History Series / TheWire

* {{Fanservice}}: Avon runs his drug operation out of a strip club, Orlando's. The show is always kind enough to include a ''looong'' establishing shot of a dancer whenever the location is visited, as though the producers think the audience will forget it's a strip club unless they see tits.

** Lex walks right up to Fruit as he's leaving a nightclub with the woman who prompted him to do this, does it, and as she screams tells her to catch him later.[[note:The Stanfields make sure that never happens]]

* CallBack:
** In the third season finale, Omar goes down to the waterfront to dispose of Brother Mouzone's gun [[spoiler:after the two have killed Stringer]]. On a nearby wall are tattered election posters for Frank Sobotka.
** The final episode has a number of callbacks to previous episodes and seasons:

* CallBack: The final episode has a number of callbacks to previous episodes and seasons:
** There's a montage of many of the primary locations featured in previous seasons, such as the Pit, the docks, the first detail HQ.
** There's a shot of two people getting into an elevator, shot from the angle of a security camera, which calls back a similar scene in the first episode.
** A shot from the POV of another security camera getting a rock thrown at it, which is a callback to a similar scene in the first season that is also in the opening credits for every season.

* HoneyTrap: The Barksdales attempt to carry out a hit on Marlo by sending a woman named Devonne to seduce him. Chris Partlow senses a trap, and thus is able to foil the attempt. Marlo then personally executes Devonne outside her house.

* PerpWalk: Season 2. While the rest of the suspects are taken in a carefully synchronized dawn raid, the ones tasked to take Sobotka are told to wait until he's at the union office, and once they've gone in they wait until a suitably sizeable press gang has assembled before Valchek personally walks him out to the car.

** Fails twice in Season 3.

*** The mayor holds up Daniels' promotion to major as a way to convince Daniels' wife to drop her primary bid against a sitting councilwoman who is one of the mayor's strongest supporters. Instead, Daniels decides to give up on the promotion.

* MoralEventHorizon: For Omar, the Barksdale hitmen [[GodzillaThreshold attempting to kill him]] on a Sunday morning when he's taking his grandmother[[note]]who has ''no'' idea about his criminal activities[[/note]] to church.

** Avon's attempt to strike back at Marlo with a drive-by hit on one of his corners gets two of his own soldiers killed because they couldn't wait and follow instructions.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: While trying to listen to Shardene's bug over the music, the usually soft-spoken Freamon raises his voice and swears at Herc and Carver when he tells them to stop their conversation about chili dogs so he can listen more clearly. Not only do they shut up immediately, they have awkward looks on their faces.

* LessEmbarrassingTerm: When Mayor Royce finally hears about "Hamsterdam," he realizes--in an unusual display of progressive thinking--that Colvin might be on to something (or at the very least realized that it's a quick and cheap way of reducing the crime stats, thus burnishing his record) and wants to figure out a way to make it more general. However, he also realizes that "Baltimore legalized drugs" is guaranteed to play poorly in the press and kill a lot of incoming federal dollars, so he casts about for a less embarrassing way of saying "we legalized drugs." Unfortunately, by the time he settles on "harm reduction" as the acceptable term, the media has already caught wind of Hamsterdam and he has to fall in line. (This, incidentally, is the last time Royce is portrayed remotely positively.)

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: [[spoiler:D'Angelo]] is killed, and the scene is dressed to make it look like a suicide. [=McNulty=] [[NeverSuicide knows best]].

** Another of Proposition Joe's nephews is Drac, who is so incompetent that he doesn't even speak in drug slang ("Cocaine, nigga!"). The MCU contemplates busting a dealer higher up the chain in hopes that Drac gets promoted.

** Invoked by Lt. Daniels when he is explaining to the commissioner why his team wants to arrest Cheese: they are [[BatmanGambit betting that his gang will replace him with the more talkative, denser Drac]]. When the commissioner asks why he thinks this will work, Daniels reminds him that the police have been known to promote incompetent people too. [[Spoiler:It doesn't work]].