The Wire: "I Regarded That Decision as Illegitimate"

First off, apologies for both the total lack of response to last week's episode and the lateness of this week's post. Basically, I got disgustingly busy for a disgusting amount of time. On the plus side, I not only have a gorgeous new apartment in Clinton Hill lined up for March 1, but furniture to go with it!

More than any other one this season, this episode managed to give us a sense of who our characters are at their cores. Lester is methodical and precise, even as he's descending deep into the serial killer ruse, which can in no possible world end well. His obsession with his work (namely, catching Marlo) manages to justify his participation in McNulty's hairbrained scheme. Bunk is proving to be exactly as awesome as the audience has always suspected him to be, turning into this season's finest example of what great police work looks like. Carcetti manages to become both more slimy and more winning at every term. His speech at the press conference was, dare I say it, damn near Obama-esque. And Omar? Well, it turns out that he can't fly, but he can set his own broken bones and use a beer bottle to get someone's gun from them. (Fat Face Rick's awesome casualness while being held up by Omar was, by far, the funniest part of the episode.) Even Chris Partlow, mass murderer extraordinare, gets a human side: it turns out that the thing that cheers him up the most is buying toys for his kids. Details like that are what makes The Wire what it is: the best show on television, even in its worst season (while I am still very much enjoying these episodes, they aren't as good as the four seasons preceding it).

Speaking of the past, the seemingly endless parade of cameos from Seasons One-Four has been one of my favorite things about this season and tonight's episode offered two of the most interesting ones yet. Nick Sobotka is out of the Witness Protection Program and honoring his uncle, more or less, and, in what was quite possibly the most heartbreakingly inevitable scene ever on The Wire, Randy is a man, all of the sudden, completely hardened by the system. When he pushed the little boy on the stairs, I got more than a little choked up.

What else did I like about this episode? Nancy Grace not realizing that the joke is on her. A rare glimpse at the good side of Templeton (for the record, I have extraordinarily mixed feelings about the Sun plot this season: on the one hand, I think that David Simon doesn't have enough perspective to write it three-dimensionally, but on the other hand, I think the question of the media's role in Baltimore's decline is one that the show, because of its very nature, had to address). The look of deep disgust on McNulty's face when he finally confronted the enormity of what he's done. Marlo calling out the game: "That some Spider-Man shit." And how.

Only four left...and, if we're being honest here, I already watched tomorrow's episode.

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"It All Matters"

Warning! This post is filled with nothing but spoilers for tonight's episode of The Wire!

Tonight's episode was one of the most viscerally satisfying episodes of The Wire in some time. Burrell is fired, the other shoe is clanging on down to the ground for Clay Davis (prediction: there are a lot of "Sheeeeeee-it"s coming up), Officer Colicchio got his ass handed to him by Carver, Templeton (so rat-like that I have to wonder if he's named after the character in Charlotte's Web) has learned that his shit isn't so hot outside of Baltimore, and even Herc is, in his own small way, beginning to see the light. It was a rare night where justice was, at least temporarily, served.

This week's episode was also filled with moments of character redemption, from Kima taking some interest in her son for the first time in years to Carver taking a stand against bad policing. I think I've enjoyed Carver's arc the most out of any of The Wire's characters. In Season One, he was snitching on Daniels, stealing money, and generally acting like a prick. At season's end, Daniels gave him a lecture about living up to his responsibility as a sargeant. It's obvious he took that advice to heart and, by Season Four, it was clear that he had become personally invested in being good po-lice. His moment of impotent rage in the car after dropping Randy off at the group home in the season finale was, to me, a defining moment of both the character and the show. These days, Carver has finally learned what cops like Lester have known for some time, that, as he put it to Herc, "it all matters."

And then there's Marlo. Proposition Joe's death scene was truly the most chilling murder The Wire has ever shown, and, given the show's astronomical body count, that's saying something. Marlo is just plain evil. Avon and Stringer were ambitious and ruthless, but Marlo is an actual sociopath. When Prop Joe realized Cheese had sold him out, his bitter "that boy was always a disappointment" was, to me, the most touching line of the show, especially given that Prop Joe has always put an emphasis on family.

I'm fascinated to see where the McNulty serial killer storyline is going. I don't see how it can end well, but I'm just praying Lester doesn't get taken down. (For my money, one of the most interesting lines of the night was Lester commenting that, if they're consistent, "attention will be paid", which I have to suspect is a fairly deliberate Death of a Salesman reference.) Given Bunk's exasperation at this point, I wouldn't be awfully shocked if he got in on the scheme.

Only six more episodes to go. Sheeee-it.

announcement time!

So, after months of ever-increasing fascination with the software, I decided to suck it up and get a Tumblr. You can check it out here or at www.leilacohan.com. (Incidentally, did you know that you can get to this site via www.leilalovestelevision.com? True story!) If you have a Tumblr, you should let me know so we can follow each other. Also, I'm not in love with my Tumblr's title, so any suggestions are more than welcome.

Here's how it's going to work: Leila Loves Television is going to start featuring more long-form writing, mostly about TV and food. I'm going to start putting up weekly review-ish posts about various shows (this season look for The Wire, American Idol, The Pussycat Dolls Present Girlicious (which I can ONLY HOPE will be one-tenth as amazing as The Pussycat Dolls Present The Search For The Next Pussycat Doll), True Life, and Project Runway). The Tumblr will feature several very short posts every day about my obsessions of the millisecond. If you visit it right now, for example, the first page contains: my thoughts on a ridiculous Obama rumor making the rounds in South Carolina, the lyrics to the INSANE theme song for Crowned, my late-adopter admiration for Vampire Weekend, me being grossed out about Hillary-related misogyny, a Kathleen Edwards video, an IM exchange between me and Elsa about my total lack of color sense, an amazing American Idol audition video, some hating on Mitt Romney, and the cutest video ever. So, basically the contents of my brain over the past three days.

love to hate to love to hate

In the month since I discovered the amazing CW program Crowned, I've become more than a little obsessed. The (pageant) finale is next Wednesday and, even though I have never seen a program so terrible at not showing its hand (seriously, if Hollis and Gina don't win, I'll...eat my hat or something), I couldn't be more excited to watch it all play out. While about half of my adulation of Crowned is based on the fact that I'm a total mama's girl and anything with moms and daughters gets me misty, I must admit that the other half is born sheerly out of my singular hatred for the "Sincere Sexy Reds", a mother-daughter team by the name of Patty and Laura.

Patty and Laura hail from Orlando. They appear to both be suffering from really, really awful Botox (no matter how they wide they may "smile", their foreheads never ever move), dead eyes, and serious personality disorders. They are seriously just awful people. Two weeks ago, the teams had to work on a project for Habitat for Humanity. When Mindy, another mom who worked steadily throughout the activity despite nursing an injured leg, and her daughter Rochelle won the challenge (because on this show, volunteering is a competition), Patty and Laura threw what can only be described as a complete and total shitfit. Patty, who, during the challenge, had complained that she didn't want to lift anything because she didn't want to dirty her shirt, called Rochelle a brat. Laura, who is, inexplicably, married, despite being 23 and awful, enjoys waking up the other contestants by scream-singing in the dining room at the crack of dawn. Patty and Laura are regularly virulently mean to the other contestants and then brag about being the only "real" people there. They are incredibly fun to hate and I'm already dreaming about the sweet, sweet schadenfreude that will result when they inevitably lose.

just in case you were wondering...

Yes, my apartment is still without heat. Yes, this is the sixth day in a row. No, I don't know what can be done about it. No, it is not awesome.

things my apartment does not currently have

•Heat
•Internet in any room besides my bedroom
•A precious baby monkey!!!!!


I would like all three to be rectified.

qwitter

I decided that I don't like Twitter. Too many restrictions!