The Wire / Tropes C to D

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Tropes comin'!

C

• Calling Me a Logarithm: Brother Mouzone says to his associate Lamar about finding Omar in a gay bar, "You're the perfect bait. They'll see you as conflicted; your homophobia is so visceral." Lamar replies, "You see that? I ain't even stepped inside the joint yet, and you callin' me a cocksucker."
• Call-Back: 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.

• The Cameo: John Munch briefly shows up as a bar patron in "Took".
• Camera Sniper: Happens a lot, particularly in season one. For instance, the scene where Bubbles is doing his red hat trick (putting red hats on the suspects being monitored) and Kima is on the roof photographing them.
• Can Always Spot a Cop:
  • Played straight many, many times. Drug dealers and street kids tend to develop a very good sense for who is a cop. Even after retiring from the police and starting to work with various educators and professors, Howard "Bunny" Colvin still finds street kids identifying him as police and treating him accordingly. Specific examples include one time when he wanders down a hallway in a local middle school and suddenly realizes that all the kids there are avoiding him and whispering to each other about him being a cop. In another case he accompanies Professor Paretti to interview a local youth and is immediately identified as a cop.
    Colvin: [Walks into interview room and shuts door] So, Shawn-
    Shawn: You police. [glances at Professor Paretti] He ain't.
  • In the first season Sydnor (who is considered one of the best undercover cops in the Baltimore Police Department), is getting ready to go undercover as a homeless junkie in order to be recorded buying from certain dealers. Before going out on the street to actually do it, the other detectives in the special detail bring Sydnor in before their informant Bubbles, who is an actual homeless junkie. While Sydnor's disguise and appearance is good enough on a surface level, it only takes a quick look for Bubbles to start poking holes in the facade. The biggest mistake by far is that Sydnor is wearing his wedding ring, which any junkie would have long since pawned off for drug money, but there are several smaller signs and details that might alert an observant dealer that Sydnor is a cop, and every junkie around would definitely know that he isn't who he says he is.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Bunk Moreland. His best friend, Jimmy McNulty, is definitely less of a lightweight.
• Cardboard Prison: It takes Bodie about three minutes to break out of juvenile hall.
• Career-Building Blunder: In season two, Lt. Daniels hires Sgt. Carver as part of his team again despite Carver snitching about their progress to the higher-ups which led to severe meddling in the investigation the previous season, explaining that he knows Carver won't do it again after seeing how wrong it went the first time, and with extra attention on him.
• The Casanova:
  • Poot is quite popular with the ladies and has many girlfriends. Bodie makes fun of how often he has to go to the VD clinic.
  • The fact that Cutty connects with so many of his students' mothers becomes a point of contention between them and him. He agrees to back off and appears to be in a relationship with a nurse at the end of his story arc.
  • Omar apparently has boys everywhere.
  • McNulty, at least when he's drinking a lot. During his more stable phases, his Casanova tendencies disappear.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • McNulty: "The fuck did I do?" It highlights the way he plunges heedlessly through life without care for the damage he causes. The phrase is occasionally given a serious turn, such as after he starts blaming himself for Kima's shooting and asks an anguished, "What the fuck did I do?"
  • Bunk: "Happy now, bitch?"; "Givin' a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck"
  • Proposition Joe: "I got a proposition for you"
  • Clay Davis: "Sheeeeeeeeeeit". This is Isiah Whitlock, Jr.'s catchphrase, which he also used in 25th Hour.
  • Omar: "Indeed" (or "Oh, indeed", if he’s about do do something he really enjoys) and "No doubt".
  • "Yo, Omar comin'!": Anyone running away from Omar.
  • D'Angelo: "Mos' def'." Interestingly, his mother also uses it.
  • Snoop: YERP!!
  • Interesting use with Lt. Dennis Mello. He's played by former police detective Jay Landsman^note Not to be confused with the burly character played by Delaney Williams, who is named 'Jay Landsman' in tribute to the real guy, who had his own real life catch phrase: he used to pretend to light up a joint and pass it around when something crazy came up in discussions with fellow officers, saying, "Good shit, right?" The writers incorporated it into his character; Mello does the same thing when scoping out potential locations for Major Colvin's "experiment."
  • Stringer Bell: "Lock / shut that door"
  • "The Western District Way"
  • Daniels: "(This is some) Bulllllshit" and "Rhonnie, dear / Rhonnie, darling"
  • Glekas: "Malaka!" It means "wanker." Almost always referring to Ziggy Sobotka. He eats that word in the end though.
  • Series wide: "It's all in the game", to the point of being Arc Words.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Tupac Shakur existed in The Wire universe yet no one notices Avon Barksdale looks a lot like Wood Harris who costarred with Tupac in Above The Rim.
  • Method Man plays Cheese, but Wu-Tang Clan songs have been heard on the radio at least once. We get a clear view of his Wu logo tattoo on his hand in season 4.
  • The reference to former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke in Season 5 despite a guest appearance by the same in Season 3, playing a health official.
  • In one episode, McNulty pontificates that the core cop cast of the show are among maybe ten or twenty truly good cops in Baltimore. One of the cops that he names is Ed Burns, one of the show's co-creators who is indeed a former cop. Burns was many years retired from police work when he began working on this show, so the cop in question would have to be a different Ed Burns.
  • The real Jay Landsman plays Lt. Dennis Mello, while Delaney Williams plays a fictional version of Landsman. Made more confusing in a scene in the fifth season where Mello, Jay Landsman, and Detective John Munch (who was based on Landsman) all appear in a bar.
  • Speaking of John Munch's cameo, there's quite a bit of overlap between the casts of The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street (justified, as both shows were filmed in Baltimore and East Coast casting is not as robust as West Coast casting).
  • Omar is a fan of HBO's Oz, although many cast members on The Wire (including Wood Harris, Domenick Lombardozzi, Seth Gilliam, John Doman, Lance Reddick, J.D. Williams, Clarke Peters and Method Man) have appeared on it.
  • In one episode, Avon mentions the Real Life Baltimore drug kingpin "Little Melvin" Williams when he's wondering how future generations in Baltimore will remember him. The now-reformed Williams (who was himself the inspiration for Avon) has a recurring role as the Deacon in Seasons 3 and 4.
• Central Theme: Systems are fundamentally corrupt, and individual members of every system will sabotage it by playing to their self-interest. In addition, each season has a central theme, usually established in the opening scene:
  • Season one: America is a rigged game, and people get hurt. The street gamblers always let Snot Boogie gamble with him, but he always steals the pot money, and this time they kill him for it.
  • Season two: The failure of industry, which drives people to desperate measures. Several characters note the dead factories that used to create steel, and the dying docks take up a large section of the plot.
  • Season three: The failure of politics, which can only fix the damage it did last time it tried to fix something. In the opening scene, the government knocks down a tower block that it built a generation ago to fix urban blight but caused unexpected crime. The crowd gets caught in the resulting dust cloud, symbolizing the unexpected ramifications that this action will cause.
  • Season four: The failure of education, which doesn't help unless it adapts to the needs of the students. In the opening scene, Snoop learns about nail guns by relating it back to something she understands: firearms. Throughout the series, we see students more easily understanding concepts when presented in terms they deal with day to day.
  • Season five: The failure of media, which is focused on sensation rather than public service to stay alive. We see journalists struggling to write stories about real issues, McNulty trying to generate interest in crime by creating a serial killer, and Michael angrily turns off Dexter to focus Dookie on important matters.
• Chaotic Stupid: Ziggy Sobotka makes a mess out of absolutely everything he says and does; Lighting hundred dollar bills on fire in a pub full of poor working men, buying a pet duck and giving it whisky, repeatedly picking fights with bigger and tougher people, whipping out his member in a crowded bar—if it's stupid, and he thinks there's a laugh in it, he'll do it. Although he finally wises up when it's too late to do any good.
• Character Shilling: A lot of characters in the third season comment on just how bad and cold Marlo Stanfield is, saying that he's "for real" and that no gangster we've yet seen can match up to him. Subverted in that, once he shows up, he lives up to the hype, starting a reign of terror that eclipses that of the Barksdale crew.
• Character Tics: Bodie spits through his teeth, usually when annoyed.
• Characterization Marches On: In an issue of Early-Installment Weirdness, Omar casually curses in his very first scene in the series. After a scene in episode three where he chides his lover Brandon for using "ugly language," it becomes a character trait that he never swears.
• Chastity Couple: Omar and Renaldo are not shown so much as holding hands, in comparison to Omar's being shown as affectionate with his first two boyfriends.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The "Get Out of Jail Free" Card.
  • Chris' Spiteful Spit on Michael's step-father
  • Bird's signature .380 pistol. Unlike savvier criminals who would toss their guns after using them, Bird continued to carry the same weapon that he used in a murder. Omar was also able to identify him on the witness stand because of it.
  • Dozerman's stolen service weapon
  • Omar starts carrying a Desert Eagle in Season 5. He later uses it to rob Old Face Andre, since the enormous rounds can penetrate bullet-proof glass.
  • The nail gun in season four.
  • Daniels' past corruption investigation, which is mentioned in the third episode and becomes relevant in the Finale, 5 seasons later.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Major Colvin makes his intro in "Stray Rounds" during the investigation and crackdown that follows a street shootout between Bodie's crew and a rival crew. He's given just enough screentime to make clear he's going to be a main cast member in Seasons 3 and 4.
  • Kenard, who appears briefly in season 3 as one of the kids on the street that Bunk notices proclaiming, "It's my turn to be Omar!". He returns in season four, and then in season five is the one to shoot Omar. The best part is that this wasn't even intentional on the writer's part, they only found out later that it was the same kid and he just happened to be cast for both roles. In one interview Dennis Lehane jokingly declared that I Meant to Do That.
  • The card-hoarding hobo in season 5.
• Chekhov's Skill: Michael learning "The Game."
• Cherubic Choir: In season four, the theme song used a Boy's Choir, since that season's theme is the decrepit west Baltimore school system and the young men it fails to help.
• The Chessmaster: Many including Stringer, Prop Joe, etc. though their successes vary. Probably the most successful however, is Lester Freamon who is a Magnificent Bastard despite being a good guy.
• Chess Motifs: In the third episode, Bodie and Wallace play checkers with a chess set. D'Angelo comes over and tries to teach them chess in terms of the drug trade and the characters, with plenty of subtext; the pawns are street dealers and muscle, the boss of the clan, Avon is the King and the all-powerful and flexible Stringer Bell is the Queen. Everyone stays the same, but very successful pawns can become queens in rare circumstances, or so they are made to believe. In truth, he says, the game is rigged against pawns like them.
• Childhood Memory Demolition Team: A rather cynical version. The whole neighborhood gathers to watch the demolition of some high-rise housing projects. Most people are glad to see them go, even those who grew up there, because they had been a focal point for some of the worst drug and violent crime in the city. Poot, however, expresses sadness and nostalgia, mainly because that was where he lost his virginity. Bodie mocks him for his The Casanova reputation and Bodie says the real tragedy is that they're about to lose a prime drug market.
  Bodie: Man, why didn't you say? They probably wouldn't be tearing this tower down now. They could put a big-ass sign in the front. "Here's where Malik Carr first got his dick wet."
• Children Are Innocent: Played straight with characters like Michael's brother, Bug, and then defied with characters like Kenard, who lies, steals, kills Omar, and is eventually arrested. Not to mention swears like a sailor on leave. He's even seen about to set a cat on fire before being distracted by Omar..
• Child Soldiers: Not always the case for every West Baltimore kid, but it's certainly expected, given the ruthless nature of the drug game. In some cases like Bodie and Poot, they voluntarily joined for the monetary benefits and because it's almost encouraged by their environment. Even the language enforces it; for instance they refer to their new homes as "cribs". The most blatant and tragic case is Michael. Although he became a very good soldier for Marlo Stanfield, he joined because he needed an escape from his horrible living conditions, junkie mother, and pedophile stepfather.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
  • Stringer.
  • Jimmy "fuck the bosses" McNulty for pretty much the entire series.
    Daniels: We're all pieces of shit when we're in your way. That goes with the territory.
  • Proposition Joe
• Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome:
  • In "Stray Rounds," Bodie and his crew get involved in a shootout with a rival crew in which a kid in an apartment on the corner was hit by a stray. Stringer tasks Bodie with getting rid of the guns, which Bodie does so by tossing the bag over the side of a bridge. Unbeknownst to him, they land on a barge and are turned over to the police. Fortunately, the guns were wiped clean beforehand, allowing Bodie to resist Cole's attempt to bluff him in the interrogation room.
  • The only time a criminal retains his gun, it's because Bird has a particular attachment to the weapon, a chromed Makarov, and ends up with life without parole for his sentimentality.
• Churchgoing Villain: Most of the criminals honor the "Sunday Truce". This is apparently so that they can go to church with their family without those outside "The Game" getting shot at. When Stringer authorizes an attempt on stick-up-man Omar's life while he's with his grandmother, the rest of the underworld is appalled. Avon forces the shooters who carried out the attack to buy Omar's grandmother a new hat.
• Cigarette Burns: When the Barksdale gang catch Brandon, a member of a group of thieves that robbed them, they torture him to try to learn the whereabouts of Omar, kill him, and leave his mutilated corpse on display as a lesson to anyone else who thinks of crossing them. A whole series of cigarette burns were part of that torture, although that only scratches the surface of what they did.
  Detective McNulty: [Looking at Brandon's body] Jesus, they must have killed this kid 4 or 5 times.
  Detective Norris: Cut him open in a dozen places, burned him with cigarettes... goddamn torture fest is what it was.
• The City: Baltimore is the show's setting, and it has all the hallmarks of a bustling, divided city.
• Cleanup Crew: Near the end of season two, there's a scene that cuts between a cleanup crew working for The Greek furiously cleaning up a location, (washing heroin and coke down a drainage system with a hose, shredding documents and then taking big bags full of those shreds to dispose of elsewhere, etc.) and cops furiously typing up warrants to search that location. By the time the cops get there, everything is gone.
• Clear My Name:
  • In one episode, Herc and Carver arrest one of the Barksdales' cash mule and turn the money over to the Major Crimes Unit. However, it is several thousand dollars short of the amount that they heard being discussed on the wire. So Daniels tells them to get it back before he reports them—Herc and Carver tear apart the squad car and find that it has somehow gotten under the spare tire in the trunk. Carver notes that Daniels will never believe they didn't try to steal it. And since they have both seen each other doing so in the past, neither of them really believes the other didn't hide it there.
  • Happens to Omar after the Stanfield organization frames him for murder. The exoneration process is more difficult for Bunk since Omar is guilty of other murders.
• *Click* Hello: Omar Little announces his presence this way to a couple of guards distracted by one of his team-mates undercover as a cheap prostitute pulling off the heist against the New Day Co-op.
• Club Kid: Dante; downplayed for the most part until the end of season three, when he is found in a gay bar drowning his sorrows in a Cosmopolitan.
• Clueless Boss: There are numerous ones throughout the course of the show, especially in the BPD:
  • The most on point example is Lieutenant Jimmy Asher, the man that Lester picks to be the Puppet King of the MCU after Daniels is promoted at the end of Season 3.
  • Lt. Charles Marimow, put in charge of the MCU by Rawls early in season 4. He's abrasive and has a reputation for destroying units and alienating his men^note to the point that Rawls calls him "my Trojan Horse". The fact that Herc knows how the drug crews move their stashes around and Marimow doesn't is proof of his incompetency.
  • When Carver transfers out of the MCU and becomes the head of Major Colvin's Drug Enforcement Unit, he's unable to provide any useful information when Colvin asks about the turf war between the Barksdale and Stanfield crews. Colvin eventually summons Carver to his office to give him a compassionate teardown explaining his need to connect with the street. Carver takes this to heart and greatly cleans up his act by season 4.
  • The reason Colvin is able to get away with creating and running Hamsterdam for as long as he does is in part to this trope, as both his superiors and peers, even the well meaning ones, are drastically out of touch with life in the city and what is happening where.
  • Initially, Colvin has a hard time getting information on the drug crews so he can set up Hamsterdam, due to the other district commanders being pressured by Rawls to focus on street rips. When Colvin stops by the MCU detail office, he's incredulous seeing that Daniels and his small unit have more information than any of the districts or headquarters.
  • After McNulty debriefs Judge Phelan, the proto-MCU is kickstarted when the judge shames Burrell and Rawls for their ignorance and inaction about Avon Barksdale.
• Clueless Detective: In line with the above.
  • Ray Cole is another average homicide detective with a middling clearance rate. McNulty got promoted from beat cop to detective by correcting Cole's mistake.
  • The original Major Crimes Unit is designed as the dumping ground for the dead wood and humps from several departments.
    • Michael Santangelo is a bad homicide detective who frets over his low 40% clearance rate, which he tries to justify on the grounds that he doesn't get that many "dunkers" (easy to solve cases). This in part is why Rawls tries to use him to spy on McNulty. When Avon and Stringer pay a rare visit to the Pit, Santangelo is pissing at the opposite side of the roof where he was supposed to be and misses them. When he tires of being Rawls' spy, Rawls gives Santangelo an ultimatum: clear one of his open cases, give something on McNulty, or leave the Homicide Unit altogether. Thus, Jay Landsman tricks him into seeing a phony psychic named "Madame LaRue", keeping him out of the way while McNulty and Bunk clear one of his cases, giving Santangelo the spine to refuse Rawls' demands. He's demoted to patrol and placed in the Western District. Santangelo finds himself much happier in this position since he takes home the same pay and pension for much less demanding work.
    • Augie Polk and Pat Mahon are two drunken and lazy detectives from other departments who get dumped into the detail in the first season. When they are tasked by McNulty with putting a face to Avon Barksdale, they come back drunk bearing a photo of a middle-aged white man. Polk's only real concern about the job is paid overtime. Mahon is of the same ilk and jumps at the chance of early retirement after he's injured by Bodie during a raid, scheming that he'll even complement his pension with a cushy underground economy job. Appropriately, their last names, "Póg mo thóin" (pronounced Pogue Mahone and source of The Pogues' band name) are Irish for "Kiss my ass."
      Greggs: Maybe he's white. (laughs)
    • Subverted with Roland Prezbylewski. He has genuinely been a terrible cop to date, managing to shoot up his car and later pistol-whipping a kid in the projects after going out drinking with Herc and Carver. While confined to the office, he proves to be great at data analysis and paper chasing. All his skills as an analyst and codebreaker notwithstanding, he is revealed to still be an utterly terrible street cop. But, when he leaves the unit, Sydnor—who is Board-certified Natural Police—laments his absence.
    • Subverted with Lester Freamon. Dumped from the dull pawnshop unit, he remains uninvolved at first, preferring to work on his dollhose furniture, giving the impression he's another hump and being called "a cuddly house cat" by Daniels. However, the Avon Barksdale case piques his interest and he's quick to produce a photo of the elusive Avon after several unsuccessful attempts by other detectives. From there, he consistently shows he's one of the smartest detectives out there. A few years later, Daniels acknowledges that Lester is the MCU.
  • Jimmy "I'm the smartest asshole in three districts" McNulty fully exploits it in his season 5 scheme while working at Homicide.
    McNulty: Most of the guys up here couldn't catch the clap in a Mexican whorehouse!
  • Happens again in season 2 when Major Stan Valchek, in a bitter feud with Frank Sobotka over a stained glass window, wants an investigation opened into Sobotka's finances. Valchek offer Burrell political influence from the Polish council members in his district in exchange for a special unit devoted to investigating Sobotka. Rawls sends an investigative team from CID to Valchek, all "highly recommended" officers, who are, like the Barksdale detail from season 1, just dead-weight "humps" that other divisions wanted to get rid of. Witnessing the task force's lack of work ethic infuriates Valchek, who promptly demands a real police detail under Daniels' command (on Prez's recommendation and repaying a favor Valchek owed to Daniels from Season 1), threatening to complicate Burrell's effort to become Commissioner if he doesn't agree.
• Clueless Mystery: The series is not big on whodunnits. In fact, the detectives use the term for cases they really, really don't want to work—but there is one particular murder that plays out like this. In season four, Kima investigates the death of a witness. The case sprawls across multiple episodes; examines motives, suspects, and forensics; becomes a political hot potato; and even gets Tommy Carcetti elected as Mayor. After she's stumped, Kima goes back to look at the crime scene one last time, and she works out that the killing was an accident, and the killer didn't even realize he'd done it. Not only is the culprit unhinted at until the last few moments, the audience never even gets to see them. On the other hand, if you consider just that brief final run at the case, the show does play fair with the clues Kima spots and her line of reasoning.
• Cluster F-Bomb: McNulty and Bunk spend an entire scene investigating a crime scene and reconstruct it with great precision while muttering nothing but well timed variations of the word "fuck". One wonders if the entire scene was titled "Reconsfucktion" or similar on the original script.
• Colonel Badass: Colonel Cedric Daniels. He starts as a Lieutenant, and becomes Majorly Awesome, Colonel Badass, and finally Da Chief, before realizing he doesn't want to be at the head of such a flawed police department. the fact that he immediately starts getting blackmailed doesn't help. He quits and becomes a lawyer.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • O-Dog suggests to Snoop and Chris to execute someone via drive-by, like in the movie Boyz n the Hood. "Shit was tight, remember?" The negative context of the drive-bys from the movie must've gone completely over his head.
  • "Like a 40 degree day!"
• Comically Small Demand: After being arrested. Wee-bey demands some take-out food to confess all of the murders he's ever committed. Given that he's already facing a life sentence at best for a different crime he's being charged with, he has nothing to lose by confessing, and prison food sucks.
• Coming of Age Story: Season four has one of the darkest examples of this with the boys of summer. Despite following middle-school students versus high school, the characters all end up in much darker places.
  • Dukie looks like he earned his happy ending— except now, he is too scared of high school and drops out to become a corner dealer. In season five, he later become a heroin addict.
  • Randy knows of a murder, which he uses to try to get out of trouble only to be outted as a snitch thanks to the police slipping during an investigation. This leads to numerous beatings, isolation from friends and even his foster home getting firebombed. Afterwards, he is put into a group home, where the beatings continue. In season five, Randy is now cold and hardened.
  • Michael after his abusive step-dad is murdered thanks to Chris Partlow. Michael is drafted into Marlo's ranks. By the end of the season, Michael has become cold to his friends (except Dukie) and a killer. This keeps up until he is betrayed in season five.
  • Namond is lucky enough to get the happiest ending of his friends. After constant pressure from his mother to be a drug dealer, Bunny Colvin is able to step in and adopt him. Through out season four, Colvin had helped Namond become more mature. In season five, a high-school age Namond is giving an award-winning speech on AIDS, showing he is fully out of the game.
• Common Nonsense Jury: The jury for Clay Davis's trial are seemingly under the impression that massive campaign finance fraud ceases to be illegal if you give away all the money.
• Commuting on a Bus: McNulty in season four. In season five, to great hilarity, the show also provides a literal example, when McNulty arrives at a crime scene on a bus because BPD has no funds for cars.
  Brian Baker: Well now I've seen everything.
• Compassionate Critic: Police Major "Bunny" Colvin from The Wire does a completely sincere and heartfelt version of this at one point with the hotheaded Segreant Carver who is under his command. Colvin goes into a speech comparing the increasingly harsh tactics used by the police to those of soldiers holding occupied territory, and expounds about how he feels young policemen, including Carver, are so focused on the game of making the right number of arrests, seizures, etc. that they forget the point of being police; protecting the neighborhood under their care. Carver himself evidently finds it to be Constructive Criticism, because we see in the following seasons that he takes Colvin's advice to heart, completely changing his style of being a cop, and becoming much more effective at the job. A part of Colvin's speech:
  You're a good man, sergeant. You got good instincts, and as far as I can tell, you're a decent supervisor. But from where I sit, you ain't shit when it comes to policing. Oh, don't take it personal, it ain't just you, it's all our young police. Whole generation of y'all. You think about it; you've been here over a year now, and you got nobody on the street looking out for you, nobody willing to talk to you. Isn't that right? This drug thing, this ain't police work. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun to a corner to jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? ... Before we took the wrong turn and started up with these war games, a cop walked a beat, and he learned that post. And if there were things that happened on that post, where there be a rape, a robbery, a shooting, he had people out there helping him, feeding him information. But every time I came to you, my DEU sergeant for information, to find out what's going on out on those streets... all that came back was some bullshit. You had your stats, your arrests, your seizures, but don't none of that amount to shit when it comes to protecting the neighborhood, now do it?
• The Con: Maurice Levy constantly suggests his clients from organized crime turn to real estate; they do. One of the background subplots is that drug money is being funneled to State Sen. Clay Davis, who then tells Stringer which buildings are due to get revitalization grants so Stringer can buy them while they are still dirt cheap. It turns out the scam is on Stringer
• Consummate Liar: Quite a few of those, but Clay Davis and Scott Templeton are the best examples.
• Consummate Professional: Bunk Moreland and Kima Greggs, especially in comparison to McNulty, who's initially Bunk's partner in Homicide and later works alongside Kima in the Major Crimes Unit.
• Contemplative Boss: Rawls is posed this way when McNulty comes into his office to try to talk him out of the Barksdale detail during the first season.
  • In an unusual outdoors example, Frank is seated on the breakwall near the Key Bridge, gazing out at the water, when Nick answers his summons to come talk about what turns out to be the theft of the cameras.
• Continuity Drift:
  • Some early episodes are a bit inconsistent about what Wallace's full name is, and the writers seem to have waffled on whether "Wallace" is his first name or his last name. The one time we meet his mother in Season 1, Freamon addresses her as "Mrs. Wallace", suggesting that it's the latter. But if you pay close attention in Season 3, there's also a photo of him in the police station captioned "Wallace Wikes", suggesting the former. ^note  A somewhat common Hand Wave among fans is that it's his middle name, taken from his mother's maiden name.
  • During the basketball game in Season 1, Avon makes a crack suggesting that "Proposition Joe" is illiterate. While it's certainly possible that Avon was just insulting his rival, Joe doesn't bother to tell him off, and his response seems to imply that he actually is illiterate. This is pretty hard to reconcile with later episodes, which establish that Joe is quite well-educated, and he was a star student in his youth.
  • In Omar Little's very first appearance, he briefly gets angry at his boyfriend Brandon for accidentally revealing his name during a robbery, implying that none of the Barksdales had ever heard of him before that point. By the end of Season 1, however, it's well-established that he's an in-universe living legend universally feared by the gangsters of Baltimore—and in most subsequent episodes, he's treated as if he's been that way for years. By Season 4, most drug dealers instinctively flee from him in terror, even when he's unarmed and in his bathrobe.
• Continuity Nod: frequent references to prior events and conversations; especially evident in the final two seasons.
  • In the third season finale, Omar goes down to the waterfront to dispose of Brother Mouzone's gun. On the wall behind him are tattered campaign posters for the now-dead Frank Sobotka.
• Continuity Porn: The fifth season does this in an attempt to wrap up the entire series and touch as many of its dizzying plotlines and characters as possible. Former one-shot characters (like Jeff Price, the reporter who had a single appearance in season three) become main characters, while other major/supporting characters (down to some of the dock workers and Russians in season two, and a one-scene character from a season one episode) show up to further various subplots. There are also entire story threads that were filmed solely to emphasize continuity with previous seasons - a key resolution of the final case is the discovery of a character's saliva sample from the previous season, which is emphasized when a cop visits the Baltimore morgue (which hadn't been seen since season three) to discuss his findings.
• Contrived Coincidence: The show sometimes jumps through hoops to keep its characters involved in related matters each season.
  • Prez's stepfather creates a detail to investigate Frank Sobotka just as a murder case crops up at Sabotka's harbor that attracts McNulty's interest.
  • Prez and Colvin both leave the force and start working at the same middle school in the same year, working with the same grade of students.
• Cool Old Guy: Lester Freamon is the oldest of the detectives and at first glance is considered a "hump" and a "housecat" who spends all his time painting miniature furniture. He's soon revealed to be the smartest guy on the whole damn show. There's a reason they call him "Cool Lester Smooth". He also gets a Let's Get Dangerous! moment when he punks Bird with a bottle during a season one arrest.
• Cool vs. Awesome: Omar Little vs. Brother Mouzone. And then both of them get a final confrontation with Stringer Bell.
• Coolest Club Ever: The downtown nightspot where Stringer throws Avon his welcome-home party after he's paroled.
• Cop Killer Manhunt: It's repeatedly driven home that criminals doing anything to incur the ire of the police is a very, very, bad idea, and everyone involved in organized crime is cognizant of this. Only the extremely foolhardy or most aggressive criminals try to do such a thing.
  • Near the end of season 1, Savino Bratton, Wee-Bey Brice, and Little Man carry out a hit on Orlando Blocker, who they (correctly) suspect of snitching to the police. They kill Orlando, but in the process, Little Man shoots the woman accompanying Orlando. What they don't know is that the woman in question is the undercover Kima Greggs. Kima survives, but the entire Baltimore police department cracks down hard on the Barksdales. The Barksdales acknowledge the utter stupidity of Little Man's improvised actions. Savino Bratton is forced to turn himself in, while Wee-Bey kills Little Man on Stringer's orders for his foolishness before going into hiding in Philadelphia.
  • In season 3, the undercover officer Kenneth Dozerman is trying to buy drugs when the dealers he's talking to simply rob and shoot him instead. Dozerman survives, but once again it triggers a massive police reaction. When the shooter is found, he does confess after the patrol wagon takes an "unscheduled stop" for a tune-up in the Western District, and the officers "mistake him for a pinata". Bunk finds himself being saddled with the task of recovering Dozerman's gun, while the shooting itself is also the final straw that leads to Major Colvin's creation of Hamsterdam.
  • Roland Pryzbylewski quits the force in season 3, when, responding to a distress call, he fails to properly identify himself as an officer and ends up fatally shooting a plainclothes officer, Derrick Waggoner, in a case of night-time mistaken identity. He is brought up on administrative charges and suspended, and there's the prospect of even his fellow officers turning on him, because Prez is best known in the BPD for being a chronic screw-up riding on the coat tails of his influential father-in-law, while Waggoner was considered an outstanding member of the BPD. Prez is horrified at having killed another officer and in full Heroic BSoD mode, so he winds up quitting the force rather than try to fight the effort to push him out.
  • The first part of painting Marlo Stanfield as more dangerous than the Barksdales is the fact that the Stanfield gang is perfectly willing to use violence against the police. Major Colvin sends Herc and Carver to tell Marlo Stanfield to show up at a parley that Colvin is doing with various drug gangs in the Western District. When Marlo refuses, Herc gets up in his face over this disrespect....and then Carver notices that Marlo's men are all starting to reach for weapons, obviously with the intent of killing both Herc and Carver if they don't back off. Carver gets Herc to stand down, but the fact that the Stanfield gang has absolutely no compunction about killing cops proves to be an early hint about just how ruthless and bloodthirsty the group will turn out to be. On the other hand, they are not so wildly stupid to actually kill cops. When Chris and Snoop prepare to murder a security guard, Snoop asks Chris if he's not a police officer.
• The Coroner: Dr. Frazier in the first, second, and third season.
• Corrupt Church: Not even the Church is beyond the corruption that grips Baltimore as it's revealed in the final season that one reverend (and possibly more) helps Proposition Joe launder his money.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Andy Krawczyck.
• Corrupt Politician: Most of the politicians, with Senator Clay Davis earning particular mention for his alliance with Baltimore's organized crime syndicates. In fact, this guy is beyond shameless, even ripping off those same gangsters with some straight-up bullshitting about bribes that actually go nowhere and using his public office to protect himself from them. The show ultimately makes the depressing argument that political corruption is Inherent in the System, suggesting that its the easiest (if not the only) way to ensure re-election.
• Corrupt the Cutie:
  • Carcetti starts out idealistic and messianic, but slowly but surely gets dragged into the politics game. His New Era Speech is genuine but it turns out to be an ironic twisted example in hindsight.
  • Tragically, Randy. He starts out a sweet kid who wants to play with his friends and make some extra money by selling candy to other kids. After Herc lets slip that Randy is a snitch and the other kids burn his house down, injuring his foster mother, he has to go to a group home. At the group home he is abused and tortured, and when we see him again in season 5, he has become hard and violent.
• Could Say It, But...: When McNulty is complaining about his ex-wife's latest legal shenanigans, he informs Kima Greggs (who is female) exactly how a "less-enlightened man" might respond.
  Greggs: You just called the mother of your children a cunt.
  McNulty: No, I did not.
  Greggs: Yes, you fuckin' did.
• Country Matters:
  • McNulty fails to get away with indirectly applying the word to his ex-wife in Season One. The word also features in a line in Season Three which is so offensive it shocks Stringer.
    Kima: Did you just refer to the mother of your children as a cunt?
  • Bird, the charming gentleman who spouts this word, and many other slurs, several times at Kima and the other detectives while in homicide's interview room. He's actually so offensive and obnoxious that even Daniels joins in on the asskicking.
  • Ziggy to Double G. It doesn't end well.
    "Fuck you. You thieving. Greek. Cunt."
• Covert Group with Mundane Front:
  • Stringer has a copy shop where he parleys with McNulty. Subverted as Stringer wants it to be a serious business, not a mere front, and chides his lazy underlings —who don't understand a word of the business-studies jargon he starts throwing around—for their lack of professionalism.
  • The Barksdales' well known headquarters are initially located at Orlando's bar, and more concealedly inside a funeral house later.
• Cowboy Cop:
  • Herc and Carver are deconstructed versions of this trope, showing how their gung-ho, headcracking style of busting street corner hustlers is actually not very useful police work. Over the course of the show, Carver matures into a more competent policeman who becomes a part of his community and uses more intelligent tactics to disrupt the drug trade. Herc, not so much.
  • McNulty is also a Deconstruction of this Trope. He's a cowboy who plays by his own rules and is constantly getting into hot water with his superiors despite the fact that he gets results. How he goes about it, however, is completely the opposite of a standard movie cowboy cop. His tactics involve navigating government bureaucracy and patiently building up intelligence on high-ranking targets rather than busting street hoodlums, which is what his superiors actually want him to do.
    • There's also another layer of deconstruction present with McNulty. On several occasions he gets impatient with doing things the proper ways and tries to take shortcuts in getting the information he wants. He winds up getting the information... only to find that other competent detectives going through the proper ways have already gotten the same information, or more than he did, without committing unprofessional or possibly illegal actions, as Mculty did.
  • Lester Freamon is a kindred spirit with McNulty and is also willing to buck the system in an attempt to do real good for the community. While McNulty is a reckless hothead, Freamon is a quiet Chessmaster, making him less of a true cowboy.
  • Kima falls into this during season 3 with McNulty's influence seemingly rubbing off on her.
  • FBI agent Fitz provides assistance to the BPD, something not sanctioned or known by the bosses most of the time. In season 3, he expedites a wiretap by registering Stringer Bell as a homeland security threat named "Ahmed".
• Cowboys and Indians: An incident on the third season, where Bunk sees children dressing up as Omar and pretending to rob the Barksdale crew. Ironically, the kid pretending to be Omar goes on to kill Omar in the fifth season.
• Crapsack World: Almost every aspect of the setting.
  Jimmy: You think about clearing your courtroom?
  Phelan: On what grounds? It's an open court in a free nation of laws.
  Jimmy: I thought this was Baltimore.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Major Bunny Colvin comes up with a pretty interesting plan in season three. Faced with the drug trade sprawling over more and more of his streets, as well as an increasing pressure to get crime rates down, what plan does he come up with? Legalize drugs. More specifically, he sets up three "safe zones" in his district and makes a deal with the dealers: if they move all their trade there, the police won't touch them. And it works. Dangerous street corners are cleared for ordinary people and his men can focus on fighting crime more concretely, as opposed to making endless futile drug raids. Crime goes down 14%. But in the end, the series is too naturalistic for such a Zany Scheme to be workable: once his superiors find out about the whole thing, "Hamsterdam" is shut down, Colvin is disgraced and the streets return to normal. Deputy Rawls even comments that his plan was brilliant - insane and illegal, but brilliant.
• Creator Cameo: David Simon plays a reporter during Frank Sobotka's arrest, and briefly at the Baltimore Sun in the final season. Other writers and producers have appeared in minor roles on the show, including Dennis Lehane as bored cop Sullivan in the special equipment room in the season 3 episode "Middle Ground" (with a porno magazine called Irish Lasses, no less).
• Crime Time Soap: The show focuses drastically more on personal and professional relationships and favors than "real police work", yet still portrays police work in an accurate manner. It's the way it shows how such relationships shape crime and police work, always in a realistic and believable way, that makes it so authentic.
• Criminal Craves Legitimacy:
  • Stringer Bell is using the money from his and Avon's drug business to make legitimate real estate investments, in an attempt to become wealthier than just selling drugs could make him, and get far enough away from the day to day business that he couldn't be arrested for it, which the cops call "being the bank". He ends up being killed by Omar at the end of season 3.
  • In season 2, Frank Sobotka is the head of the local stevedore union, and uses money he obtains by helping a smuggler known only as The Greek move cargo ranging from drugs to stolen cars to prostitutes to fund lobbying efforts to restore the port and bring in more legitimate business. He ends up being killed by the Greek.
• Criminal Procedural: It tends to be evenly split between the lives of the criminals and the lives of the cops that are stalking them. Later seasons broaden this to politicians, journalists, and children who are getting into a life of crime.
• Crossword Puzzle: Omar's knowledge of Greek mythology is shown before he testifies at Bird's trial, when he helps the bailiff with a crossword puzzle clue, explaining that the Greek god of war is called Ares. He mentions that he was fascinated by Greek mythology in middle school.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Plenty of "back-in-the-day" events and characters are normally and casually mentioned during regular conversations, dropping the idea that Baltimore has a rich but small habitat where everything is related, connected, or cyclical.
• Culturally Religious: The stevedores and Valchek are Polish-American lapsed or cultural catholics. Their conflict is kickstarted by their incompatible desire to be seen as the major pillar of the church.
• Cultural Posturing: Facing a serious challenge from Carcetti (who is white), Mayor Royce (who is black) redesigns all his campaign materials in African colors to inspire racial solidarity at the ballot box. Even lampshaded by Carcetti.
• Cultured Warrior: Brother Mouzone reads Harper's Monthly, The Nation, and other intellectual magazines, in between performing Drug executions. Stringer Bell tries to put on this air, but never quite succeeds. The end of Stringer Bell's character arch leaves this open, (McNulty picks up The Wealth of Nations in Stringer's apartment) "Who the fuck was I chasing?"
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • Stringer Bell plans to apply his shrewd knowledge of economics to become "the bank", winning the game through real estate, legitimate business and untraceable laundered money, shifting away from the risky street trafficking. Avon Barksdale would have none of it.
    Avon: I'm just a gangster I suppose. I want my corners.
  • Several druglords admit that they have more money than they can spend, but continue to sell drugs and risk imprisonment or assassination.

D

• Da Chief: Commander Rawls, who rips his underlings to shreds with gusto.
• The Dandy: Both Bunk Moreland and Mayor Royce are impeccable dressers. Bunk is intimately familiar with the minutiae of menswear (being able to identify Vondas' blazer as a Joseph Abboud at a distance based on the color of the buttons), while Royce has a very sharp if somewhat flamboyant look featuring a lot of French cuffs, patterned shirts, and pink ties.
• Danger Room Cold Open: The second to last episode of season 4 opens with Snoop and Chris chasing Michael down the streets with guns, seemingly serious about shooting him. It turns out they're firing paintballs and it was a training exercise for Michael, who delivers a very good performance.
• Darker and Edgier/The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: The generational shift in Season 3 is represented this way, with Marlo representing a Darker and Edgier amalgamation of Stringer's conservative and calculating nature, and Avon's brutality and pride. Similarly, Chris Partlow is a darker and edgier version of Wee-Bey Brice while the Stanfield bit players also seem to be a little rougher around the edges than their Barksdale counterparts. Barksdale is given a few Pet the Dog moments via Cutty that underscore Marlo's greater evil, later confirmed with the massacres at the vacant houses.
  • It's heavily implied that Avon himself was far more similar to Marlo in his earlier days as many of the old timers fondly remember the kingpins before him. When Bodie tries to claim that Marlo is more violent due to ordering hits on people that might possibly betray him, Poot reminds him that they killed Wallace for much the same reasons on Avon and Stringer's orders. Keep in mind one of the reasons he lost out to Marlo was that his reliable muscle at that point was either dead or in jail. The final montage includes a shot of Wee-Bey and Partlow both in jail together, emphasizing the similarities of the two.
• Dartboard of Hate: Sobotka has one with the face of Bob Irsay, the owner of the Colts who moved them from Baltimore to Indianapolis.
• Dawn of an Era: A major theme of the show has people proclaiming that a new era is arriving, to the point that "New Day" are Arc Words of the show. This always gets subverted by things either staying the same or getting worse. The most obvious example is Carcetti's "new day" campaign, which is quickly subverted and criticized by characters such as McNulty and Freamon.
• Dead Guy on Display:
  • Brandon in season one, presented on the hood of a car as a warning.
  • Also in the case of every informal policeman's wake held in an Kavanaugh's Pub, when the body of the deceased is put on the pool table with a cigar and a glass of whisky in his hands.
• Deadly Euphemism: Being "walked down an alley" by Chris and Snoop is known to everyone to mean they aint coming back.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the characters get their moments to some degree, but the ones who stand out include Bunk, Lester, and Norman Wilson. Daniels too, when he's off the job, reveals a rather mischievous wit.
• Death Is Dramatic:
  • The scene of Stringer's death has quite an aesthetic tinge to it.
  • Bodie's last stand is also fairly meaningful up until its seemingly anticlimactic end.
  • The death of Omar is a biting aversion, from the initial killing shot, to his murder not making the paper, to his name tag being switched with an old white man's at the morgue. Also Played With for the rest of the series whenever a corner boy tells some tall tale of how he fell.
  • Snoop's death is also surprisingly poignant.
• Death of a Child: Not only do children get killed in the series, but Cheese also shoots his dog dead.
• Death Glare:
  • The non-verbal part of the frequent What the Hell, Hero? Bunk gives to McNulty in season 5◊.
  • Daniels sometimes gives such a look.
• Death Seeker: Even after he's no longer suicidal, Bubbles seems disappointed that he's not HIV-positive. He states that it doesn't seem right to be spared after so many years of heroin abuse.
• Decade Dissonance: BPD is still using typewriters and obsolete gadgets well into the new millenium. In stark contrast both FBI and DEA have state of the art devices and technology.
• Decomposite Character: The Real Life Avon Barksdale's life of crime was so long and eventful that the writers had trouble fitting it all in. As such, many of the traits and acts perpetrated in his years as a juvenile offender were transferred to Bodie instead.
• Deconstruction: Of The American Dream, via its failure. With Baltimore being, in Landsman's words, the "dark corner of the American experiment"
  • Omar Little is it, at least according to one of his T-shirts. While he embodies the values of self-sufficiency and individualism, he might be seen as the opposite; rather than an honest businessman working to raise himself out of poverty, he's an inveterate criminal who gives most of his money back to the community that a certain kind of capitalism exploited out of it.
  • Season 2 is a bitter examination of the corruption of the dream. Working class Polish-Americans are on the verge of extinction, while Italian and Polish-American political schemers and lobbyists prosper.
    Frank Sobotka: You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.
  • Also attacked very briefly and indirectly via The Great Gatsby, during the prison library club's discussion. D'Angelo embraces that "there are no seconds acts in American lives."
• Decoy Protagonist: D'Angelo is set up in the first season as a deuteragonist of the show, serving as the principle viewpoint character for the underworld just as McNulty does for the police side. He's then killed midway through the second season.
• Defective Detective: McNulty, whose life outside of his excellent police work is a train wreck.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Even many of the more sympathetic characters in inner-city Baltimore are written as openly homophobic (sometimes violently so), even though the cast of the show includes quite a few well-rounded gay and lesbian characters.
• Demoted to Extra: Given the number of plotlines going on in each season, it's not uncommon to see characters get this treatment once their storylines are completed.
  • Wee-Bey Brice is a pretty defining case once he's sent to prison at the end of season 1. With the exception of season 4, where he has slightly more prominence because of the storyline surrounding his son Namond, in seasons 2, 3, and 5 he gets only one or two appearances per season.
  • The fifth and final season gives this treatment to various (fairly) major characters from previous seasons such as: Roland Pryzbylewski, Randy Wagstaff, Namond Brice, and Dennis 'Cutty' Wise, among others.
• Derailed for Details: In season 4, Prez tries to set his class a Train Problem and they pester him for details that would be relevant to an actual journey (which station it's leaving from, what the purpose of this guy's trip is, etc.), but not to the basic maths problem he has in mind.
• Despite the Plan:
  • In season three, an otherwise simple robbery by Omar and his crew turns deadly when they realize that the house is more heavily guarded than they were expecting, and they have to shoot their way out, resulting in deaths on both sides of the gunfight.
  • Omar faces a similar scenario in season 5, leading to a Super Window Jump.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Just when it seems that Carcetti's New Day may become a reality, a massive budget deficit that went unnoticed during several administrations is found in the school system. This imposes huge, crippling cutbacks in many other departments, specially in the Police Department, and derails any chance of reform.
• Diegetic Switch: The show as a rule, only uses Source Music, with the exemption of the montages in the season finales and the Greek music in the second-to-last episode of the second season. Used switches include:
  • In the second season the music from a radio is overlaid across several scenes. I Walk the Line .
  • Cutty's running music overlaps with the election day montage.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat:
  • Even after Bunny Colvin creates Hamsterdam (where any drugs can be bought, sold, and used completely legally), some of the gangsters in the city still refuse to use it and just go about riskily doing their business where they always have, despite knowing perfectly well that a safer alternative is available to them. Apparently, some people will break any rule, even one they know would benefit them.
  • Implied with Marlo. In the series finale, thanks to Levy's legal wrangling, Marlo is able to dodge his many, many charges almost completely unscathed and set himself up as a legitimate businessman, wholly apart from his prior gangster lifestyle...but his very last scene, where he leaves an upper-class party and starts a pointless physical altercation on a rough street, implies that he's just not cut out for the world of legitimate business, and that it won't be long before he becomes active in street crime again despite the fact that he has everything to lose by doing so.
• The Dilbert Principle: The series has this as a principal theme, showing that in many organizations the people who are best at looking like they're doing their job well get promoted over the people who actually are doing their job well. And the things you need to do to look like you're doing well are usually in direct opposition to actually doing well. For example, the police bosses force their patrolmen to make lots of petty street busts rather than go after the real drug lords so their arrest rates go up and they get promotions.
  • Invoked by Lt. Daniels when he is explaining to the commissioner why his team wants to arrest Cheese: they are 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. It doesn't work.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Daniels has some skeletons in the closet about it, and openly implies that corruption runs rampart in the Eastern district.
  • You have the brass who are not above using their resources for petty reasons, like when Valchek uses the cops in the Southeastern District to harass IBS union members.
  • Eddie Walker, a beat officer who robs and brutalizes people with impunity.
• Dirty Harriet: Played With. Kima goes undercover as a stripper, but not to catch some unsuspecting john. The Major Crimes unit is investigating a drug kingpin using the owner of his strip club, Orlando, to implicate key members of the organization. Kima is going along on the ride mainly as an eyeball witness. Unfortunately, Orlando's bosses already knew he was a snitch and ordered a hit on him. Orlando is shot and killed while Kima is shot, but narrowly survives.
• Disposable Vagrant: Zig-zagged; invoked and deconstructed. In season 5 McNulty fabricates a fraudulent Serial Killer case using forsaken vagrant victims in order to attract media and political attention and divert funds to real police work. He even "abducts" one live vagrant to further drive the point home.
• Disposing of a Body: Marlo's hit squad Chris and Snoop have a darkly ingenious system that allows them to off a huge number of rival dealers before the police start to notice (22 bodies are eventually recovered, but their actual hit count is probably higher). They take them at gunpoint into one of hundreds of derelict row-houses, kill them and cover the body in lime, then wrap them in a plastic sheet and board the house back up.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In season one Prez hits a fourteen-year old-boy so badly the kid loses an eye. His reason being the kid called him an asshole.
  • Proposition Joe matter-of-factly warns Omar, "You ever steal from me, I'll kill your whole family." This exemplifies how Joe's bark is deliberately worse than his bite; when Omar does steal from Joe, they quickly make a pragmatic deal.
  • Valchek creates a special unit to destroy Frank Sobotka because Sobotka's Stevedores Union beat out Valchek's Police Union for the honor of donating a stained glass window to their local church.
  • A murder in Hamsterdam occurred because the victim laughed at his killer's shoes.
  • In the 5th season, Marlo gets wind that Junebug is spreading rumors that he's gay. In reaction, Marlo orders a hit on Junebug, along with Junebug's wife and entire family.
• Dissonant Serenity: Brother Mouzone and Marlo Stanfield, though Marlo is more stoic than serene; the latter's lieutenant Chris Partlow also counts.
• Divided We Fall: The show runs on this trope. The office politics and rivalries within the police department and city management is Inherent in the System, causing investigations that would actually do something about the rampant crime rate or projects that would reverse the hollowing out of the schools to be scuttled by those higher up in the chain for the sake of their own careers, which depend on results. The result is juking of the stats and nothing being fixed.
  • The Barksdale crew implodes due to this. Stringer believes that making money is important, while Avon believes that maintaining the gang's reputation is key. Season 3 has Stringer getting Avon sent back to prison, while at the same time Avon gives up Stringer to Omar and Brother Mouzone to be killed.
• Divorce Is Temporary: In a season 2 episode McNulty and his estranged/ex-wife have a passionate one night stand, the next morning he thinks they're back together but she insists that its just a one time thing. Subverted trope. They never get back together for the remainder of the series.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In season 5 when McNulty goes to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit for help on the serial killer he made up, the profile describes him perfectly. You can see in his face that this isn't lost on him.
  • David Simon has confirmed, in the audio commentary for Season 3, that Season 3's overarching conflict was conceived as a partial metaphor for the then-ongoing Iraq War. Little touches, like the West Side dealers naming their new package "WMD", the season finale being ironically titled "Mission Accomplished", and Colvin's speech about the impossibility of governing a populace that you've declared "the enemy", flesh the metaphor out. The season starts with those two towers at Franklin Terrace going down, and Slim Charles' speech to Avon in the season finale, about the war with Marlo Stanfield really drives it home.
    Slim Charles: Don't matter who did what to who at this point. Fact is, we went to war, and now there ain't no going back. I mean, shit, it's what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.
• Don't Answer That:
  • Zig-zagged; in the first season, Bunk and McNulty try to make D'Angelo write an apology letter to the (fictional) family of a man killed for witnessing against him. Levy's reaction is something to behold. This also counts as a case of Shown Their Work, as this is a common trick the police use to elicit written confessions from crooks who don't know better.
  • Played with hilariously in a later episode, where Bunk, Norris and new rookie Christeson convince a young punk that a photocopier is a Lie Detector. The kid confesses because he assumes the jig's up now anyway after he's made to believe his accomplice folded and is enjoying a McDonald's meal because of it.
  Christeson: So this shit actually works?
  Ed Norris: Hell yeah! Americans are a stupid people, by and large. We pretty much believe whatever we're told.
• Double-Meaning Title: A wiretap case happens in every season, but the title can take on a variety of more metaphorical meanings.
  • It can refer to the act of "walking the wire"—that is, to the metaphorical "balancing act" that Baltimore cops must perform in order to fight crime while staying loyal to the forces that perpetuate it.
  • It can refer to the proverbial "thin line" that separates cops from the criminals that they fight.
  • It can refer to the metaphorical wire that connects Baltimore citizens of all walks of life, thus ensuring that one group's actions always affect the other.
  • The title also suggests pulling the thread.
  • In a somewhat more literal example for season 5: "wire services" or "newswires" such as the Associated Press are frequently used to share significant stories between newspapers. A big part of the season deals with the "Sun" staff being pushed to write for the newswires and headlines, rather than just reporting the news as it happens.
• Downer Ending: Don't expect this show to, like any other cop shows, have a happy ending. With the brutal honesty and the creator's unwillingness to just give the audience what they want, most of the stories in the show are an example of this trope with a few, very rare and very happy exceptions.
• Do You Want to Haggle?: The reason for Proposition Joe's name.
• The Dragon: From season 3 through the end of the series, Chris Partlow fills this role for Marlo Stanfield, though his constant training and use of Snoop may amount to making the two of them Co-Dragons.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Stringer Bell, The Consigliere and also Dragon-in-Chief for a while.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The death of Hamsterdam in the Season 3 finale is full of this: After Colvin reveals his little experiment to the higher-ups, Mayor Royce is sufficiently impressed by the reduction in crime in the Western that he tries to figure out a way to sell/spin applying the de facto legalization experiment more generally, and accordingly tells Commissioner Burrell to hold off on plans to shut it down. However, he fails to make it clear to Burrell and the Police Department more generally that this is what he's planning, so Burrell thinks that the Mayor is trying to find a way to spin it so the blame rests with the Commissioner, and thus makes plans to make a jump on Burrell by leaking the information to Councilman Carcetti along with his (false) theory that Royce was trying to screw Burrell over. At the same time, Royce's strategy for selling de facto legalization as "harm reduction" and "refocusing of resources on high-profile targets" would be much more credible if the police could produce a bust of a major high-level drug organization. The viewers know that Lt. Daniels' Major Crimes Unit is at that very moment on the verge of completely destroying the Barksdale Organization, which although a shadow of its former self is still a formidable force in West Baltimore's drug market. But nobody talking the mayor—not even the State's Attorney—has a clue.
  • The FBI give McNulty a profile on the serial killer that he's tracking, which fits McNulty to a T, without realizing that McNulty himself invented the serial killer.
• The Dreaded:
  • Omar Little has such a reputation that hoppers will shout, "Omar comin'!" whenever they spot him, triggering the streets to clear out. He even inadvertantly robs a stash house, when leaned against a wall to light a cigarette and a cache of drugs and money just drops out the window. Bonus points, he was in his bathrobe and slippers and had just gone down to the store to get some groceries.
  • Chris, Marlo's prime hitman, to the point that kids tell spook stories about him and think that he's supernatural.
  • Brother Mouzone from New York is one for the druglords, but his feats aren't widely known in the streets of Baltimore. Though Proposition Joe has heard that he has "more bodies on him than a Chinese cemetery."
• Drink-Based Characterization:
  • Daniels, intellectual, refined man that he is, will often go for wine. Nobody calls him out on this because he's a definite hardass.
  • McNulty is always seen drinking Jameson from pint bottles, sometimes on duty. He sneers at Bushmills as "Protestant whiskey," though ironically John Jameson, the Scottish founder and namesake of Jameson whiskey, was likely Protestant as well. Jameson whiskey seems to be the liquor of choice for most Baltimore police, which goes along with them all being "honorary Irish."
• Drinking on Duty:
  • The Defective Detective McNulty regularly drinks on the job, and will even drink while behind the wheel of a police cruiser. His prequel segment shows him hitting the bottle in the office with Bunk the very same day Jimmy landed in Homicide.
  • Polk and Mahone regularly arrive to work sloshed. Even McNulty is disgusted, because at least he's a Functional Addict.
  • Even uniformed officers are openly guzzling beer in some scenes—without any signs of any concern about what can actually lead to serious disciplinary action in real police departments.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Done deliberately at the very end of season 5 with Omar. He's such an epic badass that other hardened criminals are terrified of him, so of course he'll go down in a blaze of glory, right? Wrong. This show is not Scarface. He is shot from behind by an eleven-year-old while trying to buy a pack of cigarettes.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Bubbles in season four. He is saved just in time. Also, "No Heart" Anthony Little (Omar's older brother) got his nickname from a failed suicide attempt after he was sentenced to several years in prison; he tried to shoot himself in the chest, but ended up with only a contact wound "and a new nickname".
  • McNulty comes VERY close to the edge over the course of Season 3, he seems very tempted to simply stay on the train tracks.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • McNulty's alcoholism is an obvious result of being a Defective Detective with a mess of a personal life.
  • Various cops are shown drinking heavily at bars or tailgating so that they can bitch about their sorrows to each other.
• Drunk Driver:
  • Cops are regularly shown driving to an out-of-the-way spot to chat and get plastered on beer, then driving home.
  • Major Rawls at one point attempts to get revenge on McNulty by pressuring Santangelo to catch him driving under the influence. Santangelo is dismayed; it is implicit that freedom to drive drunk is an unwritten sacred right for Baltimore police.
  • When Valchek is messing with Frank Sobotka, he exploits this by setting up a DWI checkpoint on the route between Delores' bar and the docks at 8 a.m., knowing full well that all of the longshoremen would have had the "stevedore's breakfast" of raw egg dropped into a pint of beer, probably plus a shot of whiskey and maybe another beer as Hair of the Dog.
  • In one of the show's funniest moments, McNulty is driving home drunk, takes a turn too wide and scrapes the side of his car against a freeway support. He stops, gets out, surveys the damage and the scene, and then gets back into the car, backs up, and recreates the accident.
• The Drunken Sailor: Well, the drunken longshoreman: the time for drinking down the docks is "anytime you're awake."
• Due to the Dead: BPD has the Irish wakes, Boadie and Prop Joe are shown doing funeral arrangements for fallen comrades. On the other extreme dwells Marlo and his ruthless crew. They dump and forsake bodies in vacant houses and refuse the anguished plea of their own associate Old Face Andre to be disposed in a way that his people can learn of his demise and give him later a decent burial.
• Dumb Muscle: Herc and Carver are brought into the detail to serve this purpose. Their specialty is busting heads. Through Character Development, they manage to lift themselves beyond this role. As early as the Season 1 finale, Herc pompously lectures some newbies about the importance of intelligence over brawn.
• Dumbass Has a Point: After Niko and Spiros have agreed on $400 per as the price at which the cameras will be sold, Ziggy starts shooting the deal down. We think he's being unrealistic, but then he points out that the cameras in question have retailed at chains like Best Buy and Circuit City^note then still in business for as much as $550, whereupon Spiros ups the offer to $500.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Bodie, who carries it like a true soldier and fights.
    "Yo this is my corner, I ain't goin nowhere."
  • Stringer Bell, in season 3. Two of the baddest killers around need to team up just to take him down. He does try to run at first, sure. But once he sees he can't get away, he stands tall and reaps what he had sown.
    Stringer: Well? Get on with it, motherf—