Before we get into Episode Two, I have a mistake to correct- I neglected to mention the two new Wire soundtracks that dropped last week - The Wire… And All the Pieces Matter and The Wire: Beyond Hamsterdam, both on Nonesuch Records. The first album includes important audio snippets from the show, plus all the music used in the past four seasons - including four versions of the theme song, "Way Down in the Hole"; rap tracks by Masta Ace and Spearhead (really? B'more drug dealers are bumping Spearhead?!); and the Baltimore club anthem "Dance My Pain Away," by inveterate DJ Rod Lee. The second soundtrack includes music entirely from Baltimore artists, including Rod Lee, and completely knocks - B'more hasn't ever a nationally renowned rap scene, and Beyond Hamsterdam proves that it should, with its heavily regional sound - even some of the rap tracks are couched in the high-speed housey knocking of Baltimore club music - and street lyricists whose barks bite sharp. My personal favorite is "When You See Us," a menacing, rumbling track by two-girl posse Get 'Em Mamis - "It's Baltimore, where the crime rate raise every year / and every nigga wit a body got a tat of a tear" - over snapping, rumbling beats by Darkroom Productions, the folks responsible for the original Hamsterdam mixtape that reportedly clued in The Wire's music director to the local sounds popping around that town. Also included on the soundtrack are local heroes Dirty Hartz, Bossman and Mullyman, all of which are talented and deserve your ear even if your interest in The Wire is only cursory.
On to the show - we'll keep this real quick, cause we wanna know what you think is gonna happen. Episode 2, "Unconfirmed Reports," follows the storyline where the investigation into drug don Marlo Stanfield has been cut off, because Mayor Carcetti needs to focus all monetary resources to the ailing public school system. McNulty and Kima are back in Homocide, certain that without their spyglass aimed at Marlo's crew every second, the murder rate's about to blow. Meanwhile, Lester Freamon is reassigned to the investigation of Clay Davis, the corrupt Senator who hustles money from anyone who'll listen to him run his mouth (including, as you will recall from Season 3, Stringer Bell).
Over at the Baltimore Sun (which everyone starts referring to as "up on Calvert Street," the newspaper's address), our boy Haynes at the City desk sends the ambitious reporter Scott Templeton to get a human-interest story at the Orioles game. Templeton comes back with this real sketchy story about a kid whose parents were both murdered and who desperately wants in to the game but can't afford it. Also, he's in a wheelchair after getting hit with a stray bullet. And he has no last name. Clearly they're setting this dude up to be some type of Jayson Blair-type story inventor - a reporter so blinded by his own ambition he'll fake stories to get over.
As for Marlo? He's making serious moves to trump Prop Joe - the main obstacle in his own climb to the top. I wonder if there's a parallel between the fumbling Sun reporter and Marlo - obviously our latter homeboy's a lot slicker than the former, but in this game, blind drive will usually push a dude over the edge: witness a bodied Stringer Bell, a locked-up Avon Barksdale, a completely insane and alcoholic McNulty (whose freaky ideas are surely gonna be drawn out in next episode), a soon-to-be-grand-juried Clay Davis. Sheeeeeeit.
So what do you think will happen in the next episode? Is Marlo fixing to body Prop Joe?
(The Wire airs on HBO every Sunday at 9 pm EST.)
home
