The Wire 5x02 Reaction
Comments (37)
Octavia
Milena saying she's not ready for the show to finish. Bless. 🙏🏾 We ain't ready for you to stop reacting. It's been a blast watching you both.
OK, so Lola & Milena think Omar will not only return this season but will also somehow die. OK, interesting, lol! 😜 Meanwhile Scott (or копиле as they call him) is the type of person we've all worked with - ambitious, lazy, entitled, and yet the bosses still like him. Urgh! It's encouraging that Mike's conscience has returned and he's questioning why they need to perform senseless killings. Snoop seems to enjoy killing just for the sake of it but Chris strikes me as different. The look he gives Mike suggests he might understand *why* Mike asks those questions and they now have a shared bond after the killing of Mike's step-dad. Also, Chris questioned whether they really needed to kill Bodie and the risks of trying to get Omar out from retirement so he's definitely more thoughtful about actions and consequences.
For real, as competent as Snoop is, she's also quite naivê at times. But I'm sure a lot of that has to her having to adapt to her environment at an early age. I think emotional intelligence and introspection are dismissed (if not actively disapproved of) by those in the game lest it makes them weak or unfocused, and yet it is arguably the lack of these exact traits that can prove to be a character's downfall (eg. Stringer)
At this point in the season we don't yet know what Jimmy's full rationale is and how it relates to Marlo but that'll be made clear later.
Maybe it's just because I'm currently watching Better Call Saul, but I can see a similarity between the two Slippin Jimmy's. Think L&M understand him well. I also love the 'Dickensian Aspect' part of this episode. Great meta-commentary and defense of the show. At the time it had critical praise but low ratings, no awards and was given one last truncated season. "I think you need a lot of context to understand anything", "I don't want an amorphous series of society's ills", "To address the problem or to win a prize?" It feels like a mission statement against those trying to put it into a more digestible box.
I think that's both the great thing about this season and where it falls. There's a lot like that putting a bow onto everything The Wire has been doing, making meta-commentary about why they're doing it and why others don't. Everything they're trying to say is *terrible English accent* spot on. But what it creates in The Wire is a final season that feels at times a bit *too* self-reflexive to the point of smug satisfaction, and at others it creates a need to satirise which upends the established pacing and tone of the show. It also doesn't help just how disconnected the journalism stuff is from the rest when it's introduced. At first I felt the same as Milena and Lola did about the election stuff in S4 - I just don't care! What about all the other more engaging stories! Etc etc.
plot twist: the greeks are actually serbians and they're connected to funding the serbian president
We are here, the fun and insanity that is season 5 is about to take off. Hold on to your butts, it's going to be interesting
Lola remembered the girl from the car buying drugs? Impeccable memory
Re: Scott Templeton, the fabulist reporter. Scot means bastard in Serbian….and Templeton is the name of the rat in Charlotte’s Web. Ironically, the actor who plays him wrote and directed the best movie ever about good journalists—Spotlight. Check it out.
We got to that part of the story where people debate whether what Jimmy is doing is out of character or not… personally speaking is a 50/50 for me. I don’t hate it but it does feel a bit out of character for Jimmy to be doing that.
I've watched every episode of every season of the wire at least 7 or 8 times and never realized that was the same girl who was buying drugs in Hamsterdam. lol
She also has an appearance as a prostitute in Old Face Andre's store.
I finished Fall of the House of Usher today. Can't wait for LM to start their videos for it. I think they'll really like it.
Fun bit of trivia but the girl who plays Alma (the newspaper girl) was married to the guy who played D'Angelo in real life.
"fucking game's rigged" Jimmy quoting Bodie is enough to make me all melancholic. Were only on episode 2 and I'm grieving this show already
And kicking a police car like Bodie too!
Milena you might need to start wearing a name badge soon so Lola doesn’t forget who you are 😂
Lola's face blindness is so funny
Prepare to spend most of the remaining episodes asking "What the fuck?"
The crazy jimmy arc
The return of one of my favorite characters!!!!! Seriously though I know a lot of people were confused and upset with Avons decision to help Marlo but it makes perfect sense for his character, I hated it as well but then I remembered that Avon lives by the code of “The Game” and in that code if you are The King, you stay the King until you die, go to jail, or someone takes your place. And if you end up in jail and someone else takes your territory, you have to respect it because that’s just the way of The Game. Avon does not like Marlo and if he were to be released tomorrow his first move would be to kill Marlo but as of right now, Marlo holds the crown and Avon respects that. He also blames Prop Joe and the CO-OP for Stringer going behind his back and making decisions that got him killed so he wants Prop Joe to pay for that as well. Also if his choice is between West side people or East side, like he said… it’s West Side always. It’s also basically his way of telling the CO-OP “I told you so”. Because they didn’t side with him about going to war with Marlo from the beginning. What I loved about the scene is that we finally see Marlo ACTUALLY show respect to someone, you could tell he doesn’t respect Prop Joe and he didn’t respect String but he respects Avon, that’s the mark of a True King of the streets, someone who commands respect, even from his enemies. You also get to see that with all of Marlo’s ego and him wanting his name to ring out, he WILL NEVER have the name and authority that Avon carries, he legit needed his help to make moves. It’s the shows way of pointing out who the true “King” is. Like D said in season 1 “The King stays The King”. The amount of disappointment I felt for Jimmy in the last scene is inexplicable, but unlike a lot of people I saw his downfall coming from a mile away since the show started. To me, his season 4 arc always felt fake or hollow to me because we never really truly saw him change, all that happened was String died and he started dating Beadie but that isn’t enough for me to believe he was different so I actually like that the show went down this road for season 5 with him. I’ll never forget in one of the earlier episodes of last season Bunk told him he felt that Jimmy was faking, putting on an act and pretending to be something he wasn’t, and it perfectly describes how I had felt about him too, so this didn’t really come as a shock to me BUT it is a new low that takes the cake as one of the worst things he’s ever done. Season 4 took so much out of me and I grew such an attachment to those kids that when this season started I didn’t know how I was gonna go on without seeing them, so still having Michael and Dukie in this season made me happier than ever, I also LOVE that although Michael is where he is now, and that he has now become a murderer, we see that underneath it all, he is still a good kid with a good heart, and he’s still trying to hold onto some sort of humanity, he won’t lose himself, not just for Bug, but because he doesn’t want that for himself either, such strength from a kid that had to grow up too fast. Most of the adults in this show could never measure up to him.
Great analysis. I've loved reading your responses for this series btw
Did they forget to post the full reaction?
Maybe they went to sleep and will post it tomorrow. It's quite late over there
The thumbnail I’ve waited months for
Word!
Your reactions when you saw Avon was priceless! lol
I've only seen through 5x03 at this point, but after watching this one I was literally saying "Jimmy what the fuck are you doing???" over and over again. Both not surprised and shocked at the same time.
Yep! I think most of us said WTF?! when we first saw what he was doing.
Also, throwback to the 4x03 reaction when Lola said "Jimmy would kill people to put on Marlo" and we all had to stay silent lmao
LOL right! We all gasped when she said it
If I had bet money that this was gonna be the thumbnail, it would have been the safest bet of my life 😄
Honestly it could have gone either way with this and the last scene 😅
Aaaaaand we've FINALLY gotten to THAT PLOTLINE being revealed. Now I can finally post the meme that's been in my head since watching this season for the first time: https://i.imgur.com/1eJ9IbZ.jpg
I believe my first reaction was "Jimmy what in the absolute fuck..."