Strategic Restraint

The interesting plot development in the fourth episode of The Wire is that we're finally getting some real peeks at Marlo Stanfield's character and personality and so far, compared to the other criminals who've had a major role on the show, he seems like a . . . gigantic asshole. One theme we've seen consistently through the show is that, in the game, just as in counterinsurgency or grand strategy, it's often useful to apply strategic restraint rather than deploy maximum violence. Stringer Bell was the street figure most associated with this philosophy, but it clearly lives on in Prop Joe's co-op. And, indeed, even though the Bell-Avon split at times appeared to be on this very point, the script flipped late in Season 3 when Stringer suddenly wanted to hit Clay Davis and Avon pointed out that you can't be killing state senators.

Marlo, too, seemed to be down with the program. When Lex kills Fruit, Marlo's crew wants to retaliate massively against all of Lex's associates. Marlo discerns that Lex's beef with Fruit was personal, and that though he needs to kill Lex to demonstrate that you don't fuck with Marlo's crew, he also wants to minimize the violence so he retaliates only against Lex. Marlo's handling of the security guard, however, is very much at odds with this approach. An extra corpse has been generated for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the interests of the business. What's more, the victim in this case is a civilian, a taxpayer, which is a much more serious step than killing a gangbanger -- we've seen consistently that the Baltimore PD investigates such matters more rigorously than crook-on-crook violence. All of which raises the question of how this links up to the education theme: Marlo has been mostly portrayed as a source of education, along with Bubbles, Prez, Cutty, Omar, etc. But the other dealers in the co-op always emphasize Marlo's youth. Is he a teacher, or one of those who's going to get schooled?

Comments

I'm hoping he gets seriously schooled. I'm thinking the writers plan on setting him and his crew up to fall by the end of the season. He's just too much of a bastard to keep on going. The murder of the security gaurd sent chills down my spine, and I was grateful that it took place offscreen. Any thoughts on the meaning of his conversation with Marlo at the beginning of the episode? "You think it goes only one way? It goes the other way." I haven't been able to stop thinking about that line.

Posted by Jose | October 2, 2006 9:41 AM

Matt, I enjoy your blog a lot, but you consistently commit one of the venial sins of the web -- rescaling pictures simply by declaring them smaller than they are. Here, for example, your img tag is 300x240, but the actual image is 500x400. The aspect ratio is correct, at least, but not every browser is going to resize the image gracefully. (Firefox on Linux isn't doing too well.) There are worse offenders than you in this regard, of course (check out Amardeep Singh's official bio, where a 1280x960 image is included at 364x273), and worse offenses.....

Posted by Vance Maverick | October 2, 2006 11:22 AM

Jose: I think the the quote was actually closer to "You want it to go one way. It goes the other way." I took this to just be a basic comment on the lawlessness of the area, Marlo's dominance, and the pointlessness of trying to change that order.

Posted by tom | October 2, 2006 11:34 AM

rescaling pictures simply by declaring them smaller than they are

Really? I thought this would work okay as long as I preserved the aspect ratio; certainly it looks fine on my browsers -- is it a serious problem elsewhere? What's the best way to handle it?

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 2, 2006 11:47 AM

The only thing that bugged me about last nights episode was Chris Partlow throwing the security guards badge right out side of the gangster graveyard

Posted by IanD | October 2, 2006 11:48 AM

I think the key dynamic in the episode was Prop Joe using Omar to "school" Marlo. Marlo is getting arrogant because it was so easy for him to rise to the top. He has been incredibly lucky in that the Barksdale crew got taken down (by both the govt and themselves) at the perfect time, and that now political squabbles have taken out the major crimes unit, the only unit that had a bead on Marlo. So, he hasn't learned this aspect of the game yet. He doesn't realize how lucky he has been.

Posted by ValisJason | October 2, 2006 11:58 AM

I believe Apple browsers do a better job than others of down-scaling. But even if it worked perfectly, why make your readers download more pixels than you want to show them? The image on Singh's page is ten times as big (in pixels) as he needed.

For rescaling, any standard image tool will do better than most browsers. Even lowly Windows Paint -- open the picture, scale it down as desired, save it and upload it, and use the exact new dimensions. And I have to assume there are cool tools to automate some of those steps. Ask Kriston -- he seems to do this mostly right.

Posted by Vance Maverick | October 2, 2006 12:16 PM

Prez sure looks like the one getting schooled to me.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | October 2, 2006 12:37 PM

I'm pretty sure the Marlo line was "You want it to be one way, but it's the other way."

Agreed on the badge toss being lame.

And I'm getting the feeling that there's so much stuff being introduced that any resolution is going to come in Season 5.

Posted by ogged | October 2, 2006 12:59 PM

Marlo, too, seemed to be down with the program. When Lex kills Fruit, Marlo's crew wants to retaliate massively against all of Lex's associates. Marlo discerns that Lex's beef with Fruit was personal, and that though he needs to kill Lex to demonstrate that you don't fuck with Marlo's crew, he also wants to minimize the violence so he retaliates only against Lex.

Did anyone else notice that Marlo seemed to do this based on the unspoken advice of Chris Partlow? This was one of at least two moments where Marlo looks at Chris and Chris either nods or shakes his head. I'm not sure exactly what's up with that--maybe Chris is playing the role of older adviser, like the guy with the wheel rim shop in Season 3.

Posted by Tom Hilton | October 2, 2006 1:02 PM

By the way, you don't need to resize the image--Flickr already does that. Click on 'All Sizes', choose the size you want to display, right click and choose properties, copy the image url and paste it into the [img src=""] tag. Just make sure you make the image a link back to the Flickr page of the image (and in theory, you should have 'uploaded by' info as well).

Posted by Tom Hilton | October 2, 2006 1:06 PM

How does Freamon put it? "He's a young lion, and a lion needs his kills" - or something to that effect? This, it seems to me, was the principle that split Avon & Stringer - the conflict between calculation and (say) 'spiritedness' or 'love of honor' ("Your name's gonna ring out"). The murder of the security guard, so coldly plotted - the scene with Marlo's thugs discussing the guard's work schedule, whether he's real police, etc. was distressing - was, in an important sense, outside of the realm of calculation. (You think that lightly discarded security badge might come back to haunt them? Maybe?) The very thing that pulls the best and the brightest of Baltimore's black underclass into the 'game' is the same thing that seems to ensure (with the exception of Prop Joe?) that, as Prez puts it, there are no winners.

A couple other tasty moments - Bunk's gloss on "soft eyes," more hints of Rawls' machinations in the police department (by my lights, this may prove the most interesting plot line of the season), and - as others have mentioned - Marlo's "You want it to be the one way. But it's the other way." Man, was that ever a good line.

Posted by Chris M | October 2, 2006 1:29 PM

I doubt the thrown-away badge will come back -- I remember a lot of folks suggesting that the bloody map in last season's Sopranos would end up being significant, but it was a similar red herring (or more to the point, it served an indirect & symbolic point). This was just the director's way of letting us know that they'd killed the guard, without showing the murder itself.

Marlo is an asshole, but it's important to remember that Avon was probably just the same when he was coming up -- one of the things I love about this show is how they play with our ideas of who is and isn't sympathetic, and somehow we end up rooting for Avon without realizing that he's just Marlo + 15 years. I actually started to find myself sympathizing with Marlo last season, or at least feeling bad for his apparent soullessness (sp?), so I'm glad that they're letting me dislike him. I'll bet they will do something to re-humanize him later this season, though, e.g. have someone kill off his pigeons.

I'm wondering about the endgame with Omar (fool me once, shame on you...), Prop Joe and Marlo. The plotline I'm most enjoying right now is the slow build of the homicide cases, just because the interactions between the characters is so rich, and the Bunk's slow-and-steady, methodical plod is awesome to behold. Also, did the police chief or his underling (both of whose names I'm blanking on) think that by putting Kema (again, sp?) on the case of the dead witness, they were sandbagging the investigation? That will probably come back to haunt them.

Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | October 2, 2006 1:47 PM

Marlo is intelligent, charismatic, fiercely competitive, values strength and independence, and sees himself more as a soldier than a businessman. In all of these traits he's very similar to Avon. But Avon actually cared for his family and his crew, whereas Marlo is probably the only character in the history of The Wire who doesn’t show any empathy or moral sense. He’s basically a sociopath.

I got the feeling that the reason Marlo had the security guard killed wasn’t because the security guard challenged him; it was because of the weak and pleading fashion in which he did it. Marlo respects strength (which is why he pays respect to Avon by showing up at the court scene at the end of season 3), but he detests weakness. “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way” is his way of saying, ‘You want a world where personal dignity and morality matter, but they don’t. The only thing that matters is strength and power, and only chumps believe otherwise.’

Posted by RC | October 2, 2006 2:00 PM

I got the feeling that the reason Marlo had the security guard killed wasn’t because the security guard challenged him; it was because of the weak and pleading fashion in which he did it. Marlo respects strength (which is why he pays respect to Avon by showing up at the court scene at the end of season 3), but he detests weakness.

That makes sense, especially in light of the parallel confrontation (in 4.3, I think) with Michael--who doesn't back down.

Posted by Tom Hilton | October 2, 2006 3:23 PM

I think you're right about Marlo's motivation, RC. As for whether Marlo is schooling or getting schooled, I believe David Simon has said in various interviews something to the effect of, "Everyone is getting an education this season, right down the line."

So Marlo may yet find out that as much as he wants it to be one way, it's the other way.

Posted by Ghlade | October 2, 2006 3:32 PM

Stringer Bell--erudite, Machiavellian, calculating, lordly--was no match for Omar in the game, so one can only imagine how Omar will "school" Marlo. Marlo is brutal and sneaky, sure, but Omar is The Man. Marlo's moved too far above ground and has become a known entity in the game beyond his corners; when he was largely unknown, that was the key to his strength in his war against Avon. Now that Marlo and his crew are known players, Omar has the huge advantage. Omar is like the old radio character The Shadow, always one step ahead of everyone, always lurking just past his foes' reach, always capable of striking when least expected.

You gotta love Omar!

Posted by mat | October 2, 2006 3:36 PM

How can Omar get away with robbing Marlo at gunpoint? They both recognized each other, right? That's the unrealistic aspect of Omar. How can he survive, so well-known - "Omar comin'" - and yet nearly alone?

Prop Joe played a multi-level ploy by "making it right" with Omar for a past betrayal, for which no less than Stringer Bell died, by setting Omar up to rob Marlo and show Marlo a gun in his face.

Bunk is in bad shape. He's spinning his wheels. Freamon was sitting in the bar thinking about solving Bunk's case and finding the bodies, while Bunk was futilely making eyes at young women as if he weren't a fat, old drunk to them. There's a lot of gay vibe from Bunk this year, too, with all the goosing and the missing Jimmy. Unresolved issues, the man gone absent and drinking too much.

They really scared me when Snoop and Chris were watching that kid who'd stood up to Marlo. Were they going to kill him too? Apparently they want to recruit him.

What an interesting show.

Posted by not jimmy | October 2, 2006 6:05 PM

definitely i think RC got it right on the guard vs. michael thing. obviously no excuse ultimately for Marlo's actions and it's that kind of arrogance that is going to be his downfall. i think that that was the main thing to take away from this episode, as in the past he has been made to seem calculating to the point of emotional detachment.

as far as omar being unrealistic, i read an interview with simon where he gave a shout out to a bunch of bmore stickup cats by name, and implied that they were all still living. and as matt said in an earlier wire posting, apparently this phenomenon is somewhat particular to bmore such that a crime researcher may spontaneously start talking about it. so i don't think it's unrealistic to think that omar can survive and prosper. he's the only character who is empathetic and completely in control of his emotions. even with his beef with stringer all through s1-3, he picked his spots. the game is the game. and he has a point, it's much easier for him to find marlo than vice-versa (notice marlo's visibility now compared to last season, barksdale crew could never find him. he's high profile now. he's wearing the crown, but hasn't yet realized that he can't escape the inevitable fall).

the education thing is of course the thing. the political aspect was sort of rolled into this season and last b/c simon wanted it as a separate miniseries and possibly a spinoff show, but hbo didn't give him the go ahead. of course there is the obvious lack of learning on carcetti's part as to the implausibility of a get tough approach on drugs and crime in bmore really working. this parallels the major theme of all of simon's work: the institutions of modern politics do not learn. the school system will not change in any fundamental way, the police obviously will not either (witness kima and the witness case!). all of the individuals, and organizations that exist outside the bureaucracy, will learn something. it's all a question of what and from whom. all of the relationships are endogenous for these characters, but the modern bureaucracy doesn't take any lessons from it's actors, at least in simon's formulation

Posted by looj | October 3, 2006 10:29 AM

Marlo deliberatly took those suckers to show the security guard, the authority in that store, that he was in fact the boss. When the guard came out and told Marlo that he needs to respect him but did it in a wussie way like RC said, Marlo just had contempt. How do you respect someone that won't step-up?

Posted by Kevin | October 5, 2006 2:33 PM