Well well well…Week two has come and gone already. At this rate, the semester will be over in, what, 13 weeks? Jeez…
For this weeks assignment, I decided to focus on breaking down episode 12 of The Wire: “Cleaning Up.” This episode sets so many plot elements in play that are crucial for the end of this season, as well as season 2. Without further ado, lets get into it.
This episode begins with the team (and McNulty in particular) reeling from the shooting of Kima. The exchange in the hospital between McNulty and Daniels plays a dual role in this episode: To show the after effects of Kima’s wounding and to show that going forward, this dark spot will be the thing that gives the team purpose. Sure, things are tumultuous right now, but Daniels immediately takes charge (as a good leader does) and uses this event to give the team a renewed “vigor”, so to speak.
Meanwhile, Avon’s crew is also in a bit of turmoil after the ambush. Avon, Stringer, and Maury Levy (the corrupt attorney for the Barksdale enterprise) have a “low-key” meeting in the club, in which Levy warns the two that “anyone who can hurt us can still be put into play.” This is the catalyst that sets the “cleaning up” in motion.
Later, Avon and Stringer bring Dee into the office at Orlando’s to ask him where Wallace is at. They say they only want to talk to him, but Dee see through this…it is clear that the organization is cleaning house and tying up loose ends. Dee assures them that Wallace is out of the game. He even goes so far as to almost beg Avon to leave Wallace alone. It’s possible that Dee sees a bit of himself in Wallace and wants desperately for Wallace to be out of the business for good. But as we find out very soon, Wallace is not out. In fact, he comes marching back into the “pit” with all but a fanfare, and is greeted with a friendly, albeit crude welcome back. When Wallace meets later with Bodie and Poot, the resulting several minutes are hard to watch.
Very few events in television or movies have hit me with so much force as this scene. Everything in this episode is clearly leading up to this, yet I was still blindsided by it. What is especially interesting to me is that Bodie seems to need Wallace to prove he is a man, potentially so that it will be easier on Bodie to have to kill him. He brings up the fact that Wallace os talking about his mother in the restaurant, and again right before he pulled the trigger. Finally, the moment prior to pulling the trigger, he appears to resign himself to the fact that he is about to kill a kid. As a side note, when I was making this GIF, I found myself wondering if Poot had not yelled “Do it Dammit!” would Bodie have still pulled the trigger? Thoughts?
After the deed is done, and the cops have picked up Dee for drug possession and informed him of Wallace’s shooting, we see this scene between Stringer and Dee. Stringer has come to tell Dee not to worry about the charge, and that the organization’s lawyer (you guessed it, ol’ Corrupt McGee, Esq. at your service!) will be on the case. However, news of Wallace’s death has hit Dee hard, and here for the first time, we see a fracture beginning in the family business.
***Spoiler Alert***
One reason I love this scene so much (and maybe because I have watched ahead), is that when Stringer leaves the room, you see the light from the hallway that is filtering through suddenly snuffed out by the closing door. This is such a powerful image in my mind, because it is such a simple use of contrast: A dark room, a bright spot, and then suddenly no more light. This in my mind represents several things. First, in a literal sense, the door closing on Dee. Though Avon is still willing to help in later episodes, Stringer has made up his mind to “shut the door” on Dee. Secondly, it signifies Wallace’s death. Wallace was portrayed as a bright spot in a dark enterprise. He was a drug dealer, sure. But he also took care of lots of smaller children, getting them up in the morning, fed and off to school. He also envisioned going back to school and leaving the drug business. However, the business was too strong of a pull and sucked him in, and eventually snuffed out the bright spot that was Wallace. Lastly, and here is where the major spoiler is at, I think it is almost foreshadowing Dee’s demise in prison in season 2. Dee is suffocated, and we see the life slowly leave his eyes, almost the way that the light in the hallway is snuffed out. This scene also happens to have the character behind Dee’s murder, which is what tied it together in my mind.
In summary…..this episode hurt. It hurt a lot.
The Creation of This Week’s Media:
This week was an interesting week for me. I had to teach my self (through some great tutorials!) how to make them. Simply ripping a piece of video and saving it as a GIF proved to be very simple. However, adding text or manipulating the images in any way proved to be rather frustrating and challenging at first. The program I used to create the GIFs was Gimp. Turns out, in order to add text to a GIF in Gimp, you have to add the text to each layer and merge it with that layer. This shouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that I had well over 100 frames for some of my GIFs. But with perseverance, I muscled through and am quite happy with the way most of them turned out.
As far as daily creates go for this week, I dropped the ball.
In my mind I had done 4, but in the real world (which turns out is where we all live) I had only done 3. Sad face…. Anyway, for Sept. 1st, I decided to be as simple as possible, while still attempting to be creative. The resulting is what I like to call: “The Other Side of My Face.” You’ll never guess the surprise twist ending.
For Sept. 2nd, I did the “create your logo” assignment. This was SO MUCH FUN!!!!!! I am the vice president of the UMW Society of Physics Students, and we did something similar last year with our physics t-shirts. I happened to be wearing mine the day we were supposed to do this one, so I thought “Hey, why not?” The symbols are pretty self explanatory, but if any of it needs clarification, just ask!
And lastly, for today’s daily create, I wrote a little blurb about my “happens more often than it should” embarrassing tech hangup. Take a look.
http://tdc.ds106.us/writings/im-getting-old/
Well, thats about all for this week. Hope everyone’s third week gets off to a great start! And remember to Keep calm and Wire on!
