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"Sometimes I'm goodie-goodie/Right now I'm naughty-naughty" - The Gossip, Are U That Somebody? (Aaliyah Cover)

Episode 41: Refugees
Written by Dennis Lehane
Directed by Jim McKay

"A good church man is always up in everybody's shit" - Deacon Melvin

"No one fucks with me now." - Marlo

"Are you in any way suggesting that the system has lost control?" - Board of Education rep.

Official: "No one wins. One side just loses more slowly." - Prez

Previously on: Marlo wants Bodie's corner. Bunny wants a meaningful job. Royce wants a case to go away. Omar wants some excitement in his life. Marimow wants Major Crimes to suck. Herc wants a promotion. Kima & Lester want the hell out of Major Crimes. Prez wants to forget his first week of school.

The cold open is all about Marlo and his power trip but we'll get to that later. I hadn't seen it last week but during the previously on and throughout this episode it became obvious, Rawls is trying to screw Burrell and the Mayor. While Burrell is too busy trying to dodge the shit storm coming down from Royce's office, Rawls has been moving his chess pieces so that his state's witness murder case doesn't get buried. He's moved Lester & Kima to Homicide and put Colonel Foerster into a position where he's forced to give Kima the case in a order that comes down straight from Burrell. Kima is green but she's great Po-Lice -- another McNulty -- and Rawls knows she's going to do something with a case that she has no business being on.

Hell, that's just what those Major Crimes detectives do, innit? In other Homicide news, Bunk & Lester are partnering on the Fruit murder and figure out that Lex is dead. Bunk gets busy drinking while Cool Lester Smooth wraps his head around the problem of known dead people but no dead bodies.

Meanwhile, it continues to be readily apparent that the kids are doing it for themselves. Sherrod continues to ditch school because he can't read and we learn that Shaquan needed over 200 stitches in her face while Laetitia will move from her group home to juvie which is only a minor downgrade in her life for the crime. Namond's still an ass, Donut's still stealing cars and Dukie continues to be the odd man out while Randy gets caught doing his candy hustle and has to dime out another kid. He also seems most affected by the classroom violence of the previous week.

Michael, however, is on everyone's radar. While his home life leaves much to be desired, he spends his time taking care of his little brother and avoiding the fatherly influence of Cutty, although he is softening. He spars with Cutty and joins him and Justin on a trip to the Fights but won't let Cutty get too close even refusing a ride all the way home. All this happens while Cutty sees a significant problem in the system as he takes Deacon's advice and gets a makeshift custodial job at Tilghman that is mostly about rounding up kids and getting them to go to school...for at least one day. Cutty can't seem to wrap his head around how screwed up things have gotten.

And Michael is still in the sights of Marlo who sees the kid as a possible corner boy. It's a power play. He sees Michael as a comer and could care less about the kid's future. Marlo only cares about his own juice. He spends all episode exerting his influence and power if only to prove to himself that it's still there. After a poker game, he taunts a Security Guard at a quick-mart and has him clipped for disrespect. He forces his package on Bodie. He refuses Prop Joe's reasonable offer to join the Co-Op because "No one's fucking with [him] now." Well, Prop Joe puts Marlo in Omar's path so now, he's officially been fucked with and Marlo, once again, overestimates his power while underestimating Omar's. That's not a good situation for him.

Other notes:

• Carcetti continues to impress the people of Baltimore which probably will end up with a Tony Gray win of the election (This is a baseless prediction. You folks that have seen the entire season already, please don't say shit in the comments about future episodes confirming or denying this. Thanks)
• Grace's last name is Sampson.
• Herc joins Major Crimes for no apparent reason.
• Bunny finds signs of hope in other parts of Tilghman that Prez obviously isn't privy.
• Ms. Daniels loses her place on Royce's ticket while Royce hustles his own card game to raise 75 grand of "off the books" dollars.
• Sydnor & Massey have to shut down the wire.
• Parallels: The poker games. Bunk telling Kima she needs soft eyes for a crime scene a la Prez getting told he needs soft eyes to be a good teacher.
• This is a complete set-up episode for things to come but I thought it was the weakest of the season even with knowing that. Nothing quite caught my attention as strongly as the previous weeks have.

Next week: Who knows? Herc gets surveillance up on Marlo; Marlo tries to set-up Omar and Kima's case makes waves.

"Only thing tighter than my rhymes is the puss" - Busta Rhymes featuring Rah Digga, Untouchable (New Crack City)

Episode 38: Boys of Summer
Story by David Simon & Ed Burns
Directed by Joe Chappelle

"There's an election? Who's runnin'?" - Cool Lester Smooth

"Pandemic! Got that Pandemic!" - Hilltop Touters

"I've been schooled, dog. I'm trying to tell you." - Felicia "Snoop" Pearson

"That lost-ball, high-grass motherfucker, Carcetti, needs to get used to life in the wilderness." - Mayor Clarence Royce

"Fuck yourself with a forty, shit-breath" - Officer Tony Colicchio

"Look at that bow-legged motherfucker. I made him walk like that." - Bunk Moreland

Official: "Lambs to the slaughter here." - Marcia Donnelly

If you want to know what happened in the previously on... check my season 4 primer.

Welcome back, Baltimore! Oh, how I have missed you so. We're about a year after season 3 ended. Marlo is the absolute big fish in the Western drug world. New Major Daniels is running the Western police division. The primary election is 4 weeks away and school is about to start but, really, we start with Snoop shopping for a nail gun at Hardware Barn. The DeWalt 410 (although it looks to actually be a DeWalt DC618k) she's been using has a low battery life and she wants an upgrade. As the hardware salesman tells her, the Hilti DX 460 will do the job. He earns a $100 tip for helping the hit-woman and #3 in command in Marlo's crew get her job done that much easier.

And, it's on. The newly arranged theme song is "gospirational" and performed by Doreen Vail & Maurette Brown-Clark. There are 57 different shots in the new main title and if you're obsessive like me, you can read the entire list after the jump. Every season I want to know what's in the title sequence but I've never really had a reason before to actually go through it. Now, I'll never have to do it again this season.

The story every season is dependent on what the Major Case Squad is doing so let's start there. The team, lead by Lester "Cool Lester Smooth" Freamon and Kima Greggs while their absentee lieutenant focuses on building his dream house, is up on just about all the street level guys in Marlo's crew. As discussed, Marlo is much more tactical than Avon ever was but he isn't as smart or as paranoid about the police as Stringer Bell.

The problem for Major Case, though, is that there are no bodies. There is very little sting (or bargaining power) in arresting and bringing down the drug kingpin if they can't clear some murders. Marlo, Chris (who is an even more gentlemanly killer than Omar and Brother Mouzone) and Snoop have devised an ingenious plan for keeping the police off their back. They store the bodies in abandoned and boarded up buildings, reboarding them with the nail gun after they've don their business.

With all this free time, Lester has the team going through old Barksdale/Bell assets and asks Pearlman for subpeonas so that they can "follow the money" which leads to several prominent politicians during election time.

Speaking of elections, Carcetti is a great councilman but a terrible candidate. He can't even get his advance crew leader, Norman (played by the excellent Reg E. Cathey), to vote for him. He also can't seem to raise any money or get his friend and opponent, Tony, to forgive him. Meanwhile, Royce is losing voter confidence but getting new funds at every turn.

But who cares about politics, when you've got the real mayor of West Baltimore, "Bodie" Broadus running a low-traffic corner after getting pushed off of Lafayette by Marlo's crew? His new independent crew features Lex & young hopper Namond along with Reese and a few others. Slim Charles provides the package but he's an independent distributor now, okay with selling to the small-time clockers and not trying to hold any corners of his own. Bodie regularly gets visits from McNulty and Carver -- who might finally have become good Po-Lice -- but doesn't seem to have any real issues outside of too much product. Well, there is the little problem of his boy Lex not knowing who is untouchable and killing Fruit, one of Marlo's top corner captains, all for love.

Fruit's death provides the first body caught on the wire and gives Bunk something to do. Lex's murder a few days later at the hands of Snoop and Chris will make things all the more interesting for Bunk and Lester and Carver...and Randy. Randy is one of our new faces. He's one of the junior high school age kids running amok in the Western. He rolls with Namond (who has the money and the attitude but none of the heart), Michael (their fearless protector), Donut (the comedian), and Dukie (dirty, dishelved and obviously fending for himself at 13). Randy is the brains. He's a good kid with a kind heart who comes from what appears to be a stable home. He's also partially responsible for Lex's death.

Other stuff:
-Prez is teaching math at a middle school in the western. The principal and assistant principal are ecstatic to have a former police officer as a teacher.
-McNulty is flying right. He's living with "Beadie" and her kids, refusing promotions from Daniels and staying sober.
-Herc is working Mayoral security detail and still doesn't have a very developed sense of humor.
-The Baltimore Sun is right. Snoop is awesome.
-Fruit was already living on borrowed time as "Cutty" would've killed him last season if hadn't lost his heart for the drug game.

Next week: who the hell knows? I couldn't make heads or tails out of the preview outside of our favorite crooked congressman putting the pressure on Royce after getting Lester's subpeona.