Television Review: The Pager (The Wire, S1X05, 2002)

The Pager (S01E05)

Airdate: June 30th 2002

Written by: Ed Burns
Directed by: Clark Johnson

Running Time: 60 minutes

The Wire remains indelibly stamped with the intellectual imprint of its creator, David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter whose journalistic rigour defined the series' unflinching gaze upon institutional decay. Yet, to attribute the show’s very existence solely to Simon is a profound historical oversight. The crucible from which The Wire truly emerged was Simon’s earlier collaboration with Ed Burns, a former Baltimore City Police detective turned school teacher. Burns, whose lived experience navigating both the streets and the failing public school system provided the show’s bedrock authenticity, was not merely a consultant; he became a vital producer and, crucially, stepped into the writer’s room for the fifth episode, The Pager.

The episode’s central police narrative meticulously charts the agonising frustration of Lieutenant Cedric Daniels’ nascent task force. Their painstaking efforts to build a case against the Barksdale Organisation hit repeated walls, culminating in the bittersweet victory of finally securing a wiretap warrant. The significance is underscored by the rare appearance of Judge Phelan descending into the task force’s dingy basement headquarters to personally sign the order – a moment of hard-won institutional validation. Yet, triumph swiftly curdles into despair. The dealers’ cloned pager numbers, painstakingly gathered, prove maddeningly opaque, likely employing a numerical code rendering them useless. Just as the task force seems permanently hamstrung, the breakthrough arrives from an utterly unexpected quarter: the desk-bound Prez. Demoted following his disastrous, violent encounter with a civilian, Prez, freed from the adrenaline-fuelled chaos of street policing, finds the mental space his colleagues lack. His quiet, analytical persistence cracks the code, transforming meaningless digits into actionable intelligence – a triumph of intellect over brute force, born from enforced reflection.

Simultaneously, the Barksdale Organisation reels from the audacious robbery executed by Omar Little’s crew. Stringer Bell, ever the strategic thinker, immediately suspects an inside leak, his paranoia fixating on the Pit crew. His solution is chillingly pragmatic: withhold their pay, reasoning that those who remain silent are the likely traitors. This internal purge sets the stage for tragedy. D’Angelo Barksdale’s soldiers, Poot (Tray Chaney) and the Wallace (young Michael B. Jordan), spot Omar’s lover, Brandon Wright, in an arcade. They report this critical intelligence, triggering the Barksdale enforcers. The consequence is swift and brutal: Brandon is murdered, joining John Bailey, the third member of Omar’s crew, already gunned down.

Elsewhere, the volatile duo of Herc and Carver achieve a minor victory by arresting the street-level dealer Boadie, but their heavy-handed attempt to flip him spectacularly backfires, further poisoning relations and fueling the cycle of violence. Meanwhile, McNulty and Kima Greggs pursue a more strategic gambit: leveraging Omar Little’s vendetta against the Barksdales by attempting to recruit him as an informant. Their tense, impromptu meeting at a cemetery becomes a fascinating exchange of intel – McNulty reveals Bailey’s fate, while Omar, with chilling nonchalance, discloses his knowledge of Bubbles as a police informant. Omar’s refusal, grounded in his strict code against "snitching," is delivered with a respect that highlights the complex, almost honourable, boundaries within his criminal world. This parley, however, suffers from a certain staginess; the cemetery setting and the measured dialogue feel more reminiscent of a classic Western standoff than the gritty, spontaneous realism The Wire typically masters, momentarily pulling the viewer out of the show’s immersive verisimilitude.

Within the consistently high watermark of The Wire, The Pager undeniably feels a step down from the masterful first four episodes. The primary reason lies in Ed Burns’ debut as a credited writer. While possessing invaluable experiential knowledge, Burns, at this stage, simply lacks Simon’s seasoned command of narrative economy and character exposition. Certain scenes, particularly D’Angelo’s awkward date with Donette in an overly posh Baltimore restaurant, feel clunky and didactic. The unsubtle contrast between D’Angelo’s discomfort and the affluent white clientele serves as heavy-handed social commentary, lacking the organic integration of theme and character that Simon achieves so effortlessly. Similarly, D’Angelo’s continued pursuit of stripper Shardene Innes (Wendy Grantham) and the visit to Avon’s comatose brother, while adding texture, don’t significantly propel the central plot forward in this specific episode, contributing to a slight narrative drag.

However, Burns should not be dismissed outright. He demonstrates a nascent but promising skill in adding layers to seemingly one-dimensional characters. The scene where Herc and Carver, despite their earlier brutality towards Bodie, find a moment of grudging camaraderie with him over a game of pool, is quietly revelatory. It hints at the complex humanity lurking beneath their cop personas, a nuance Burns, drawing from his police background, seems uniquely positioned to explore. Yet, his most significant contribution, and arguably the episode’s single greatest strength, is the handling of Prez. Up until The Pager, Prez is portrayed as a liability – cowardly, prone to violence, and fundamentally unsuited to street policing. Burns masterfully engineers his redemption not through a violent act, but through the quiet, cerebral triumph of code-breaking. Prez’s victory in the drudgery of office work, earning the genuine respect of his colleagues, is one of the series’ most satisfying and thematically rich character turns. It validates the intellectual labour often overlooked in police procedurals and perfectly embodies the show’s core thesis about the value of different kinds of intelligence within broken systems.

At the end, The Pager is a fascinating, if flawed, chapter. It is indispensable for showcasing Ed Burns’ crucial, often underappreciated role in The Wire’s genesis and for delivering one of the series’ most pivotal character moments in Prez’s redemption. However, Burns’ relative inexperience as a television writer is evident in scenes that lack narrative drive and occasionally stumble into stylistic missteps. It is not the equal of Simon’s opening salvo, but it is far from a failure. It represents the necessary, sometimes uneven, growing pains of a collaborative masterpiece finding its full voice, proving that while Simon was the architect, the building required the hands of men like Burns, whose intimate knowledge of Baltimore’s streets and institutions provided the essential, authentic bricks.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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