‘The Wire’ Season Plot
Summaries
Season 1
The first season introduces two major groups
of characters: the Baltimore police department and a drug dealing
organization run by the Barksdale family. The season follows the police
investigation of the latter over its 13 episodes.
The investigation is triggered when
detective Jimmy McNulty meets privately with Judge Daniel Phelan following
the acquittal of D'Angelo Barksdale
for murder after a key witness changes
her story. McNulty tells Phelan that the witness has probably been
intimidated by members of a drug trafficking empire run by D'Angelo's uncle, Avon Barksdale,
having recognized several faces at the trial, most notably Avon's
second-in-command, Stringer Bell. He also tells Phelan that
nobody is investigating Barksdale's criminal activity, which includes a
significant portion of the city's drug trade and several unsolved homicides.
Phelan takes issue with McNulty's report and
complains to senior Police Department figures, embarrassing them into
creating a detail dedicated to investigating Barksdale. However, owing to the
department's dysfunction, the investigation is intended as a façade to appease
the judge. An intradepartmental struggle between the more motivated officers
on the detail and their superiors spans the whole season, with interference
by the higher-ups often threatening to ruin the investigation. The detail's
commander, Cedric Daniels, acts as mediator between the
two opposing groups of police.
Meanwhile, the organized and cautious
Barksdale gang is explored through characters at various levels within it. The
organization is continually antagonized by a stick-up crew led by Omar Little,
and the feud leads to several deaths. Throughout, D'Angelo
struggles with his conscience over his life of crime and the people it
affects.
The police have little success with
street-level arrests or with securing informants beyond Bubbles, a well known
West Side drug addict. Eventually the investigation takes the direction of
electronic surveillance, with wiretaps and pager clones to infiltrate the
security measures taken by the Barksdale organization. This leads the
investigation to areas the commanding officers had hoped to avoid, including
political contributions. When an associate of Avon Barksdale's is arrested by
State Police and offers to cooperate, the commanding officers order the
detail to undertake a sting operation to wrap up the case. Detective Kima Greggs
is seriously hurt in the operation,
triggering an overzealous response from the rest of the department. This
causes the detail's targets to suspect that they are under investigation.
Wallace is
murdered by his childhood friends Bodie and Poot, on orders from Stringer
Bell, after leaving his "secure" placement with relatives and
returning to Baltimore. D'Angelo Barksdale is
eventually arrested transporting a kilo of uncut heroin, and learning of
Wallace's murder, is ready to turn in his uncle and Stringer. However, D'Angelo's mother convinces him to rescind the deal and
take the charges for his family. The detail manages to arrest Avon on a minor
charge and gets one of his soldiers, Wee-Bey, to
confess to most of the murders, some of which he did not commit. Stringer
escapes prosecution and is left running the Barksdale empire. For the
officers, the consequences of antagonizing their superiors are severe, with
Daniels passed over for promotion and McNulty assigned out of homicide and
into the marine unit.
Season 2
The second
season, along with its ongoing examination of the drug problem and its effect
on the urban poor, examines the plight of the blue-collar urban working class
as exemplified by stevedores in the city port, as some of them get caught up
in smuggling drugs and other contraband inside the shipping containers that
pass through their port.[43]In a
season-long subplot, the Barksdale organization continues its drug
trafficking despite Avon's imprisonment, with Stringer Bell assuming greater
power.
McNulty harbors
a grudge against his former commanders for reassigning him to the marine
unit. When thirteen unidentified young women are found dead in a container at
the docks, McNulty successfully makes a spiteful effort to place the murders
within the jurisdiction of his former commander. Meanwhile, police
Major Stan Valchek gets
into a feud with Frank Sobotka,
a leader of the International Brotherhood of Stevedores, a fictional dockers' union, over competing donations to their old
neighborhood church. Valchek demands a detail to
investigate Sobotka. Cedric Daniels is interviewed,
having been praised by Prez, Major Valchek's
son-in-law, and also because of his work on the Barksdale case. He is
eventually selected to lead the detail assigned just to investigate Sobotka; when the investigation is concluded Daniels is
assured he will move up to head a special case unit with personnel of his
choosing.
Life for the blue-collar men of the
port is increasingly hard and work is scarce. As union leader, Sobotka has taken it on himself to reinvigorate the port
by lobbying politicians to support much-needed infrastructure improvement
initiatives. Lacking the funds needed for this kind of influence, Sobotka has become involved with a smuggling ring. Around
him, his son and nephew also turn to crime, as they have few other
opportunities to earn money. It becomes clear to the Sobotka
detail that the dead girls are related to their investigation, as they were
in a container that was supposed to be smuggled through the port. They again
use wiretaps to infiltrate the crime ring and slowly work their way up the
chain towards The Greek, the mysterious man in charge.
But Valchek, upset that their focus has moved
beyond Sobotka, gets the FBI involved. The Greek
has contacts inside the FBI and starts severing his ties to Baltimore when he
learns about the investigation.
After a dispute
over stolen goods turns violent, Sobotka's
son Ziggy is charged with the
murder of one of the Greek's underlings. Sobotka
himself is arrested for smuggling; he agrees to work with the detail to help
his son, finally seeing his actions as a mistake. However, the Greek learns
about this through a mole in the FBI and has Sobotka killed. The investigation ends with the fourteen
homicides solved but the perpetrator already dead. Several drug dealers and
mid-level smuggling figures tied to the Greek are arrested, but he and his
second-in-command escape uncharged and unidentified. The Major is pleased
that Sobotka was arrested; the case is seen as a
success by the commanding officers, but is viewed as a failure by the detail.
Across town, the
Barksdale organization continues its business under Stringer while Avon and D'Angelo Barksdale serve
prison time. D'Angelo decides to cut ties to his
family after his uncle organizes the deaths of several inmates and blames it
on a corrupt guard to shave time from his sentence. Eventually Stringer
covertly orders D'Angelo killed, with the murder
staged to look like a suicide. Avon is unaware of Stringer's duplicity and
mourns the loss of his nephew.
Stringer also struggles, having been cut off by Avon's
drug suppliers and left with increasingly poor-quality product. He again goes
behind Avon's back, giving up half of Avon's most prized territory to a rival
named Proposition Joe in exchange for a
share of his supply. Avon, unaware of the arrangement, assumes that Joe and
other dealers are moving into his territory simply because the Barksdale
organization has too few enforcers. He contracts a feared assassin
named Brother Mouzone.
Stringer deals with this by tricking his old adversary Omar into believing that Mouzone was responsible for the vicious killing of his
partner in their feud in season one. Seeking revenge, Omar shoots Mouzone but, realizing Stringer has lied to him,
calls 9-1-1. Mouzone
recovers and leaves Baltimore, and Stringer (now with Avon's consent) is able
to continue his arrangement with Proposition Joe.
Season 3
In the third season, the focus returns to the street and the Barksdale
organization. The scope, however, is expanded to include the city's political
scene. A new subplot is introduced to explore the potential positive effects
of de facto "legalizing" the illegal drug trade,
and incidentally prostitution, within the limited boundaries of a few
uninhabited city blocks — referred to as Hamsterdam. The posited
benefits, as in Amsterdam and other European cities,
are reduced street crime city-wide and increased outreach of health and
social services to at-risk populations. These are continuations of storylines
hinted at earlier.
The demolition
of the residential towers that had served as the Barksdale organization's
prime territory pushes their dealers back out onto the streets of
Baltimore. Stringer Bellcontinues his reform of the organization by cooperating
with other drug lords, sharing with one another territory, product, and
profits. Stringer's proposal is met with a curt refusal from Marlo Stanfield,
leader of a new, growing crew. Against Stringer's advice, Avon decides to
take Marlo's territory by force, and the two gangs
become embroiled in a bitter turf war with multiple deaths. Omar Little continues to rob the
Barksdale organization wherever possible. Working with his new boyfriend,
Dante, and two women, he is once more a serious problem. The violence related
to the drug trade makes it an obvious choice of investigation for Cedric Daniels' now-permanent Major
Crimes Unit.
Councilman Tommy Carcetti begins
to prepare himself for a mayoral race. He manipulates a colleague into
running against the mayor to split the black vote, secures a capable campaign
manager and starts making headlines for himself.
As he approaches
the end of his career, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin of
Baltimore's Western District wants to effect some real change in the troubled
neighborhoods for which he has long been responsible. Without the knowledge
of central command, Colvin sets up areas where police would monitor, but not
punish, the drug trade. The police crack down
severely on violence in these areas, and also on drug trafficking elsewhere
in the city. For many weeks, Colvin's experiment works, and crime is reduced
in his district. However, Colvin' superiors, the media, and city politicians
eventually find out about the arrangement, and the "Hamsterdam"
experiment ends. With top brass outraged, Colvin is forced to cease his
actions, accept a demotion, and retire from the police department on a
lower-grade pension. Tommy Carcetti uses the
scandal to make a grandstanding speech at a weekly Baltimore city council
meeting.
Dennis "Cutty" Wise,
once a drug dealer's enforcer, is released from prison alongside Avon. His
struggles to adapt to life as a free man show an attempt at personal reform. Cutty tries to work as a manual laborer and then flirts
with his former life, going to work for Avon. Finding he no longer has the
heart for murder, he eventually uses funding from Avon to purchase new
equipment for his nascent boxing gym.
The Major Crimes Unit learns that Stringer has been
buying real estate and developing it to fulfill his dream of being a
successful legitimate businessman. Believing that the bloody turf war with Marlo is poised to destroy everything the Barksdale crew
had worked for, Stringer gives Major Colvin
information on Avon's weapons stash. But Stringer is himself being betrayed
by Avon: Brother Mouzone had
returned to Baltimore and tracked down Omar to join forces. Mouzone tells Avon that his shooting must be avenged.
Avon, remembering how Stringer disregarded his order which resulted in
Stringer attempting to have Brother Mouzone killed,
possibly still furious over D'Angelo's murder (Stringer
having finally confessed the truth), and fearing Mouzone's
ability to harm his reputation outside of Baltimore, informs Mouzone of Stringer's upcoming visit to his construction
site. There, Mouzone and Omar corner him and shoot
him to death.
Colvin tells McNulty about Avon's hideout, and armed
with the information gleaned from selling the Barksdale crew pre-wiretapped disposable cell phones, the detail stages a
raid, arresting Avon and most of his underlings. Barksdale's criminal empire
lies in ruins, and Marlo's young crew simply moves
into their territory. The drug trade in West Baltimore continues with little
change.
Season 4
The fourth season expanded its scope again to include an
examination of the school system. Other major plots include the mayoral race
that continues the political storyline begun in season three, and a closer
look at Marlo Stanfield's
drug gang, which has grown to control most of western Baltimore's
trafficking.
The show
introduces Dukie, Randy, Michael, and Namond, four boys from West
Baltimore, as they enter the eighth grade. At the same school, Prez has begun a new career
as a math teacher. Despite mentorship from the more seasoned faculty, Namond, and later Michael, work as drug runners for Bodie, who has had middling
success selling Proposition Joe's product independently.
The cold-blooded
Marlo has come to dominate the streets of the west
side, using murder and intimidation to make up for his weak-quality drugs and
lack of business acumen. His enforcers Chris Partlow and Snoop conceal their numerous victims
in abandoned and boarded-up row houses where the bodies will not
be readily discovered. The disappearances of so many known criminals come to
mystify both the major crimes unit investigating Marlo
and the homicide unit assigned to solve the presumed murders. Marlo coerces Bodie into
working under him.
McNulty has found peace working as a
patrolman and living with Beadie Russell,
and refuses promotions from Daniels, now a major commanding the
Western District. Detectives Kima Greggs and Lester Freamon,
as part of the major crimes unit, investigate Avon Barksdale's political donations and
serve several key figures with subpoenas. Their work is shut down by
Commissioner Ervin Burrell at Mayor Clarence Royce's request, and after being
placed under stricter supervision within their unit, both Greggs and Freamon request and receive transfer to the homicide
division.
Meanwhile, the
city's mayoral primary race enters its closing weeks. Royce initially has a
seemingly insurmountable lead over challengers Tommy Carcetti and Tony Gray, with a big war chest and major endorsements.
Royce's lead begins to fray, however, as his own political machinations turn
against him and Carcetti starts to highlight the
city's crime problem. Carcetti is propelled to
victory in the primary election.
Howard "Bunny" Colvin joins
a research group attempting to study potential future criminals in the middle
school population. Dennis "Cutty" Wise continues
to work with boys in his boxing gym, and accepts a job at the school rounding
up truants. Bubbles takes a homeless teenager named Sherrod under his
wing. He encourages the boy to attend class, which he fails to do.
Prez has a few
successes with his students, but some of them start to slip away. Disruptive Namond is removed from class and placed in the research
group, where he gradually develops affection and respect for Colvin. Randy,
in a moment of desperation, reveals knowledge of a murder to the assistant
principal, leading to his being interrogated by police.
Proposition Joe engineers a conflict
between Omar Little and Marlo
to convince Marlo to join the New Day Co-Op. After Omar robs Marlo, Marlo frames Omar for a
murder and attempts to have him murdered in jail, but Omar manages to beat
the charge with the help of Bunk. Omar learns Marlo
set him up, and gets revenge on him and Proposition Joe by robbing the entire
shipment of the Co-Op. Meanwhile, the co-op members, including Marlo, are furious at Joe for allowing the shipment to be
stolen. Marlo demands satisfaction, and as a
result, Joe sets up a meeting between him and Spiros Vondas,
who assuages Marlo's concerns. Having gotten a lead
on Joe's connection to the Greeks, Marlo begins
investigating them to learn more about their role in bringing narcotics into
Baltimore.
Freamon discovers the bodies Chris and Snoop had hidden. Bodie offers McNulty testimony against Marlo and his crew, but is shot dead on his corner by
O-Dog, a member of Marlo's crew.[56] Sherrod dies after
snorting a poisoned vial of heroin that, unbeknownst to him, Bubbles had
prepared for their tormentor. Bubbles turns himself
in to the police and tries to hang himself, but he survives and is taken to
a detox facility. Michael has now
joined the ranks of Marlo's killers and runs one of
his corners, with Dukie leaving high school to work
there. Randy's house is firebombed by school bullies for his cooperation with
the police, leaving his caring foster mother hospitalized and sending him
back to a group home. Namond is taken in by Colvin,
who recognized the good in him. The major crimes unit from earlier seasons is
largely reunited, and they resume their investigation of Marlo
Stanfield.
Season 5
The fifth season
focuses on the media and media consumption.[57] The show features a
fictional depiction of the newspaper The Baltimore Sun, and in fact
elements of the plot are ripped-from-the-headlines events (such as the Jayson Blair New York Times scandal)
and people at the Sun.[58] The season, according
to David Simon, deals with "what
stories get told and what don't and why it is that things stay the
same."[57] Issues such as the quest
for profit, the decrease in the number of reporters, and the end of
aspiration for news quality would all be addressed, alongside the theme of
homelessness.
Fifteen months
after the fourth season concludes, Mayor Carcetti's cuts in the police budget to redress the education
deficit force the Marlo Stanfield investigation
to shut down.Cedric Daniels secures
a detail to focus on the prosecution of Senator Davis for corruption. Detective McNulty returns to the
Homicide unit and decides to divert resources back to the police department
by faking evidence to make it appear that a serial killer is murdering
homeless men.
The Baltimore
Sun also faces budget cuts and the newsroom struggles
to adequately cover the city, omitting many important stories. Commissioner Burrell continues to
falsify crime statistics and is fired by Carcetti,
who positions Daniels to replace him.
Marlo Stanfield lures his enemy Omar Little out of retirement by
having Omar's mentor Butchie murdered. Proposition Joe teaches Stanfield
how to launder money and evade investigation. Once Joe is no longer useful to
him, Stanfield has Joe killed with the help of Joe's nephew Cheese Wagstaff and
usurps his position with the Greeks and the New Day Co-Op. Michael Lee continues working as a
Stanfield enforcer, providing a home for his friend Dukie and younger
brother Bug.
Omar returns to Baltimore seeking revenge,
targeting Stanfield's organization, stealing and destroying money and drugs
and killing Stanfield enforcers in an attempt to force Stanfield into the
open. However, he is eventually shot and killed by Kenard, a young Stanfield dealer.
Baltimore Sun reporter Scott
Templeton claims to have been contacted by McNulty's fake serial killer. City
Editor Gus Haynes becomes suspicious, but
his superiors are enamored of Templeton. The story gains momentum and Carcetti spins the resulting attention on homelessness
into a key issue in his imminent campaign for Governor and restores funding
to the police department.
Bubbles is recovering from his drug addiction while living
in his sister's basement. He is befriended by Sun reporter Mike Fletcher, who eventually writes a
profile of Bubbles.
Bunk is disgusted with McNulty's serial killer
scheme and tries to have Lester Freamon reason
with McNulty. Instead, Freamon helps McNulty
perpetuate the lie and uses resources earmarked for the case to fund an
illegal wiretap on Stanfield. Bunk resumes working the vacant house murders,
leading to a murder warrant against Partlow for
killing Michael's stepfather.
Freamon and Leander Sydnor gather
enough evidence to arrest Stanfield and most of his top lieutenants, seizing
a large quantity of drugs. Stanfield suspects that Michael is an informant,
and orders him killed. Michael realizes he is being set up and kills Snoop
instead. A wanted man, he leaves Bug with an aunt and begins a career as a
stick-up man. With his support system gone, Dukie
lives with drug addicts.
McNulty
tells Kima Greggs about
his fabrications to prevent her wasting time on the case. Greggs tells
Daniels, who, along with Rhonda Pearlman, takes this news to Carcetti, who orders a cover-up because of the issue's
importance to his campaign.
Davis is
acquitted, but Freamon uses the threat of federal
prosecution to blackmail him for information. Davis reveals Levy has a mole
in the courthouse from whom he illegally purchases copies of sealed
indictments. Herc tells Levy that the Stanfield
case was probably based on an illegal wiretap, something which would
jeopardize the entire case. After Levy reveals this to Pearlman, she uses
Levy's espionage to blackmail him into agreeing to a plea bargain for his
defendants. Levy ensures Stanfield's release on the condition that he
permanently retires, while his subordinates will have to accept long
sentences. Stanfield sells the connection to The Greeks back to the Co-Op and
plans to become a businessman, although he appears unable or unwilling to
stay off the corner.
As the cover-up
begins, a copy-cat killing occurs, but McNulty
quickly identifies and arrests the culprit. Pearlman tells McNulty and Freamon that they can no longer be allowed to do
investigative work and warns of criminal charges if the scandal becomes
public. They opt to retire. Haynes attempts to expose Templeton but the
managing editors ignore the fabrications and demote anyone critical of their
star reporter. Carcetti pressures Daniels to
falsify crime statistics to aid his campaign. Daniels refuses and then
quietly resigns rather than have his FBI file leaked.
In a final
montage, McNulty gazes over the city; Freamon
enjoys retirement; Templeton wins a Pulitzer; Carcetti
becomes Governor; Haynes is sidelined to the copy desk and replaced by
Fletcher; Campbell appoints Valchek as
commissioner; Carcetti appoints Rawls as Superintendent
of the Maryland State Police; Dukie continues to use
heroin; Michael becomes a stickup boy; Pearlman becomes a judge and Daniels a
defense attorney; Bubbles is allowed upstairs where he enjoys a family
dinner; Chris serves his life sentence alongside Wee-Bey; the
drug trade continues; and the people of Baltimore go on with their lives.
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