Straight and True (S03E05)
Airdate: October 17th 2004
Written by: Ed Burns
Directed by: Dan Attias
Running Time: 58 minutes
David Simon’s The Wire remains unparalleled in its forensic dissection of urban decay and institutional failure, and Season 3’s Straight and True stands as a masterclass in weaving this intricate tapestry. The series presents Baltimore as a city defined by a profound, unsettling paradox: it is simultaneously a claustrophobic village where social, professional, and criminal networks are astonishingly interwoven, operating on the principle that everyone is separated by no more than one or two degrees, yet it is also a place where those ostensibly in positions of authority and insight regard the very communities they police or govern as utterly inscrutable alien territories. This central tension – the coexistence of intimate proximity and profound ignorance – permeates the urban landscape Simon constructs. Straight and True crystallises this paradox with exceptional clarity, demonstrating how systemic myopia persists even amidst the dense web of human connection that characterises the city, rendering the obvious invisible to those who should see it most clearly.
Nowhere is this blindness more starkly illustrated than in the valiant yet increasingly desperate efforts of Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin in the Western District. Colvin’s radical "Hamsterdam" experiment – concentrating drug activity into designated zones with minimal police interference to reduce overall street-level violence – founders on a fundamental failure of communication and understanding. His own officers, including seasoned narcotics detectives Herc and Carver, remain utterly incapable of grasping the basic structure of the drug trade they patrol daily. Street-level dealers, operating under immediate, brutal pressures, cannot comprehend Colvin’s strategic vision of controlled zones. Following another humiliating dressing-down from the Deputy Commissioners for failing to produce conventional crime statistics, Colvin realises his fatal error: he has been trying to negotiate with the foot soldiers while remaining completely ignorant of the actual managers orchestrating the trade. The bitter irony is palpable: despite Herc and Carver’s relentless, often brutal, street-level enforcement, they possess zero intelligence on the mid-level operators – the crucial link between drug lords and the corners. Colvin’s salvation arrives not from the vaunted narcotics unit, but from the sidelined Major Crimes Unit (MCU), whose meticulous, intelligence-driven work, conducted while battling institutional neglect, has painstakingly mapped the very hierarchy Colvin needed. This allows Colvin, in a move emblematic of both pragmatism and chilling dehumanisation, to finally corral the dealers into his designated zones and even arrange for police vans to bus in addicts – treating human beings as mere logistical components in his social engineering project.
This institutional blindness stands in stark contrast to the intuitive, almost accidental navigation of the city’s hidden networks by Jimmy McNulty. Later revealed as Colvin’s former protégé, McNulty embodies the paradox by effortlessly crossing boundaries that baffle his superiors. Attending a mundane school fundraiser with his ex-wife, he stumbles into a brief liaison with Tina d’Agostino, a politically connected figure whose connection to the rising mayoral challenger, Tommy Carcetti, remains unknown to him as she angrily ejects him from her bed. Simultaneously, Carcetti, leveraging his colleague Councilman Anthony Gray’s increasingly vitriolic public evisceration of Commissioner Burrell over the murder of a key crime witness, intensifies his campaign against the Royce administration. McNulty’s movement through these disparate worlds – from the school hall to Tina’s bedroom, from the MCU bullpen to the corridors of nascent political ambition – highlights a fluidity utterly absent in the rigid, self-blinding structures of the police command. Yet McNulty’s own sense of agency is shattered when he confronts Stringer Bell at his legitimate printing business. Bell, having meticulously laundered his empire and cultivated powerful political and business connections (including State Senator Clay Davis), stands on the precipice of shedding his criminal past entirely. McNulty’s desperate, almost pathetic attempt to reignite their old conflict is met with Bell’s cool, triumphant mockery – a dismissal that strips McNulty of his purpose and leaves him slinking back to the MCU office, defeated and adrift, ready to chase the next corner boy simply to feel relevant again.
Bell’s apparent triumph, however, is as fragile as Colvin’s Hamsterdam. While seemingly mastering the transition from street kingpin to respectable businessman, he faces mounting pressures. Colvin’s experiment directly impacts his operations, forcing Bodie and others into the chaotic Hamsterdam zones. More significantly, Avon Barksdale’s return from prison creates a seismic rift. Avon, a creature of the raw street logic that built their empire, is profoundly alienated by the "brave new world" Bell has constructed – the sterile boardrooms, the polite negotiations with figures like wealthy developer Adam Krawczyk and the oily Clay Davis. Avon’s discomfort underscores the fundamental incompatibility between the old code of the corners and Bell’s corporate ambitions. This internal fracture is catastrophically exploited by Marlo Stanfield, the young, psychopathically ambitious drug lord who embodies the new, terrifying face of the trade. Marlo’s deliberate rejection of both Colvin’s pragmatic zones and Bell’s attempts at negotiation is a declaration of war based on pure, amoral power. Bell’s decision to meet Marlo, driven by a misplaced belief in reason and negotiation, proves disastrous. Not only is the meeting surreptitiously recorded by the ever-vigilant MCU – providing McNulty with a vital lifeline back into the investigation – but Marlo interprets Bell’s very attempt at dialogue as weakness. His chilling instruction to his troops signals the imminent, brutal dismantling of Bell’s carefully constructed world, revealing the fatal flaw in his belief that the rules of legitimate business could govern the streets.
Written by former detective and teacher Ed Burns, Straight and True maintains the exceptional narrative density and thematic coherence that defines The Wire’s peak. The episode weaves its complex political, institutional, and criminal threads with masterful precision. Cutty Wise’s subplot – his reluctant return to the Barksdale fold and growing disillusionment with the escalating violence and recklessness of the younger crew – resonates perfectly with the central theme of seeking legitimacy versus succumbing to the street’s gravitational pull. Similarly, Bubbles’s futile attempts to convince the perpetually strung-out Johnny Weeks that being a police informant offers a more sustainable path than petty crime underscore the tragic cyclical nature of addiction and desperation. While the pacing occasionally falters, particularly in some of the Hamsterdam establishment sequences, these moments are minor blemishes on an otherwise flawless tapestry. The episode also deftly employs dark humour to alleviate its oppressive weight: Stringer Bell’s furious eruption at Shamrock for meticulously recording Barksdale Organisation meetings using Robert’s Rules of Order (a potential goldmine of conspiracy evidence) is both hilarious and tragically illustrative of Bell’s struggle to impose order on chaos; Bunk Moreland’s Sisyphean quest to recover Dozerman’s lost service weapon, yielding only absurdly useless "tips" from incarcerated informants, provides a perfect counterpoint of weary, absurdist comedy.
Straight and True ultimately serves as a pivotal moment in Season 3, exposing the inherent contradictions and inevitable fragility within every attempted solution to Baltimore’s systemic rot. Colvin’s Hamsterdam, McNulty’s fading relevance, Bell’s precarious ascent, and Avon’s displaced rage all stem from the same core failure: the inability of those within the system, whether police, politicians, or criminals, to truly see and understand the complex, interconnected reality they inhabit. They operate within a city where everyone is connected, yet persist in treating it as an impenetrable mystery. The true mystery isn’t Baltimore’s streets; it’s the persistent refusal of those who shape its fate to comprehend the world right before their eyes.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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