The Wire Season 3 Episode 12: Mission Accomplished

The Wire Season 3 Episode 12: Mission Accomplished   David Simon, in an action that is half cynicism and half social criticism, titled this episode after President Bush's premature declaration of the end of the Iraqi invasion and the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Simon is offering up the same assessment of the campaign to restore law and order to the ravaged streets of inner city Baltimore. The arrest of Avon Barksdale in this episode delivered nowhere near a death blow to drug operations in the city. In fact, Barksdale's operation -- severely weakened by the summary execution of his second in command, Stringer Bell, at the end of the previous episode -- was being out sold and gunned by Marlo Stanfield's lean and mean team, a team so bold they met in abandoned parking lots not strip joints or funeral homes as Barksdale did. Stanfield's enforcers (Chris and Snoop) were more lethal than Barksdale's increasingly bumbling gunmen, his heroin was better and the man himself was unperturbably efficient -- a real sociopath. When he discovered a young woman had been sent by Barksdale to infiltrate his organization, Marlo shot the woman three times -- one in each breast and one in the month. (The misogynism is undeniable.) It would be West Baltimore's new kingpin, Marlo Stanfield, that BPD would be trying to take down in Season 4 before his operation brought down the entire city.