This marks the 32nd episode we’ve watched and discussed so far this semester. We’re not playing games here.

In this Wire 106 video discussion, Paul Bond and I looked at season 3, episode 7 of the The Wire: “Back Burners.” There are a few moments that are interesting in this episode—the mirroring of loyalty and taking care of the young between Sergeant Carver in Hamsterdam and Marlo with his pigeons. There’s also Freamon’s discussion of how the burner phone networks operate, which has some interesting parallels with the overarching allegory of the Iraq War that’s playing out in this season. In fact, the description of the burner network was similar to how a terrorist cell network operates, making the ongoing allegory subtle, complex, and often embedded within the technology of control that is everywhere present in this series.