The Wire “Ebb Tide”

The case for season one started because McNulty said the wrong thing to a judge he knew.  It was McNulty being an asshole out to prove himself smarter, and it still brought down some major crime figures for a little while and not doing jack to the overall drug scene in West Baltimore.

For season two, the whole thing may be started by a petty feud between two guys over the right to put a stained glass window in a prestigious place within the local Catholic church.

We knew McNulty was punished by becoming a maritime cop, and he clearly hates it, where most of his work seems to come from towing rich party boats and finding the occasional suicide body in the water.  But McNulty was hardly the only one punished for being too good at what they did.  Daniels was put in charge of the evidence room.  Kima Greggs has a desk job, though that was due to her partner wanting her to take a safer job.  And Prez wants to stick to case work, but his father-in-law wants the guy to do stuff to rise up the chain of command, something Prez has zero interest in doing.

That father-in-law is one Major Valchek, and Valchek has managed to raise money from the various Polish cops in Baltimore to spring for a nice stained glass window at their church depicting Polish police and firefighters working with God or something.  The problem is the window’s spot was already taken by the local stevedores’ union, led by one Frank Sobotka.  Sobotka’s union is dying, as is work in general out in the port of Baltimore.  He has some ambitious plans to try and save the union and the jobs associated with it, but Valchek doesn’t see how a dying union could raise more money than his police group for the prime spot in the window.

Point is, the petty dispute over a single window may cause the investigation to what’s going on down at the docks.

But that won’t be all.  The body McNulty and his new partner fish out of the river is showing signs of blunt force trauma, and while now-Colonel Rawls pawned the case off on the county, McNulty did some tide work and got it sent back to the city.  Rawls can somewhat admire that sort of work to make his life difficult.

Bunk, meanwhile, wants Omar back to testify against Bird.

But where did the body come from?  And who is she?  No one seems able to answer that one.  How does Frank keep the union going?  Well, he’s taking less-than-legal jobs from some fellow known only as “The Greek”.  His competent nephew Nick makes runs to the Greek’s place.  His obnoxious, screw-up son Ziggy goes along and makes a nuisance of himself because Ziggy seems to be completely unaware of how stupid he looks.  One of the Greek’s men is to take a steamer crate from the ships, or is supposed to.  What’s in it?  Well, when the driver doesn’t pick up the container for reasons unknown, Port Authority cop Beadie Russell notices something off about it, and then goes inside the container to take a look.  What’s in there?  A secret room with about a dozen dead young women.

The union guys didn’t seem to know it was human trafficking going on from the looks on their faces.

So, while the drug war is going on (Avon is still running his empire from jail through Stringer, though his reputation suffered as a result of his short sentence causing other criminals to think Avon turned in evidence when he didn’t), the docks and the opening credits tell me this season will be dealing with female sex trafficking and problems on the docks as organized labor is doing what it feels it has to keep people working.

This should get ugly.