to do it at the police station and it's like Lester notice them please, to "that's the Greek"... I think it's really fun how this show plays with coincidences and missed connections. They're all over the place but it feels there's a balance, where for every Ziggy's arrest messing up the case or Herc & Carver not noticing Spiros leave you'll have a Lester being right there when Nicky turns himself in or Nicky seeing the photo that happened to have The Greek in it. I don't know why I remember always feeling hopeful about Ziggy's future at this point [this is meant as a spoiler-free formulation, not a suggestion that the show eventually confirmed this, denied it or neither]. It's probably wishful thinking because prison is hardly a good environment for self-actualization, and Ziggy doesn't have the kind of connections and protection DeAngelo had. But it feels like with all of his pretenses stripped away he has nowhere to go but up. It would probably rely on him meeting good people though. I liked your comments too on how this season sets up the next compared to last one being so self-contained. I talked about that at the beginning of the season but I do suspect that's a reason many might not like Season 2 as much, at least on first watch: it has so much to set up after the first season tied everything in a bow. Shout-out to one bit of setup I don't think stood out to me on first watches: nyy gur thlf qevaxvat sebz oebja cncre ontf!

trenton gragg
>>165302763

I forgot another character for S3 is Dennis “Cutty” Wise. Who will have a great character arc.

Brian Harris

As good as this season is, I think it’s probably third or fourth best for me. 2 and 3 are kind of interchangeable in quality, both excellent. But man, season 4? Just one of the best stories ever told on television. EVER.

Adam
>>165378097

For me 3 and 4 are kind of interchangeable as the top of the pile, 1 is maybe my favorite because of how simple and perfect it is, and then 2 and 5 vie for the "worst season of the best show" award. Even the "worst" season of The Wire is so beautiful though.

Adam

I love the outfits they put people in in this show, Lester's shirt when they're interrogating Sergei and Beadie's outfit when Bunk tells them the murders are down are both great. Chris Bauer is so amazing this season, sometimes I'll make a "top-5 Wire" characters list in my head and it always feels so bad leaving him off even though he was only in it for one season. He has incredible facial acting.

MrRuss50
>>165378097

43125 best to worst is the correct answer but I have tolerance for people that find 3 better than 4. :)

Robert Bauman

When you mentioned the Wire being bingeable it reminded me that on my first watch I watched the entire show in less than a month. Within that, this particular season kind of got lost in the overall shuffle for me - remembered the main stuff but forgot a lot of the details. Upon rewatch I have really appreciated it a lot more. I think it introduces some great characters and an interesting broader look at the world the show and "the game" exist in and are impacted by. It really is a tangled, interconnected web. Having seen the whole show I get why some people may prefer other seasons (S4 is my personal favorite), but I do think this is an excellent season of television that maybe doesn't get discussed that way.

Robert Bauman

You guys are pretty good at guessing where the show might be headed. A big theme of the show are institutions that are corrupted or eroding, we'll see where that takes us...

IDoDabble
>>165547512

I agree. They see so much on the first go I didn't notice in 4. It's what keeps me coming back.

IDoDabble
>>165342538

This is the first time I actually got what Koutris was all about. That it wasn't straight up dirty cop or some kind of leak because of the access of a guy who'd left, but that counterterrorism - again - got so much priority it interfered with fighting regular crime. On Sepinwall: he had a great series of reviews on Mad Men too, that went up immediately after airing and I think he started out doing just for pleasure. Incredibly insightful reviewer. His comment sections were amazing. I didn't know Simon showed up there! Gotta hunt that down now.

IDoDabble
>>165314596

And there was The Corner before The Wire, which he wrote and then later adapted. It's a miniseries, but it was an obvious precursor to The Wire. Has some of the same actors, too, but in very different parts.

IDoDabble
>>165315040

Wow, that's a great bit of info I didn't know about. I'm amazed at how much story is in The Wire that is pretty critically important in real life but has been totally overlooked. We're going to get another in the next season.

IDoDabble
>>165344364

I've always felt the coincidences and missed connections were very reflective of a system that is actually not working very well, and is too dependent on individual parts excelling - as it would be in real life. Cop shows tend to portray policing as a frictionless system where everything functions as intended (a 'happy path'), which it very much isn't. Someone not thinking to call someone else? Of course that happens. Stuff getting lost? Sure. People missing stuff? Absolutely. On the other hand there are the good things that happen unintentionally: Herc & Carv preventing a murder because they're sitting there, for example. It never bothered me, because the entropy of a system that's untended cracking, feels very realistic.

IDoDabble

This show is so meticulousIy scripted. I remember thinking the fact that Frank was found recognizable, so to speak, was an easy out. The plot needed him to. Only this time I realized it was because Sergei was already in the box.

Youtalkingtome
>>165547352

I'm really glad that we are watching it weekly. Really gives us time to digest. It's such a perfectly nuanced show

Youtalkingtome
>>165344364

Every second of this season was captivating to me. I only buy Blu-ray's of shows that I absolutely love. This one will be added to my collection. I'm thinking about waiting to see if there is a box set of The Wire. The rest of the show could be terrible (I don't believe it is) and I would still buy it.

Youtalkingtome
>>165342538

I am going to check those out. I'll check out the Mad Men reviews too. These are two of my all time favorite shows at this point.

dys
>>165560535

Oh my god, that makes so much sense, and I had never realized that. "Did he have hands? A face? Then it wasn't us" so why would Frank's body show up with hands and a face? Because Sergei was locked up! Every time I think I get how brilliant this show is it has another layer.

dys
>>165302763

please stop spoiling even the names of new characters for them...

Rozenn Keribin
>>165344364

@IDoDabble: It's how I feel about it too! I also wonder if there is an element of Greek tragedy to it. I think I've seen either Simon or commentators talk about the Wire taking inspiration there, but those missed connections and strokes of luck sometimes also give me a "fates toying with mortals" vibe.

Rozenn Keribin
>>165560535

Oh man add another "I'd never realized that" to the pile! It makes me so happy because the contrivance legit bothered me every time I thought of it.

Kevin L
>>165560535

Interesting! On first watch I thought maybe Frank was intact because sometimes mobsters leave a victim as a message; but Spiros says they weighted him down (and failed), so my guess was wrong.

IDoDabble
>>165560535

Vondas even alluded to it very briefly. He said they did not do as good of a job as Sergei would have.