The Wire Season 2 Episode 6: All Prologue

The Wire Season 2 Episode 6: All Prologue. This marvelous episode is one of the strongest from the second season because it is loaded with classic moments, from Omar's testimony against the murderous Bird to Greggs' and Prez's visit with a plainspoken stripper. But in this episode viewers also bid farewell to D'Angelo Barksdale. The writers give D'Angelo a strikingly insightful speech toward the end of this episode. It's set in a classroom at the prison where inmates are discussing The Great Gatsby. D'Angelo (played by Larry Gilliard Jr.) shares that a man's character is the sum total of his earlier deeds, the prologue. It's not really about the trappings that he gathers around himself (foreshadowing to a later discover about his nemesis Stringer Bell) but about the man himself, his heart, his soul. It's a perfectly pitched moment that resonates tragically as we watch, stunned, as D'Angelo falls victim to an assassin inside the prison who is hired by Stringer to silence his best friend's nephew, for fear he, D'Angelo, might flip and bring down the Barksdale organization. This episode is terrific from first to last.