Television Review: The Hunt (The Wire, S1X11, 2002)

The Hunt (S01E11)

Airdate: August 18th 2002

Written by: Joy Fusco
Directed by: Steve Shill

Running Time: 56 minutes

One of the depressingly resonant conclusions permeating David Simon’s meticulously constructed Baltimore in The Wire is that profoundly dysfunctional and incompetent institutions, particularly the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD), remain trapped in a state of bureaucratic lethargy until jolted awake by events of extraordinary tragedy, shock, or public embarrassment. Only then do they momentarily transcend their inherent inertia and perform the core functions they are ostensibly mandated to fulfil. This grim, systemic truth forms the chilling backbone of The Hunt, the eleventh episode of the first season, where the near-fatal shooting of Detective Kima Greggs acts as the brutal catalyst forcing the machine, however imperfectly, into motion. It is a stark illustration that within Simon’s world, institutional efficacy is not a baseline state but a desperate, reactive response to catastrophe – a conclusion that feels less like dramatic licence and more like a documentary observation of urban decay.

The specific tragedy that shatters the department’s complacency is the ambush targeting Kima Greggs and her confidential informant, Wendell "Orlando" Blocker. The episode opens not with the shooting itself, but with its chaotic, sprawling aftermath. The scene is a microcosm of Baltimore’s fractured law enforcement landscape: officers from patrol, detectives from Homicide, task force, and even representatives from other agencies converge on the street corner, a rare moment of forced collaboration born of shared outrage. The immediate focus shifts from the slow, painstaking work of dismantling the Barksdale Organisation to the singular, visceral imperative of avenging one of their own. As Kima fights for her life in the hospital, the BPD undergoes a startling, almost unnatural transformation. Jurisdictional squabbles and personal vendettas – the oxygen of daily police work – are temporarily suspended. Major William Rawls, Homicide’s notoriously abrasive and politically astute head, seizes the initiative, directing his unit with an efficiency rarely seen outside such crises. His detectives uncover crucial physical evidence at the scene. Combined with the wiretap intelligence painstakingly gathered by Lieutenant Cedric Daniels’ sidelined task force, the disparate pieces coalesce. The reconstruction is swift: Barksdale enforcer Wintell "Little Man" Royce (Micaih Jones) is identified as one shooter, while Savino Bratton, the architect of the ambush that claimed Orlando’s life, makes a coldly pragmatic, self-serving decision. Leveraging the corrupt defence attorney Maurice Levy, Savino surrenders, striking a plea deal that reduces his potential life sentence to a mere three years – a transactional betrayal highlighting the system’s own moral bankruptcy even as it ostensibly pursues justice.

This sudden police momentum, however, forces Lieutenant Daniels’ hand regarding the planned raids on the Barksdale stash houses. Deputy Commissioner Ervin Burrell and Commissioner Warren Frazier (Dick Stilwell), sensing a potent public relations opportunity amidst the outrage over Greggs, launch a highly visible, politically motivated campaign of raids designed for television cameras – a stark contrast to Daniels’ methodical, evidence-based approach. Daniels’ desperate attempts to prevent a premature raid on the primary stash house, fearing it will scatter evidence and compromise the wire, are met with suspicion and hostility. The reaction from certain superiors strongly suggests a leak within his own task force, a betrayal that underscores how the very crisis uniting the department also exposes its internal rot and the ease with which political expediency corrupts operational integrity.

Conversely, the Barksdale Organisation finds itself reeling under an unprecedented, intensely public police assault – a situation Avon Barksdale never anticipated. The irony is thick: Stringer Bell, whose strategic miscalculation in authorising Savino’s ambush directly triggered this firestorm, now advocates for a swift, brutal cover-up. Wee-Bey, the other shooter, is dispatched to Philadelphia (a city where he has no connections, amplifying his isolation), while Little Man is marked for execution – a desperate attempt to contain the fallout through violence, mirroring the police response in its brutality but lacking its institutional cover.

Written by Joy Lusco, a veteran of Simon’s earlier Homicide: Life on the Street, The Hunt masterfully exploits these layered ironies. The episode’s core satirical thrust lies in observing how the department’s usual roster of lazy, corrupt, or indifferent personnel suddenly operates with remarkable efficiency and unity of purpose when one of their own blue uniforms is struck down. This efficiency, however, is born of tribal loyalty and political pressure, not systemic reform. A particularly potent moment sees Major Rawls, McNulty’s most persistent bureaucratic antagonist, delivering an unexpected, almost gruff pep talk to the devastated detective – a fleeting human connection forged in shared trauma that momentarily transcends their usual enmity, yet does nothing to alter Rawls’ fundamental nature.

Yet, the episode’s most profoundly tragic irony centres on Bubbles. The series’ most sympathetic figure – a gentle, non-violent addict striving for basic decency – becomes the victim of the very institutional frenzy the Kima shooting unleashed. Mistakenly identified as a suspect after pagers lead detectives to him, Bubbles is subjected to a brutal beating in the interrogation room by Detective Holley (Brian Anthony Wilson). His near-murder at the hands of the very people supposedly hunting Kima’s shooter epitomises the systemic blindness and casual cruelty that The Wire relentlessly exposes; the machine gears up efficiently for its own, while crushing the most vulnerable outsiders without a second thought.

Further dark humour emerges with D'Angelo Barksdale. Convinced he is being taken to a remote house for execution by Wee-Bey as punishment for Orlando’s death, D'Angelo faces a moment of pure existential terror. The reveal – that Wee-Bey merely needed him to feed the fish before his exile – is a masterstroke. It underscores the pervasive paranoia of the drug game while highlighting the absurd, mundane realities that underpin its deadly stakes. Directed with taut precision by Steve Shill, a veteran of British television known for the gritty realism of The Bill, "The Hunt" avoids sensationalism. Shill’s background in procedural drama allows him to capture the chaotic energy of the police response and the tense, claustrophobic fear within the Barksdale crew with equal authenticity, grounding the episode’s powerful themes in visceral, believable detail.

Ultimately, The Hunt is not merely an episode about solving a shooting. It is a devastating dissection of institutional pathology. It reveals that the BPD’s capacity for effective action is tragically contingent upon the sacrifice of one of its own – a horrifyingly high price for temporary competence. The system remains fundamentally broken; it merely appears to function when the stakes become unbearably personal. The efficiency displayed is a flickering candle in the overwhelming darkness of bureaucratic inertia and moral compromise, illuminating not progress, but the sheer depth of the rot that requires such a horrific catalyst to stir even momentarily. It is a triumph of writing and direction that leaves the viewer not with catharsis, but with a deepening sense of despair about the possibility of meaningful change within such a profoundly flawed structure.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Leodex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9