The Wire “Corner Boys”

How good is Bunk at his job?  It takes him about thirty seconds worth of observation to prove Omar is not guilty of the murder he’s been arrested for.

Yeah, he knows Omar did commit other murders, but the one he’s in jail for is not one of them.  It also makes Bunk absolutely no friends in the office, and he’s even disappointed at a cop’s wake to see McNulty is still sober.

That’s all we have to say about Bunk.

Instead, let’s divide the write-up into three sections.

First up, Carcetti and the Cops.

So, Carcetti is checking out how the police do things.  Homicide doesn’t do much if a call doesn’t come in.  Other districts are doing penny-ante stuff for really small-timers.  Going to see Rawls gets some sort of passive-aggressive, kinda racist stuff, and Carcetti sees it as such, but then he opts to see the one high-ranking cop who really impressed him:  Daniels.  Daniels gets offered a promotion to serving just under Rawls.  Plus, Daniels puts the idea of Major Crimes being good at one time as a bug inside the most-likely-new mayor’s ear.

Next, we have School Daze.

Back at the school, Prez is getting frustrated with every student who isn’t Dukie.  He needs to keep teaching to a standardized test up to a point.  No one really learns that way, and all the teachers know it, but they still have to do it.

As for the special class, Colvin actually manages to make some progress with Namond and the others.  How?  He asks them to explain street rules as the episode title “Corner Boys” suggests, seeing as how a number of them believe they’ll be dead in a decade.  The challenge?  Work out those rules as a group.  They actually seem to be getting somewhere, which is more than we can say about Namond’s career as a drug pusher.

Oh, and this class makes a reference to Ben Carson as if he wouldn’t be a well-known person.  Times change.

By the by, the surly kid Michael that Marlo seems to think is the next big thing on the street?  Well, he’s got a mom who seems to be a bit strung-out, selling the groceries for things that don’t help Michael’s kid brother, and then bringing in said kid brother’s probably no-good father.  I think I get why Michael’s so surly.

And finally, On the Streets.

Proposition Joe told Marlo that if he wanted to know who set up that camera, he just had to wait and see if someone would come claim it.  If it was a city cop’s camera, someone would look for it.  If it were a fed, they wouldn’t care.  And if it were a particularly dumb cop, then the cop might actually try first bargaining with Marlo, giving him a business card that allows Proposition Joe to track down exactly which part of the city PD said cop works for.  And then by hassling Marlo and his people (like a nail-gun carrying Chris and Snoop), said dumb cop might think Marlo would either be up for negotiations or easily intimidated, which just ain’t in Marlo’s character.

Man, Herc is one dumb cop.