In the end, it's the liberal politicians that are the ones actually running the city, and will blame anyone but themselves for the terrible living conditions for minorities in their city. You would never see this show get made today.
@@mmclaurin8035 i say this as a "right" leaning person - the conservative politicians are no better. they just have a different constituency they pretedn to care about and fuck over. both the "red team" and "blue team" are part of the same club, and you and me ain't in it.
Art imitating life, how many times have we seen this "who gets paid, behind all the tragedy and the fraud" in major cities? Washington? countless times.
This scene shows exactly why the police higher-ups saw Lester as someone so dangerous, he needed to be basically imprisoned within the police system. He was not only a diligent detective, but he refuses to take any outside or "political" considerations into account, and he had an intuitive understanding of how organized crime works, not just at the street level but at the white collar level. If you've got something to hide you sure as fuck need to worry about him, even though he's "just the police."
I know the show puts McNulty on the front and makes him almost the protagonist of the series, but Lester is definitely the best cop in the entire series. He's just always on point and never betrays his own code that put him away 13 years.. And 4 months. He just don't give a fuck about nobody.
Imo McNulty is as good as Lester, but he's much more unstable. Lester was true police, he wanted to lock up the bad guys, but McNulty wanted to beat the bad guys. To prove his superiority. That's their biggest difference.
The difference in Jimmy and Lester isn't the ability to police. It's wisdom. Lester had already been Jimmy in his life, and he the more he learned and cared about Jimmy he wanted to help him avoid an inevitable ending.
@The Feeling Of Being Watched even good police can run some other game. Like how Rawls describes Lester to Burell in season 4 "Lester runs a hell of a game"
Lester is old school police, he's nearing the light at the end of the tunnel in his career and knows it. He's good in that he is grooming, training his young replacement.
Freamon is by far one of the more wiser detectives within the entire department. Daniels said himself that Lester is not in the business of selling wolf tickets and he for one will not bet against him. Funny how in I believe Season 1, they all thought that Lester was nothing more than a hump, like those other drunk MF's they gave Daniels when they started the Major Crimes Unit. As the show went on, I'm surprised that Lester never made rank, but due to Rawls having a personal axe to grind with him, partly the reason he was stuck in the Pawn Shop Unit, Lester just kept on proving that he was what they call..."Natural Police."
+1stLDP and yet, Clay Davis escaped that trial shit! The way Clay Davis fooled them all was just hilarious. Daniels, Sobotka, both Carcetti and Royce, Stringer Bell, Bond, Freamon, Magic Clay beat them all like a stepchild
+suncore598 Rank means responsibility, which is fine but when you have to spend 50-60% of your time managing subordinates (especially in a Baltimore PD!) you can lose your focus. Also when you make rank you get moved to the next vacant slot normally, which means a CID detective could end up working as a DEU Sergeant in some quiet district or a Sergeant could end up working as an LT in evidence control. Rank has really never been about talent, its about ass kissing, the right timing, political office games, political games in general, etc. Oh and as said above Rawl's didn't screw Lester originally, some other Commissioner did and Lester stayed in the pawn unit because they "forgot" about him, he talks about this with Jimmy over a beer and specifically says it wasn't burrell or rawls.
Like all shows, there was some washout, where careers end or fizzle out.... But it seems to me that most of the real actors did in fact get work after, but those that were “the real life” types that were brought in for the show, never really transitioned to Hollywood. Agree???
"...how we're all of us vested, all of us complicit..." pretty much sums up the most important lesson the Wire taught. No one is innocent. We're all a part of the problem.
One of the nicest moments at the end of season 5 is where, as you see Dukie become the next Bubbles, and Michael become the next Omar, Sydnor becomes the next Freeman.
Rangda Rangda Sydnor was depicted as the next McNulty. His last shot was in Judge Phelan’s office complaining about the troubles in the department. Just were the series began with McNulty.
@@davidthomas7897 buy you can tell Sydnor looked up to McNulty..At McNulty's retirement,they showed a brief close up of Sydnor looking sad to see McNulty go
I think you're all on the money. McNulty is likely the next Lester- time off in retirement from detective work he gets a life and learns to be more patient. Then everyone's gonna forget about him and put him on a detail... So I think Sydnor becoming the next Mcnulty means he's going to end up like Lester.
Sydnor I think was going to be a McNulty without the baggage. Same desire to do something, same unwillingness to just accept shit as "the way things are" but less egomania and self-destructive bullshit. McNulty done right, basically.
McNulty and Freamon had the same motivation. Each of them was searching for that super case that would define their career. McNulty sought it in the streets. Freamon sought it in the bureaucrats.
Same with America You follow politicians you get politics and bullshyt. But if you follow the Fed reserve & tax statistics you get to see the manipulative domino affect even if you can't explain it
Baltimore, being a decently sized city in America, does encapsulate what happens on the bigger stages. Thing is, if they did anything close to “The Wire”, but based out of like Washington, trade the drugs for politicians vs the law and boom, you have a show that would probably get the director murdered before it even came out.
That is why this show should have continued. So many stories still to tell. Micheal, Dukie Randy, the new package, Marlo, Port at least another 3 seasons of stories to tell.
I view this scene as a tragedy. Because TV shows get made based on what we know. We know someone like Marlo exists because eventually they get caught. We never see the men and women behind Clay Davis. As Lester is doing here we can only speculate who they are. The real King Pins are never caught
Lester Freamon =real Natural Po Po = Real Af/American,,Indeed,Lester Trancends Racial Stereotype and is a man.A real man,played by a great actor,Clarke Peters.His work on The Corner was Right on also , which Ironically was, {Also set in Baltimore} Bravo Clarke Peters
every time i try to blabber a reply comment to any one of these clips, i'm forced to just stop in mid-response and say to myself, "who cares what i think, and what difference does it make? the bottomline is that this is the most brilliant post-late 90s dramatic series ever." doesn't matter what i think, you think, or anyone else. me arguing my point on why this is so is not going to change anyone's mind, and now i realize, it DOESN'T MATTER. i don't need to convince anyone to accept for myself that this is the best.
Reminds one of Washington Politics. No different than street life in Baltimore only the players wear expensive suits and pretend to be "respectable"....
How do you guys think Sydnor became the next Freamon? In the scene with Phelan he literally uses the same exact words McNulty uses when he talks to him in the first episode. It’s the most obvious one. Even more obvious than Michael becoming the next Omar
In an ideal world, Lester would have been a commissioner with a ton of commendations and medals because he cared about doing the job whereas those like Burrell and Rawls were apathetic careerists who only cared about getting promoted and kissing the backside of the higherups.
Lester was in the wrong line of work. He should have worked for the Feds, for whom long, slow, exacting financial cases are the norm. Municipal police departments exist on the day-to-day, applying first aid to social problems over which they have no control. That said, untilhe got involved in the caper in the final season, he was the best officer on the show.
Remember season 1 when the FBI wanted to take the barksdale case federal and roll stringer and avon up against the corrupt politicians that were benefitting from the drug trade, and the major crimes unit (including Lester) got upset and turned them down?
Lester would have done well building cases at DoJ or Commerce. I know a couple guys at both FBI Financial Crimes and at BIS that look for this kind of talent in pattern recognition, not to mention the love of it. Although, Freaman would probably hate the bureaucracy as a Fed even more than at the city.
As nice and knowledgeable Lester was, he really underestimated the power of the political beast and dirty lawyers He was already chalking up the Clay Davis case as a win in his head and thinking of bigger fish to fry and never once assumed how dumb a jury of 12 can be especially if they’re made up of mostly blacks
Imagine being smart as fuck and a good worker, trying hard in school and shit, only to realize that you are a danger to the system and all your effort is wasted.
I think Lester is trying to make up for failing to bring the Barksdale case up to the Federal level here. He let McNulty sink the case when it could have blown a hole in the system, and he never really got over it.
+PlankofWood1 Eh...maybe a little but Lester is just really really good police. Some cops are great on the street, some are great with murders and some have the mind to wrap around complex organized crime investigations and Lester is just built for Organized crime / corruption cases, its a calling.
