This is how the episode, and seasons, begins. It seems like we are back on the street again. I really love the green trees contrasting with the red brick. The junk strewn about the street also makes for a great shot.

There’s blue, yellow, and red on the sign in the background. Also, the man on the left is wearing a blue shirt, the guy in the middle is wearing a yellow vest, and the man on the right is wearing a red tie.

The whole scene with the cloud of smoke and debris coming from the building was really powerful. This moment with the green traffic light seemed really powerful too.

The epigraph was also mirrored in other moments in the episode. McNulty, at the end of the episode, said that he was looking through the Barksdale case to make sure he didn’t do the same thing over again.

I’m not sure if not doing the same thing over and over again is possible though. There’s been a running theme throughout the series that things just keep on keeping on and you can’t stop it from being like that.

This was an eerie shot of the empty table. It reminded me of the shots we usually see at the season finale. This lighting seemed to be very prominent in the episode as well. Everything seemed very golden.

There were some great shots of McNulty peering through the window. I really love the camera angles used and how it captures the disarray around them.

This huddle was a nice shot as well. I like all the parallel and perpendicular lines we have here and how they intersect at the group.

The orange and red seems indicative of the police and bloodshed. The corrugated wall reminds me of a lot of what we saw in season 2.

This shot reminded me of Ziggy on the shipping container. Carver is standing on top of the car and trying to look very masculine and powerful, when he’s just been thwarted. I find it very interesting that we often get these shots looking up at characters when they are least powerful.

The shadow of the blinds on both the arrested kid and the police officers.

Here is some more of that red and green contrast.

Bubbles’ shirt almost looks like it’s covered in blood. We see this shot just as you hear gunfire out the window. The lighting is also very golden here, like a sunset, as if these glory days are soon coming to a close.

More of the green and red contrast.

Green and red contrast. I also really like the one way sign. It suggests that Cutty, who is deciding whether he wants to get back in the game after being in prison for fourteen years, really only has one way to go.

McNulty finally seems to be getting some serious flack for his behavior. I really love this shot as McNulty always seems to be caught between two women and unable to realize the problems within himself.

The way McNulty dumped out the files onto the table was a great representation of who he is. He usually is on to something, but his motives and his way of going about it often seem quite flawed and messy.

I’m looking forward to seeing what this season has in store. It feels like in some ways we’re going back to the focus of season 1. This start of the season was not as jarring at season 2 was. It also didn’t seem like much of what happened at the end of season 2 had a big effect on the events in season 3 like we saw with season 1 finale’s effects on the season 2 premiere and how important it was that all those things happened so that the season could start the way that this could. This doesn’t seem as tightly connected.