The Main Ingredient with Chris Ellis
"The Main Ingredient with Chris Ellis" is a captivating podcast that serves up a delectable blend of film and television insights. Hosted by the charismatic screenwriter and film director Chris Ellis, this show is your go-to destination for in-depth reviews of both new releases and timeless classics.
Each episode of "The Main Ingredient" delves into the heart of cinema and television, dissecting scripts, unraveling plot intricacies, and unveiling behind-the-scenes anecdotes that add layers of depth to your viewing experience. Chris Ellis brings his expertise to the table, offering thoughtful analysis and thought-provoking commentary that enriches your understanding of the entertainment industry.
Whether you're a seasoned film buff or a casual viewer, "The Main Ingredient" promises to be a feast for the senses, tantalizing your curiosity and leaving you hungry for more cinematic delights. So grab your popcorn, settle into your favorite viewing spot, and join Chris Ellis on a journey through the magic of the silver screen.
The Main Ingredient with Chris Ellis
"The Wire" Season 2 Review | The Main Ingredient With Chris Ellis Podcast - Ep.2
What happens when the lines between loyalty, survival, and betrayal blur in the gritty world of Baltimore's docks? Join us on "The Main Ingredient with Chris Ellis" as we dissect HBO's "The Wire" Season Two with movie enthusiast Antoine Ross. We kick off this episode by breaking down the compelling narrative of the first episode where McNulty's reassignment leads to a pivotal discovery, igniting the season's drama. From the troubled antics of Ziggy Sobotka to the complex dynamics within White Mike's crew, we take you through the intricate web of loyalty, economics, and survival at the port, where Commissioner Valchek's intense scrutiny of Frank Sobotka sets the stage for a season full of tension and intrigue.
In this episode, we go beyond the surface to explore the power dynamics within the prison system, focusing on Avon's strategic moves to undermine corrupt guards and the moral complexities faced by characters such as D'Angelo and Stringer Bell. We highlight the deteriorating alliances within the Barksdale organization, touching on significant moments like Stringer's calculated decisions and Ziggy's psychological breakdown. Through our discussion, you'll gain insights into how these characters navigate through a world filled with betrayal, strategic finesse, and familial loyalty, offering a nuanced understanding of their motives and actions.
Finally, we reflect on the cultural nuances of the longshoremen and McNulty's personal battles, wrapping up with a discussion on character development in television series. We delve into the slow start of Season Two and its impact on viewers, offering suggestions for keeping audiences engaged through thoughtful writing and character arcs. Whether you're a longtime fan of "The Wire" or discovering it for the first time, this episode provides a comprehensive look into one of TV's most gripping dramas, blending deep analysis with lively discussion. Don't miss this captivating exploration of HBO's masterpiece!
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About The Main Ingredient With Chris Ellis:
Join host Chris Ellis on ‘The Main Ingredient with Chris Ellis’ podcast for lively discussions with special guests, diving deep into beloved classics and latest hits in film and TV. From nostalgic gems to modern marvels, we dissect every aspect, leaving no stone unturned. Tune in for entertaining and insightful conversations that celebrate the essence of cinema and television!
The Wire (season 2) - Ep.2
Cheese ain't gonna be too happy that he gonna owe me for this car, so y'all best stay away from him. He told me y'all best stay away from him. Let's address the elephant in the room. These dudes was drinking all the time.
Antoine:For work. Dolores, give me a shot in the beer, oh my God.
Chris:And they put that raw egg in there. Yeah, sir, it was not planned. Did he have head? Did he have head?
Antoine:It wasn't me. Sergi was no joke what's up y'all?
Chris:I'm chris ellis and this is the main ingredient with chris ellis. Today we're here to talk about one of my favorite tv series on hbo called the wire. Now, today, because we're talking about the Wire and we're talking about season two, we are going to run through it the best way we can, with notes of each episode to kind of like break it down the best way we can. And today I'm here with the homie, antoine Ross, and he's a movie enthusiast like myself, watch a series. You know really can pick out details of series like myself. So I want to introduce him to you guys and kind of let you know what he uh pick out details of series like myself. So I want to introduce him to you guys and uh, kind of let you know what he's talking about. What's up with that all?
Antoine:right. Thanks for having me okay, okay.
Chris:So over the years we've had a lot of talks about the wire yes indeed I've talked to you about the wire more than anybody in my entire life, just to be totally honest. Okay, it's probably you and I got one other partner that watches it Like we watch it, okay, and that watched it back then and also still loves it to this day. Right, what do you think drew you to the wire when you first watched it and didn't make it just a regular series? It was like some specialty?
Antoine:Well, I guess just the realness. It's like I can relate to some of the characters and it didn't feel like a tv show. It kind of just felt like I was watching, like real life situations I kind of felt the same way too.
Chris:It's like, damn, this seemed like my block right, right, right, right, kind of weird, like that, and, like you said, you can pull realness out a lot of the characters. Like I got a homie, that's just like that, and blah, blah, blah. This season was from 03. This was a special season. We talked about that offline, about how different this season was compared to all other seasons. Right, what do you think was the most dynamic thing in this season that differentiated from all other seasons?
Antoine:the writing, the writing, the writing was on point on this season. Um, a lot of the other seasons had a lot more action, yeah, but with the writing in this one, from the beginning to the end, it just showed you how everything was all connected. So how one person that was over here you had no idea even knew somebody else that was over there, yeah, and how they were all in one big circle getting money together and not even knowing it, I know it was kind of weird too how they, how they mixed it up, but it all kind of blended in perfectly.
Chris:At the end it made it kind of all made sense. So let's get into the production. So the wire season two was uh 2003. It was an hbo production, 12 episodes. It was starring Dominic West as McNulty one of my favorite characters Chris Bauer as Frank Sabatka, paul Victor as Spiros, john Domain as Rawls, colonel Rawls. Idris Elba as Stringer we all love Stringer Wood Harris as Avon Barksdale, wendell Pierce as Bunk, sonya Sohn as Kima, amy Ryan as BD russell she's an important part of the whole second season and uh lance reddick is lieutenant daniels. I want to say this before we get started the characters in season two were some of the most important characters throughout the whole entire series okay for two for two reasons, because, well, well, I'm gonna say for three reasons, I'm just gonna say two.
Chris:One was because some of them carried on past season two, so that's how important it was. Secondly, was that how intimate. They explained some of the characters in season two, like we, even though I complained about some of the characters that didn't explain enough, but the ones they did explain, we found out a lot about, yeah, a lot greek right, spiros and russell, like, knowing that she's a single mom and all that stuff like they. Really they dove deep into some of these characters that I didn't even think they would do, right, you know, like, even with the relationship with uh mcnulty and his soon-to-be ex-wife, I didn't know how weird and kind of yeah, it was kind of weird relationship they had. Like they were kind of still together, yeah, but not together type of thing, right, you know, because of the kids and you know, and we'll get to that as we go on.
Chris:So episode one is called abtai McNulty, who's pissed off. Rawlings puts him on a boat, right, like a place he didn't want to go. Right, he's like he's going to give him, he's going to send him to a place he didn't want to go. Mcnulty is kind of like dealing with the fact that he blew up his own spot to the point to where he's been exiled, because everybody else is pretty much doing cop work, normal cop work, except him. He's literally on a boat by, I said, with a brand new partner. Right, uh, og, I forgot the guy's name, but you know, og, they find a body in the water.
Chris:Yeah, and the way mcnulty has always ran is like he's always wanted to do detective work. Even when he was on the boat he missed being a detective exactly. So when the, when the girl showed up, his normal, his natural curiosity started. The wheel started turning. Yeah, you know, like, did she? Did she die here? Did she die there? And we found out later that he kind of did all the math and figured out that she was thrown off the bridge somewhere else. He figured out the ties, he figured out everything. I like they showed that about mcnulty because they showed you like wild of a boy, as he seemed to be, he was very smart, he's a great cop. That's personal. He was a great cop and in the series one of the cops actually says that too, like when he nails down what he's trying to nail down. He's the best at it right when you have him in that zone is just getting him out of the zone.
Chris:He just needs something to focus in on yeah, he just needs something to focus in on. So the union rep, frank sabaka, and the commissioner's uh, stan valchek. They're having a dispute over a stainless glass piece of the church. Me personally, I feel like that was they were both being childish about that. How you feel about that whole stainless glass?
Antoine:I think at the end of the day, that was all a power play. It was a power play, so who had the most power?
Chris:okay, okay, okay, because they were also giving the church like don't donate money.
Antoine:Yeah, so they were donating money to the church right, and their donations determined where that stained glass window went.
Chris:Right, that shows the church in a different light, because it's like now they playing politics. Exactly Because these two dudes playing politics and doing a little dance, but you taking money from them and letting them position stained glass in the church for the most money.
Antoine:Whoever paid the most money?
Chris:is the best spot. Yeah, it was like, was like oh, the church is church is kind of in on this too.
Antoine:That's like going to the club you pay the best, the most money for the best vip. That's true.
Chris:Yeah, the sections yeah, that's, that's true. That's true because sabaka's uh longshoreman crew gets to keep their stained glass in the church. In that position, which is in the middle of the church, the the bottom floor val check starts harassing the longshoremen. He knows they all go drinking, so at one point in time he had a dui a dui check at seven o'clock in the morning.
Antoine:Oh my god, that's petty bro yeah that's petty, that's petty.
Chris:It's all about the power. It's power. Now I kind of feel like I don't know if you feel this way. I kind of feel like frank frank was over his head and he didn't know. He was over his head with val valchek got powered right but frank didn't know that.
Antoine:I kind of feel like frank didn't expect valchek to take it that far. Okay, he didn't think he would be that right, because I can't remember what episode is one of them episodes they were talking about how valchek used to get punked by like frank's brother or somebody back in the day. They just saw him as a little punk little kid, so Frank didn't expect him to go to those extremes, yeah.
Chris:Frank knew some history on Valchek Right and he checked him on that history too. And Valchek never fought back on what he checked him on. So that lets you know it was real. Exactly Everything he said was actually actually happened. Along that time 13 dead women were found in the container. The greek and spiro's was kind of mad. It was kind of. They were mad about it because they didn't know what had happened or whatever, but they knew it would mess up business. So at that time they were trying to figure out who did it. The case was given to bunk and freeman. The weird thing about that is like it's a homicide so it shows up. I didn't know until I started watching the wire that they're really trying to clear cases but at the same time they're trying to push cases on other departments because they don't want that negative clearance.
Chris:Right, yeah and I didn't know that type of stuff was going on in the police department.
Antoine:Like you take the body, they like no, you take the body right with those 13 bodies in the water, like that on the uh on the dock. They're like we don't know what happened, we don't know where these came from, so they're not expecting to find out who did that, right? So they don't want to get stuck with 13 bodies right with nobody to pin them on. Yeah, so that's why everybody's trying to push it off on a different department and what's.
Chris:And what's weird is that rawls was tripping off of the percentage right like you take. Those bodies gonna be always talking 30.
Antoine:He's always talking about the clearance, right, yeah, he was like we were at 51, put us at like 30, exactly.
Chris:I'm not taking the bodies right. Yeah, I didn't know it was that serious until I started watching the wire like, oh, they be tripping off the numbers. Yeah, it's the numbers and I, and so that lets me know that the numbers go parallel to their salaries and their position that's the whole politics.
Antoine:Part of it too, because that's with the unsolved cases and the murder rate, and all of that comes into play with that too. Yeah, yeah that's true.
Chris:That's true. Then we get to Avon, avon Barksdale. So Avon cooperated to turn on one of his suppliers to get his sentence reduced Right and nowadays we call a snitch Basically Avon snitched. Avon snitched on one of the dudes he was working with. What happened was the guy who was actually supplying him that he was waiting for a package from reneged. Because they found out that's what he was doing to somebody else. The new york connect didn't send him the package that he was waiting for.
Chris:So essentially what happened was the west side drugs dried up. The east side still had the greeks because the greeks was dealing with uh prop Right, west Side didn't have nothing. But the West Side didn't have nothing, like I said, because Avon was tied up in some cooperation stuff to get his sentence reduced and they didn't know where they were a part of it, where he was snitching on them. It was just this whole mystery. So they kind of left him alone. They kind of left him alone, which put the West Side in a bad position, because now all their smokers was going to the East Side to get high. Yeah, that always creates a different type of dynamic, because now they're losing power, they're losing the grip, they're trying to hold on to the towers. Yeah, it's like six towers.
Antoine:So that becomes something. But then also, avon connected Stringer with somebody in Atlanta, correct. But the product that they was getting from Atlanta was trash. It was trash, it was trash product, correct. Yeah, so that's why they ended up having to go to Prop Joe on the east side, to Prop Joe, because Prop Joe got the good stuff Right.
Chris:Prop Joe, I want to say he said he was like 85, 90%, pure, pure, yeah. So you could step on it a thousand times, still going to be good. Episode two now Collateral damage. So McNulty, he takes the 13 dead girls case and he turns it into a personal thing he wants to do to get back at Rawls, and not only to get back at Rawls, it was also.
Antoine:He figured out that that dead body that they found was tied to those bodies that were found in the cans Right, and he wanted to try to put a name on the body that he found when he was on the boat Doing good detective Right. So that was that was a personal part of it. That he took was trying to give her a name, to figure out who she was yeah, because now that is 14.
Chris:Right, 14 total dead girls in the water, 13 in the can, and they were still trying to figure out who smashed the pipe, the air pipe, right, but essentially, uh, killed the girls. We go from that to ziggy. Introducing ziggy, y'all frank sabaka's, I'm gonna just go ahead and say, idiot son, right, the first time we see ziggy he's trying to do a deal with mike, white mike. White mike for everybody doesn't know is like we're gonna get into this race thing. White mike is like the hood og that got all the dope right, right, but what's weird about white mike's crew is that all the dudes selling dope is white and they're, for all intents and purposes, they're acting black. And that comes up in the season. Like Y'all wearing FUBU and Nietzsche and all this other stuff, super baggy clothes and y'all calling each other the n-word. Yeah, you, literally white dudes call each other n-word, which was kind of weird to me, but I'm like it showed me how much black culture has affected other races, right, and I'm glad they showed it in this season. Like this is what black culture can do with other races. It actually makes them feel like they're black, right, and they don't even know that you couldn't explain to these dudes that they're not black. They feel like they're black because they listen to Jay-Z or whoever, they listen to Lil Wayne and stuff, and it was kind of weird.
Chris:It was weird watching it, but as I started to process it, I started to understand it. As I got older I started seeing that more too. In reality Latinos and Asian kids call each other N-word and it always bugged me a little bit, but not to the point where I, you know, flash on nobody. But I know some old jesus, they not. They're not having it. They're not because in their mind it's like if you ain't black you don't get to say that, right, like you just don't get to say it. So it was kind of weird seeing that.
Chris:And nothing I noticed about about ziggy's, that he would say the n-word with the hard er yeah, he didn't use it a term of endearment, right. So that kind of let me know like ziggy has some other issues going on too, because white mike's people you could tell they said the n-word with the a at the end. There's no racism, no racism behind it. But when ziggy said it it was different and I'm glad they kind of let you see like it's two different, two different ways they were saying it. So commissioner of val check gets a full detail put on uh sabaka, pretty much because of the church thing right and he wants to know where all his money came he wants to know where the money's coming to find out how much he paid Correct, so he could pay more Correct.
Antoine:But they wouldn't tell him how much he paid no.
Chris:And we are to assume that Sabaka was getting the money from the union dues or from the docs. So so we don't really, you know.
Antoine:I think it was more from the docs the docs Right. Because in one of the episodes I don't remember exactly which one it was somebody had brought up how they had cut the union in half. A lot of people weren't paying dues anymore, yeah, so there was no way that they can afford to move the way they was moving, right. So the money that he was getting had to be from the docks and making them cans disappear and helping out the Greeks, stealing and stuff like right, because I think they said he went from, at one point in time, 300 people down to 100.
Chris:Yeah somewhere like something like that. A huge change.
Antoine:But union dude was bringing a whole lot of damn money yeah, but I don't think it was bringing in enough right for him to be paying for the stained glass windows and giving people envelopes of money when they get hurt. Yeah, he was buying everybody drinks at the bar and all of that stuff. The union money wasn't was a good like that.
Chris:I felt like, and maybe you can expand on. I feel like Frank was being very reckless with how he was giving envelopes and, like you said, buying stuff at the bar, and he was doing a lot for a union representative I wouldn't necessarily call it reckless.
Antoine:He was more so trying to take care of his people, correct?
Antoine:So he wasn't expecting val check to be watching them like that, because to me it seemed like that's just how frank was moving.
Antoine:He had been doing that for years, so he wasn't expecting no fallback on everything that he was doing right, because he had been moving the cans for the greek for a while, no problems and being able to take care of his people.
Antoine:So his whole thing is he was trying to get the port to get more ships to come in so people that weren't working can work right. So he wanted everybody that was part of the union to be able to come in and work every day and not have those small percentages of ships that were coming in. That's why he was trying to give them money when they would get hurt, like, look, don't worry about it here, take this, take care of your family, you're gonna be okay. But he, at my eyes, at the end of the day, he was just trying to make sure his union work was all straight right, because even his nephew wasn't getting a lot of work right and his son and nephew wasn't really working, and that's why he kind of was okay with them stealing some stuff from the uh, the cans, but when they started getting out of hand, when it, that's when he was like nah, look, y'all need to calm down, y'all making it too hot.
Antoine:you're still a little bit here and there, but you can't be doing a whole lot, right? Because I, I mean, back in that day, when Frank was in his nephew and son position, they was doing the same thing they were stealing stuff off the dock.
Chris:Everybody know that. And Longshoremen you know, I had a father who was a Longshoreman. They'd all be stealing stuff off the dock, that's just a part of being a. Longshoreman, especially back then.
Antoine:But you only could do it within reason. You can't be stealing a whole lot because that's gonna bring all that attention. Yeah, that's what frank was trying to get nick and ziggy to understand. Like, look, do a little bit, not a whole lot. Yeah, you bring it too much attention by stealing the whole can. That's why when they stole them cameras he was like no, them cameras got to come back.
Chris:Y'all stole too much yeah them cameras were going back to the cameras. It was funny watching Ziggy explain to Nick what digital was. Oh yeah, Because Nick was like so what do you do? You take the camera down to a shop and he's like, no, they're digital, but that lets you know how long ago this came out A long time ago, See, and I had a crazy moment too.
Antoine:I want to say it might have been the second to last episode. The Greek says shut everything down.
Antoine:I want to say it might have been the second to last episode. The Greek says shut everything down. I want to say it was bunk McNulty on a boat watching Spiros and I can't remember who else was Spiros. It was somebody else, was Spiros and Spiros pulled out it might have been like a blackberry or something, yeah, and he was typing on it. He was text and McNulty was like what was that? He was doing with that phone and another guy that was on the boat Actually I think that might have been McNulty's partner, former partner, when he was working on there he was like oh yeah, he's texting, he's sending a text message.
Antoine:The kids go crazy over there right now. I was like man, that's how long ago this came out, where text message was like new, yeah, and it feels like we've been doing it forever, but it is new. And another crazy part about that that made me also see how smart and crazy Detective McNulty was. He wrote down the time, the coordinates, everything of that text message to try to figure out if they can figure out what was sent through that text message from that phone.
Chris:Without even knowing what he was doing at all. He knew that he needed to write that down. Smart dude, smart dude. Most people wouldn't even think to do that. Nah, nah, because Bunk was on the same boat and Bunk was sitting there fishing oh, bunk was doing his show.
Antoine:But you got to remember, the first time they went on there Bunk was scared, he didn't want to get on there. Yeah, he had the whole life vest and was scared to step onto the boat and everything Bunk had his fishing pole. Yeah, by that second or third time, that fishing pole and that cigar.
Chris:He was chilling. Mcnulty was looking down at him like you ain't even helping the fool.
Antoine:Right McNulty was doing all the work. They supposed to be watching the Greeks over there. He's like you ain't even helping us. He was chilling.
Chris:So we get to the point, to where the Greek finds out that the women were killed by a seaman named Sam. He did it because one of the girls refused to be prostituted, and that's the one who got killed Right, thrown into the water, right, and I guess he, panickedicked, tried to clean up the mess by killing the rest of the girls.
Antoine:He wanted to kill all the other girls bigger mess. Yeah, but he wasn't thinking.
Chris:He was thinking oh well, these girls is gonna snitch until we get, so we got to get rid of it was almost the dumbest thing you can do in that situation. You killed one, right you figure, killing 13 more, who bodies were gonna rot in a container, like they were gonna get found out just due to smell alone, right, because obviously, when Russell opened up the container, she smelled it, she almost threw up. So I don't know how he thought they were going to get away with killing 13 girls. I don't know how this do. Whatever he was thinking, it was like the dumbest. He wasn't thinking, he just was not thinking. So, yeah, that was, that was a stupid situation. So now, uh, we jump into weebay. So weebay is being harassed by a guard, a guard who's a family member, a cousin of somebody he he actually killed.
Antoine:Um but I can't remember. Did he really kill a dude or is it just one of the bodies that he took for somebody else? Because remember that's a good point they already had him on a bunch of bodies. Yeah, so he just started. He started taking bodies for other people so that they wouldn't get caught up.
Chris:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. He might not have actually killed the dude's cousin, but he might have took the body, I think he just took charge on that one.
Antoine:I'm not 100% sure, but that guard wasn't playing?
Chris:No, he wasn't. That guard was like tearing up his fish tank Fake fish tank.
Antoine:Yeah, took all the pictures off the wall.
Chris:He's not even a real fish, he's got motors in him. Like, what are you doing? But that same guard is dirty himself, yes, so it's almost like you can't throw stones in the glass house, almost like you. You know you can't throw stones in the glass house, right, and it was weird how that guard would treat him. But it's like you bring in cell phones and dope into the prisoners. Like you can't judge nobody, right, like it was kind of weird. But by him being a dirty cop, he made himself vulnerable exactly to the backlash. Exactly like you, you, you can't be messing with prisoners, but you dirty at the same time, because eventually, hey, will somebody going to snitch on you? Right, somebody going to snitch on you. Eventually it did happen.
Antoine:And I feel like with him it was all a power play too, because Avon tried to have a conversation with him he did About the stuff that he was doing to Wee Bay. Now, if he would have had that conversation with avon and they would have went so hard on we bay, they would have left him alone. But when the way he treated avon, avon was like nah, you treat me like this.
Chris:Avon is avon is, is, is is the big dog right. And when he politely says can I have a conversation with you and you like?
Antoine:no, he's like I know who you are. And then avon's like oh okay, that's how we want to play. I got something for you.
Chris:Yeah, you still gonna walk away from me.
Chris:You know why okay so I and I want people that have not watched the Wire, or not really familiar with the Wire as much as we are, to understand how big of a character Avon is in this whole universe. Right, he is the sun and everybody else or planets right all around the guy. He's the guy, right. I don't think people understand that he is the guy. Matter of fact, there's a part in another part in another season to where they stop a prison softball game for him to walk across. Yes, I remember.
Chris:Oh my god I remember that when I seen that, I'm like, yeah, he the king, yeah king, they don't do that for just anybody, right? You don't stop a softball game for a dude to walk across the field, right? And I'm talking about the guards blew the whistle, prisoners blew the whistle and they stopped. That's avon's power, so I understand why he was kind of pissed off at the guard.
Antoine:Like you want to talk to me okay, I got you. We can't even have a conversation.
Chris:You can't even tell me no yeah, as you know, man to man, knowing, knowing you're doing what you're doing, knowing you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, avon was the big dog and people really need to understand. Like I said, he's the son. Everybody's revolving around what he does, right, even in this season. You see how he was eating in his cell KFC.
Antoine:Yeah, Wee Bay was mad about that.
Chris:Got KFC, got big gulps and stuff, like everybody else is starving up in there.
Antoine:Avon eating KFC and everybody else eating bologna salad.
Chris:Avon. You better get up in here and get this Weebay man. It's hot. You know what I'm saying.
Antoine:That just shows you how much Weebay really loved his fish. He didn't want none of the KFC. I couldn't believe that. Yeah, weebay was pissed off about the fish. He was pissed off. Do you remember the fish tank he had? In season one, though, yes, I do.
Chris:It was a nightmare. He was serious about his fish. That was his thing. Yeah, fish was his thing. It's like you don't, you don't mess with those fish. That was his peace of mind. That was his peace of mind. You, you are correct. So now we get into episode three hot shots. Frank Sabaka, with the dock workers, decided to steal the police surveillance van. That's worth, they said, 120,000. Yeah, take it on a worldwide trip across all the docs and stamp it with whatever doc they ended up on and send him the picture. Valchek gets the picture of all the docs. That's going on. Now I feel like had Frank not done that, valchek would have eased up a little bit, but he just pissed them off even more.
Antoine:Honestly, I don't even know if he would have eased up. You don't think he would have eased up a little bit, but he just pissed him off. Even more Honestly, I don't even know if he would have eased up. You don't think he would have eased up. Nah, because he was mad about that stained glass window. He was, and he wanted to know where he was getting his money from. He was, but you don't think that the van though. That just added fuel to the fire. But I think Valchek would have still did everything that he did he?
Chris:yeah, come to think about he. Probably he just didn't like he couldn't even tell nobody about that van truth.
Antoine:People came to him asking him for the keys for the van like where the van is like oh, it's in service right now.
Chris:Yeah, something wrong with it, but he couldn't tell him because he knew that he had a part of why it got stolen.
Antoine:Yeah, that the van getting stolen was because of what he did like he was covering up his self.
Chris:Right, he was trying to cover up the van. They sent it around the world and it becomes like a a laughing, a running joke with the long shoreman like, look what we do with this fool. The next thing, we got ziggy and nick right and they still have cameras. And we've been talking about the cameras all digital and now we're getting into something I really want to talk about. So they still have cameras. They still have cameras because, not, they need the money. Clearly they need the money. But also nick is trying to get more money because his girlfriend, slash baby mama, is pressuring him about them getting their own spot because she has to sneak in and stuff like that. Do you feel like nick would have made those moves had he had a baby mama who would never have said nothing, or would he have had the normal motivation to get the money?
Antoine:no, I don't think he would have did all that killing and all that if she was okay with their situation. But I felt like to me he was comfortable in his situation, but on her side of it she didn't want to have to keep sneaking in and out, going down there to the basement, right, and they got a kid. So she's like look man, you need to do something for us to get up out of here so I don't have to be sneaking in and out this basement. Right, and his mother was stomping on the floor. Yeah, for him to wake up. And there was even a scene where he was going upstairs and she was laid down in the bed and he told her oh, go out the back, don't go through the front door. So that's what made me think like, ah, so they set this up to make it seem like she tired of being in his basement. Yeah, because she got to sneak in and out.
Chris:Yeah, and she's a grown woman with her own kids. Right. I kind of feel where she feels like you know her man should be doing more to put him in a better position. But I still feel like nick was probably cool, was sleeping in his mother's basement if she wouldn't have never seen it now.
Chris:He was comfortable, he lived the rest of his life like that yeah, even though every day he wake up, stand up hit his head, hit his head on thing, he would be totally fine with that, and ziggy sleeping on the couch upstairs where the mama can't even clean the living room because his cousin Ziggy's upstairs. They were actually pretty comfortable with living like that.
Antoine:I want to know if the mama really cooked Ziggy breakfast or not. That's a good question. I feel like Ziggy lied. I do too.
Chris:Because you ain't going to cook your son breakfast, you're going to cook his cousin breakfast.
Antoine:The mama told Nick, take your cousin with you.
Chris:You should not leave him here. It's hard for me to believe that that woman let ziggy wake up on her couch and cook and cook the eggs and bacon. Yeah, she, he said that to piss him off. Yeah, I think so too.
Antoine:He definitely said that to piss him off.
Chris:Avon. Getting back to avon, avon hooks up with Butchie, which is the blind bartender guy who also does his little dirt, and basically cooks up a bad batch of dope to get it to the guard who Butchie has dealings with, knowing that the guard would bring the dope into the prison, people would die and the guard would get pretty much all that blame.
Antoine:But before that, Avon put some people on the guard to tell him Correct, to figure out what he was doing and where he was getting his stuff from Correct. Then that's how they found out he was getting it from Butchie Correct. One of Avon's people saw him go into the bar where Butchie was working at Right and then that's when they called Avon, like yeah, he getting this stuff. But yeah, and they was cool with butch yeah they was cool with.
Chris:But uh, because avon got a lot of reach right in the city of baltimore. So he actually cool with everybody, right, actually pretty cool with everybody. I don't even though he might be having beefs and later on dealing with marlo and all that, but really avon got a lot of reach, even all the way to new york. Yeah, you know he got connects in new york, atlanta, atlanta. So avon got a lot of reach. So he, he hooks up with butchie, they, they do that little deal to kind of break up what the guard has going on in the prison and get him out of the way because he's really pissing off wee bay right, and they need wee bay to be cool because he's taking all these murders, right.
Chris:Can you have him in there tripping because we've been tripping off them fish right, and you don't need your number one dude that's down for the team taking all these bodies for the family to be pissed off by a guard. So they actually made streetwise, they made the right play, yeah, messing with the guard. I'll give avon that he, he kind of played a good hand in in making the right move on that one kind of getting that guard up out of there. That guard did it of there. That guard did it to himself, though the guard did it to himself. But see, I see it from both sides because it's kind of like, you know, I lost my son. So it's kind of like if I'm the guard, I would feel the same way If you took the bodies that had to do with my son getting killed, or even a family member we'd to do with my son getting killed or even a family member we beefing for life.
Antoine:I get it. You know, I'm saying I get it, but you got to look at it too, that the guard is in there doing dirt also. Yeah, you know, I'm saying that's what. Put him in the back. He has something to lose. Yeah, so you got at least had a conversation with the man to hear him out. Yeah, you know, I'm saying don't just brush him off. Yeah, you know, I'm saying at least hear him out. And man to man. So I'm like no, I can't do whatever you're asking me to do because of x, y and z. And I feel like avon is the type of person that'll hear somebody out. You know, I'm saying if you could give him a rational reason why you're not gonna do something, then he can understand that he's like look man, y'all killed my people. I can't mess with y'all, like that. Yeah, and then y'all can come to some type of agreement. But the way he went about it I think was the wrong way. Yeah, it was definitely rough, avon.
Chris:Avon had enough power to either get Wee Bay move somewhere else or get the guard move somewhere, right, but I think Avon would have resolved the issue Totally. Different conversation, good, but because they didn't have one, he felt I think Avon felt like he put him in a position where he had to make Felt disrespected. He felt disrespected and it's like you pushing a you know animal in a corner. Now they have to fight back, right, because you put them in a vulnerable position. So now we get into episode four hard cases. Frank finds out that his son, ziggy, and Nick stole the cameras.
Antoine:Oh, no, hold on, let's go back. Okay, to episode three, the hot shot. Okay, hot shot. Remember Avon found out that D'Angelo was in there using yeah, he was using. So he went to him and told him hey, stop doing what you're doing. He sure did. And then he stopped, and that's when they had the hot shots. I remember his friend died, yeah. So then that created friction between D'Angelo and Avon, that's true.
Chris:So Avon had it all mapped out from the very beginning, which also shows you how smart Avon was to map it out so far ahead, to where he could have a conversation with his nephew and say just don't use on the next batch, right? Take a couple days off and don't use the next batch, knowing that the next batch is going to be the hot bag, right? That's a lot to think through to know that it won't affect your nephew, but you knew you was going to kill people but avon is always thinking the long game yeah, he's thinking the long game.
Chris:And those other prisoners that died became collateral damage too? Yeah, because it's like they were, just know, trying to get high.
Chris:Right Trying to take their mind off their time, take their mind off the time. And DeAngelo says something to that fact, like I'm trying to pass my time, yeah, just let me do it. Yeah, what, like 20 years he took 20. Avon was trying to get him down, guy with avon and d'angelo's sister, abriana, is that they wouldn't leave him alone. He kept saying leave me alone and just let me do my time. For some reason they felt like if there was no communication between him and them, there was an issue.
Antoine:So the reason why is because he almost snitched on them before, so they was trying, so they was trying to keep them close, so where they can have conversations with him and make sure he wasn't going back and trying to snitch on him again, because he did write some stuff down at one point. Yes, he did, he was about to give up the whole operation in that interrogation room.
Chris:That's true, until Levy came in there, that's true.
Antoine:That lawyer Levy came in there, like what are you doing? Because that's true, until Levy came in there. That's true, that lawyer Levy came in there, like what are you doing? Because they were trying, if I remember correctly they were trying to get.
Chris:D'Angelo to write an apology letter that's what it was To the family of the girl that got shot, mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, they were trying to get him to do that and D'Angelo's response was it's just an apology letter, right, but he didn't understand it. That's a letter of guilt, right? You, admitting to being involved, have something you didn't do right you know so correct on that.
Chris:They would try. They were trying to keep them close. They were trying to keep them close, but personally I felt like d'angelo was fine with the sentence as long as because he was going to take the time for the family, but he wanted to be left alone but they felt like he might have been time being okay at the time, but they don't know what he going to do later on.
Antoine:Yeah, yeah, he could have five years.
Chris:Two years down the line he could have been like man I can't take this, yeah, and especially if his girlfriend ain't coming to see him Right. Stranger doing what he's doing. Yeah.
Chris:Like it was a lot about D'Angelo's back. That was kind of wrong considering the time he took for the family, right, like that kind of let me know also how dirty Stringer was. He taking his time for you, right? You sleeping with his baby mama, right, he's taking his time literally for you to be free. It just showed me how Stringer, in the end, stringer only wanted to save Stringer. Stringer was only about Stringer. In the end, you, you know he was pushing that us they hit the glass, us him and Avon he never really cared about Avon.
Antoine:He was being fake with it, trying to make Avon think that he was really about us.
Chris:Correct and I think over time not just over in this season, but just and I think Avon saw a little bit during his season when Stringer started dealing with Prop Joe, but definitely over the time of the series Avon started seeing little things of Stringer to show that oh, he ain't really one of us. Yeah, he's different.
Antoine:Because Stringer wanted to be about business. He wanted to be a businessman.
Chris:Avon is a gangster yeah, we gangsters. Yeah, we all carrying guns. That got felonies and all type of crime stuff going on and you want to make this a co-op business? He was never cool with that. Yeah, avon was never cool with that, which shows you how deep and how street marlo was, because marlo was not cool with that at all. Yeah, marlo's crazy marlo. Even though he was one of the younger dudes who came in to wreck shop, he still had a lot of old school values. Like man, we can't be co-op. Yeah, you want us to meet up where one person could be wearing a wire, we all go to jail. Like that was kind of stringer, didn't understand that it only take one wire. We all go to jail, right, you don't do a co-op where all the all the leaders, all these drug crews meet up at the same time kind of stupid you put.
Antoine:You put them all in the barrel for omar too right easy.
Chris:So but that kind of lets you know how stringer was not? He didn't base what they were doing as far as selling dope and being his crime family. He never based it in reality, because reality is dude. You are a criminal. Yeah, you trying to be a businessman, you are a criminal. Right, clay davis is an actual businessman. Even though he's doing crimes, he at least got a business. He's a businessman. You the opposite, you doing crimes, you ain't got no business, you just doing crime.
Chris:Now, later on, of course they got they started little company and stuff like that, but that's later on. But getting back to episode four, hard cases. So Frank finds out about the cameras that Ziggy and Nick stole. Right, he pissed off, big pissed off. They take the cameras to Gleekus. Gleekus is like a dude who he fences stuff that people steal and stuff like that. And I'm assuming that everybody kind of deals with him to a certain extent with stuff that they steal. So they start doing business with gleekus.
Chris:Ziggy doesn't really understand that to get respect you have to be a respectful person. I feel like ziggy has like a short man complex because I feel like his whole thing was nobody respected him. Yeah, from the docs to his dad, to his cousin, to even now gleek is. Gleek has kind of looked at him like gleek is. It was more or less like I'd rather just deal with your cousin. Right, I don't want to talk. Ziggy didn't like that because ziggy was the one who actually made the connection initially. Ziggy was the connect man with white mike and gleek is and all these dudes. His cousin, nick, was kind of a square who was just working a nine-to-five. Ziggy actually got him into the street stuff, yeah. But Ziggy didn't have the respect Nick had and he had the smarts to know how to move and he had the smarts. Why do you think that Nick, not even being in the streets, had more respect from people than ziggy?
Antoine:d because of the way he treated people. He didn't go in there acting all crazy, like sick. He hit goofy, yeah.
Chris:Taking pictures of his penis, yeah and taking pictures.
Antoine:Taking pictures of glee gets too sure what the camera's like. Come on, man, we doing dirt. You can't be taking my picture boy, he smacked that camera right, he broke that camera.
Chris:So, and nick wasn't going around doing stuff like that. Now, yeah, nick wasn't doing it, nick was. Nick was about business. Yeah, nick was about business, business only. And going back to ziggy ziggy, I always wondered what type of little kid ziggy would have been, because if he acting like this at 20 something, yeah, what was he at 10 years old?
Chris:probably wild back then too, like you can't control him now, right? Even his father really couldn't control right, because at one point his dad said I think he's not gonna listen to me where he gonna do what he want to do and the crazy part about is that a lot of people didn't even know that ziggy was frank's son.
Antoine:That's true, because I can't remember what episode it was. They were at the port on the docks and Frank told Ziggy that he was fired and Ziggy started laughing and walked away. And somebody else that was there was like why is he laughing? He think it's funny that he just got fired, like man, he ain't fired, that's his son. That's his son, which means he'll be back the next day.
Chris:Yeah so now we get to the point where Avon is cooperating, basically snitching on the guard, whose name is Tillman, to get his sentence reduced Right, which is a smart play, because even though he's snitching, it's against a guard. So I don't think prisoners really count that as real snitching, because it's against a guard and there's one guard that's there at the at the meeting. He knows avon is setting all this up. Yeah, he, just he, he, like y'all falling for this, yeah, this dude is seeing a black dude like avon is one who's setting all y'all.
Chris:Just let him set this dude up like this. But but avon is doing it the right way, you know. He's doing it the legal way, right. He's setting the guard up in the legal way to where the guard can get fired.
Chris:But just want to bring d'angelo in on that too, yeah, he tried to bring d'angelo in and that's what kind of messed up their relationship too, because d'angelo's like I don't want no points, yeah, even against a guard, right. Whatever he said, whatever you got going on, leave me out of it, I want nothing to do with it. And that also made avon go. Okay, we really got to deal with this, the angelo issue. Like he don't, he don't even want to help me take down a guard right, like shave some years off of his sentence and shave some years off his own sentence, which they were trying to get it from 20 to 10. Time served, you might have to do 85, that's seven, eight years. Yeah, so brianna, his mama and avon and even stringer they were trying to figure out why he just don't want to cooperate. Do this.
Chris:Why do you think d'angelo couldn't just get with the program and just do the? The time they were trying to get reduced? Why do you think he was? He was cool with doing 20 as opposed to helping him get his sentence down to 10 or 8. He didn't want nothing to do with them. No, think he was. He was cool with doing 20 as opposed to helping him get his sentence down to 10 or 8 he didn't want nothing to do with them, no more.
Antoine:He was just done, done, yeah, but he was just trying to get as far away from them as possible that's great.
Chris:Had he not been blood, maybe that's a possibility. But you blood, right, ain't no getting away from me, right? I don't think he understood that part. Your mama is your mama and avon is your uncle, right? You ain't getting away from that right by just saying I'm cool on y'all right. Like I feel like had that tragic engine ending not happen to him, he still would have had to deal with the fact of you're gonna still see avon, he gonna still try to talk to you and connect with you, and like they're not gonna just leave you alone in the prison, like see, and I think part of it too, was they killed?
Antoine:uh, michael b jordan's character yeah, wallace. Wallace, yeah, yep, because I remember at the end of season one, d'angelo kept asking where's the boy at, where's the boy at, and he's the boy at, and he knew that they had him killed, but they wouldn't tell him that. So that's when it first started going south, because he didn't like how they was doing things anymore. So that was kind of pushing him away. Not wanting to be running with them, no more.
Chris:Which is weird because you know your family. The barksdales from what the history is in the show like they had years going back right of running dope and stuff like that. So you know your family's history. It seems like it wouldn't have been such a shock that they murder people no but to d'angelo. The way he took the wallace murder was like yeah because why was the wallace murder such?
Antoine:because I feel like, if I remember correctly, d'angelo told them that wallace wasn't gonna be no problem. He did, he did, you are correct. And it was like now we got to get rid of and that was stringer's call.
Chris:Yeah, I remember stringer meeting up with a bode and intelligent and and was like y'all need to do what y'all need to do, take care of it. Yeah, it's time to take it. I don't think that was Avon. I don't think Avon had nothing to do with that. Honestly, not that Avon would have went against it, because Avon is about taking care of business too. But I think when it comes to murdering Wallace, that was a Stringer call. Murdering wallace, that was a stringer call. And those are the type of calls that stringer started to make, which made me feel like stringer started to feel like him and avon was on the same level, making those calls and it never was. No, that's barkdale's crew. Is the barksdale's crew that everything's supposed to go through avon? If he's not there, like he was in prison, then yeah, you go through string, but even stringer, even then during you're supposed to come check with him first. Right, and that was kind of the issue that was going on in season two was like stringer started making moves. It wasn't telling anyone.
Antoine:Right. That's like when he uh, he was getting dirty when he let the East side come in with that product yeah, product and take over the tower. Yeah, he told prop joe that he can do that before avon even said he could do that. Right, and prop joe even asked him. He was like, uh, avon okay with this and he hadn't even got the okay from avon.
Chris:Yeah, yeah, he went and did it anyway. Yeah, even bode was kind of like, yeah, big dog, deal with this. Right we supposed to just have him sitting here, right don't?
Antoine:right, we've been beefing with them the whole time, and now Forever.
Chris:Yeah Right, I said basketball games, all type of stuff. Yeah, here's my thing. Stringer was a businessman so I kind of get what he was trying to do was keep the business going. But at some point Tommy forgot about the street part of Right, having having the east side dudes working next to the west side. Somebody gonna get shot right and he should have understood the street dynamics of it and it felt like he just kept trying to get people to understand the business aspect of it. But you're not dealing with business dude.
Antoine:Some of these dudes teenagers but he was not a business, he was not he was a soldier.
Chris:Right, they said it several times he's a soldier. I don't know where stringer thought he was going to be able to take the crime enterprise of the family, even if he got into the business aspect of it and started running it like a fortune 500, which sounds like that's what he was trying to do, right? How was you actually going to make that work in the real world exactly?
Chris:exactly yeah, and that's what avon essentially was trying to tell him when he came to visit him. Like this, that other thing, right, look, we ain't businessmen. We're not businessmen, dude, you're trying to you in class. You know what I'm saying? You getting notes from your professor? This is not that type of business and maybe you can touch on this.
Chris:I feel like Stringer and Avon would eventually fell out over what Stringer was trying to do compared to what avon knew they were actually doing. Absolutely, I felt like they eventually would have bumped heads, probably became enemies, because avon wouldn't be able to trust stringer to be a soldier, because stringer. Stringer was not a soldier. Stringer was like the dude that that took care of business, but he really wasn't the one holding the gun at the end of the day. It's kind of like, if you've ever seen the Sopranos, you had Tony Soprano and under Tony you had Seal. Seal was the second in charge, but Seal really never shot nobody because he was more of the thinker that was Stringer.
Chris:But Stringer was sending soldiers in the battle, fighting the wrong wars. You don't give up and that's and I was with avon on this one too you don't give up the towers. They just explained that he had to fight a whole nother family right to get those towers. Right now, you're about to give them up to the east side without a fight. Without a fight, thinking that when, when the dope comes back in, they're gonna walk away. You know, damn well, that wasn't gonna happen and that's what avon. What I was saying was basically trying to tell him once you give up half, even when our dope comes back in, they're not leaving them down right, so we're gonna have to end up fighting with them anyway.
Antoine:Then a whole, nother fight for the towers again and stringer didn't understand.
Chris:He thought everybody would stay in business mode. He's not really understanding that from what I know of prop joe. Prop joe was licking, his licking, his chops going. Okay, you giving us the tower? Yeah, dude. So even when, the, when, the when y'all dope start flowing back in, we keeping these towers, like I know. In the back of his mind he he's like Stringer thinks we're going to leave these towers. Them towers is ours. Prop Joe played Stringer. It wasn't the other way around, right? I think Stringer thought he was getting the best of Prop Joe. I'm getting the good dope we sharing. You know equally this, blah, blah, blah. I think Prop Joe saw it as like this we got three towers, we taking the other, whether avon get out of jail or not, we already here.
Antoine:But it was a win-win for prop joe at the end of the day anyway. It was because he already running the whole east side. Now he got his people in the west side too. Got his people in the west side with the best, best drugs.
Chris:Nobody gets the good drugs without prop joe, right. So he kind of ran that whole department on that. I don't think stringer looked at the big picture of what giving up three towers would now give up one tower maybe even yeah.
Antoine:I was shocked when he gave up.
Chris:You give up half the time just for the good, no, so I think that's. That's kind of where avon kind of saw like stringer don't really know what the hell he do. You're not playing the street game correctly. He's trying to be a businessman in the gangster's world. That that normally does not work out well. So we get to the part where akima and daniels are trying to live a straight life and work their nine-to-fives and behind the desk.
Chris:Stay behind the desk, safe, comfortable, with their families. Both their wives are enjoying seeing them every night a moment after five o'clock, live living normal lives. They both want to jump back into this whole detective work and solve crimes, which pisses their wives off, to where, at one point in time, keema said said you tell my wife and. I'll tell your wife.
Antoine:Yeah, that was when they were having that discussion on how they're going to tell him yeah, they decided to put that task force together.
Chris:Kima said you tell him how? I tell you, because both of ours do not like what's going on. They knew and it was kind of weird because on Kima's end I understand Daniel's made a lot of choices in this series. He went from working in the basement to I'm tired of working in the basement, having that conversation with his wife saying I'm just going to quit and do law because he got a law degree to running a whole team to solve Val checks, discrepancy with Sabatka, to now take it on 13 by. He did all this stuff at the same time telling his wife everything is going to be okay.
Chris:She never. I think. Actually, when, when he first got his crew together to to go back and do it, do the detective stuff, I think at that point in time his wife, I think in her mind she was like I can't trust his decision. I think that's when he lost his wife, because if you peep after that, every time they showed him and his wife, it was almost like a disgust on her face yes, somebody's calling on the phone, you know, take the phone. Like she didn't really want to see him no more yeah.
Chris:And then it got to a point where they had one scene where you could tell he answered the phone. She went back in the room, closed the door, turned the light off. They saw the light from under the door turning off. Like don't come in this room. That's where his wife was at, like I'm not trying to deal with you no more, because he was making too many decisions. And it wasn't that he was making decisions, it was like you married, just like I'm married, you have to make a decision with your wife. You're married. He was making his own decision, yeah, without even having a discussion. He wouldn't even have a discussion, or he'd have a discussion, but still do what he wanted to do.
Antoine:anyway, do what he wanted to do anyway.
Chris:Yeah, it was like what's the point of even and I think that's what pissed his wife off the most Like we keep having these talks, yeah, where we feel like we right here with each other, but then you go do some totally different that I have to accept I don't even get a choice on it, and I think that's what kind of pissed him off. What Kima was different. Kima did the same thing, but she didn't make as many wild choices Daniel's made. But Kima has a baby coming with her part, so her part is trying to get her to understand. It ain't about even me and you, no more. We got a baby come. You need to make the smart decision, for the baby sitting behind the desk guarantees that you come home at night.
Antoine:Yeah, now you're trying to get back into the street where she had just got shot, where you just got shot we got a baby.
Chris:You're not thinking. The more I seen keema and her partner talk about the baby, the more I started to realize Kima don't want no baby. No, she don't. This is the partner who wants the baby. Yeah, kima just agreed to Right. Like you know what I'm saying. It's like we all know, as married people. It's like sometimes we just agree to disagree to end the conversation Having a baby so you disagree to end the conversation though.
Chris:So I feel like Kima's partner probably kept pressuring her about having a baby. We need to start a family, and Kima just said, okay, let's just start, but you can tell us. As the season went on, they were in the baby store at one point in time and Kima was like, whatever, if the baby can't hold his own cup, he don't need to be here. Yeah, juice box, yeah, the juice box holder, any baby that can't hold his own cup, he don't really need to be. She said some disrespect to where her partner was. Like what we decided on doing this, so she kind of had to check on that. So that was a thing that I focused on too was the relationship that Daniels had with his wife, kima had with her wife and how, no matter how many discussions that they had, they was gonna move, how they was gonna move. That was kind of interesting to see that, because you you felt like their relationships are pretty strong, especially with daniels and his wife. His wife seems very educated, very worldly, and it's like you would think that he would take her advice more serious, but he would just talk with her and still do what the hell he wanted to do. So I don't know, I don't know Keeman Daniels become part of Valchek's team to catch Sabatka.
Chris:Valchek has a hard on for Sabatka, more than I've ever seen somebody want to hurt somebody in all of the Warriors. He really hates this dude. He hates this dude, hates this dude. It seems so petty but, like you were saying before, like there's history there, because frank's older brother told him some stuff about val check that seemed to be true. Val check didn't like what he told him, right, so that became something, but it seemed like it was just like a pissing contest. I'm gonna show you what I can do over here with my crew. You're gonna show me what you can do with your crew. And it felt like they would have been a lot stronger team if they'd been able to squash the differences and come together, because they both had a lot of power. They both could have made some mountains move had they teamed up. They spent all their energy fighting each other the whole damn series yeah and I don't, I don't understand.
Chris:I mean, I guess it's an ego thing. You know, men as men, we have egos and I guess they let it get to the best of trying to show who had the most power. Yeah, they were just trying to flex, a lot of flexing. So now we get to episode five, undertow ziggy. Well, before we get to ziggy, we have the big introduction. Before we get to Ziggy, we have the big introduction Cheese Sheep, what's your name? My name is Cheese. Method man.
Chris:M-E-T-H. So Method man Cheese is introduced in season five. I mean not season five. Episode five Undertow Beating up Ziggy over a debt that Ziggy owes. Now you would think the way they ran up on him. He owed him like $27,000. It was $2,700. We're not even talking about a lot of money. We're not even talking about $10,000, $15,000. $2,700 got him whooped on, ran up on with two car loads full of dudes with bats, guns, whatever and stuff, and come to find out later the car that ziggy was driving was worth more than what he owed.
Chris:Yes, cheese yeah they said the blue book value was like 5100. All ziggy had to do was sell his car from the very beginning, that's all he really had to do.
Chris:He wasn't selling, he did not want to sell the damn car for some reason. I don't think that was his baby. But see this another thing, that's why I'm saying sometimes they don't have the time in series to explain stuff. It would have been nice to know why he loved that car so much, because he loved it a lot. So if they didn't explain something like uh, his mother bought him that car and, you know, because of the relationship that happened with his mom, that's why it meant so much, or maybe that was the first car to hit his dad, you know, you know, ever had, you know, like if they would explain why he loved the car so much? Because he didn't, he didn't want to sell a car. Yeah, they run up on him. He don't have the money. They give him one week. They give him a week initially. If I'm not my mistake, cheese gives him a week to pay him the 2700 but700.
Antoine:But he owed him the $2,700 because he got in front of the package. He got the package and he gave it to the other white dude to sell and the dude took his money.
Chris:White Mike.
Antoine:No, it wasn't White Mike, it was the other white dude, the younger white dude.
Chris:It was the hip-hop dude, yeah him, the hip-hop dude who kept saying the N-word yeah him.
Antoine:The hip-hop dude who kept saying the N-word yeah. He didn't want to give him all his money, he kept some of his money.
Chris:And he played him. Yeah, we see that later on with Weebae's son getting played by Lil' Canard over the money. We see that happen, like when they think you a sucker on the street, they're going to blame you about your money. Like that white dude knew that he owed Ziggy money but he felt like he knew that Ziggy wasn't going to do nothing.
Antoine:I don't even think he didn't even know that he owed Ziggy money. He had the money and just didn't give it to Ziggy. He went to go collect on his package and dude didn't give him all this money.
Chris:Think about how disrespectful that is Right, I can pay you your money. I just ain't, I'm not gonna pay you and you ain't gonna do nothing about it.
Antoine:Look, I owe you 2700, but I'm gonna get a little man right here some money to go to the stove for me and give me some chips in the soda right in front of them.
Chris:Let's get back to ziggy. Ziggy is such a character in this. I can't stop talking about him. They sell the cameras, right? Did they ever talk about how much money they made on the cameras they talk about?
Antoine:percentages.
Chris:Yeah, I don't remember the exact dollar, I don't think they, we, we ever found an exact number, but we knew it was thousand thousand dollars because ziggy bought a jacket for that two thousand dollar leather jacket thousand dollar leather jacket to work on the waterfront right and even his leather right.
Chris:Even his cousin was like what are you doing? Right? You know you making it hot like we. You know I'm saying ziggy did not respect money, not at all. He didn't respect relationships neither, because he blew up basically every relationship he had with his dad, with his, eventually, with his cousin, even what the dudes on the street, white mike cheese and all them, like every relationship he had he messed it up, yeah, over his own foolishness and selfishness and stuff like that. The only people who loved him was the longshoreman on the dock, because he acts so goofy, so they, he was kind of like a court gesture to them.
Chris:Yeah, they, they looked at him like a clown yeah because you can even tell by how, like the whole incident with him, them trying to make him go fight the other dude yeah they knew you could take him.
Antoine:You could take him and do about. He had about 50 60 pounds on him, about six, three. Yeah, and ziggy was about five, five.
Chris:Ziggy might have weighed about 130. Yeah, there was no way. No, he wasn't gonna take dude, but they was egging him on to see him get beat up. They knew exactly what was gonna happen.
Chris:They were wrong for that. They were definitely wrong for that. So now we get to Omar. Omar has testified against Bird with a damn tie on. Omar. Look a damn fool in the courtroom. He got on like a banana-colored tie with a regular-like jacket on. Look like a starter jacket or something on. He got a regular tie thrown on, playing with the tie as he's talking, but do you know why? He did that, though, right.
Antoine:Tell us why he did so? Mcnulty and Omar were talking to the attorney and she said that she needed him to testify, so they gave him a voucher to go to the store and get some clothes $150 voucher.
Antoine:So they was in the store looking at stuff him and McNulty and the lawyer had told him it doesn't matter what he wears, he just needs something with a tie. Omar is in the store looking at all of the clothes and there ain't nothing in there that he like, so he just got a tie and that was it. He put on his regular clothes with the tie on. So he's showing her look, I got my tie.
Chris:That's crazy. Now, in this case with Bird, this is the case dealing with Kima, right? Or was this another case that Bird was in there? For Bird has so many bodies, right?
Antoine:was it the dude, the, the security guard in the projects?
Chris:was it that one? It might have been the security guard in the projects, but anyway, bird is on a case where omar's testifying that he saw something and that he was there. Omar clearly was not there. Yeah, yeah, or he wasn't, he wasn't there. We never find out for sure.
Antoine:We never know for sure. So during that episode where he's testifying on the stand, it's Stringer sitting in the courtroom and it's McNulty. So McNulty comes up behind Stringer and whispers something in his ear and Stringer says yeah, I heard that cocksucker wasn't even there. He was on the other side of the town sticking up such and such and such. And McNulty said it doesn't matter, we're in the court of law.
Chris:It don't matter what they say, they were using the court of law against him. Streets don't even matter. There's no way, omar. Omar was not there for that. But Omar and Bird didn't like each other. Omar and Bird did not like each other. Bird was wild. Bird was wild, dude. He was wild. It was weird. This is how cocky Stringer was Dude. You are a crime boss. You were in a courtroom backing up a murderer. That works. That quote, unquote, worked for you. What you doing in the courtroom, dude? What's wrong with you?
Antoine:He felt like they hadn't known him. It was all ego. Remember when they in the last episode of well, I don't remember the last episode, but it's season one when they came and got Avon and they left Stringer, he was standing there with his hands behind his back because he thought he was about to go to jail too. There's a big note. He's like catch you later. Yeah, yeah, yeah that was a dope line. Yeah, he felt like he was untouchable yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris:Correct me if I'm wrong. Would you ever think avon would be sitting up in a courtroom in a situation like that? He would never even come into the courtroom. Do we criminals like we don't walk in the courtroom and sit down behind people who supposedly work for us?
Antoine:that's up for a murder charge and I can't picture avon in there stringer, stringer wild boy.
Chris:If he even thinking he could do that, I think that's a testament to how, like you said, untouchable stringer thought he was to be able to go into the courtroom and sit there doing that court case like they can't do nothing to me.
Chris:You know I'm saying so. That was always a good little moment, you know mignolte, kind of messing with him sitting right behind him, just I like messing with him and stuff like that mignolte also when, when they come out of court, mignolte asked omar, so was she really there? It's like, are you really?
Chris:asking right and it kind of ends right there which which leads you to believe that omar probably wasn't. He was probably just doing that to. He got to get out of jail. Free card from that lawyer too. Yeah, he said anything under up to an aggravated assault.
Antoine:Aggravated assault some.
Chris:I got you. Yeah, we got that car and that car comes back later on in the series. For anybody who doesn't know he's gonna use that car, yeah, back later on in the series. For anybody who doesn't know he's gonna use that car, yeah. So we get to the point to where stringer, stringers characters. Great stringer's going to school and he's talking to his professor about business and he's tied in with he's asking him certain things about branding bad, bad branding he was asking if you have an inferior product, how can you change the market value, or something like that.
Antoine:Yeah, the teacher gave him an explanation about some company that has changed their name. Yeah, to make it seem like it was a new company with the same product Same exact product. Yeah, changed the name.
Chris:People, was a new company with the same product, same exact product, change the name. People have a different perspective, right, new product, right, and so then he takes, he changes the name of his drug and changes the color and the color, like yellow tops the blue top, yeah, red the blue, or something like so he takes that advice and changes it.
Chris:I've always been very curious to try to figure out why string would ever think that everything that you can do in a business world actually you can do in a criminal world. Some of the stuff, yes, but for the most part you can't take what they do in a legal world and put in a criminal world and think that the outcome is going to be the same. Because even though you have criminals in society that do legal work bad lawyers, bad cops you know they're still protected by something because they're doing it legally.
Antoine:But to a certain extent it worked. Changing the name and then the color it did, it did. But the only problem was they had bad products. So, you can only change the name and the color of the tops for so long.
Chris:And that's my point. When it comes to smokers, they know it's the same product. They're going to know because they're not getting high. You know what I'm saying? Like at some point in time stringers should have understood. Yes, you can rebrand and change, but if it's the same product, it's going to taste the same, feel the same, especially when you're dealing. You can rebrand and change, but if it's the same product, it's going to taste the same, feel the same, especially we did with drug right either it's getting you high or it ain't bubbles.
Antoine:Yep was the one that was like it's, it's shit, yeah, it's nothing. You didn't feel anything when he was talking to the white dude that ran with it nothing.
Chris:So that you know. My point is smokers can tell the difference and I think stringer that's where you got it mixed up with the real world and the dope world when it comes to that getting that high, you can't fake that.
Antoine:But part of it too was he was just trying to buy time, yeah, and Avon to find a new club. True, true, true.
Chris:So we get to the point to where Frank Sabaka is refusing to work with the Greek. He wants to meet with the Greek. He's upset that the girls died and he's just upset and he wants to meet with them. Or else, so the greek says I'm still not gonna meet with you, but he, he says I'll pay them triple. All of a sudden frank don't care about me with the greek no more when he says triple the money. So was it even really about what frank was really mad about? Or was it about the money? Because at he was like we ain't doing nothing with him until I meet him. It was that triple price came in. He was like maybe I don't have to meet with him. So Frank was definitely all about the money. I feel like the problem with Frank was Frank had a power issue too, because remember, frank was supposed to be finishing up his tenure as the UN rep yeah he wanted that dude auto.
Chris:He didn't want. He didn't want to give up that spot. And that started to become an issue too, because even his own people started to see like but Frank, you agree that this is it? Oh, but I need one more year to get the dredging done in the in the bay so the ships could come in, the dredging done in the bay so the ships could come in. He kept putting it on that, but I think even his own people started to see like it ain't about these ships, you want to stay in control of the union, you want to be in control of the union. So Frank also had some ego stuff going on too, like he had his issues too, and you could tell when he had his talks with his older brother that he had an issue. You know, frank, frank has his own like demons that he was dealing with. But when it came to that union he was not trying to let that union go, that job he was not trying to let go.
Chris:And I know from you know, working at a company who built Toyotas I won't say they named him some free pub, but I know, because of our union there's a lot of money coming through. They're not always using it in the right way. Oh, I'm sure we caught our union leaders at my old job vacations. We caught them taking girls on vacation all of a sudden with union money. All you do at my plant it was like 7 000 people paying 70 a month. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. That's crazy. And and it doesn't always funnel to where it's supposed to go. Yeah, and we don't. Even for the 70 a month. We didn't.
Chris:Let me take that back. 70 a check? Yeah, yeah, a check. So he times that by four, right, and that's what they was getting per person. So there's a lot of money coming through and there's no. This is the problem I always had with unions there's no checks and balances of where the money go, because the union rep, the union president, can also sometimes serve as a treasurer, so he's touching the money and spending the money as he pleases. And that's what was happening with frank. Yeah, frank was actually the treasurer, his title was a treasurer, but he was actually also the union rep in in in totality. So he was serving two purposes. He was serving two jobs to where he can touch the money, spend, spend it the way he wanted to, and I feel like he was using some of that money and also some of the illegal money, to give people the bags he was giving he was giving away bags.
Antoine:He was giving away a lot of money.
Chris:The one lawyer dude he pulled out the shoebox.
Antoine:He said these seem to be your size.
Chris:That's a cold lie. That's a cold lie. These seem to be your side right. He opened up that box probably like 200 g's in that box. Cash frank had his things going on too. So we get to the part to where nick is being propositioned by spiros and another guy I forgot his name about chemicals, trying to get chemicals. They like nick better than they like zig, because ziggy talked too much, so they rather deal with nick. He seems to be more responsible and he is more so. They try to hook up something with nick to where they can get some chemicals. Nick finds out later on that there is to process cocaine. Yeah, these chemicals are processed coke.
Antoine:Nick and ziggy went to the library or somewhere and googled all of the chemicals they were asking for. They figured it out. They wanted to make sure they wasn't trying to make no bombs.
Chris:Right, because initially everybody was assuming it was for bombs. Stuff they were asking was like bomb making and it was the same time as the 9-11 around that time. But it's really the process. Cocaine, Because it is a process for people that don't know. Coke, just don't grow on leaves with white snow. You got to turn the leaves into something Won't go into it. Little bit of this, little bit of that Won't go into the process. But there's a lot to making to turn it stuff into cocaine. But now Nick is dealing directly with the Greeks, dealing with the chemicals. He's making a lot of money. It seems to not shed his girl up because she still is complaining to him about them moving Because they're still in that basement. Because they're still in the basement. At one point in time she finds some money. She got an issue with that. Where are you getting the money from?
Antoine:So if your wife found a wad of money, you don't think she have an issue.
Chris:She's going to want to know where that money came from. She would ask me. But it and I know I'm going to get hammered in the comments for this I feel like black women wouldn't have too much of a problem with finding a bunch of money. They might ask you about it, but they ain't going to be mad about it.
Chris:They don't want to know where it came from, but also they just trying to make sure ain't nobody finna come knocking at that door right. But also I think that here's the problem I got with her tripping on nick he a solid dude, yeah, so he wouldn't be the dude you'd be tripping off of finding that type of I don't think she was tripping that hard though I think so I think she just wanted to know where it came from.
Chris:But you know how they say. You know accessory after the fact, do you really want me to tell you where it came from? You said like that's what I would tell my wife Find a hundred thousand in cash. Do you really want to know where this hundred thousand came from? Now you might be sitting in court with me, but I just feel like, depending on how solid your dude is as a woman, I feel like most, most black women would probably ask. But if your dude is a solid nine to five working dude and you gave her an answer, it would end right there it did, it, didn't I think it did but, I feel, like part of it too is like, okay, you got all this money up here, but we still in this basement.
Antoine:Yeah. So what's going on? Something ain't right? You, I'm finding all this money up here, but we still in this basement. Yeah. So what's going on? Something ain't right? You I'm finding all this money, but we still in your mama basement. That's because, but he's comfortable being in the basement. But he told her oh yeah, I got another job, yeah. So then once he told her that, yeah, she was fine with it, he lied his way through, yeah, but through it.
Chris:But I feel like, going back to what we were talking about before, nick was actually kind of cool. What his life, his life was.
Antoine:Yeah, he was definitely comfortable.
Chris:He was straight. He was living with his parents. He was straight. He wasn't really tripping. It was more or less. He wasn't taking the responsibilities of having a baby mom and a child, as serious as she was, and that's kind of what their whole issue was. But I feel like finding that much money for her should have been more of a good thing than than a conversation, because as long as he out there getting it and your door is not getting kicked in, which they wasn't at the time, she want to know why we still in this basement, if you got all this money it all comes down to the basement yeah, well, I'm sneaking in the back door.
Antoine:It all comes down to the basement.
Chris:So we go to episode six, all pro prologue. After om, omar testimony Bird is found guilty, mcnulty. We go back to McNulty asking Omar if he was actually there. Now, omar could have been there. Probably wasn't, omar could have been there, but Omar kind of correct me if I'm wrong Omar broke, broke the street code by showing up to court you a gangster but I think omar you, you showing up doing this to another gangster, that's kind of that's snitching bro it is, but I feel like it seemed like omar moved by his own code.
Antoine:He does, he does. That's the thing I can agree on.
Chris:Yeah, no, I can agree with that, but it feels like they never made his character seem like the type of character that would do that. Yeah, so this kind of came out of nowhere.
Antoine:You've been a solid murderer, killer all this time, but and now you a snitch I think the only reason he did that is because bird killed his boyfriend, brandon brand, was when they got him out the pool hall, right. So I think that's why omar did that. He was trying to get bird back for killing brand, for killing brand up, which I'm assuming.
Chris:I mean he really must have really loved brand he did for him to go.
Chris:You know that that that far for him, that's how stringer was able to get omar to go after brother muzon, correct, because he was saying that brother muzon was the one that yeah yeah, everybody played brandon's death against um omar because they knew how the sensitivity to that like, and they all understood like we can use that to get him to do what we want to do. And omar wasn't even realizing he was getting played off of brandon's death. They was playing, yeah, they was playing a big time.
Chris:He just didn't, he never even realized it until he had that conversation with brother muzon yes, yes, brother muzon is a stand-up dude, which lets me know that omar didn't do his research on brother muzon because even brother muzon, after being shot, was like that's not my style. So I'm confused of why omar wouldn't have known that brother muzon don't be burning bodies and taking out eyeballs and with the history that they had, I don't understand why om Omar took stringer at his word.
Chris:Yeah, it was. It was kind of like OK, that part right there I can't really roll with because them being street killers and knowing each other's history, he would have known. That's not his style. This dude is basically a black Muslim sniper killer, whatever you want to call it, but he not putting cigarette butts in people's eyes. That's torture. Yeah, he want to call it. He's not putting cigarette butts in people's eyes. That's torture. He don't do torture, he just pop you and keep you pushing, like he did with cheese Pop you and keep you pushing. So I think Omar drunk the wrong. He definitely drunk the wrong Kool-Aid, but the fact that he drunk the Kool-Aid without even knowing the history kind of confuses me, because I would have thought omar would have known that ain't that, ain't his style, and stringer style is is lying, stringer lies to everybody. So if he fit, you know, the fact that he fell for was kind of weird.
Chris:So now we get to a situation where cheese doubles. What ziggy? What he says ziggy, oh, the 2700 is now 5400 and ziggy and nick is basically they can't pay it. You know they figure that they have to get cheese to drop it down to what he, what they actually owe, yeah, as opposed to the 5400 which is cheese just being petty. Cheese is prop joe's nephew. Prop joe is partners with sergey, which is hooked up with the greek got. So prop joe got plugged through sergey. So they get sergey to go run up on cheese and sergey pretty much puts the pistol to cheese and threatens him. Sergei jumps back in the car, nick and him is in the back and says it's back to 2700. Y'all are not 2700. He's going to pay you. Yes.
Chris:For your car that he burnt up. Yeah. Sergei pretty much pushed the smash.
Antoine:So he was told Nick is like him. We don't know the man he calls boss, we know, because, cheese being the Nick, he was like him. We don't know the man he calls boss, we know, we know.
Chris:Because, Cheese being the asshole that he was burnt up, Ziggy's car which was worth $5,000. I think Nick's somewhere around $5,000 or something like that.
Chris:So they kind of did the math and was like no, so now, since you burnt up his car, you owe him. Prop Joe came out of pocket, paid. It was like you know, cheese ain't gonna be too happy that he gonna owe me, yeah, for this car. So right, y'all best stay away from him. You told me y'all best stay away from him. But it was good to see that prop joe honored the debt of his nephew, because he could have been like that ain't my that's, that's cheese's problem. But he honored it. But that's some greek stuff.
Antoine:That's some Greek. He honored it because he had to. He didn't want to mess with that product, right?
Chris:So he, he, he did good by that. And that just goes to show you that in the, in the street world, connections is the only thing that matter. Your survival, your, your income, your finance, all that comes down to connections. You got the wrong connection. You end up on the bad side, like ziggy was on the bad side of that, had he not known who he known. Right, he was gonna be on the bad side because, matter of fact, cheese gave him one extra week. Yeah, he said, we're gonna kill you, you owe us 54, but I'm gonna give you one more week to pay, double the money, right? So ziggy would have been in a bad bad. That's why I said it would have been. It'd been nice if the writers would have figured out a way to explain why the car meant so much that he just wouldn't just sell the car. That was a simple answer to the whole, to the whole cheese incident, but he even tried to give cheese that jacket.
Antoine:Try to get the cheap jacket 2011.
Chris:Two thousand dollar leather jacket the pleather rus, russell and Bunk find out that Horseface is the checker who basically is doing all the dirt.
Chris:Disappearing the cans and stuff like that. Horseface is basically the flunky of. Well, he is the friend of Frank Sabat, that's his right hand man, but he's still like more of a follower. He don't call no shots, he's a yes man. He's just a yes man. He will follow Frank into hell. If Frank says let's go to hell, he'd follow him into it. So Horseface, even though he's involved in the crimes, he ain't really calling no shots when it comes to the crime. So I think that's what kind of gives him a little bit of immunity throughout this whole series, until the very end, which we will get to because they they get them in the end, bonk and Russell. Through the computer system they find out how everything is starting to work. They find out how to track the trailers, track the containers. They kind of figure out how the system is yeah.
Antoine:So during their investigation they cloned the computer and just sat there and watched everything. So when they saw the can start disappearing, they knew exactly what was going on.
Chris:Right, I forgot who said it. But somebody said that everything is is traceable and that's how they kind of figured, like they can go backwards, forwards, whatever they can figure out who was the checker on what day, because at first they didn't know where they could trace any of this stuff and somebody had told him, like no, everything is saved in the computer, everything is saved. I think that might have been Lester. Was it Lester? I think so. Yeah, but it was told to them that no, everything is saved in the computer, because at first they didn't know how they were going to find out, right, who had who had anything to do with anything. But it comes to find out that horse face has a lot to do with with stuff disappearing, but his orders are coming from frank. Yeah, it's not, horse face is doing it because he want to do it, or you know honestly correct me if I'm wrong.
Chris:Unless they said it somewhere in the story, horse face didn't get nothing out of this stuff. Did he get? You see horse face get anything out of this? I don't remember him frank giving him no envelopes, or am I tripping?
Antoine:no, I don't remember seeing him getting right didn't break off horse face nothing.
Chris:I'm sure he was probably was taking care of him a little bit. They probably just didn't show that. Yeah, he wasn't, definitely wasn't giving no fat envelopes, though he was giving everybody else. He was handing out money like it was candy at one point, like frank was. Like you said, it probably wasn't. It wasn't reckless. It was more or less him taking care of people. He wasn't subtle about it at all. There was no subtleness to. He would do it right there at the bar in front of everybody.
Antoine:Yeah, because that was the bar where all of them went to, so he felt like he was amongst his people. He was amongst, and wasn't nobody gonna say nothing like that glad you brought that up.
Chris:Let's address the elephant in the room.
Antoine:These dudes was drinking all the time before work, dolores give me a shot in the beer.
Chris:Oh my god, they put that raw egg in there, the raw egg they was drinking. They was doing the boiler makers, they were doing all this jaeger meister shots. They were doing everything, but it was like they were on the clock, yeah, or getting ready to get on the clock, getting stone drunk. It was going before work and after if any issue came up.
Chris:They went to the bar anything. I don't know who dolores is or whether she even owns that bar, but dolores should be rich, which is with as much money they were spending in that bar. They was coming like every other longshoreman, was like I'm buying rounds for everybody. So you think about doing that all night long, every single day. Right, because they wasn't taking no days off. They were doing that every day. Yeah, honestly, me being on the docks, my dad being a longshoreman and me being down there. I was 19, I was only down there for a couple years. That is exactly how they do. No, wow, there is that much drinking, there is that much horseplay. Uh, there's a lot of gambling, parlays and stuff like that.
Chris:The ogs do send the youngsters on missions to do stuff. They do get the job done. They do make a lot of money out there and they definitely do the work, but they do it on their own terms because you know, to quote my dad, it's like longshoremen live in their own world. They conduct business how they want to do. Yeah, so if a ship comes in at 6 am and they know they have until the next 6 am to get it out. They will play around with that ship 24 out. They can. They can finish it in six. Yeah, they're gonna play around for 24 hours. They're gonna make sure 50 people get paid off that 50 large. I'm gonna make money off that ship before it leaves out, whether stealing or getting paid to work on it, the eight hour ship or anything else everybody getting paid off that ship and it's going to leave. When they say it's a lot of power, it's a lot of power.
Chris:And they showed us in the series where this later on maybe I'm jumping too far ahead, but when Frank said, give me your badge, I'm going to work for you, they actually did do that. That actually was a thing. There were actually times where ogs would say, hey, chris, go work this job for me over here because I picked up another job over here. So they would have two jobs at the same time at two different locations. The ogs could that. The dudes were eight.
Chris:I don't know if they can do it now because I don't get nobody in trouble, but back then in the in the early 90s, you could pick up as many jobs that was available, even if it was impossible for you to be there. That's crazy and you would just send somebody else to do it. So they would say chris, let me give you 200, go work over here in benicia because I got a job over here in frisco. So at the end of the week he's going to get paid for both jobs, but I just got a quick 200 cash you wouldn't be getting nothing and I wouldn't get nothing because I'll be sitting in the hall not making no money.
Chris:So all that stuff that you saw in here was very accurate, uh, and I feel like they definitely had some insider knowledge of how the docs work, because a lot of stuff actually happens exactly like that and it always seems to be. And it I worked out a local team in frisco. There is a bar pretty much always right across street from a longshoreman. You, it don't matter where you had on the planet, there's a bar, a local bar. They all go to that bar and that's great, sir. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks 24 hours a day. That's crazy. It's crazy, but it's very accurate. So I got to give him props on that. But Dolores should be rich, that's for sure. So, mcnulty, we're going to get into McNulty.
Chris:Mcnulty takes his soon-to-be ex-wife out to dinner. They have a nice candlelight dinner. Mcnulty says I want to get back with you. She said well, basically, let's just have sex instead. Give you one for the road, give you one for the road, and they get it in.
Chris:And the next morning he's talking about their plans to be together and I'm going to go pick up the boys and we're going to come back and have dinner and watch the sports and she's like no, I don't want to confuse the kids, you got to go. He's know. I don't want to confuse the kids, you gotta go. He's not understanding where she's coming from. Yeah, and it's it. I've got a lot of friends like that where they've messed up so much and gotten back with the girl they mess up with so much they don't take her seriously and it's always been funny to me to sit there and go and sit there and look at these relationships and go dude, you've hurt this girl so much that whatever she tells you, just deal with it. Like, don't fight it. She's giving you, she's still having sex with you, so you're getting that benefit, but you can't also want to still stay in the same house, like she's telling you though, man that's mcnaughty just like, and she told him on another occasion like I can't trust you.
Chris:I want to say it was during that date. It was during that date when he was talking about getting back together, when she was just like I can't trust you. You don't understand the whole trust thing. You are liable to sleep with anybody at any time because you're a drunk, like when he's sober he's the most solid dude on the planet. When he get drunk he'll sleep with a dog, like mcnojie will sleep with anybody when he's drunk. And they showed that in season two.
Antoine:Yeah, they did, you know, with the with the prostitution ring that was going on, not even that, even when he was drunk one day and he was driving his car and he tried to make that turn and he hit the wall and then he ran it back and did it again. He's like oh, no, wait, wait, wait. What's?
Chris:wrong with this dude man?
Antoine:Let me do this again I can make this turn. And he tried to do it again and ran into it again. I've never even heard of nobody doing something like that. Look. Then he went to sex with the uh the waitress in there. Sure women was throwing themselves at mcnaughty woke up in her bed the next morning hey, they had mcnaughty, like he was something like a player right right, because that waitress said you can have whatever you want right
Chris:I was like, oh, she mean okay, okay, she said you can have whatever you want. He was like, oh, okay. But mcnaughty found himself in a lot of situations to where at one point in time, bunkin was even jealous of him. Like dude, you're getting all the booty, you get everything. You know what I'm saying. We got to struggle, you're getting it all.
Chris:So we get to the part where Stringer visits D'Angelo's baby mom I forgot her name, but he visits her, plays with d'angelo's son, tells her she has to go start seeing d'angelo at at the prison because you know he has to feel like he's still part of the family. Right, you're not even taking his son to go see him. You ain't going to see him. That's going to keep his mind at ease and make him feel like we still care about her. She's making up a thousand excuses, but come to find out she's really making up these excuses because she really I feel like she cares for him. But at this point in time she's obviously sleeping with strength. So her feelings are starting to change about the engine right to where uh, you know, sometimes you can have love for somebody but not be in love with them. I think their relationship got to that point. He went to prison. He got that 20. He got that 20 and then she's sleeping with Stringer. Her feelings for Stringer start to her feelings for D'Angelo, start to move towards Stringer, donette, donette. So you can start to see why she wasn't about to come up there.
Chris:If stringer and them wouldn't have told her to come up there, I don't think she ever would have went up there and said she was now, which, which is kind of messed up, you're taking 20. She was checked out boy taking 20 for the family. His partner had. His boss had to come and tell you personally you need to go, take his son to go see. You need to go up there and see and stop being, you know uh, shy from from doing it.
Chris:Stringer's holding d'angelo's son and he says little man, your father's starting to buck buck, you know like, and you could tell the wheels are turning.
Chris:String his head like, yeah, we got to do something about that. And I kind of knew without even when I first saw, I kind of knew like he gonna kill this dude, like I knew stringer was going to have something to do with d'angelo getting killed somehow, some way, because there were too many advantages to Stringer having him gone than staying. Number one he gets to sleep with his woman as much as he want to, but he's gonna do that anyway, but with no friction. But number two he don't have to worry about D'Angelo flipping on no one and sending all in the prison, which essentially all he was worried about anyway. He never cared about D'Angelo. He was just like as long as you don't tell on me, that's all Stringer was about. Stringer hires a guy from DC who has a cousin that's in prison with D'Angelo and during their conversation about pulling a hit on D'Angelo, the guy from dc can't really understand why you would do that to that particular person, because he knows that's avon's family member.
Antoine:Then and he questioned him too like any question. I know about this.
Chris:You're reaching way over here to dc he knows that's in the world of crime. That's a no. No, that's your bosses. The King's family member Right You're sitting Now. You got me involved in this.
Antoine:He knows I'm fishy because they're not using their own people.
Chris:You're not even using your own people to do it. But you know, according to this guy he, like my cousin, does work clean and you know it won't be no issues Cause stringer. Main thing is it can't come back on him so it has to be a suicide. Now would have been interesting, would have been very interesting.
Chris:And what if I would have wrote it just to give it, even if it had been a director's cut that never made, I would have had it to where something would have happened, to where it wouldn't have worked to look like a suicide, to where it would have got back to avon, like somebody tried to make d'angelo still got killed, but it would have been, it would got back to avon. That no, it wasn't a suicide. Somebody tried to make it look like a suicide to make avon start turning his wheels and say who has enough clout to get in here to do that stuff? To my, who has the nuts number one right to do that? To my cousin, to where it would have brought some tension between him and stringer. Because I don't think I know for a fact watching this, watching the season, he never, it never.
Chris:He never crossed his mind that stringer had done that yeah because you can tell by the conversation you had with wee bay my nephew couldn't handle the 20, so he was weak. We, even wee bay, say that's, that's the sign of a weak person. But it would have been nice to for something to would have happened in that scenario, to where it would have came back. The medical team would have been like no, that wasn't a suicide, somebody tried to make it look like a suicide. Therefore, avon would have been like the only person who could have done that is stringer, and then they would have put them at, you know, at odds earlier than it eventually did, because eventually they went to odds. But uh, I would have done it like that just to throw a little bit of mystery into it, because avon basically was thinking like it was just a suicide. Yeah, it just came over. So, which means the cousin did do clean work. Yeah, essentially, dude was right, my cousin does clean work. Like I don't know how much he paid him, but it was a nice fat stack, it was something cool. It was.
Chris:He stringer gave him something cool to do, you know, to do the hit. The hit was a sign of how menacing and evil stringer could get when he had to do what he had to do. We saw a little bit with wallace, because that was out of pocket. Shout out to michael b jordan. But uh, we saw, because wallace was only about 14. He was a baby when he killed that little dude. Yeah, he was a kid.
Antoine:He was probably like 15, 15, 16 at most.
Chris:I don't even think it was for him to murder wallace and then turn around and murder d'angelo shows you that, when it came down to it, he was willing to kill anybody.
Antoine:Yeah, but he felt like wallace was snitching. Yeah, yeah, he felt wallace. Wallace disappeared for a while and then popped back up.
Chris:That's what they didn't like about that. He thought that angelo would eventually yeah, possibly right snitch. Uh, honestly, the way I think is like I don't think angelo would have never snitched. I think angelo was gonna hold that or 10 or whatever it was. I feel like he didn't hate his family he just didn't want to deal with.
Chris:Yeah, like you say, he just didn't. He was done with him, but I don't feel like he had enough hatred to be like I'm gonna take the whole family down, right, because then that would affect his his mama too, right? So I don't think he would have done that. I think that stringer overreacted in his actions of getting him killed, because if they'd have just in my opinion they'd just left him alone he would have just done the top. He might have been turned into a dope fiend Because clearly he was doing dope, but he wasn't a snitch. Stringer overused his power, and that power was overused because Avon was locked up also, so there was no checks and balances. Stringer was doing some wild things. He was just doing whatever hell he wanted to do. I'm glad on that. One part where they met him and avon met avon was like do what you feel is necessary until I come home, literally until I come home.
Antoine:I mean when I get there, I'm back right, I'm taking, I'm taking over, I'm making all of the decisions.
Chris:Yeah, I'm doing it all because he was. Yeah, because he said something to the fact that you know, if you got to deal with prop joe, do what you got to do until I get back. Yeah, so that was kind of dope that he actually told it to him just like that. So, episode seven, backwash, d'angelo's funeral, prop joe was there. Prop joe is a straight business man. Prop joe, as soon as the funeral was over, he approaches stringer, says you know, I got the good stuff over here. We need to hook up and make some stuff happen. I send my condolences but I feel like if it wasn't business related, prop Joe wouldn't have never been at that.
Chris:I think Prop Joe came there with the intent to do business with Stringer, like straight up, and Stringer, being as desperate as he was because he didn't have a good dope, kind of fell for it. It opened up a conversation that, according to Avon, should have never been opened up. We don't deal with Eastside, we Westside, with Eastside, we Westside, they Eastside, even if we got the worst dope. Avon's thinking probably is like we don't ever want to be dependent on them. They're the enemy. Why would you?
Antoine:You can't let them know. We need them.
Chris:Yeah, like, why would you put yourself in that position to where you need your enemy to survive, right? So Stringer didn't see it like that. Stringer seen it as he always is business opportunity. We was like I could keep your road, you gotta get the good stuff until you know. So now we get to. Now we back to ziggy, ziggy. I hope ziggy whoever played ziggy's character, got very well paid for this season. He all over this season dude, like every other scene, got ziggy in in some form or fashion. Ziggy is now mad at nick because nick is kind of controlling the whole chemical thing, even though nick is his cousin, blood cousin, and nick is cashing him out and he ain't gotta do nothing, you don't have to do nothing collect his money shut up and take the money.
Chris:Ziggy is pissed off because he's not running the thing right. So my question to you is this do you think at any given time, nick would have cut ziggy out of this and just said you know what, since you acting like this, I'm just gonna do this by myself. Or do you think he would have always included?
Antoine:his cousin ziggy. It seemed like he was always trying to include him in everything, so he would have kept going, because even in that situation Ziggy wasn't doing nothing, but he was still breaking Ziggy up, so it was like he was going to always look out for Ziggy. It seemed like he almost treated Ziggy like he was handicapped.
Chris:Well he kind of was Mentally, he kind of was. He almost treated Ziggy like you're that little cousin. I have to help because you missing an arm or a leg.
Antoine:But I feel like I got to pick you up. I feel like that's been their situation their whole life. Yeah, the way it seems like, in the series at least, and it seems like the whole family kind of. Yeah, ziggy in that right, because, like, even when ziggy got in trouble frank was talking to nick, like you supposed to look out for him.
Chris:He's like that's your, that's your son. Yeah, that was a. That was a deep. Yeah, that was a deep conversation. That's your son. Yeah, I know he's my cousin. You're getting mad at me in trouble, but that's your son. But you can tell Frank, put that much pressure on Nick to take care of Zeke and you shouldn't do that. But they've probably been doing that all their life, forever.
Antoine:Yeah, they've probably been doing that forever, because Zeke's always been wild like that. It's like you were saying Correct, how was he at 10? Wild like that and Nick was still looking after him.
Chris:Correct, correct. A Lieutenant, daniels finally gives in and takes on the 14 murders. That pisses off his wife, marla, even more, because they had just had that talk. He had told he wasn't gonna take the murder. And getting back to daniels, daniels at this point is like he's trying to figure out what's gonna end up to his best event. If you, if you hear what he was saying, he was always trying to figure out how it would play out in the end if he made this move, this move, this move and this move and this move, assuming that everything was gonna turn out perfect yeah but what he didn't understand was that everybody that's above him can change their mind at any given time and screw up his whole plan and what he tried to do and.
Chris:And he found it out at the end, everybody changed. Rawlings changed Valchek, what he wanted to do changed, everything changed because he assumed that they would stick to their word and nobody stuck to their word. And that was one of the things that Marla, his wife, was trying to tell him. You're not in control of your life as much as you think you are. You're making all these decisions, but the people above you are the ones who actually control what you actually going to end up doing, whether you end up being a captain, a sergeant, whatever. They control that. You don't control none of that. So I think, to make a long story short, that's what kind of pissed her off is that she thought her husband was smart enough to see this and it seemed like he was getting blinded by the end goal. Like I'm, if I make these moves, I'll end up over here.
Chris:It's like he he was taking everybody at their word he had been done dirty before yeah, he had been done dirty by everybody she's like why are you taking them at their word? You already know they track record and they had that conversation about three times in this, three or more times in this season where they would have a conversation, she would interject some sense into him.
Chris:He would say I understand, and then he'd do something totally different. That pissed her off Like dude. We just had this conversation. The crew continues to monitor Horseface, you know, as a checker to bag containers and they start to figure out how everything is disappearing, how everything is moving and how everything is going, but at the same time they don't really understand what's in the containers. The only thing they're really worried about is that it's not more like girls and stuff in containers, but it's they're moving a lot of stuff and he's they, they moving everything. These dudes are moving everything and they're moving at a high velocity. They're moving a lot of containers that they can catch. Some of them they can't catch.
Chris:Getting back to episode going to episode eight duck and cover mcnoey gets drunk, wrecks the car twice and then he has a heart-to-heart with bunk as they're getting drunk, yeah, and he confesses that he misses police work. You know, doing detective work, yeah, doing real detective work, instead of being on the boat. Do you feel like mcnaughty would have ever like retired being a boat person? Do you feel like eventually he would have quit because he couldn't became a detective like person? Do you feel like eventually he would have quit because he couldn't became a detective like, how do you think that would have played out for him?
Antoine:on that boat. I don't think he would have ever quit. I can't see him being nothing else. But I don't know. I feel like at some point, because he's such a good cop, at some point he would have got off that boat. He wouldn't have got off as fast as he did, but at some point he would have got off that boat. He wouldn't have got off as fast as he did, but at some point he would have got off that boat. I agree, I agree, because he's too good of a cop. Yeah, I agree, somebody somewhere would have needed him for something.
Chris:Somebody would have pulled him um eventually for for some type of assignment. Yeah what he needed a good cop. So eventually he does get pulled in. He's back on the team, even though Rawlings hates him. But because Rawlings promised Daniel, yeah, they made that deal.
Antoine:They made the deal.
Chris:I take these bodies, you give me whatever I want all my people you can't resist whatever I need for my team right and Rawlings even though he hates McNulty go goes ahead and gives it to him because he's taking the bodies and the bodies was really all his whole season was about the bodies Because the chemical stuff that was like secondary compared to finding out who killed the girls, what was going on with the girls, like how was it, why was it even in the container? And they find that out a little bit later. Ziggy once again is pushed by the Longshoremen to fight Maui. He gets embarrassed, gets beat up by Maui, gets thrown on top of the container. Maui says anybody who helps him down, you're going to be up there with them. Ziggy being who. Ziggy is trying to get back his respect because everybody's laughing at him. He's a poor gesture.
Chris:He buys a duck, puts a real diamond necklace around the duck, takes the duck into the bar and drinks alcohol with the duck. Yes, I'm wondering if ziggy is fighting for respect or attention. Which one you think? Probably both, probably both, yeah, because the duck things feel like that was more of it.
Antoine:Attention than respect.
Chris:Yeah, like's not going to get you no respect they all had. They was laughing about that stuff. They was having a good time with that duck, which I knew when they had the duck drinking vodka and all. I'm like this ain't going to end well for the duck. Everybody else is probably going to be fine. Probably not going to end well for the day. Frank Mr Sabatka finally realized that he's being traced or followed or whatever you want to call it. He's three months behind on his cell phone bill. Cell phone people said don't worry about it, we ain't going to turn it on. Yeah, he called in.
Antoine:I was trying to see what was going on with my bill but he said oh, you got a. What is it a? Do not turn off or not, do not disconnect, do not disconnect.
Chris:Yeah, not disconnect. And we know matter of fact. You don't even got to go three months. You go a month and a half to two months. They turn, they shut down. He went three. They was like do not disconnect. And that shows you kind of let the level of smarts that frank was dealing with, because he kind of figured it out after that point him and horse face sitting there talking horse face is like after three months they normally cut you off, right? Frank was like that's kind of weird that they didn't cut me off and you know it had a do not disconnect on there. So it shows you that frank wasn't as stupid as he looked yeah he looked very stupid.
Chris:He was not a stupid person. It just took him a while to process stuff before he figured stuff out. Yeah, because he figured it all out eventually, but it just took a while for him to get there because he had so much, so much other stuff going on. So now we get to episode nine, stray rounds. So, sam, it starts off with bode and his crew going up against some other another crew. They have a full-blown shootout in the morning, oh yeah, and a little kid gets killed. He's shot through the window and gets killed. So that episode has a lot to deal with. Who did that? Like, what happened?
Chris:Unfortunately, a lot of stuff like this happens in the inner city. It's just senseless, reckless violence and that happens. It's just senseless, reckless violence and that you know. That happens, but it's one. It's another case. To get thrown into the murders and the drugs is a whole nother layer of drama that gets thrown in the um. Episode nine so then we go to after the shootout. He was told to get rid of the gun. Oh, they drive to the, to the bridge, instead of him getting out of the car, throwing him and watching him go in the water. While he's in the car. He throws the bag of guns over the bridge, assuming that they they went into the water. They go right onto a ship. They nice and dry right on the ship. But the one good thing they did shows that he was wiping those guns down. So there was no fingerprints on them guns. So that's why he kind of knew y'all lying about y'all got me on the gun.
Antoine:And another part about it too is when they had him in that interrogation room they said they knew which gun was his. Yeah, and they pointed at the wrong gun.
Chris:Yeah, they played a bad hand. Yeah, they did. They should have left that alone. Right, you a shooter, you know your gun. You picked the wrong gun. He knows your line about everything else. Right, like Bodhi already knew, he said lawyer, lawyer I don't want to talk to y'all, no more Lawyer. And they had the best stringer. They had the best stringer hat.
Chris:They had the top boy, levy, levy. What no joke. Levy, levy, come in, you get you going home. Levy, yeah, levy, come in, unless you kill somebody. When levy comes in to get you, you're going home. You are not going to jail, you would be free. That's how good he was. So we get to the point ziggy. Once again. Ziggy gets in business with Glicas, gets to the stolen car business. They originally agree on 20 percent. I kind of knew before it even happened. I'm like he about to pay. They don't respect. Yeah, if he gets five percent he'd be lucky. Nobody respects Ziggy to be a stand up dude that you have to pay, you have to honor what you said you was going to honor.
Chris:Because he ain't going to do nothing about it and he a goofball anyway, so nobody kind of respects him. He does this without his cousin Nick involved. He does it with his white boy partner. They steal the cars. He's even acting kind of goofy when they steal the cars. He's playing the radio loud. Even a white boy kind of like turn down the rate, dude, we trying to steal cars. Right, you're playing the radio loud.
Chris:So even then ziggy don't take nothing serious. That's part of my biggest issue with ziggy's like he don't take nothing serious. Even a that's a felony offense, dude, you breaking stealing cars. I guess it's just his character, ziggy. Just he just don't take nothing serious. I don't know where frank went wrong with him. Frank definitely went wrong at some point time with ziggy. They never really discussed. He was probably always on the docks and was never yeah, they, they. They had a little discussion where ziggy was like yeah, I knew you loved me, dad, but but you can kind of tell, like you said, frank was probably working so hard when he was little he was never home. Ziggy was probably an unsupervised key, you know, just acting wild, and he carried that into adulthood because he just became a wild adult never had no structure, no structure, no, no, nothing.
Chris:You know, ziggy didn't, ziggy didn't have nothing. So we get to stringer. Stringer did the deal with prop, prop Joe to give up three towers. Prop Joe brings in Chiefs. Chiefs' crew is beefing, has always beefed with Westside Duke, but now they next to each other Right. So now they're competing to who can sell a dough to Chiefs.
Chris:That becomes an issue to where Bodie cuts off one of their boys who was going to sell it for this price. Bodie walks over there and said we sell it to you for $5 left. So it becomes like a basement bargain type of thing that really never is going to work out well for nobody. Now both of y'all are going to end up selling it super cheap. You're losing money. So what was the point? That becomes an issue. But Bodie from the very beginning. Bodie was on stringer from the very beginning, like dude who sanctioned this. Yeah, like you got these dudes down here, you gave them three towers. Bode is under the old school gangster code of your enemy is always your enemy. You don't have no deals with your enemy he's a mini avon yeah, he's a mini avon.
Chris:We don't deal with east side dude at all. We west side, they east side, they stay where they at, and that's it. Avon hires brother muzon to get the towers back, which I want to talk to you about. Does that mean that Avon knew that Stringer brought in the Eastside?
Antoine:No, he didn't bring him in to take the towers back. He brought him to keep the Eastside from coming into the towers because they didn't have that product and they didn't have enough muscle, which is what stringer was feeding avon as a reason to get the product from prop joe. Stringer was telling avon that they didn't have enough muscle and he was like, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it, I'm gonna send somebody. Then that's how brother muzon came over there. Gotcha, brother muzon didn't know that stringer gave Esai a pass to come up in there. Right, that's how he shot Cheese. Right, because he didn't know that Cheese was supposed to be there. Because Stringer was making this backdoor deal with Prop Joe that Avon knew nothing about. So Cheese Cheese was collateral damage. Collateral damage Because Stringer, she didn't know neither because string string was going off on his own, yeah, doing stuff that avon ain't know nothing about stringer was, as one point.
Chris:At that point in time, string went 100 rogue and just started doing his own moves, knowing it was going against his own crew. Right, knowing that he, he, he was lying to avon, yeah, in the day he lied to me, yeah, which is a death offense in the streets. But because avon is locked up and can't do nothing about it, right, he felt he can kind of let it linger on for a minute. Now my thing is avon eventually gonna get out of jail, find out everything you did, bro, right? You, how you thought that was gonna play out for you in the long run when he finds out, you, the one that told the east side dudes that come in and start all this stuff. Right, take the three towers like. I don't think stringer thought it all the way through, which makes me think that stringer had always planned on getting rid of avon. How you feel about that that I feel like stringer was going to have him killed or keep him locked in.
Antoine:Yeah, so I wouldn't necessarily go with the kill part, but he definitely did not want Avon coming home. He wanted Avon staying locked up as long as possible. As long as possible, yeah.
Chris:Because when Avon come out, Avon running.
Antoine:Right.
Chris:And Avon going to run it.
Antoine:The old school way, right the way he want to run it, not the business way like Stringer, not the business way, and I feel like Stringer and Avon would have eventually.
Chris:My opinion is they would have been enemies eventually. Yeah, just because of the train of thought that each one of them had. Right.
Chris:Which is weird because it's like I feel like they've been friends probably since they were sandbox Teenager Kids, whatever. Friends, probably since they were sandbox teenagers kids, whatever stuff seemed like they would have had the same train of thought when it came to the streets. But it feels like avon was the hub of the gang and stringer came in later with different. Yeah, they're not on the same page. I would like to see a prequel. Yeah, it's like why y'all not on the same page with the street stuff? If both y'all from the streets and this your man, 50 grand your man, why he don't think like you?
Antoine:yeah, I would like to see their early life how it got. That would be season one that would be dope.
Chris:If they had a prequel to show you how they got a season one, that'd be dope, because that's what confused me about the script was just like stringer, don't think like avon yeah, it's like they're super different they're super different and that did never made sense to me because I'm like but y'all come from the same place, right? Y'all doing the same dirt. Right, y'all been boys forever. You said he like your brother why he don't understand the street game, like even bode understands what the street game is, and he the youngster yeah, him.
Chris:And poie understands what the street game is. He's a youngster yeah, him. And Poot understand what the streets is. That's a cool name, poot yeah, but it's like Stringer seems to not be connected to what was really happening in the streets. So that was always kind of weird for me to see the mind frame of Stringer compared to the mind frame of Avon. It was kind of weird.
Chris:Episode 10, storm Warnings. Brother moves on, politely, approaches Chief, says I'm going to have to ask you young men to nicely leave. Dude is polite as hell man. I got to give him props for that. He didn't come on there like no savage, right, none of that stuff. He politely told him your services are no longer needed. I've been hired by mr barksdale to clear, to get you to clear the premises.
Chris:She said some crazy stuff, get shot now. He showed him some love because he said he shot him with some plastic pellets. He said but the next one is the one you need to worry, right, next one in the chamber was specially made by me to end your life. Right, you need to be worried about the next one in the chamber. So that shows you that he had brother mouzon, even though he was a hired hitman. He had a level of a thought process to know that. I'm gonna be fair about this. Yeah, because he could have killed chief. Just give you a warning. I'm gonna give you a warning. Maybe that has something to do with him being a muslim black man, a black man. I don't want to come up here just killing brothers right. So I'm going to give them a chance to make the right decision right, even if it costs me about your appellate good pellet bullet in the shoulder yeah I'm gonna allow you to make the right decision or the wrong decision, and then I'm gonna go after that.
Chris:But the fact of the way brother muzon showed up, the fact of how he showed up and what he stood on, is a testament to how much respect avon and stringer had for him. You've seen later on when avon told stringer you don't ask a dude like that, oh, who did it? Yeah, you don't do that. He is, he's a soldier killer, right, he gonna handle that, right, like so. Essentially, avon was telling stringer you just played yourself by even asking him that, you just gave up something by even asking him that and also that lets you know that stringer with once again stringer didn't understand the streets.
Chris:That's confusing me right right, right right it confuses me that he grew up with avon in the streets, started this crime organization together. But you didn't understand that part of the game. Yeah, that kind of bothered me. That kind of bothered me. Yo dudes at hbo, let's make a prequel.
Chris:We need to find out why stringer was a dumbass when it came to stuff like right, we, we need to know. I love the show, but that's always gonna bother me. Ziggy once again delivers the cards to Gleekus. Gleekus says I'm only paying you 10%. Ziggy gets mad, wants his respect, said yo, we agreed to 20%. Ziggy, I guess, tries to no, he calls him a Greek something. He said something disrespectful to the dude. Dude had enough. Gleekus had enough, roughed him up, smacked him around like a little kid, like the little kid he acts like.
Chris:Ziggy goes to the car kind of hits himself on the head and just goes to all this, this, this mental stuff. But was what I feel like? What he was really going through was like he was just fed up with being disrespected. Yeah, the whole world had disrespected him his entire life. He, other than his cousin, he probably don't feel like nobody loves him at all. Yeah, and he made a decision to go back inside the shop, shoot gleekus several times. I want to say he shot about four or five times in the back. Yeah, then gleekus turns over and says please stop, like begging him, don't shoot me shoots him again. Then the part the next person he shot was that was weird to me. He shot glickus's young assistant, who seemed to be a teenager, yeah, but he doesn't kill him. That was weird to me, like so what was the point you killed? I understand why you killed glickus he disrespect and he just smacked you around, but you shoot his assistant, but you don't kill him.
Antoine:he snapped so when you think it's, and then kind of snapped out of it after he realized what he had did so in between Gleekus and the kid and the kid.
Chris:Yeah, okay, you think he snapped back and just was like I shouldn't have done that type of thing.
Antoine:Mm-hmm, Because remember, after he did all that shooting he went back into the car and was tripping out again in the car.
Chris:He was of the car and was tripping out again in the car, was tripping, he was tripping. He was. He was definitely tripping. He definitely knew he had messed up.
Chris:Yeah, ziggy is the poster child for somebody who crashed out. Yeah, that's a crash hour. That's somebody who just said I'm you know. We see it all the time in the black community where we see a new boyfriend dealing with a with with a woman who has a baby daddy and he kills the baby daddy or the baby daddy kills the boyfriend in the hood. Those are crash out scenes that we see all the time. Yeah, we normally don't see what ziggy did. Yeah, that was a different type of crash out. Yeah, they all deal with the same factor of respect. When we see it in the hood, it's a respect factor. When a baby daddy kills a new boyfriend, he feels disrespected. When ziggy did that to gleekus, he feels disrespected.
Chris:I always cause and pause when I hear, when I hear people a lot of times saying men have to deal with their feelings. I get it. Some. Some of us need to talk to therapists and get therapy, but people have to understand. When men deal with their emotions it doesn't always end peacefully. A lot of times it ends in violence. So the way you deal with your stress and drama as a man varies on the individual. Yeah, most men wouldn't have done with ziggy d. Yeah, and that's because ziggy is a different type of dude. So everybody processes stress and turmoil differently, differently. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Like, I've been through a lot of stuff, I've never been to therapy and I'm fine. In my opinion I'm fine. But I also know other parents who have lost their kids and they went on to commit suicide. Yeah, everybody can't process stuff the same way everybody different, deal with different things.
Antoine:Everybody different.
Chris:Ziggy might have needed help prior to even getting into this shootout. He might have been one of those kids who probably needed help, yeah, and he probably showed signs, cries for help, and he just never got it. He, you know, he could have been one of those. So we get to episode 11 bad dreams everybody gets arrested. Episode 11 is pretty much about everybody getting arrested, everybody trying to figure out who's going to snitch first. White mike gets arrested. Everybody gets arrested, except the greek nick spiros and horseface. Yeah, because horseface doesn't get arrested initially. Yeah, everybody else does get arrested. That's including frank and all you know. A bunch of. They even arrested some of the some of the dudes on the dock, like some of them got arrested. They had nothing to do with nothing, so but everybody gets arrested.
Chris:During this time they were trying to figure out who knew what about. This all comes back down to the girls and the murders. Yeah, they're trying to figure out who knew, who did what and why. But at the same time, stringer going to Stringer Stringer lies to Omar tells Omar that Brother Muzon is the one who did the dirt to Brandon. Stringer lies. Well enough that Omar believes him is good is lies. Well enough to that omar believes him.
Chris:He finds brother muzon, knocks out his, his bodyguard yeah, kicks in the door, shoots brother muzon. They have a conversation, he's shooting a stomach, shoot him in the stomach with a nine. Brother muzon says I ain't had nothing to do with neil brandon being tortured, because it wasn't about brandon got killed, it was the torture part that bothered brother muzon said that's not my style and I guess it kind of registered to Omar that it wasn't his style because he did not kill him. Matter of fact, he called the ambulance for him, right, he dialed 911, said we got somebody here shot and he gave him a wink and he walked out, which lets you know that now he's figured out he got played. Yeah, he figured out that moment. Stringer played him against.
Antoine:Brother Muzang yeah, because Stringer was trying to get Brother Muzang killed. Correct, so he can get all of them Eastside cats back up in the project, correct.
Chris:We get that figured out. So now we get to Sabaka, who agrees to cooperate with the police. It's pretty much to save his son and his nephew. He knows he's done. At least I feel like he knew he was done because he had a part in everything the Greeks was doing. He was calling the shots, he was making horse face, do all this other stuff. He's the reason why his son and nephew even got involved in doing all this other stuff. I feel like he knew he was done, but it was just to help his son and his nephew.
Antoine:I I feel like he knew he was done, but it was just to help his son in his net.
Chris:I think you're trying to save the union to any, any union. Yeah, and he was in the end he really wanted to help his people and stuff like that. So I give him that what Frank would Frank and what nobody knew even though the city police, lester and everybody was that the Greeks had people on the inside, yeah, and the Greeks had a guy on the inside who knew everything that they were doing with their witnesses and everything. So somebody on the inside tipped off the Greek that Frank was cooperating.
Antoine:Yeah, so he was a fed and he had I don't know if he has some type of alert set up or something, but it was always some popping up on that screen. He had the screen that had all the information, so something would come up on that screen and he calling the Greeks, letting them know.
Chris:Yeah, he had all the information. It popped up on the screen that Frank was cooperating.
Antoine:Yeah, straight up, and it said against and had all of their names, said against and had all of their names.
Chris:So Frank has set up a meeting with the Greek and Spiros to talk about where they were. You know how everything was going after all arrest and everything as he was walking, which was a dope shot. It was a cinematic shot. You seen the bridge and the background and everything as he was walking toward the Greek and him. The FBI agent called the Greek and told him that he's cooperating. The Greek looked over at Spiros and whispered in his ear he's like your way is not going to work Because they had that talk before.
Antoine:Right, spiros was like no, we ain't got to kill him, we can let him live.
Chris:Spiros didn't want to kill him.
Chris:He's going to be alright, we ain't gotta worry about it was like we could take care of it in a regular diplomatic way, right? Greg was like your way is not gonna work, meaning we gotta kill him without even saying what the phone call was about, right, he pretty much letting them know your way is not gonna happen, we gotta kill it, dude. And that's pretty much how episode 11 ends, with you knowing that frank wasn't gonna make make it past. That An interesting thing is Frank told Nick not to come with yes.
Chris:So, in your opinion, do you think it's because he knew they were going to kill him, or do you think?
Antoine:it was for any other reason. Nah, he was just trying to keep Nick away from them. He didn't want nothing to do with them. No, more.
Chris:Okay, so you don't think Frank knew there was danger.
Antoine:No, he wasn't expecting to get killed. He wasn't expecting to get killed. No.
Chris:Even after meeting the police. No, I don't know if I would have went to that meeting bro.
Antoine:He wasn't expecting to get killed. He wasn't expecting to get killed. No, I don't think he was.
Chris:Frank better than me? Look, I don't think he was. I frank better than me because, look, if I didn't have a meeting with the police saying I'm gonna cooperate against these dudes, I don't know if I'm taking any more. I'm not doing it. Frank was a soldier. For that I gotta give it.
Antoine:But see, and I think part of the reason why he took that meeting too, was because what spheros had talked to nick real stuff and told him that they were gonna try and find a way to get Ziggy out of jail. Oh yeah, remember, dude didn't die, the young cat that he shot didn't die, and that was one of eight people and they was going to get him to have this elaborate story to try to get Ziggy out. So that was part of the reason, too, why Frank went to go meet with him, and you know what was dope. Two, why Frank went to go meet with him, and you know what was dope.
Chris:Is that that actually makes a legitimate reason why? Because if that young dude would have went in there and said there was a self-defense issue and it wasn't Ziggy's gun, Ziggy might have got off Like the. Greeks. There was pretty smart about that. You got to think about it like this that young dude could say anything. Yeah, he can say glee, just pulled out the gun. They wrestled right. This is what happened. Blah, blah, blah. Ziggy might have got off, but ziggy had already told on his self if they didn't know that.
Antoine:They didn't know that, they didn't know he signed that full confession.
Chris:They didn't know that ziggy ziggy hung his self, yeah, from the very, not only because he actually shot the people. But you go in there and confess and sign something. It's a rap. Even I want to say lester was like no, we got this yeah you can't go against this, you're done.
Antoine:Yeah, they didn't know. They didn't know he signed that confession like you'd already signed sealed yourself.
Chris:Yeah, you done. But potentially, if he wouldn't have done that, zicky might have got off with murder, possibly, like the Greeks, might have got him up out of there, which made sense why Spiros was thinking it through Like no, we can fix this without all the murders by just the man will do anything to save his son.
Antoine:If we can show we can save his son, he'll continue to do whatever the hell we need him to do because frank, he, he went in and talked to the police but he didn't give them all the information yet, so they just had an initial meeting. Hurlman I think that's her name, the, the lady, the, the lawyer for the police told him that he needs to come back with his own lawyer and then they was going to take his statement right. And then in between that time is where frank had that conversation with nick, saying that they were going to try and get the kid to say that it was self-defense and try to help ziggy out. So frank was talking to nick and was like look, man, we need to leave these guys alone. Nick told him I know they can try and help us. All they want is loyalty and us to not say anything, just loyalty. That's when Frank took that meat.
Antoine:So I think at that point he was kind of like on the fence, like man, do I testify against them or do I try and get my son? So let me go hear them out and see what they got to say before I make my decision. But just so let me go hear them out and see what they got to say before I make my decision. Yeah, but just in case anything goes sideways. Nick, no, you stay here. I don't want you around them, no more. You stay away. Because it's like he probably didn't know what he was going to do at that point yet and it turned out to be the smart decision because they would.
Antoine:They would have had to kill nick too, they would have. And spiro's the spiro really liked it. He really did like he didn't want to to do and even the greeks saw that yeah, like he's like you should have. You should have had a son. Yeah, he said somebody.
Chris:You should have had a son because the way you like, yeah, you know, and that part of that was because nick, you know, in total nick was a good stand-up dude, yeah, solid dude. Like he wasn't no goofball, he wasn't ziggy, he wasn't ziggy, he wasn't about to crash out over no bullshit. Like he was a solid dude who went to work and when he when there was work, yeah, remember, his main thing was and you know, work. I want to work but ain't no work. So he was a solid dude who wanted to work, who wanted to take care of his baby mama and his daughter, but he just couldn't figure out financially how to make that happen without doing illegal stuff right now. So nick was a good dude. I like nick's character.
Chris:Last episode, episode 12, port in the storm, it starts off, frank's body washes up and they pull it out the water. Nobody knows. It's frank initially. Everybody's on the dock. It's early in the morning. Everybody's on the dock all along, sherman out. They're seeing, they're pulling. They know that they're pulling a body out the water. Right, no, whose it is? They pull it out the water. Uh, it's frank all along.
Chris:And this is kind of not real because that's not how this works. They wouldn't have pulled the body out with a hundred longshoremen in in unzipped to show you what it was. Right, that would not have happened in real police work. Right, that is for cops eyes only, because we've seen it in the hood. They'll put a tarp to block the crowd from seeing what it actually is, because you don't you never know right, but you know cinematically. That's what happened. They unzipped the bag. It's frank in the bag. Everybody you know sighs and you know a couple people cry. Russell shows up with the fellas, with every bunk and everybody, and she walks up to the body and cries because she was actually cool with Frank.
Chris:Right, they had a good relationship, frank was cool, like not even on no sexual stuff, like Frank was like she's a good girl, right, even when everybody was like you, like her.
Antoine:And I feel like she had been working there for a few years she had been working there for a minute enough to wear a relationship.
Chris:They was cool. She didn't bother frank. And then what they were doing on the dock, they didn't bother her. It was a good working relationship, so it kind of. And she was the one who told frank to come in and do all that right. So some of that was guilt.
Antoine:Yeah, because she was the one that convinced him to come in.
Chris:She was the one she was crying to him saying just come in and and do the right thing, right. So I, I feel like some of the crying when she saw his body was like definitely guilt. You know I'm saying some guilt, like I told him to do this, he didn't really have to do this. So you know, I I kind of see why she was. She was hurt more than anybody else. Everybody else is kind of more or less shocked because Frank was the bull. Right, he was a dude. That was untouchable. Right he in the water throat slit.
Chris:Throat slit Like they did it Dirty. But at least they kept his head and hands on, cause you know he was cutting off his hands and everything but Sergei was not playing. Sergei was in jail so he couldn't do it Right. Yeah, the hand cutter offer was in jail, yeah, but Sergei was not playing. Did he have heads? Did he have heads? It wasn't us, sergei, no joke, but as tough as Sergei was he cooperated.
Antoine:Yeah, I was shocked with that one. Oh my God, he told it all.
Chris:Sergei knew everything. Yeah, that's the one they should have killed.
Antoine:Right, I was shocked with that one. I was not expecting him to go near Teflon.
Chris:Sergey knew everything and told everything and with his testimony and Nick's testimony everybody was going to go there Because Nick knew enough, but Sergey knew everything. He said this idiot killed this girl. Then he killed the other girls because he's like it, yes, we. He wouldn't say he had to die, he said he had to. Sergeant said he had to. He killed the one girl and then killed 13 to cover up the one right which did still to me doesn't make no sense at this point in time. Stringer visits brother mouzon in the hospital and they have the, this conversation that changes everything, changes the landscape of all their relationships. He asked brother mouzon who did it and says that we'll get him back and brother mouzon said no, I got it I take care of it, I take care of it.
Chris:You know I got it, but in that time you see the wheels turning brother mouzon's mind. You did. You did because every time I say this or that, your response is a is somebody who's guilty? Yeah, you're not responding with somebody who's concerned. Right, right, I'm shot. I could have died from some assassin yeah you more concerned? Who did it?
Antoine:that's not supposed to be your response like did they tell you it was me?
Chris:yeah, thank you and brother mouzon peeped at like you just want to know if I know you the one that did it. Yeah, so that, and it was so cold. Brother mouzon was like he was like I'll take care of it. He started reading his paper and, like Stringer wasn't even in the damn room, blocked him all the way out. He's like basically, thank you, have a nice day, I'll take care of it. I think when Stringer walked out of there it was a 50-50 thing for Stringer, like I think he was, like he might know it's 50, 50. He wasn't 100 sure. He wasn't 100 sure that that brother mouzon knew it or didn't know it. It was right down the middle. Like this dude might know I did, he just might know. And and the biggest problem is, if he knows and he goes back to tell ava, I'm done like one of these little dudes gonna pop bode and one Look what they did to.
Chris:Wallace. They killed Wallace.
Chris:You know what I'm saying that was really a good scene between Brother Mouzon and Stringer, because Stringer couldn't lie his way out of that. His emotions said everything, the way he responded to Brother Mouzon and the way Brother Mouzon was answering the questions and looking at Stringer's eyes answered a lot of questions. Yeah To whether Stringer. And looking at stringer's eyes answered a lot of questions. Yeah, to whether stringer had something to do with it or not. And the fact that stringer only cared about who did it, not whether you know. Is he all right? He got gut shot, worried about the, the pain he going through. Yeah, you know, I'm saying you worried about who did. Do you know who did it? We gonna get him. That was actually a good scene and I feel like at that point in time brother was on also understood that not only the stringer did it but avon had nothing to do with, I think right then and there he kind of knew stringer was on his own- and went rogue he went rogue.
Chris:I think he knew stringer did and stringer did it. Rogue avon knows enough about brother was on to know that. You don't play with me like that. You don't play with me Like Prop Joe said dude got more bodies than Chinese cemetery.
Antoine:Especially since Avon is the one that called him and told him to come up there.
Chris:Correct. So Avon don't play around like that at all. So then we go into Nick, going into protective custody with his girlfriend, and they put him in like a snooty fox. Yeah.
Chris:He get thrown in a snooty fox. Yeah, he get thrown into snooty fox. And the first thing he said and I love this line he told he said well, you said you wanted a place. All that hollering and yelling, we got a place of our own. Now you did all that complaining the whole. The whole time you complained about us getting out of my mama house. Right, we're out of my mama house, shut up.
Chris:So that was kind of funny like that was the first thing he told her when they walked in the door. You said you want her home because she said, uh, this is a dump. But you said you want her to have her own place own place, so I don't and I don't even know what type of Explain to me this. This is just me being petty about this scene, why when they walked in there, it was already tiles and stuff on the floor.
Antoine:I didn't see that. What type of hotel, is that. Yeah, I didn't even notice that.
Chris:Remember because when they walked in, one of the agents went into the bathroom to kind of check.
Antoine:Yeah.
Chris:It was a tile on the floor Like somebody was just dead. They didn't even clean the room.
Antoine:What kind of way is this? They didn't even clean the room. One person went out and another one came over.
Chris:That's why I'm like, oh, because that's why she said it was a dump. There's tiles on the floor and stuff like that. But that was kind of funny. So then we get to the final scene, which is Nick getting dropped off back on the waterfront, to the docks, and he tells the agent who dropped him off nobody messes with us here On our territory, this is our territory, which is true. Nobody messes with Longshorn.
Chris:I noticed, for a fact, when I was down there at one point in time there was one cat that we worked with who was wanted for a murder. Whether he did or not, we don't know, but he was wanted and they waited until he got off work and got off the dock to arrest him outside. They would not come on that dock and arrest him. That's crazy. Yeah, they don't. Longshoremen don't play, they'll die for their brother.
Chris:And if you noticed, in the series, when race came up, they were squashing right then. And there One point in time, time they was in the bar, the black dude said those damn polacks, and they was like hey, hey. He was like oh, those irishmen, like they changed it like it me being on the waterfront, on the docks, I know for a fact they're their own race. You know how they say policemen are they bleed blue? That's how it is with longshoremen. Ain't no race, we brothers, we on the same, we in the same union, we we die, we gonna die on this union, on this union land.
Chris:So I'm glad they showed that too in in uh, in this, in this particular season, is is when it comes to the docs, they're their own family. Yeah, and sometimes, I ain't gonna say sometimes they see that they see each other more than their own family. They work in two, three shifts a day you seeing, your, you seeing and they're in the bar after work and before work and before. So they, they're potentially spending maybe 18 hours of every day with each other, right, choking around, playing and working. So they, they become family. That's why they ride so hard for each other and it gets so intense when things happen amongst them, because they're like family. You know I'm saying so. I'm glad they show that.
Chris:But anyway, nick goes there, he goes to the docks. There's like there's like two black guys sitting there and they telling him like it ain't no work today, you just dead here, because there's really nobody in the hall. So Nick can tell it's one of them days where ain't nobody going to get no work. So he walks outside, goes up against the fence, puts his hands on the fence and kind of looks out at the water and then you have a montage of what's going on amongst everybody in season two. So then you have Horace getting arrested.
Chris:Everything is all loose ends are getting tied up, everybody's getting arrested. Everything is all loose ends are getting tied up. Everybody's getting arrested is getting arrested. Everybody's getting promoted is getting promoted, like everything is happening. And all these things start going through Nick's mind of where his life is about to go, because now he's in protective custody. Once he leaves that dock and goes back to the hotel room with his wife, potentially they're going to ship him somewhere in a whole other state. His life would never be the same again. He's on the east. He's probably going to end up somewhere in Arizona.
Antoine:He'll be in Montana or in Montana.
Chris:So maybe you have a different. I saw it as when he was looking, it was like this is my last time to see my wife.
Antoine:It's over with.
Chris:You feel the same way like yeah, it was just like him taking one last look at one last kodak moment mental picture of this is what. This is the last time I'm gonna see this life right, because when you go on the witness protection they get you a job, a car, a house and you become a whole different person and you're never gonna do the same stuff you was doing yeah, and you gotta remember too, he was teaching his daughter the names of all of the different ships and stuff.
Chris:He was and that was. That was his life. That's all he knew. His father, his uncle, cousins that was, that was a family thing. Yeah, them being longshoremen, being union men, and that life is gone.
Chris:And witness protection Like you can't come back. No, like them, greeks are still. They still got, they got long arm they can reach, so you can't. Once you leave, they always tell people the chance of you surviving if you come back is very slim. Somebody's gonna get you, somebody's gonna see you somewhere and it don't matter what time you come back, two or more than three somebody's going to catch you slipping, so you should not come back. So I think that was like he understood that this was it.
Chris:Now, the only thing, the only thought I had by mind after that last scene was uh, basically, would he be able to sustain that life, Knowing where he came from? I don't know if he could. You see what I'm saying. You go, you come from the fast life of the waterfront, moving and ships coming. That life knowing where he came from? I don't know if he could. You see what I'm saying yeah, you go. You come from the fast life of the waterfront, moving and ships coming in, coming out, you drinking every day, having fun with the fellas and stuff like that. To now, it's just you and your girl and your daughter right in montana sitting behind a computer. Sitting behind a computer, can a man like nick and he was young yeah, so I'm assuming Nick was about 28. At most, at most, can a young man who's used to coming from all that waterfront action turn it all off for the sake of witness protection. Do you think he could do that? I don't think so yeah.
Chris:I don't think so. I'm thinking three years or less, he coming back up there Trying to see what's cracked right and he's gonna get his head.
Antoine:I don't know, I don't know, how everybody else is saying he's gonna get his throat slid throat slid.
Chris:He's gonna go back in that bar to surprise hey, everybody, I'm back and they're gonna love him that night and he's gonna love, love, the love he was getting to where he's gonna night? Number two he's still out there, right? Number three you're only supposed to go to see them one time and go back. He's gonna get too comfortable and that's how his life is. I feel like he's gonna try to fall back into what his old life used to be. He'll go see his parents, stuff like that and I feel like that will essentially get him delete. Yeah, I agree, I definitely don't think that he could. He's built for witness protection at the age of 27, 28 years old, right, you know, especially getting stuck with the girlfriend he had, good lord yeah, you just don't like her let the man live man like he.
Chris:Women, do not put a lot of pressure on your man, who's already working a nine to five, to go get more money immediately. It takes time for men to make money. Most men don't reach their financial peak till they get into their late 40s and 50s. So stop pushing your 20 something year old baby daddy to go get the bag. He cannot get the bag at 20 something. He's too young and stupid to go get the bag at 20 something. So give it time, that is all. No, I mean, that's a financial statistic. Most men don't reach their financial peak until they get into almost their 50s, whether you're working a nine-to-five or hustling starting a business. The problem is we see entertainers as us. We are not them. We see Jason Tatum get $300 million. You will never get $300 million on your nine-to-five job, it's not happening.
Chris:You probably won't even see that in a lifetime you won't see it. In a lifetime, nobody. You can add up all the money your whole family's made since slavery. They've never made that much money. That's how much of an anomaly that is for somebody like jason tatum and all these dudes to have that much money. Right, you can add up all the slavery in your whole family lineage and nobody's never made 300 million dollars. So I get frustrated when I hear people say stuff like well, if he did it, I can do it. No, sometimes some people are blessed. Some people are blessed to be seven feet tall. They're to play in the NBA. Everybody's not blessed like that. What you have to do what I always tell people is take the talent that God has given you.
Chris:And then you and you figure out how to monetize yeah, In whatever way that is, if you're an artist, rapper, whatever stuff like that. But we got to stop thinking that everybody can fit in the same peg hole.
Chris:It's like we can't. You got to figure out your way to make money and nothing I want to say is everybody can't be a boss. So you know from the incredibles, taking a line from incredibles if everybody's super, then nobody's super. Yeah, everybody can't be a millionaire, right? Because then there won't be nobody cutting grass working at mcdonald's. You know, doing this, doing that like labor is needed for the world to work, like normal manual labor is actually needed for things to run smoothly. So if everybody is a boss, billionaire, then nobody's working. So it doesn't work that way. So we all got to understand that.
Chris:And then also another man's happiness. It depends on the man. So me personally, my old, not ultimate goal, but my goal I've I've gone for since I've been an adult. It's like if I get to 10 million, then I figure out whether I'm comfortable enough to relax, go harder, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next man could be a billion, but another man could be cool with a hundred thousand dollars a year. So every man has their own standards of what, what makes them comfortable and what puts them in a, in a, in a, in a good financial position, right? So I think, because we see all these, these crazy numbers, everybody talking about getting to the bag, into the bag. Into the bag, what you consider bag could be different than what I consider. We all gotta have enough respect for each other to let it be what it is right. You know I'm saying going forward after getting back to the wire, going forward after seeing season two and everything that happened you know, with omar stringer, frank sabatka.
Chris:Ziggy you know we talked about ziggy, a lot cheese and everybody. Which character did you see that changed the most throughout the season? Nick?
Antoine:Nick, nick, yeah, because he started out as just getting up, going to work. Regular dude Bump his head on the ceiling and next thing, you know, he getting product from White Mike, I know, at a wholesale price. You know what I'm saying. So, yeah, nick changed the most from the beginning to the end, in my opinion.
Chris:Nick. Nick did, I would say, changing the most. Yeah, nick definitely changed the most. I don't see a character who changed more than Nick. You're right about that. There's characters who did a lot more, but they were already kind of doing some stuff. Nick changed the most.
Chris:He went from a 9-to-5 dude to you know slinging chemicals Right. You went from a nine to five dude to you know slinging chemicals Right. All type of stuff On a scale from one to ten. What would you rate season two Seven being good, eight being great, nine being excellent and ten being a perfect wire season. I'll give it an eight, an eight, okay. Why eight instead of nine or ten?
Antoine:Only because it started off kind of slow. A lot of people that I talk to about the war, a lot of people don't like season two. In my opinion, season two was one of the best written seasons. Only because I feel like how they tied all the characters together. So it's like you didn't know that prop Joe was cheese, his uncle, prop Joe was working over here with the Greeks, and then you got Nick, who's over here with the Greeks, and he with the high school, with white Mike and just all of the different dots that ended up being connected in the end.
Antoine:But the reason I can't give it I wouldn't give it anything higher than the eight is just because it started off. I feel like it didn't really kind of get like really going and take off to like episode five. Maybe I don't know, I'm the type of person where I'll give the show like three, maybe four episodes to decide if I like the series or not. But I feel like because season one was so good, I gave season two a little bit longer. Maybe if season two was season one I might not have finished season two, gotcha, because it started off so slow Started off slow, yeah, but it was all that character development, yeah.
Antoine:So for you as a writer, because it started off so slow, but it was all that character development, yeah. So for you as a writer, how do you feel about it starting off so slow? Do you ever worry about developing characters too much to where the viewers lose interest and don't want to finish the show or the movie?
Chris:or whatever it is that bothers me sometimes, because you don't want to start off too slow because you will lose them, especially when it comes to a series. If people go into the theater watch the movie, they're pretty much going to watch the movie, and because it's only two and a half hours hour and a half when it comes to a series and it was 12 episodes, but the first two ain't shown them nothing, right, they liable to turn off, right. So you have to be very careful of not taking too long to develop characters, especially characters that aren't important. Right, that's the key, right. But I feel like the Wire season two did a decent job. I'm going to give it personally. I'm going to give it a seven and a half Only because of that, because it started off so slow.
Chris:Yeah, we're not that only because of that because it started off so slow yeah we got that far apart.
Antoine:Yeah, I'm almost at eight, but I can't give it eight, and you're more. Yeah, you're a strict critic.
Chris:Yeah, it's like it. Just it just went too slow to the point to where I couldn't even get a lot of my friends involved in season two. I got friends that skipped over season two, went to three. See, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, and I and I, and I still call them idiots to this day because I'm like y'all need to understand season two to understand everything after Right Right, things will make sense if you know season two.
Antoine:But they just like dog, it's too slow, and that's what I tell everybody. Too slow. That's like man. Season two is too slow, I'm like true it is. Stick with it, though.
Chris:Yeah, episode, I want to say five. It turned yeah, and then everything starts making sense. Yeah, they have to not only watch it, but pay it, don't?
Antoine:get bored to where you're not paying attention.
Chris:Yeah and that's another thing too. Some of my partners watched it. When I try to ask them about certain things, you can tell I can tell they wasn't paying attention. Yeah, because it's just too slow. So when I write stuff I try to make sure that I develop the characters in a way to where there's still movement in the script, there's still things going on, because if you take too long in a series, you're gonna lose them yeah that's just a fact.
Chris:You're gonna lose them and if you're gonna take the time to develop a character, make sure it's a character that's important to the story. It just can't be anybody right. I like what they did with ziggy's character. I like what they did with nick's character. I wish they would have told us more about russell, even though we've learned a couple little things, but she was such an important character the whole season she found the dead bodies like seemed like you would have put more into her story other than her being a single mom. So there's certain characters I wish they would have developed more, but I understand they under time, constrict you and then they got to do a certain amount of episodes in a certain amount of time. So I get all that stuff.
Chris:Character development is serious in a series and I think sometimes writers in studios take it for granted that they got 12 episodes. We got time to develop? No, you don't, because by the time the action starts cracking off, you ain't even developed the characters because you thought you had 12, 12 episodes to do it. Yeah, you got to get it done. And you got to get it done quick. Yeah, not in a sloppy way where it's too quick, you learn stuff too fast. Like, honestly, I'm gonna keep it real, even though he wasn't a a huge character in this season, he came back later. Cheese cheese came back later to be an important person. Yeah, so how? So how about develop Cheese' character a little bit more? Yeah, to the point to like why does Prop Joe hate him so much? Yeah, he called him on top of idiots. Yeah, my idiot nephew, my stupid nephew. Yeah, if he wasn't my nephew I'd kill him, right. Like, why does he hate him so much? What mistakes has Cheese made to make Prop Joe feel that way he could be?
Antoine:another Ziggy. He could be a black Ziggy.
Chris:He's a bliggy, black Ziggy, so yeah, and he very well could be, but Cheese would have been a character I would love for them to kind of develop. Even Brother Moves On. We got.
Antoine:Oh, there's a little bit of his history.
Chris:His history. We understand that he's a murderer and he's a. He's a hard hit man. But how did he get into that, right? Why does he dress up like a Muslim but he kills black people, right? Y'all don't think that was important to put a Muslim who kills black people. You didn't think that was important to explain why he's OK with killing other black people.
Antoine:But he's clearly a Muslim. Keep that bow tie.
Chris:Yeah, keep the boat. He's re. He told him to bring him to, uh, the final call. I was like he's a clear Muslim and I don't think they supposed to be running around killing black people, but he does. So what would be dope? What would be dope would be a whole series called Brother Muzan. We're going to explore everything about Brother Muzan, which will be dope because now you get to see what's going on with him in New York.
Chris:Because, he's a New York cat and how he's connected to the Baltimore cats and what hits he's done. Why is he a Muslim but he's a hitman at the same time? I think that would be kind of actually that'd be kind of dope. And if michael k williams wouldn't have died you know, rest in peace, michael k williams, the guy who plays omar that would have been dope seeing tying them together some way in a series. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Like I'm going against some brother moves on finding omar to say I'm going to get some dudes. I can't do this by myself. We did such a good job with Stringer, even though Stringer was unarmed, but we did such a good job of hunting him down, getting rid of his bodyguard and then getting rid of him I need you on this and then seeing him. I think that'd be kind of dope, though Omar and brother moves on this thing about that. Hbo gotta find a new Omar.
Chris:Man that ain't going to be the same. I know it ain't going to be the same. He had a unique look, the way he talked. I don't know if he was from I think he in New York dude, but he had Baltimore lingo though he talked like he was from Baltimore, though he didn't really sound like a New York, new York dude. He didn't really sound like a a new york, new york dude, but if I'm not mistaken, he's like. Y'all correct me if I'm wrong. Where's michael k williams from? I know it's the east coast, but I'm not really sure. I mean, where is he originally? Originally?
Antoine:in real life. I think it is new york.
Chris:Yeah, so that would have been interesting having him too like. That name of the show is called the main ingredient. So at the end of every show we ask everybody what in your opinion is the main ingredient. So at the end of every show we ask everybody what in your opinion is the main ingredient. The one thing that you can point to that made you love season two because you told clearly you like season two. So what made you like it so much?
Antoine:one thing, the way it all came together, and then all the dots got connected.
Chris:So connections, the ending connections, is what made you love it the most. Yeah, had those connections not been as fluid and connected, would you still like it? Or that would kind of mess up your perception of it. They wouldn't connect it, it would just mess it up. Yeah, they tied it up pretty nice and the Greek and Spirals got away, you got to add that in.
Chris:I forgot to add it in y'all. Yeah, greek and sparrows got away, said new city, new name, man, they got passport, they got a thousand pounds. Yeah ain't. Here's something that's dope though that I that I didn't mention. Sorry about that. Joe, remember in the hotel greek and spiros they was talking about their names. He was like that's not even my real name. Yeah. And he was like, and Greek was like. I'm not even Greek, Right. Right, I forgot about that part. That's so dope yeah.
Chris:That's what I'm talking about Y'all, not even who they think y'all is. That's not his. Spiros ain't even his name. You ain't even Greek. He could be Russian, Ukrainian.
Antoine:Right.
Chris:We calling him the Greek.
Antoine:He ain't even Greek.
Chris:There's no way they're going to find this dude. They looking in Greece for him. He's not even from.
Antoine:Greece, and they ain't even know what he look like. They don't even know what he look like Remember they walked right past him and didn't even know it. Correctly.
Antoine:But, Nick did tell them yeah, the picture, because they thought the lawyer might have been. They thought the lawyer was could have been a Greek. Nope. So when Nick was looking at the picture, they had the Greek in the back in that picture. The Greek was always around. That's what you gotta peep, though even when they was going to the diner talking to Spiros, the Greek was back there.
Chris:Ain't nobody even know who he was. He was always like ear hustling. You know he was always ear hustling. But yeah, that was a dope thing that they said that stopped my name, yeah I'm not greek, so that was.
Chris:But yeah, the main ingredient for me would pretty much be the writing. I really like the writing season there, compared to every other season where it was more action based. Right, I think the writing was very good in this season and I think if you're a person who likes very well-written series and stories, this is a season you want to watch, right? If you about all that street action, then probably season one to give you the fix you looking for or even season three.
Chris:Season two probably had the least amount of action season two definitely had the least amount of action, but it did have the best writing and clearly by far the most dialogue. Yeah, like it was more about what people had to say. The entire, the entire of yeah, but I think it played out well. I think that it's definitely a season that stands out above all other seasons because it's so different, but it definitely it's a season that's an acquired taste right you just got to be that type of person who likes good writing to like season two.
Chris:I think if you're action-based type of person and you've already watched season one and you're looking for more, season one probably wouldn't be, you know, the best thing for you. But you know it is what it is. But once again, antoine, I thank you very much for coming through it's all good to the main ingredient and chopping it up with me about the wire.
Chris:We're gonna do another season. Let you choose a season, just make sure it's not season one. That's too easy. Season one is too easy. We got to pick another season. We'll do another season and we'll get through that season, just like we got through season two, and kind of explain everything in detail and get it going Definitely. Appreciate you, my brother. It's all good. You're always welcome, appreciate it. And to y'all y'all tell me what y'all think about season two of the wire. I think it's dope. Antoine thinks it's dope, but it's up to you. If you like writing, you probably like it. If you like action, you probably still like it, but it's just a lot less action. But anyway, I'm chris ellis, the host of the main ingredient with chris ellis, and I'll see y'all next time. Peace.