Television Review: Undertow (The Wire, S2X05, 1988)

Undertow (S02E05)

Airdate: June 29th 2003

Written by: Ed Burns
Directed by: Steve Shill

Running Time: 57 minutes

Where other police procedurals would have long since resolved their central narrative knots through forensic breakthroughs or convenient confessions, The Wire’s second season persists in its glacial, almost stubbornly deliberate pacing. It is not until the fifth episode, Undertow, that the two seemingly disparate investigations – the Major Crimes Unit’s surveillance of Frank Sobotka’s dockside operations and the homicide inquiry into the dead women in the shipping container – finally and almost accidentally converge. The Wire refuses to indulge the genre’s typical adrenaline rushes; instead, it immerses us in the grinding, often futile mechanics of institutional work, where connections are forged not through brilliance but bureaucratic necessity and sheer happenstance. In most television crime drama, this linkage would be a foregone conclusion by episode two. Here, it arrives as a quiet, uncelebrated inevitability, underscoring the show’s commitment to realism over narrative convenience.

The script, written by Ed Burns, masterfully orchestrates this convergence through institutional pragmatism rather than dramatic revelation. Lieutenant Cedric Daniels, desperate to bolster his under-resourced Major Crime Unit targeting Sobotka, makes a calculated decision: resurrect the disbanded task force that dismantled the Barksdale organisation. This means reassembling Kima Greggs, Prez Pryzbylewski, and Herc Hauk, alongside the newly rehabilitated Ellis Carver. Daniels’ wry observation that Carver’s exposure as a double agent during previous investigation renders him "unlikely to repeat the same stunt" speaks volumes about the show’s cynical view of loyalty and rehabilitation within the system. Far more pivotal, however, is the arrival of Lester Freamon. With his quiet, methodical precision, Freamon informs Daniels of the container murder case, noting the probable link to the docks investigation. Daniels’ reaction is pure institutional realism: he is visibly displeased, knowing dockside murders are historically unsolvable and politically toxic, yet he grudgingly accepts the cooperation out of sheer operational necessity. The connection isn’t a eureka moment; it’s a bureaucratic compromise, a reluctant marriage of two failing investigations.

Meanwhile, the homicide unit, stripped of Freamon and assigned the ineffectual Ray Cole as his replacement, flounders. Bunk Moreland and Beadie Russell resort to the blunt instrument of issuing grand jury subpoenas to union members, hoping intimidation might yield a confession about the fatal container. Predictably, this tactic fails – the working-class solidarity of the docks proves impervious to legal strong-arming. Beadie’s breakthrough comes not from police procedure, but from leveraging her personal history. Advised by seasoned colleagues to seek a steady informant, she turns to her former lover, Maui, a cargo checker. Through this fragile, human connection – a conversation steeped in past intimacy and unspoken regret – Beadie learns the crucial detail that all container records are digitally archived. This single piece of information, gleaned outside official channels, becomes the key to reconstructing the crime.

The Major Crimes Unit, conversely, pursues a more conventional, albeit ethically dubious, path: targeting Sobotka through the drug trade. They begin in the Southeastern District’s open-air drug markets, a move that energises Kima, Herc, and Carver. This subplot delivers one of the episode’s sharpest sociological observations. Carver, observing young white dealers aping the mannerisms, slang, and fashion of the established Black crews from the projects, is visibly amused. His reaction isn’t mere mockery; it’s a quiet indictment of performative gangsterism and cultural appropriation, highlighting how marginal white youth mimic a romanticised, media-fuelled "gangsta" aesthetic, utterly detached from the systemic realities that forged the Black drug trade. Their operations are haphazard, inefficient – a pale imitation revealing the profound difference between cultural signifiers and the brutal socioeconomic structures that sustain the real game.

Frank Sobotka’s desperation intensifies as he attempts to extricate himself from the Greeks’ smuggling operation. A chillingly calm reminder from his handler underscores the brutal reality: this illicit trade is the only viable economic lifeline left for him and his men in a post-industrial landscape where the docks are dying. His nephew Nick, sharing Frank’s misgivings but seduced by the promise of a better home for Aimee and their child, agrees to participate in stealing chemicals – rationalising it by convincing himself the substances are for drug processing, not terrorism. Simultaneously, Ziggy’s impulsive foray into drug dealing backfires catastrophically, landing him deeply in debt to Melvin "Cheese" Wagstaff (Method Man), Proposition Joe’s ruthless Eastside lieutenant.

McNulty’s parallel struggles epitomise the show’s theme of institutional futility. His attempt to leverage Omar Little’s testimony in the Gant case founders on Omar’s intimidating appearance and courtroom demeanour, threatening to sink the prosecution – a brutal commentary on how the justice system often convicts based on perception, not truth. His investigation into the container victims hits a dead end at the ICE detention facility; conversations with traumatised Eastern European women yield no clues, underscoring the invisibility of the exploited migrant underclass.

Meanwhile, Stringer Bell grapples with declining drug purity from Atlanta, applying sterile business-school logic to a trade where human volatility defies spreadsheets. Avon Barksdale, meanwhile, faces the crumbling loyalty of his incarcerated nephew D’Angelo, disillusioned by the previous neglect by Donette and empty promises of future legitimacy. These threads, while seemingly tangential to the docks, reinforce The Wire’s central thesis: all institutions, whether criminal or civic, are failing the people who depend on them.

Undertow is undoubtedly solidly written and competently directed, yet it lacks the searing memorability of The Wire’s strongest episodes. Its true significance lies not in plot mechanics but in the quiet, incisive socio-economic and historical asides woven into the narrative fabric by Burns. Carver’s observation of white dealers appropriating Black culture transcends mere scene-setting; it’s a microcosm of America’s fraught relationship with race and class performance. Nick’s house hunt, navigating the gentrification of his old working-class neighbourhood, captures the visceral displacement of the urban poor as capital reshapes the city. Most powerfully, Frank Sobotka’s rousing speech to his union men – invoking how they repulsed union-busting campaigns under RFK, Nixon, and Reagan – isn’t just rhetoric; it’s a lament for a vanishing era of organised labour’s power, a historical anchor that resonates with profound melancholy in today’s fractured labour landscape.

Crucially, for a 2025 audience steeped in relentless US immigration controversies, one seemingly throwaway detail gains startling historical weight: McNulty’s passing observation of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) insignia being replaced by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) signage. This mundane bureaucratic transition, a direct consequence of the post-9/11 security apparatus, transforms The Wire from contemporary drama into vital historical document. What was merely background detail in 2003 now reads as the prelude to decades of escalating border militarisation and the weaponisation of immigration policy. Undertow inadvertently chronicles the birth pangs of a system whose devastating legacy we now fully comprehend.

In the end, Undertow works not as a plot-driven thriller but as a meticulously observed sociological snapshot. Its power derives from the spaces between the action – in the weary pragmatism of Daniels accepting an unsavoury alliance, in Beadie’s reliance on a personal connection over procedure, in Frank’s invocation of labour’s past glories against present decay. This episode, seemingly unremarkable in its progression, is in fact quintessential Wire: a testament to the idea that the most profound stories are often told in the quiet moments where institutions falter, and humanity, flawed and desperate, tries to keep its head above water. Its true legacy, especially viewed through the lens of 2025, is its unwitting documentation of societal fractures that have only widened, proving that Simon and Burns weren’t just chronicling Baltimore – they were mapping America’s future.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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