Time After Time

Season Three of The Wire opens with the demolition of Baltimore's notorious Franklin Terrace towers, the home base of Avon Barksdale's (Wood Harris) crew, currently under the supervision of Stringer Bell (Idris Elba). Rather than worry about expanding his control, through violence and intimidation, of the corners of West Baltimore, Stringer explains to his lieutenants that he plans to make money by offering the other gangs in on their New York drug supply, and sharing the corners with them. Lieutenant Daniels (Lance Reddick) and his unit are doing surveillance on Cheese (Method Man), one of Proposition Joe's dealers, and begin to realize that the phones that the street dealers use never reach the higher-ups in the organization. They have a wire up on one talkative dealer, who happens to be Prop Joe's nephew, and they decide to bust someone higher on the food chain in hopes that Prop Joe will promote the talker. "What makes you think they'll promote the wrong man?" asks Commissioner Burrell (Frankie Faison), to which Daniels responds, "We do it all the time." Daniels also finds out that Mayor Royce (Glynn Turman) is holding up his promotion because his wife, Marla (Maria Broom) is planning to run for the city council against one of the mayor's cronies. An ambitious councilman, Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) notices an uptick in violent crimes in the city, and decides to go after the mayor, inviting the media to watch him criticize Burrell at a hearing. This leads Burrell and Rawls to pressure their majors, including Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom) who is approaching his thirty year pension, to bring the murder rate down. Cutty (Chad L. Coleman), a former drug soldier, gets out of prison after fourteen years, and gets a handout from Avon, who plans to get out soon himself.