The King Stay The King

No baseball here.

The Wire began its fifth and final season this week. As a result, it’s been getting a lot of publicity from the critics who love it.

My opinion: it’s the finest series ever broadcast in television history. So I guess I like it.
In advance of the season, HBO produced a couple of short pieces about the series history and about the fifth season. In one of them, various cast members identify their favorite scenes. I have two, neither of which were mentioned.

The first was a scene from the first season, episode 3. The late, great D’Angelo Barksdale explains chess to Wallace and the late, great Bodie in a way that they can understand. The tag line for the episode comes from this dialogue: “The king stay the king.”

You can see the clip on You Tube here. In the meantime, I found a somewhat edited printout of the dialogue:

"See this?" he picks up and kisses the king. "This the king pin. He da man. You get the other dude's king, you got the game. But he tries to get your king too because that's the game. Now the king he move any direction he damn choose, because he the king. But he got no hustle. The rest of the other motherfuckers, they got his back and they run so deep, he ain't got to do shit."

Now you see this?" He picks up the queen. "This the queen. She smart, she fierce. She move any way she want, as far as she want. And she is the go-get-shit-done piece.

"And this over here is the castle, it's like the stash, it move like this and like this."

One of the kids points to the pawns and says, "What about these little bald-headed bitches here?"

"These the pawns. They the soldiers. One space forward only. Except when they fight, they go sideways. They like the front lines. They be in the field."

"How they get to be the king?"

"It ain't like that. See, the king stay the king. Everything stay who he is, except for the pawns. Now if a pawn make it to the other dude's side, he get to be queen. Like I said, the queen ain't no bitch. She got all the moves."

You’ve got to love it – little bald headed bitches.

The other scene is the opening scene of Season 4, Episode 38. In this scene we meet Snoop, who was actually convicted of juvenile murder in real life. She (yes, Snoop is a she) heads to a Home Depot-like hardware store to buy a nail gun, which she will use to board up dilapidated buildings after burying her murder victims inside.

Unfortunately I don’t have printed dialogue here, because it’s pretty much impossible to understand every word. But you can see the clip posted on You Tube here.

If you are not watching, maybe these clips will give you some idea of what you are missing. And maybe they won’t. All I can say is that in our household, this is priority number two, after ball playing with Max.