[Jules22]

okay, my other favorite episode, although i love them all like i previously said, is Season 1 Episode 12 "cleaning up"

Now before i dissect this episode a little bit, i want to say that i really like season 1. I have heard a lot of people say 4 is the best season (my favorite is actually three but i am a barksdale story line junkie). I like season 4 a lot, its really good (i especially like how they took mcnulty out of it for the most part but kept him involved, how many shows write their main character down to a side character? brilliant!)

Season 1 to me, tho, is really amazing and I like it better than season 4. To me it really draws you into a very complex world very well, and i was instantly hooked when i watched season one episode one. But to me the best episode of the whole season is episode 12. You probably rememeber it as the one where Wallace dies and Avon goes to jail, but to me it is the peak of the series intertwining storylines, i was floored it really had me glued to the couch.

Avon's attorney Levy helps Stringer and Avon focus on their vulnerabilities. Together they enumerate their weak points and come up with what is essentially a hit list, which includes the security guard who lied to save D'Angelo as well as Little Man, who killed Orlando, and Wallace, who can connect them to the death of Brandon.


(to me Idris Elba (Stringer) and Wood Harris (Avon Barksdale) really convey their menace and reach in this scene, as they decide on the fates of people in a brief moment of consideration before each one, and then move on. Their cold business like manner in deciding the fates of these human beings really had me moved, and i was loving it. What great writing and acting!)

When Avon and Stringer express interest in Wallace's whereabouts, D'Angelo reassures them that Wallace is out of the game and in fact has moved away. When they persist, he tells them, "Let the boy be." Wallace, however, is bored in the country and returns to the projects to ask for his job back. Bodie and Poot are dispatched to kill him and they do.

(When D is called up to Avon's office, you can sense the menace in the way avon and stinger ask about Wallace, you know they have already decided he needs to be killed because he was weak behind Brandon's death. It's heartbreaking really, and D senses it and tries to protect Stringer as best he can, but fails to really back his Uncle and Stringer down. Is he partly responsible? love the club music in this scene too, it fits)

Burrell summons Daniels to his office to meet Sen. Clay Davis, whose driver had been picked up with $20,000 in cash from the projects. "That was a mis-understanding of no concern of the police," Davis assures Daniels. Daniels leaves after persisting in his interest in the twenty grand, and Davis is furious: "You need to put his ass on a foot post so far out in the sticks he's gonna see the Philadelphia cops working towards you," he tells Burrell.


(Ah Daniels, my favorite police character. I dont know the name of the guy who plays him but he does a great job! This is one of my dark horse favorite scenes, the political forces at work within the police department are really displayed. I like how Clay Davis switches from really happy to really menacing in a split second, great stuff! "You're not just talking to me, erv, you're talking to the MAYOR, the CITY CAUCUS, the STATE CENTRAL CONTROLLER i dont know it word for word but it rocks")

With a wire installed in Avon's office, the squad can see Stringer and Avon packing things up to move. They also see Avon asking D'Angelo to make a New York City run that evening to pick up drugs. Reluctantly, D'Angelo agrees, and before he leaves, the squad attaches a tailing device to his car. He's stopped and arrested after he makes the pickup, and is defiant when Daniels and McNulty try to flip him by showing him pictures of Wallace and the security guard Avon had murdered. "That's how you take care of your own?" McNulty asks him. But when Stringer and Levy come to visit him in jail, he is defiant with them, too. "Where's Wallace, String?" he asks over and over. As they leave, D'Angelo yells that he'll get his own lawyer.

(this whole sequence is the season's dramtic peak, which is over surprisingly fast once they get the camera into barksdales office, they find out about the heroin buy in new york and D'Angelo faces some tough choices. Gripping stuff imo)


Outside Orlando's, a S.W.A.T. team readies itself for action, but when Daniels and McNulty arrive, they simply knock on the club door and enter when it's opened. There is no drama, Daniels cuffs Avon and, leaving Stringer to ponder the future, marches Avon out.

In the Detail Room, Sydnor says to Freamon, "Best work I ever did. Just feel like this ain't finished." At the Pit, the courtyard is empty. For the first time in a long time, no drugs are for sale.


(First time the series protaganists and antagonists meet face to face for an extended period. Little is said, little needs be said. The empty couch after Sydnor's revelation is as powerful an image as i have seen on tv))