The Wire “Home Rooms”

Well, it’s episode three.  Time to check in with some characters that fell to the wayside so far in the form of Omar and Colvin.

First up:  Omar.  He’s got a new boyfriend, and people are so scared of him that a simple cereal run means dealers are dropping their drugs down to him without a fuss.  Omar doesn’t care for that since it means he doesn’t have to work for it.  As such, he and his new guy monitor a drop of Stanfield’s for a period and then rob it, proving bulletproof glass may not be so bulletproof, and Omar will still buy some smokes from the shop owner, but he still wants correct change even in the middle of a robbery.

Omar had spotted Kima watching the same spot, but she left after a while.  Omar was right:  she wasn’t patient enough.

As for Colvin, he got a job as hotel security, but he isn’t cut out for it since good customers can beat up prostitutes in there and not have to worry about simple things like being arrested for hitting another human being.  He loses that job and goes on to be a liaison for a local college professor trying to do a study of repeat violent offenders.  18 year olds are a little too…scary, but the local middle school is still promising.

And Bunk, well, he has dinner with McNulty and Beadie Russell, and seeing the newly domesticated Jimmy McNulty is rather depressing for Bunk.

But last time around we had subpoenas issued for various politicians, and Rawls was told to stop it, so he replaced the Major Crimes Unit commander with one Lt. Marimow, the kind of guy who usually gets sent to units to dismantle them.  Marimow’s first order of business is to declare the wire tap business is too slow, so he clearly doesn’t know what the title of the show is, and he wants results on Stanfield within a matter of days, even though anyone could tell him that doesn’t work.  Heck, Lester tried and was basically shut down.

Lester decides to complain to Rawls, but Rawls sees the angle and has a new proposition:  shut up or the others in the Unit will get hurt too.  Lester’s too good a cop to not take advantage of a way out of a bad unit, so Rawls transfers him back to Homicide.  Kima, meanwhile, complains to Daniels, who personally goes to Rawls to also get Kima transferred to Homicide.

Herc, meanwhile, may be getting ahead thanks to the mayor wanting to keep him quiet.  This is the same mayor using blatant abuse of power to get back at Carcetti’s rising in the polls.

But it’s the first day of school.  Michael is doing well enough as a drug dealer to gain attention from both his boss, Bodie, and from Stanfield looking to take over Bodie’s single corner.  Prez is having trouble as only a new teacher can, what with Randy taking advantage of Prez’s obvious inexperience, and Prez’s math class isn’t going any better.  He doesn’t quite know what to do when two girls starts fighting.  And the next day, he really doesn’t know what to do when one of those girls slashes the other across the face with a box cutter.

Yeah, that happened.  Good thing the next teacher over knows how to handle this stuff.