The Wire: Difference between revisions

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Although the series has been critically acclaimed, ''The Wire'' never managed to earn anything more than a small but devoted following. Part of the reason, says co-creator [[David Simon]], is that it has a primarily black cast representing the racial makeup of the real-life Baltimore. Indeed, the show's best-rated season is its second, which was the only one to have an equal number of white faces, being set in Baltimore's docks.
{{tropelist}}
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=== This show provides examples of: ===
* [[Abandoned Playground]]: Several, considering that Baltimore is a shooting gallery. Most notably, Nick laments Ziggy in one in Season 2, Marlo holds court in one for most of Season 3, and Lex is ambushed by Snoop in one in Season 4.
* [[Absentee Actor]]:
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* [[Antagonist in Mourning]]: McNulty spends 3 seasons trying to build a case on Stringer, and finally gets him on tape incriminating himself. That very afternoon, {{spoiler|1=Stringer is betrayed to Omar and murdered. McNulty is distraught.}}
{{quote| {{spoiler|1='''McNulty:''' I caught him, Bunk. On the wire, I caught him. He doesn't fucking know it.}}}}
* [[Anti -Hero]]: McNulty and Omar, most prominently. Both of them are mostly [[Sliding Scale of Anti -Heroes|Type III]] but McNulty sometimes shows signs of a Type IV, {{spoiler|especially in the final season}}. Bubbles is a Type I.
* [[Anti -Villain]]: Most of the people on the bad side of the law could qualify, as very few of them consciously choose a life of crime or actively take pleasure in suffering and fear. With the notable exception of {{spoiler|the Stanfield gang,}} of course. Of particular note are D'Angelo Barksdale, Bodie and Co., and Frank Sobotka.
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: To the point that by the final season, most of the {{spoiler|Barksdale}} clan's members who weren't arrested were killed on the streets; long-running characters like {{spoiler|Bodie and Omar Little}} are killed off suddenly as well.
* [[Arc Words]]:
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'''Slim Charles:''' Game's the same - just got more fierce. }}
* [[Artifact Title]]: A literal wire, rather than a metaphor for walking a thin line, only plays a major role in the first season. Wiretaps of one variety or another are central to several operations. The title also suggests [[Pull the Thread|pulling the thread]].
* [[Back for The Finale]]: {{spoiler|Pretty much everyone that's not dead has one last hurrah as a [[One -Scene Wonder]] at some point during the final season. Even Nicky and Johnny Fifty from season 2's docks plotline show up for cameos.}}
* [[Badass Beard]]: {{spoiler|Prez}} in the series finale.
* [[Badass Boast]]: Omar in the first season: "Lesson here, 'Bey. You come at the king, you best not miss."
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** Kima drinks, sleeps around, and kicks in doors right along with the men of the series.
** Snoop as well. She has the "one of the guys" aspect down nearly to a tee, wearing almost exclusively baggy men's clothing (concealing her fairly feminine build seen on the one exception), being one of the top two enforcers for Marlo, and with a voice deeper than most males on the show. Her sexual orientation is only once referred to, and that fairly obliquely (where she claims that she, like Bunk, is "thinking about some pussy"), but the actress who plays her is also a [[Butch Lesbian]].
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Ziggy, though he [[What an Idiot!|mostly brings it on himself]]. He can arguably be seen as a [[Deconstruction]] of the trope, once you see his fate at the end of the season: {{spoiler|he gets so tired of being the punchline of every joke that he snaps and murders George Glekas after he cheats him in a business deal and humiliates him. He gets a lengthy prison term for the crime}}.
* [[But Not Too Gay]]: The fairly prominent gay character of Omar never gets a sex scene, and over three boyfriends and five seasons, only has two on-screen kisses (three if you count kissing Brandon's forehead in an early episode): he barely even touches the third boyfriend, Renaldo, even in a non-sexual way (possibly as a result of some controversy about the fairly steamy make-out scene with his previous boyfriend, Dante). Mostly, however, this is averted as Omar is one of few characters who never hides his relationships, and what we do see is still a lot more than some examples from other media.
* [[Camera Sniper]]: Happens a lot, particularly in season one. For instance, the scene where Bubbles is doing his red hat trick and Kima is on the roof photographing them.
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* [[The City]]: Baltimore
* [[Clear My Name]]: A strange example. Herc and Carver arrest a cash mule and turn the money over to the Major Crimes Unit. However, it is several thousand dollars short of the amount that they heard being discussed on the wire. So Daniels tells them to get it back before he reports them - Herc and Carver tear apart the squad car and find that it has somehow gotten under the spare tire in the trunk. Carver notes that Daniels will never believe they didn't try to steal it. And since they have both seen each other doing so in the past, neither of them really believes the other didn't hide it there.
* [[Cluster F -Bomb]]: In season one, McNulty and Bunk spend an entire scene investigating a crime scene while muttering nothing but variations of the word "fuck."
* [[Comically Missing the Point]]:
** O-Dog suggests to Snoop and Chris to execute someone via drive-by, like in the movie ''[[Boyz N the Hood]]''. [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|"Shit was tight, remember?"]] The negative context of the drive-bys from the movie must've gone completely over his head.
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* [[Dissonant Serenity]]: Brother Mouzone.
* [[Divided We Fall]]
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: {{spoiler|1=In season 5 when (McNulty) goes to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit for help on the serial killer he made up, the profile describes him perfectly.}} You can see in his face that this isn't lost on him.
* [[The Don]]: In season 2, "The Greek", unnamed patriarch of the Greek crime syndicate. He's very soft spoken, has a calm civility of another age, masking an icy ruthlessness.
* [[Don't Answer That]]:
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** It can refer to the metaphorical wire that connects Baltimore citizens of all walks of life, thus ensuring that one group's actions always affect the other.
* [[Do You Want to Haggle]]: The reason for Proposition Joe's name.
* [[The Dragon]]: From season 3 through the end of the series, Chris Partlow fills this role for Marlo Stanfield, though his constant training and use of Snoop may amount to making the two of them [[Co -Dragons]].
* [[The Dreaded]]: Omar fucking Little. Even Chris and Snoop -- Chris and Snoop -- get nervous when he's hunting them. Chris and Snoop themselves also count.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]:
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* [[Expospeak]]: ''Very'' little from a story standpoint, and ''no'' [[As You Know]] explanations. You [[Continuity Lock Out|can't skip an episode]] to follow the plot, and if you don't have a cursory knowledge of each season's field, then be sure to have a web browser open and a pause button handy. The closest the show gets is Bunk and Lester saying as McNulty flirts with women in a bar:
{{quote| '''Lester:''' Ain't he married or some shit now?}}
* [[Facing the Bullets One -Liner]]: {{spoiler|Stringer Bell}}'s last words, when cornered by {{spoiler|Omar Little and Brother Mouzone}}, are "Get on with it [[Killed Mid -Sentence|motherf-]]".
* [[Fake American]]: McNulty and Stringer Bell are both played by Brits; Carcetti is played by an Irishman
* [[Fake Nationality]]: Sergei, supposedly from [[Insistent Terminology|the Ukraine]], is played by Chris Ashworth, born and raised in the USA. In-universe example with {{spoiler|"The Greek"... who's not even a Greek. He does head a mostly-Greek gang though.}}
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* [[False Rape Accusation]]: An 8th grade girl has sex with two boys, and when it is revealed they only had interest in her for the sex, she accuses them of rape. In the end this ruins quite a few lives {{spoiler|and sending ripples through the entire criminal underworld.}}
* [[A Father to His Men]]: Colvin, especially towards McNulty and Carver.
* [[Five -Bad Band]]: Two notable ones:
** The Barksdale Organization (Season 1)
*** The [[Big Bad]] - Avon Barksdale
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* [[Foil]]: In the second season, Nick and Frank Sobotka serve as a foil for D'Angelo and Avon Barksdale. Both are uncle-nephew duos who are born into the same business, and both involve the nephew trying to break away, but their respective environments (working class Polish vs. inner-city Black) and subtle differences in character dynamics form a contrast.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: the chess conversation in the first season; McNulty's confession that he doesn't want to end up "on the boat" in the pilot; {{spoiler|Kenard}} pretending to be Omar; almost all {{spoiler|of Bodie's appearances}} in season four {{spoiler|foreshadow his death}}; Prez not wanting to see {{spoiler|Randy}} get chewed up by the system, many other instances.
* [[Four Lines, All Waiting]]: a rare example of this done well. You sometimes have to wait several episodes for a minor plotline to advance at all, and it might be by a single line of dialogue; however, since you ''really'' have to be paying attention to enjoy this show at all, it usually works.
* [[Freeze Frame Bonus]]: During a police/community meeting about drug dealing in city neighborhoods, a chart shows the success of enforcement efforts with drug arrests going up between 2003 and 2004--however arrests for every other crime are down. This of course reinforces the third season's premise that the drug war distracts from real police work.
* [[The Fun in Funeral]]: The Baltimore police have a tradition of holding rowdy Irish wakes for their own, culimating in a passionate sing-along of the Pogues' "The Body of an American." Even the black cops seem to love the tradition.
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''(cut to McNulty driving across three lanes)'' }}
* [[Go Karting With Bowser]]: The East side and West side gang lords have a truce day where they meet and play a high-stakes basketball game. This series is full of examples of this, fairly cordial interactions between sworn enemies.
* [[Good Adultery, Bad Adultery]] / [[Sympathetic Adulterer]]: In season 1 D'Angelo hooking up with Shardene despite having a wife and young child (who he led Shardene to believe he was separated from) was depicted very sympathetically. His wife Donette hooking up with Stringer in season 2 wasn't depicted so sympathetically, especially since Stringer {{spoiler|was the one who arranged D'Angelo's death}}.
* [[Good Cop Bad Cop]]: Subverted: season one, episode five has this shtick turning into "Bad Cop, ''Pissed'' Cop".
* [[Good Guy Bar]]: Kavanagh's, the bar where McNulty and Bunk regularly go to drink, and where the Irish wakes are held.
* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]: Omar has a pretty distinctive antihero scar running down the left side of his face, which goes a long way towards solidifying him as a [[Badass]]. Interestingly, that scar isn't a prosthetic--Michael K. Williams actually has a scar like that, which he got from a bar fight.
* [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]]: In the second season's opening credits, a passport ostensibly from the Russian Federation (despite still having Communist stationary and reading "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" at the top of one page) reads: ??????????? D????? ??????????? (''Fedorovskal Dovlasch Lschtvkrfyrsht''). The passport's gender reads M and something that looks like a cross between an F and ?, and the "transliterated" name is "Dobrav Naberezhnyi".
* [[Greedy Jew]]: Maurice Levy, the [[Amoral Attorney]] who profits handsomely by protecting drug dealers, makes a number of references to his Jewish culture, while Rhonda Pearlman, his honest counterpart, is also Jewish, but [[All There in the Manual|you'd never know it]].
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* [[A Half Dozen Guys in A Basement]]: The Major Case Squad, for basically all of the show's run.
* [[Harmless Villain]]: How many see Marlo Stanfield. It really comes back to bite the cops in the ass with a brutal subversion.
* [[Headbutting Heroes]]: A minor case in season 3. The MCU is slowly turning into a dump unit for solving impossible cases, but McNulty doesn't want anything with it and continues his investigation on Stringer Bell. On the other side, Lester Freamon is compliant out of loyalty to Daniels and happy to do actual police work after years in terrible units. They both annoy each other at the beginning, with McNulty [[Dare to Be Badass|appealing to Lester's pride and longing for puzzles to solve]] and Freamon [[What the Hell, Hero?|berating Jimmy for being a selfish jackass pissing on the unit he himself created]]. Hilariously, they both give themselves food for thought.
* [[Hidden Depths]]: Pryzbylewski is initially dumped on the Barksdale detail because he's an incompetent officer who once accidentally shot up his own car in a panic. On his first day he accidentally [[I Just Shot Marvin in The Face|discharges his gun in the office]], and later gets another car destroyed by needlessly inciting the local community. The only reason he doesn't get fired is [[Nepotism]]. However, after being restricted to office duty, he begins to excell and becomes a specialist in penetrating the drug dealers' heavily slurred, slang-laden, and coded communications. He also becomes a decent teacher during season 4.
* [[Hooker With a Heart of Gold]]: Shardene.
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* [[Inherent in The System]]: the overarching theme of the series is that the characters are trapped inside the machinations of the city of Baltimore, and no one can ever really shake up the system.
* [[Insistent Terminology]]: Lester Freamon, a highly capable detective, was forced into pawn shop unit for thirteen years "and four months".
* [[In -Series Nickname]]: Quite a few of them, several of whom are [[Only Known By Their Nickname]].
** Bird (real name: Marquis Hilton)
** Bodie (real name: Preston Broadus)
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** {{spoiler|Snoop's death, as Michael got the better of her by using the same techniques and advice that she and Chris Partlow had taught him.}}
** {{spoiler|Stringer's}} death also qualifies, as it's a direct result of {{spoiler|his attempts to set Omar and Brother Mouzone against each other.}}
* [[Kick the Dog]]: Marlo, at least once in the fourth season (for example, flagrantly shoplifting ''lollipops'' just to intimidate the security guard). This being ''The Wire'', though, it's played as much [[Deconstructed Trope|to explore his ego issues]] as to establish that he's [[Card -Carrying Villain|just plain evil]]. The payoff of this [[Kick the Dog]] moment comes when {{spoiler|he has that same security guard murdered for daring to ask him to stop.}}
* [[Kick the Son of A Bitch]]: Whenever [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|Obstructive Bureaucrats]] like Burrell or Valchek get shit in the way. One especially memorable instance happens in season 2, when the kicking is done to Burrell by ''Valchek''.
* [[Killed Mid -Sentence]]: {{spoiler|Stringer Bell}} and {{spoiler|Omar}}.
* [[Kingpin in His Gym]]: in Season One, Avon Barksdale and Russell "Stringer" Bell were shown working out at the gym and on the basketball court while planing gangland operations.
* [[Knight in Sour Armor]]: The vast majority of the good cops in ''[[The Wire]]'' know perfectly well just how much of a [[Crapsack World]] Baltimore really is, and how little of what they do will change it. However, this doesn't stop them from trying.
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** Seeing his boyfriend, Brandon's, mutilated corpse.
** In the aftermath of {{spoiler|Dante accidentally shooting Tosha during an ambush because [[I Just Shot Marvin in The Face|he wasn't paying attention]] to where his gun was pointed}} in season three. In fact, Omar cries a lot, and yet he is still never less than manly.
* [[May -December Romance]]: Of all people, {{spoiler|''Lester''}} ends up with Shardene in late season one, and they remain together for the rest of the series; she shows up again in the finale.
* [[Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot]]: Season Two: Wharfie with suspicious amounts of money buys a stained-glass window for a church + Shipping container full of dead prostitutes -> International drug and human smuggling cartel, city-wide crime organizations merging.
* [[Missing White Woman Syndrome]]: [[Discussed Trope]] in "Unconfirmed Reports", {{spoiler|1=inspiring McNulty to cross his [[Moral Event Horizon]]}}.
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* [[Mob War]]: In Season 3, between the Barksdale and Stanfield crews.
* [[The Mole]]: Agent Koutris, who feeds information to the Greek about the joint BPD-FBI investigation into his activities in exchange for counterterrorism intel.
* [[MommasMomma's Boy]]: D'angelo shoes some signs of this early on, but Namond fits this trope fully.
{{quote| Bodie: "Your momma is what niggas call a 'Dragon Lady'<br />
Namond: "Yeah, she don't blink."<br />
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* [[Mood Dissonance]]: Omar's sort-of [[Leitmotif]] is... [[Dissonant Serenity|The Farmer In The Dell]]. On the other hand, Omar whistles it so that in resembles a marching music. Since he only whistled it, the tune resembles that of the very relevant 'A-Hunting We Will Go'.
* [[Mother Russia Makes You Strong]]: 'Boris' points out that American prisons are not real prisons as he has been a 'guest' to the actually harsh Ukranian ones.
* [[NamesName's the Same]]: The graphic novel ''[[Watchmen]]'' features a company called "Pyramid Delivery", as does the second season of ''The Wire''. In both works, the company turns out to be a front set up by the [[Big Bad]] ( {{spoiler|Ozymandias}} and The Greek, respectively).
* [[New Job Episode]]: Not an actual ''episode''. McNulty is forced to work in the Baltimore Marine Unit for half of the second season as revenge by his former commander.
* [[Never Heard That One Before]]:
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* [[Not So Different]]: During a trial {{spoiler|Omar}} destroys {{spoiler|Levy's}} attempt to discredit him as a witness by pointing out that his description could [[Insult Backfire|very easily]] be about himself.
{{quote| I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. ''[[Nothing Personal|It's all in the game right?]]''}}
* [[Not -So -Harmless Villain]]: As has been said, many considered Marlo Stanfield to be a wannabe punk who wasn't worth much trouble, especially compared to Avon Barksdale. This includes both gangbangers and cops. However, by the end of the fourth season, they all see just how wrong that assumption was, as he proved himself to be far more ruthless than Avon ever was.
* [[Number Two]]: Various characters in the drug trade, including Stringer Bell in the first season, Spiros Vondapolous, Chris Partlow and Slim Charles.
* [[Office Golf]]: Burrell does a lot of this.
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* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted surprisngly often, such as with Dennis "Cutty" Wise and Dennis Mello; Roland "Wee-Bey" Brice and Roland Pryzbylewski; William "Bunk" Moreland and William Rawls; Tommy Carcetti, Thomas "Herc" Hauk and Thomas "Horseface" Pakusa; Johnny Weeks and Johnny "Fifty" Spamanto; Ray Cole and Raymond Foerster. Probably due to [[Loads and Loads of Characters]].
* [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]]: Several actors do this in their more emotional moments. Idris Elba manages to avoid it as Stringer Bell. Michael K Williams as Omar affects a pretty good Bawlmer accent for the most part, but slips a couple of times into his natural Brooklyn, particularly noticeably when he's acting across from Ernest Waddell, also from New York (and who uses his real accent). In the scene were Carcetti is pretending to make a phone call he sounds very Irish.
* [[Pac -Man Fever]]:
** Michael's little brother is clearly playing [[Pokémon]] Red Version in a Game Boy Advance, yet the sounds it makes are beeps and boops.
** Namond is shown playing on his X-Box, without the TV in view, and, despite showing him playing ''Halo 2'' in other episodes, we hear random stock ninja sounds playing over and over.
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* [[Police Brutality]]: Most officers on the show at least one incident of brutality towards suspects in their custody, and this is simply considered part of the Game.
* [[Police Procedural]]: In this case a huge [[Deconstruction]].
* [[Politically -Incorrect Villain]]: Any time a gangster refers to Omar using an anti-gay slur instead of his name, [[Drinking Game|take a shot]].
* [[Prequel]]: Omar, Proposition Joe, McNulty and Bunk's backstories were shown in short vignettes before the premiere of the fifth season, to heighten speculation about [[Tonight Someone Dies|who would die]].
* [[Prison]]: Season two, more briefly in season three, still more briefly in seasons 4 and 5.
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* [[Real Men Wear Pink]]: Omar is so tough that he can walk down to the corner grocery store in a turquoise silk bathrobe and drug dealers will still toss their stashes to him out of fear.
* [[Real Song Theme Tune]]: Tom Waits's "Way Down In The Hole", performed by a different artist each season (including Waits himself in Season 2).
* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Quite a lot of them considering the cynical nature of the series, though none are without flaws. Cedric Daniels is shown to be a good cop at heart, but he's very ambitious. Howard Colvin is a father to his men, but he risks everything on a poorly conceived gambit that inspires some [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|angry tirades]] from cops. Frank Sobotka does everything he can to save the docks, but essentially sells his soul to do so. Carcetti seems to be one during his early career and political campaign, but his ambition causes him to go down the same roads as everyone else. Prez turns into one over the course of season 4, though he'd already shown himself to be a truley incompetent and even violent cop.
* [[Reassigned to Antarctica]]:
** McNulty, at the end of the first and third seasons (the latter being used to allow Dominic West to be [[Written in Absence]] while filming several feature film roles).
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* [[Reckless Gun Usage]]: Kima is assigned to a murder of a State's witness in an alley. There's quite a bit of backroom scheming because it's a mayoral election year, so she under pressure from one side to solve the case quickly and from the other to bury it. {{spoiler|It turns out, a pair of drunken knuckleheads two blocks away were shooting at beer bottles and hit the guy by accident.}}
{{quote| {{spoiler|Det Norris: So these idiots are shooting forties two blocks down, and now this Carcetti fuck gets to be mayor? What a town.}}}}
* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Several.
** Jimmy McNulty is the Red Oni to Bunk Moreland's Blue Oni. On occasions when he's paired with them, Lester Freamon and Kima Greggs fill the Blue Oni role as well.
** Avon Barksdale is the Red Oni to Stringer Bell's Blue Oni.
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** Season 5, during one of the corners "time out" moments. Kenard blatantly stashed a brown bag "package" in plain view for the western "knockos" to see. Without question, militant cop Colicchio snatches the whole corner. When he reaches inside the package, he pulls out a hand full of dog shit.
* [[The Scream]]: Omar's reaction after viewing the mutilated body of his lover Brandon at a Baltimore morgue. The camera cuts to McNulty's sons (who are waiting in the main lobby for their father) freezing in shock when he screams.
* [[Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful]]: In Season 3, Rhonda uses a short skirt and a seductive smile to convince Judge Phelan to authorize a wiretap that the cops technically don't have a valid probable cause for.
* [[Secret Test of Character]]: Stringer sends Bodie and some other Mooks to Philadelphia to pick up some drugs stashed in a parked car. He has Bodie memorize the route and plans to check his odometer ''down to the tenth of a mile.'' What Bodie doesn't know is that Stringer has a car following Bodie the whole time, and the route he picked goes right through a construction zone (necessitating a detour) just to see how Bodie would handle it.
* [[Series Fauxnale]]: The ending of season three, since David Simon wasn't 100% sure whether [[The Wire]] would return for the fourth and fifth seasons.
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* [[Sophisticated As Hell]]:
** Used in both a verbal and non-verbal sense when {{spoiler|Stringer}} is shown attending an Introduction to Macroeconomics class (and uses the lesson in the next scene).
** This trope is to David Simon as [[Buffy -Speak]] is to [[Joss Whedon]].
{{quote| '''Bubbles:''' You're equivocating like a motherfucker, man.<br />
'''Carver:''' Did you just use the word 'habitat' in a sentence?<br />
'''Brother Mouzone:''' Let me be emphatic, you need to take your black ass across Charles Street where it belongs.<br />
'''Bodie:''' Man, better go on before I lose my composure out this bitch! }}
* [[Spell My Name With a "The"]]: The Bunk.
* [[Spoiler Opening]]: Every opening contains clips from episodes later on in the season, but they don't make much sense until you see them in context.
* [[Straight Gay]]: Omar, Omar's various boyfriends, and [[Word of God]] confirms this about {{spoiler|Commander Rawls.}}
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* [[Ted Baxter]]: Cheese is the game's version of this. There is not a single season that he appears in where he doesn't get completely punked out at least once, and if he weren't Prop Joe's nephew he probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where he got. {{spoiler|And then when he finally ''was'' on top of the drug game, it lasted all of one scene before Slim Charles put a bullet in his brain.}}
* [[Terrible Interviewees Montage]]: In the second season, with people who all claim not to speak English. Later in season 3 The Bunk, when trying to recover a police gun, interviews several convicts who can't help him, including some who try to sell him other guns.
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Happens more often than the average show. McNulty has gotten more than one over the course of five season, even Rawls slipped one in while trying to console Jimmy in the wake of Kima getting shot. Omar got a nasty one from Bunk in Season 3. Carver got a rare lenient one from Colvin on how he isn't much of a police officer. Even Avon calls Stringer out when he grows tired of him trying to avoid war even after Avon is almost killed. The best one had to be Nick Sobatka slapping Frog hard with his "You Know You're White?" speech.
* [[Theme Music Power -Up]]: Omar whistling "[[Ironic Nursery Tune|The Farmer in the Dell]]".
* [[Thieves Guild]]: Stringer trying to run syndicate meetings according to Roberts' Rules of Order.
{{quote| ''You ain't got the floor. Chair don't recognise yo ass.''<br />
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* [[True Companions]]: A lot of the cops might hate each other. In fact, a lot of them do. But when {{spoiler|a cop gets shot,}} the ''all'' forget their differences and ''all'' work together.
* [[Twofer Token Minority]]: Korean-African-American Lesbian Detective Kima Greggs is at ''least'' a twofer, though her tokenhood is questionable given the show's diverse cast.
* [[Two -Teacher School]]: Averted in the fourth season. Multiple scenes show teachers at an inner-city Baltimore school debating issues such as curriculums, test preparations, and overall teaching structures; we also see shots of teachers giving lectures to their classes. Played straight when it comes to actual class focus, however.
* [[Ubermensch]]: Omar Little, personal-code warrior
* [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]: Bunny Colvin's Hamsterdam project can be considered a mild example. It greatly improved public safety and quality of life for Baltimore citizens, but it involved allowing criminals to peddle drugs unhindered, and ''brutally'' [[Disproportionate Retribution|punishing the dealers who refused to move to the free zone]].
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** Apparently, there was another season of ''The Wire'' planned which would have dealt with immigration and the large influx of Hispanic immigrants in Baltimore. Since none of the writers spoke Spanish nor knew enough about the immigrants that lived in Baltimore, the season was cut.
** During season 3 the idea was floated of spinning off the political subplots into a separate show called ''The Hall''. Instead the political side was folded into subsequent seasons.
* [[What Measure Is a Mook?]]: Averted. Nearly every one of the street thugs has a backstory and character development, and the deaths of even minor mooks are given dramatic weight.
* [[What Have I Done]]: One of the intonations of McNulty's catchphrase, "The fuck did I do?".
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Bunk on the night after Jimmy's [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]].
* [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]]: seen at the end of each season, with an extra-length one at the end of season five.
* [[Where Were You Last Night]]: In season 5, McNulty has such a scene with his lady, who knows he's cheating.
* [[White Gang Bangers]]:
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