2.02 – Collateral Damage – The Wire Review

Posted by Samuel Walters

“They can chew you up but they gotta spit you back out.” – McNulty

“Collateral Damage” builds on the foundation established by the season premiere. As expected, the narrative is less overwhelming, and more easy to navigate. That’s not to say, however, that there’s an explicit focus. There’s a kind of scattershot approach which, while easier to follow than the premiere, nonetheless slightly dilutes the impact of each plot thread. There’s a very delicate balancing act at work here and, as yet, the season has yet to find its footing. The result is another strong episode, but one which isn’t quite as successful as, say, season one.

The primary focus of the episode is the hot-potato game about which agency has jurisdiction over the thirteen bodies found at the end of the first episode. As a story, it’s fascinating to watch people who, though their job be to solve crimes, simply wish to pass the case off to someone else. Sergeant Landsman sums up the rationale, though: “It’s about self-preservation.” And really, that’s what’s at stake here for everyone involved. The implicit message is that accountability is all well and good, but if the pressure is such that people’s jobs become little more than covering their own backsides, then the accountability has driven matters a bit too far.

The most amusing element to all of this comes from McNulty, who makes it his mission to tag the case on to his former boss, Rawls. His success at doing so is utterly hilarious to watch. But this series has long been about taking a more detailed and complex approach … so when McNulty’s friends Bunk and Freamon get tagged with the case, we get to see a very real consequence for McNulty’s vindictiveness.

Also of note is the growing rivalry between Sobotka and Valchek. Valcheck sends his men, including Sergeant Carver, to harass Sobotka’s men. The two have a war of words. Sobotka sends someone to steal a police van. Valcheck gets Burrell to assign a detail to investigate Sobotka’s “dirty” money. It’s the beginnings of a similar kind of cat-and-mouse operate to what we saw in season one.

On the criminal side of things, the episode is once again split between the docks and Barksdale’s ring. The inclusion of Barksdale into the story line is a good idea, however, the approach thus far has been a bit underwhelming. Admittedly, there’s not a whole lot happening as Stringer struggles to get business running again, and Avon tries to keep things smooth on the inside of prison. But these moments tend to break the momentum of the other elements of the episode. This is the balancing act that the series must find a way to solve before too long because it keeps the new characters from being as fully developed as the old ones, and it keeps the old ones from evolving as naturally as they did in the first season.

Overall Grade: B

“Collateral Damage” does a decent job of advancing the overall storyline, as well as keeping a complex cast of characters slowly simmering until events allow them to truly develop again. But there is a drawback to the complexity and numbers. At this point, it’s a bit of quantity over quality. That is, of course, relative to the rest of the series. But it does represent one of the few inherent weaknesses in the series thus far.

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Topics: Crime, Mystery, TV Reviews
Filed under: The Wire, The Wire - Season 2