All Due Respect (The Wire)

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"All Due Respect"
The Wire episode
Episode no.Season 3
Episode 2
Directed bySteve Shill
Story by
Teleplay byRichard Price
Original air dateSeptember 26, 2004 (2004-09-26)
Running time58 minutes
Episode chronology
โ† Previous
"Time After Time"
Next โ†’
"Dead Soldiers"
List of episodes

"All Due Respect" is the second episode of the third season of the HBO original series The Wire. The episode was written by Richard Price from a story by David Simon & Richard Price and was directed by Steve Shill. It originally aired on September 26, 2004.

Plot

McNulty visits medical examiner Randall Frazier, skeptical that D'Angelo Barksdale's death in prison was a suicide. Frazier reports that D'Angelo's death could have been a homicide, citing bruises on his neck and back. McNulty visits D'Angelo's ex-girlfriend Donette, who doesn't tell him anything. Meanwhile, Cheese executes his dog when it loses in a dogfight. Soon afterwards, Tree, a drug dealer attending the dogfight, approaches and kills another dealer named Jelly. The MCU hears chatter about the murder over the wire, assuming a gang war has erupted.

Poot
.

Herc, Carver and

War on Drugs to Prohibition. Back out on the street, Herc cannot understand Colvin's reasoning. Omar and his crew stick up Shamrock and Country
while they collect money for a drug resupply.

Bell visits

street cred. Country, Shamrock and Bodie are sent to talk to mid-level dealers to try to displace their suppliers. Bodie is tasked with approaching Marlo, but is unable to find him; Marlo instructs his corner boss Fruit to ignore Bodie and go back to work. At the funeral home, Bell sends Bodie out to look for Marlo again and learns of Omar's robbery. Marlo meets with Vinson
, who advises him to prepare for war if he doesn't compromise with the Barksdales.

Production

Title Reference

The phrase "all due respect" is spoken by several characters, starting with a drug dealer addressing Omar Little as Omar is robbing him. "Respect" is a recurring theme in the episode, in which many characters, on either side of the law (e.g., McNulty and Bodie), struggle against authority figures. In particular, a strong contrast is drawn between the cordial meeting between police (Herc, Carver, and Dozerman) and drug dealers (Bodie and Poot) at the movie theater, when they are all "off-duty", and their more fraught interactions during a typical day.

Epigraph

There's never been a paper bag

โ€” Colvin

Colvin makes the comment "There's never been a paper bag for drugs" in a speech in reference to an unofficial policy of declining to arrest people concealing open alcohol containers in paper bags in public, technically a violation of open container laws, in order to focus on more significant crimes. This is a prelude to his forthcoming policy of non-enforcement of narcotics laws in unofficial free zones, which will become a significant part of the season's storyline.

Colvin's "paper bag" speech is very similar to an extended discussion of the same topic in David Simon's book The Corner.[1]

References

  1. ^ "The Corner by David Simon, Edward Burns: 9780767900317 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com.

External links