The Wire “That’s Got His Own”

We started the season looking at kids getting ready to go to school.  Now it’s around Christmas, and times have changed quite a bit for the lot of them.

MICHAEL

We open with Michael running from Chris and Snoop.  But then we learn that they aren’t trying to kill Michael.  No, they’re training him to kill.  Later, he beats up a small child that robbed the other dealers.  Cutty gets shot trying to get Michael to come back to the gym after wrongly tossing him out.  He’s not living with his mother anymore.  Michael’s lost.

RANDY

Randy, on the other hand, is under police protection for the presumed squealing.  Carver’s doing his best, but the neighborhood kids are too smart for the cops.  They call the guys watching off with a false report and firebomb Randy’s house.  His foster mother gets third degree burns.  He bitterly taunts Carver by the episode’s end.

NAMOND

Oddly enough, Namond’s life might be improving.  After his mom basically tosses him out of a house for letting a kid rob him (the same one Michael later beats up), when he is caught, he has nowhere else to go…but then Colvin shows up to take care of him.  Maybe Bunny Colvin’s special class has been canceled, but he got through to one kid and may be of more help in the future all the same.

SHERROD

Sherrod was the kid Bubbles has been trying to take care off all season.  When Bubbles got tired of the guy constantly beating him up and robbing him, he whipped up some poison in drug vials to try and take the guy out.  Then Sherrod thought it was crack or something and took it himself.  Bubbles wakes up to find the boy dead.

DUKIE

Dukie has been given the go-ahead to move on to high school.  He doesn’t really want to go.  His drug-addicted family has been evicted from yet another home.

These are kids here.  I mean, there are other things going on, like what Carcetti had to do in order to get the school’s budget deficit fixed, or Herc getting pulled out by IA detectives and agreeing to take the fall for some of the others, or Lester getting Daniels to pull some strings to expose the dead bodies in the warehouses.  And, of course, Omar robs the Co-Op, getting even with both Proposition Joe and Marlo Stanfield all at once.  But given this season is about the school system, let’s see how the kids end up after next episode’s season finale.