The Target (The Wire)

Baltimore homicide detective Jimmy McNulty investigates the murder of Omar "Snot Boogie" Betts, a "rip and run" kid who was shot while attempting to rob a back alley craps game. An eyewitness describes to McNulty the illogical, but to that point accepted, pattern of the regulars allowing Snot Boogie to join the game each week, knowing in advance he would rob it, followed by their chasing him down to beat him and retrieve their money. McNulty, "in exchange for some Grape Nehi and a few Newports", persuades the witness to testify in court. The following day, McNulty observes the trial of D'Angelo Barksdale, a young drug dealer charged with killing a low-ranking gang member. One of the two witnesses, a security guard named Nakeesha Lyles, changes her story on the stand and refuses to identify D'Angelo, resulting in an acquittal. McNulty vents his frustration to Judge Daniel Phelan about the Baltimore Police Department's failure to investigate D'Angelo's uncle Avon and his right-hand man Stringer Bell, who are major players in West Baltimore's drug trade. Phelan makes a call to Deputy Commissioner Ervin Burrell. Later, Major William Rawls, incensed that McNulty went around the chain of command, forces him to write a report for Burrell about the Barksdale murders. Sergeant Jay Landsman warns McNulty that his behavior could end with reassignment. He asks where McNulty would not want to be reassigned, and McNulty admits dreading being posted to the harbor patrol unit. Wee-Bey Brice drives D'Angelo to Wendell "Orlando" Blocker's strip club, a front for the Barksdale Organization. When D'Angelo discusses the trial in Wee-Bey's car, Wee-Bey curtly reminds him not to discuss business in the car or on the phone, in case either is being monitored. Avon chides D'Angelo for committing a needless public murder, costing the organization time, effort and money. D'Angelo also meets a stripper called Shardene Innes. When D'Angelo arrives at the high-rise Franklin Terrace housing projects, Stringer tells him he has been demoted to heading a crew in the low-rise projects, dubbed "the Pit". This new crew includes Bodie Broadus, Poot Carr and young Wallace. Narcotics lieutenant Cedric Daniels is tasked by Burrell with organizing a detail to investigate the Barksdales. Burrell wants to keep the investigation quick and simple, appeasing Phelan without becoming drawn into a protracted case. Daniels brings narcotics detectives Kima Greggs, Thomas "Herc" Hauk and Ellis Carver with him. Rawls sends McNulty and Michael Santangelo, one of Homicide's more inept detectives. McNulty's FBI contact, Agent Terrance "Fitz" Fitzhugh, shows him the Bureau's far superior surveillance equipment but explains that their drug investigations are winding down due to the War on Terror. McNulty objects to Daniels' plan of "buy-busts" and suggests using a wiretap to get a conviction. However, Daniels insists on a fast-paced investigation, suggesting that the detail looks at old murders tied to the Barksdales. McNulty goes drinking with his Homicide partner Bunk Moreland and complains about his ex-wife, who makes it difficult for him to see his two sons. Greggs returns home to her partner Cheryl. A heroin addict called Bubbles and his protege, Johnny Weeks, buy drugs with counterfeit money, but when they try to repeat the scam, Bodie leads the crew in beating Johnny. Bubbles is also a confidential informant for Greggs and agrees to give her information on the Barksdales as revenge for the beating. At the start of his second day working the Pit, D'Angelo is shocked to find the murdered body of William Gant, another witness at his trial, lying in the street. ==Production==

Epigraph This line is taken from a conversation in which McNulty criticizes his colleague Bunk Moreland for taking on a homicide case that he could have avoided – it not being his turn in the rotation to take the next case. Bunk took the case because he knew the corpse was found in a house, which statistically gave him a much better chance of solving the case than if the victim had been found outdoors. The conversation is ironic since McNulty has broken the rules in a much more serious fashion by circumventing the chain of command. Commentary The DVD release featured a commentary track recorded by creator and writer/producer David Simon. Simon discusses the season's novelistic structure and the theme of the corrupting influence of the institutions that the characters have committed to. He mentions many real-life inspirations for events and characters on the show. He discusses the technique of using surveillance methods within shots (TV monitors, security cameras etc.) to give the sense of always being watched and a need to process the vast amount of information available to the show's detective characters. He also talks about trying to ground the show in realism by using only diegetic music. Throughout the commentary, Simon tries to distinguish The Wire from other television crime dramas. He makes the point that the detectives are motivated not by a desire to protect and serve but by the intellectual vanity of believing they are smarter than the criminals they are chasing. At the end of the episode, when the body of Gant is found, there is a brief flashback to the trial, re-identifying the character for the audience. David Simon cites it as one of the few things HBO urged them to do, to make sure audiences recognized the character. Although Simon concedes that 'maybe they were right', he says that they were reluctant to put it in as it broke from the style of the show. The show's storytelling has been entirely linear ever since. Simon confirms that the pilot was shot only a few weeks after 9/11, but that the writers correctly predicted what the FBI's response would be. The scenes set at Orlando's gentleman's club were filmed at the Ritz Cabaret in Fells Point. In addition to Doman, Reddick, Harris, and Lombardozzi, Oz alumni include Seth Gilliam (Ellis Carver) and J. D. Williams (Bodie Broadus). Peter Gerety (Judge Phelan) and Clayton LeBouef (Orlando) were both major characters on Homicide, on which Delaney Williams (Sgt. Jay Landsman) had also appeared. This episode was the first of several directed by Clark Johnson, also an alumnus of Homicide. The Corner star Larry Hull appears as maintenance man and witness William Gant. ==Broadcast==

The episode debuted on HBO in the U.S. on June 2, 2002. The episode debuted in the UK on January 12, 2005, on FX. BBC Two broadcast this episode for the first time on UK broadcast television on March 30, 2009. ==Reception==

Ratings On its U.S. debut, "The Target" had 3.7 million viewers on HBO. In the UK, BBC Two's first run of this episode on March 30, 2009, had nearly 600,000 viewers. Ben Marshall of The Guardian noted the pilot episode established the series' themes of institutional dysfunction, the ineffectiveness of the war on drugs and novelistic structure. The review compared the series to Richard Price's 1992 novel Clockers and wondered if the pace could be sustained for an entire season. The review picked out the characters of Jimmy and Avon as particularly significant. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly praised Johnson's direction of the episode and credited him with drawing subtle performances out of Gerety and Reddick. The review also made favorable comparisons between the show and Simon's previous work on Homicide: Life on the Street, attributing the improvement to the switch to cable television for The Wire from the NBC network who produced Homicide. Shales also believed the show to be "almost ludicrous in its excess of profane and raunchy talk". The New York Times also felt that the show "went out of its way to be choppy and confusing" and eschewed conventions of signposting the introduction of characters and obvious exposition but commented that while some viewers may be alienated others would find this refreshing. They noted the theme of institutional dysfunction and the use of parallel storylines for characters in different organizations to highlight this, citing the pariah status of Jimmy and D'Angelo. ==References==