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These moments from "The Wire" will make you want to binge watch the entire show in one sitting. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at the most memorable and impactful scenes on the HBO crime drama “The Wire”.
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00:00And what is your occupation?
00:02Occupation?
00:04What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Little?
00:07I rip and run.
00:10Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most memorable and impactful scenes on the HBO crime drama, The Wire.
00:16If you aren't caught up on the classic yet, here's your spoiler alert.
00:19You still don't get it, do you? Huh?
00:23This ain't about your money, bro. Your boy gave you up.
00:30Number 10, Season 2 Closing Montage, Port in a Storm.
00:40With music montages concluding and summarizing each season of The Wire, Season 2 ends most thought-provokingly.
00:46Steve Earle's catchy yet bluesy I Feel Alright scores authorities shutting down the dock workers' union hall and its criminal rackets.
00:52Meanwhile, continued street crime and a condo building's groundbreaking illustrate the mixed bag of Baltimore's resilience.
00:58It's all the more poignant for how the montage is framed, with Nick Sabatka staring through a chain-link fence like his uncle Frank did before his murder.
01:12This corresponding visual and Nicky walking off in the rain perfectly punctuate the season's study of the death of blue-collar America.
01:18Earl's ballad and the compilation behind it may mark a sweeping climax, but that silence says so much more.
01:24Number 9, Snoop buys a gun, Boys of Summer.
01:34Season 3 introduced Felicia Snoop Pearson as a ruthless enforcer for the Stanfield organization.
01:46This impression makes the way she introduces season 4 very intriguing.
01:50We fade in on Snoop walking into a hardware barn to exchange her old cordless nail gun.
01:55After some light-hearted conversation with an employee, she hands him an excessive stack of cash.
01:59Then walks straight out of the store with a top-of-the-line product.
02:02This is $800.
02:04This boldly mundane season opener encapsulates the whole show's mastery at humanizing even the most hardest characters.
02:14You never know what an overly generous customer may be planning with a new nail gun.
02:17One can only hope she isn't sealing off vacant buildings where murder victims are stored.
02:27Number 8, Where's Wallace? Cleaning up.
02:29D'Angelo Barksdale is in police custody when he learns that his friend Wallace is dead.
02:41He refuses to believe it until Stringer Bell visits him in jail.
02:44Who's the boy, String?
02:46Wallace's reluctant return to the Barksdale organization roused Stringer's accurate suspicions that he's snitched.
02:52The 16-year-old's assassination is one of the most disturbing moments in all of The Wire.
02:56Equally heartbreaking is when D'Angelo refuses further orders from his boss repeatedly shouting,
03:00Where's Wallace?
03:01Where's Wallace, String?
03:03String!
03:04Where the f*** is Wallace?
03:06Stringer just silently walks away, knowing the kid knows the answer.
03:10Those two words say everything about the tragedy underlying D'Angelo and Wallace's arcs.
03:14If ordering the latter's death proved Stringer's cold-bloodedness,
03:17the aftermath shows just how little men like him care about the children they turn into soldiers.
03:22Number 7, Bode and McNulty in the Park, Final Grades.
03:31You hungry?
03:32What?
03:33Preston Bode Broadus is a devoted Barksdale lieutenant without question, at least among comrades.
03:40His in season 4's final episode is highlighted by Jimmy McNulty treating him to lunch in Silber and Arboretum.
03:46Just out of jail, Bode asserts that he's no snitch, but is frustrated that loyalty to gang bosses doesn't go both ways.
03:52I mean, when s*** goes bad, and it's hell to pay, where they at?
03:59This game is rigged, man.
04:01This heartfelt exchange focuses the pride and futility in the game's power structure.
04:05It also convinces Bode to turn informant, but he's quickly marked for death when word of his meeting with a cop reaches Marlo Stanfield.
04:12Bode's realization of true honor is rewarded with two shots in the head as he defends his corner.
04:17His chat with McNulty showed that it was all he ever really had.
04:26Number 6, well, get on with it, Middle Ground.
04:28It seemed like I can't say nothing to change your minds.
04:35Season 3's penultimate episode is a fitting swan song for Stringer Bell.
04:39The callous kingpin is first humbled by a crucial conversation with Avon about their youth and Stringer's plans to go legit.
04:45The next day, he goes to a meeting at his real estate development when Omar and brother Muzon bust in.
04:50You need to work that out.
04:52Shit!
04:54Oh, God!
04:56Oh, God!
04:58Avon had sold out his lifelong friend as a liability.
05:01Cornered after a frantic pursuit, Stringer poetically meets the same fate he ordered for Wallace in Season 1.
05:06But instead of begging for his life, he exclaims, well, get on with it.
05:09Omar and Muzon cut him off with a barrage of bullets.
05:12For all his humanity in the end, Stringer Bell died an impatient businessman's death.
05:16Well, get on with it, motherfucker!
05:22Number 5, Bunk confronts Omar.
05:24Homecoming.
05:25It wasn't about guns so much as knowing what to do with your hands.
05:30Those boys could really rack.
05:34Hearing that Omar Little may know something about a shooting, Detective Bunk Moreland meets with the infamous stick-up man.
05:39Slowly but surely, the evasive interview turns to a debate about community policing.
05:44Bunk scrutinizes Omar as a role model for exclusively robbing drug dealers and reflects on his own criminal neighbors growing up.
05:50Where these men kept Bunk out of their affairs, today's hustlers exploit the kid who idolized them.
05:55And out where that girl fell, I saw kids acting like Omar.
06:00Calling you by name, glorifying your ass.
06:03Makes me sick mother f*** how far we done fell.
06:07This marks one of The Wire's most succinct laments of the hood's moral hierarchy in decline.
06:11Bunk's powerful words seem to affect Omar.
06:14And as they echo all the way to his death at a child's hands two seasons later, it seems the only legacy of violence is violence.
06:26Number 4, Bubbles Anniversary.
06:28Late Editions.
06:30Look at this.
06:32Bubbs.
06:34Reginald Bubbles' cousins grew from one of the most tragic characters on The Wire to one of its most triumphant.
06:39His torturous battle with substance dependency is put into perspective in the show's penultimate episode.
06:44With a narcotics anonymous speech to commemorate one full year of sobriety.
06:48Bubbles speaks to recovery as a daily fight for joy in the midst of grief.
06:52But he cannot share that it was his attempt to murder an attacker that resulted in surrogate's son Sherrod's death.
06:57Quite possibly the show's most heart-rending moment of redemption.
07:00Bubbles' monologue is still underscored by the horror of his rock bottom.
07:04It's also an important and articulate reminder of the strength it takes to live with oneself.
07:07Ain't no shame in holding on to grief.
07:12As long as you make room for other things too.
07:15Number 3, The Shotgun in the Briefcase.
07:18All prologue.
07:20Even when hitting gangsters by legal means, Omar stays dominant.
07:23He wears casual clothes and a tacky tie while testifying against Barksdale enforcer Bird.
07:26His cheeky honesty endears the jury until Bird's attorney Maurice Levy tries to discredit the witness as no better than the criminals he robs.
07:34You're feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade.
07:38You're stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city.
07:42You are a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs.
07:45Excuse me.
07:47When the stick-up man is labeled a parasite, he responds by equating his enterprise with a shotgun to Levy's with a briefcase.
07:53The tense cross-examination suddenly becomes an indictment of the legal system's own amorality.
07:58The best representation is usually more interested in the highest bidder than how the client got there.
08:02Omar punctuates one of the wire's snappiest exchanges with one of its most elegant metaphors for the game's many methods and wardrobes.
08:11I got the shotgun.
08:14I got the briefcase.
08:17It's on the game though, right?
08:22Number 2, You Gonna Look Out For Me? That's Got His Own.
08:27How you doing, dog?
08:29Sergeant Ellis Carver sees goodness in young Randy Wagstaff, but the street sees something else in their connection.
08:35The kid's label as a snitch leads to Molotov cocktails incapacitating his foster mother and destroying their home.
08:48Carver visits Randy in the hospital sincerely vowing to get improper help from social services.
08:52The officer then mournfully walks away as Randy sarcastically gushes about someone looking out for him.
08:58Carver is himself pessimistic about the system, especially as it was his own meddling that put Randy in danger.
09:04Indeed, a group home would turn Randy into a brute by his return in Season 5.
09:13His rant at Carver foreshadows this while offering one of the wire's most devastating hints of futility in this environment.
09:18Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
09:23Cuddy gets out. Homecoming.
09:25Avon respects his soldier's courage to rise above his environment.
09:28The game ain't in me no more. None of it.
09:36Four letter investigation. Old cases.
09:39Bunk and McNulty charmingly drop F-bombs while looking for a bullet at a crime scene.
09:42My little f**k.
09:51All f**k. All f**k.
09:54Snoop's hair. Late additions.
09:56All the cold killer wants when Michael turns the tables is to go out looking her best.
09:59How my hair look, man.
10:04You look good, girl.
10:11You come at the king, you best not miss. Lessons.
10:14Omar displays his ruthlessness with a flipped assassination attempt and an iconic one-liner.
10:18Ayo, lesson here, bae. You come at the king, you best not miss.
10:26Davis on the witness stand. Took.
10:28The senator's populist testimony on his community's strife is both hilarious and harrowing.
10:32If a jury of my peers, you all, deem it right and true for me to walk out of here and upright is justified, man.
10:42Oh, I ain't gonna lie to you.
10:44I'm gonna do the same damn thing tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that
10:50until they got me laid out at Marge's funeral home and truck me off to Mount Auburn.
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11:12Number 1. D'Angelo Explains Chess. The Byes.
11:16See this? This the kingpin, alright?
11:19The wire lays its thesis with one seemingly insignificant scene in the third episode.
11:25When D'Angelo Barksdale catches his crew playing checkers with a chess set, he explains chess in a relatable way.
11:31Their experiences in the drug trade are associated with the strategic and combative power struggles of pawns and monarchs.
11:37In the end though, the king stays the king.
11:39See the king, stay the king, alright? Anything stays who he is, except for the pawns.
11:44This slick monologue foreshadows the fates of these boys trapped in the game of urban life.
11:50An ensemble of hustlers, capitalists, and politicians will meanwhile navigate Baltimore's power structure.
11:56But the broken system is king.
11:58D'Angelo's chess lesson became as important as any piece in The Wire's long-form narrative.
12:03Mind you, as Lester Freeman said,
12:05All the pieces matter.
12:09What are your favorite moments on The Wire?
12:11Re-up in the discussion under the comments.
12:12Do you really see him shoot the man?
12:18You really ask me?
12:21Did you enjoy this video?
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