Asshole Sweepstakes

It's time once again, Wire viewers!  [cue audience shouting:]  Who's... the biggest... asshole?

A wide-open race this week:

• Herc makes a weak play for the title, leaving Bubbles hanging yet again; Bubbles' revenge plants Herc squarely back in the dumbest asshole spot, continuing his ten-week streak.
• Marlo orders the death of two people but, strangely, this doesn't qualify him for biggest asshole since they're both work-related.  His increasingly itchy trigger finger keeps him on the radar, though.  Plus, he hurt Bodie--have we ever seen that before?
• Rawls is conspicuous in his absence, doing nothing more assholish than letting Barrell run wild--or giving him enough rope to hang himself?
• Marimow is an asshole, but he's the same asshole he's been since his first appearance:  a cheap Rawls knockoff who doesn't even share Rawls' glee in his own assholery.  And that's why he hasn't won a week yet.  Show us something new, Marimow!
• The area superintendent makes a late but strong run for the crown with her insistence on turning Colvin's class into another meaningless test prep.  Does Miss Mason undercut the program because she just got shoved by a student, or because she can see which way the wind is blowing?
• McNulty, last season's winner, hasn't been in the running once this year.  This week he cements his "most reformed" title by becoming one of the series' good teachers, educating Baker in the ways of real police work.
• Clay Davis is always a contender, but at least Carcetti and Norman know his game.  Will somebody please act on those subpoenas and get rid of him?
• This week sees a surprising new contestant:  Michael.  Not so much for the favor he requests, but for the disturbing, sinister pride he seems to take afterwards.  He isn't a serious contender yet, but small steps and good intentions are leading him there.
• Bubbles plays a mean little trick, but it's on Herc so that doesn't qualify him at all.  (Great bit of misdirection in the on-demand summary:  when it said "Bubbles gets revenge" I assumed it meant on the guy who's been robbing him.)
• And that leaves Delonda Brice.  Other characters do far more damage to far more people with their inflexible policies, their negligence, their drugs, their murders, but every week that Delonda shows up she somehow places herself in the top two or three assholes.  Maybe it's just great acting from Sandi McCree, who freezes her face into a permanent sneer of baseless entitlement.  Maybe it's the parasitic way she lives off a son she's done nothing for except push into the drug trade.  Maybe it's because in a season about children, nobody comes off worse than the many bad parents.

But this week it's because she has the gall to disrespect Colvin, who's doing more to help Namond than she probably ever has.  Does she cuss him out because she knows he's police--Colvin radiates police--or because she makes the same assumption Michael made about Cutty, that any man who takes an interest in a teenaged boy's future must be a pedophile?  Either way, she runs down the man who's been doing her job, and runs down her son in the same breath.  Congratulations, Delonda:  you just might take the season title and you haven't lifted a finger.  But then, you never do.

Comments

[Matt Brady]

Marc, I'm loving your Wire reviews, and now you've got me playing Spot the Asshole when I watch it too! On this episode I've gotta go with Namond's mom ("You were afraid of baby booking?!"), but Herc should get special recognition for the most clueless asshole and Clay Davis always pisses me off. Man, this is a great show.

[Marc]

Herc always gets special recognition for most clueless asshole.

[Mike]

i think she curses him out more or less because she doesnt want him thinking outside of her box. In order for her to control namond she cant have any outside influences affecting him.