what's going on to all my hbo fans out there and welcome back to my channel movie files elliott
back again reviewing the second episode part two of we own this city an episode in which we
see the young beginnings of wayne we see this investigation going on from the fbi and g money
meanwhile nicole steele is investigating and learning more about herschel we're gonna be
discussing that and so much more in tonight's spoiler review before we get into the discussion
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enjoyed what i had to say about this second episode part two of we own this city we'll
make sure you all are liking this review as well as sharing it but speaking of sharing go ahead
and share your thoughts of this second episode in the comments from moments of how we learned
about wayne in his corrupt days very early on in the police force how that ties into sean and
him investigating this murder nicole talking and learning more about herschel and of course
everything going on with david in the fbi and g money let's discuss it all in the comments below
so with that being said i want to take the time to thank you all for supporting last week's review of
episode one i asked a question do you want to have these discussions every single week and you all
say yes so here we are breaking down this second episode and the way i want to handle these reviews
moving forward is very similar to what i did in episode one i want to break it into the three main
plots plot a in my opinion is everything going on with wayne how that ties into nicole steele
and then sean and then plot b and c to me in my opinion involves more of g-money the fbi and how
that connects to david so that's how we're going to be tackling this review with that being said
full spoilers ahead as we open the episode with wayne being brought in for questioning and what
i love about john berthold as an actor it's all in his eyes and his mannerisms we see the disbelief
going on right now this whole rah-rah i'm superman you got the wrong man i'm untouchable persona is
slowly but surely crumbling down right in front of him as we have a flashback to august 18 2003 we
meet a young wayne as he meets eddie who's going to be his trainer of the day and you can throw
all that stuff all the stuff from the academy out the front door because you were in baltimore which
reminded me so much of uh training day with alonzo and ethan hall's character like again
trying to do well like i i feel like wayne went in with good intentions but then he met a bad
apple and it's like this tradition of learn what you learned from this person implementing your
career and then bring it on to the new trainee and so on and so forth and i think that's what this
main plot kind of gave us as we transition into the whole task at hand is to empty the corners
and you better use your handcuffs for work if not you're going to have a discussion
it's a numbers game as we learned in this episode getting back into the conversation we see
that this repeating behavior in this pattern of people being released only to be put back in jail
for some of the dumbest reasons and i think this episode shows us the disconnect of the system with
the police force the government officials how it's just corrupt from the top on down
as we have this conversation between the two characters of the politics playing a huge part of
this corrupt system the mayor want to become the governor trying to lower the crime rate trying to
lower the money rate or the murder rate in so more money more you know funds being brought in and
the corruption is just this circle of corruption over and over and like i said it starts from the
government officials up top and it works its way down to the police force it's disgusting and this
episode really kind of highlights that as we go to august 25th 2003 we see more of this broken system
and how charges are dropped on the spot instead of having court dates we see that they send in their
assisting estates attorney who's looking at these police ports and seeing if there's a false report
being had and if so they let them go which is kind of a good thing in place to have that there
but again think about it more it's covering the government's ass right if they have all
these force these false police reports they're going to court they can prove it that's money
they're losing so again it might look well but they're really just covering their ass and we
obviously see that this is upsetting the police because they're like we're getting people off the
streets only to be put back in the streets again it's just corrupt from the top to bottom and it's
just so frustrating to see how this system can be handled not just in baltimore but across the
world it's very frustrating but getting back into the conversation we head to may 20th 2004
moment in which we see wayne and barbara pull up to a bunch of black men and they search them for
no reason one of the men has drugs on them whatever it's not the end of the world one
of them has a drug but drugs on them but there's three of them so this is where we see barbara give
wayne the game right he gives him some insight on how to take advantage of the situation we
see barbara tells wayne about taking advantage of these men and do you want to make some extra coin
because if we bring one in that's less money out of our pockets so let's charge all three of them
with drug possession and it's in that moment in my opinion that wayne started to see that corruption
he started to say wow i can take advantage of the situation and again john berthold plays it so well
and i like how this moment ties so perfectly into his day-to-day life as we get this scene of wayne
being embarrassed in front of his families and friends because he doesn't have enough money
to get the better shrimp you know in the in the crabs and he feels like he doesn't support his
family enough which ties into the conversation he had with barbara you want to make that extra bed
brett go ahead and do corrupt things to make that extra money to make that extra overtime
it's messed up i'm telling you and we get back to october 2015 which is 18 months prior to the
situation we see the new commissioner having this kind of conversation about the plane
close policy and how there's some things going on and how the police feel like it's being handled
and wayne makes this type of remark in regards to releasing one of the police officers
that's recently been suspended and again it just kind of shows you that the commissioner
who we've met in episode one he's trying to clean up the past commissioner's mistakes but then it's
hard to clean up when you don't have support from your fellow police officers doing their jobs on
the streets which is corrupt jobs so again i love how this episode is showing us how wayne
i think in all you know intensive purposes he was going in to try to make a change but as the
months and the years and everything goes by what he learned from barbara how he can take advantage
of the system he's becoming a bad apple as they say so i really thought that was highlighted well
as we go back to wayne and how he was taught to handle situations that's where i think this main
plot was focusing on and how we show is passed down from one bad apple to next bad apple now you
have a whole department filled with bad apples so i really did enjoy how they showed the corruption
the early days from wayne let me know what you all thought about that but transitioning over
to another main plot which is nicole steele she hears young moose verse who calls out herschel
and we're seeing his name is becoming like an urban legend of a sense on the streets which leads
her to meaning drummond who is representing young moose and she wants to set up a meeting between
her and young moose to kind of get his experience with her show which brings us into her actually
meeting him and him going over the experience with herschel and how he's just one of many
other police officers that that display this type of corrupt and terrible behavior we get a phone
call from an officer who wants to meet up with her and he goes over how he is tired of the situation
that's going on in the department he means well he wants to be a good police officer but there's just
situations that kind of get brushed on the rug kind of get ignored as he goes into showing this
situation and how it's a numbers game bringing bodies in is number one we hear this story of
the police just lying on trial and not trusting and losing us to say losing the trust from the
community we see these witnesses being brought in trying to make a change but they know it's just
going to get thrown out because they're dealing with the police force they're dealing with the
government so again it's just a matter of you're losing trust in your community you're supposed to
be policing situations saving people serving the community but instead you're doing corrupt things
is really the big thing that i took away from this scene as he goes into this particular situation in
which we see a young black man by the name of samuel who has a knife on him trying to walk
home they even mention it's not the safest area so he's just trying to protect himself if need
be the police is just like five police officers versus this one black man we see this all the time
they arrest him and then we see still meets with samuel he has a big old gash over his head a scar
to remember what happened to him again police just trying to remember it's a numbers game bring them
in for anything and everything you can find them on which is just so messed up which we ultimately
see going back into her story she is beginning to car start to unravel the police force and uncover
all the stuff and being you know police officers even good police officers they're fit up they want
to change and i hope that nicole still and her plot continues to show her trying to make that
change and one being taking down herschel which we'll get into that scene a little bit later but
let's go back into what's going on with plot b and plot c starting off with detective sean
suiter we see that he is had a couple experiences with g-money we see this one scene where g-money
comes up in his car he feels like a rock star right he doesn't feel he doesn't even look like
a police officer he's coming in listening to music talking about oh how much money you make this year
like he looks like more like a drug dealer to me than he does a police officer which just kind of
shows that relationship and i'm very curious as we get more into sean's uh plot here as we
kind of get more into it we see him handling this case of a young black man by the name of kendall
who was found shot and dead in his backyard right now it appears that he's an innocent man and all
he was doing was putting up a fence to prevent drug deals going on in his backyard which i think
is gonna have something bigger in a little bit further episodes because there is a moment in this
episode with sean talking to his boss there seems to be some type of cover-up we see his boss wants
to he offers to do you want help on this case to me there's something going on we don't get
the full understanding of it in this episode but i believe sean's gonna uncover some type of cover-up
going on with this young man being found and i have a feeling like some off-duty police officer
killed him or that kindle guy kid who was killed that man was killed he might have seen something
that he wasn't supposed to so because again we don't get a full understanding what's going on
but i think there's some corruption going on that kendall saw and i think sean's gonna uncover it
let me know how you all took in that plot and how you're enjoying that so far but we're gonna wrap
things up talking about this plot c which involves david who is representing the harfield county
narcotics task force we follow up with him with his bus from last week we're taking in aaron
and this is where we see them questioning aaron as he goes into his connect with his name
antonio and he believes that he is responsible for kicking in his door last week but we see that he
believes aaron talks about there's a relationship between this connect antonio and g-money and this
is where this whole plot kind of unravels as we see g-money is now on their radar david meets with
the fbi in a situation on aaron and the baltimore police and the plane clothes department are being
connected especially after they found that tracker and it's been weeks since that bus and no one from
the baltimore police department has called in for that missing tracker which starts to
you know the ball is getting rolling there's something going on here as we see that the fbi
does some more digging as they discover g-money is definitely someone to look into and has a
history of things that have never been followed up on which brings special agent jensen who
interviews sergeant glenn about g-money and we see him talking about that he didn't follow his gut
he felt like whenever he saw g-money interacting with antonio there was more than just like uh you
know inside man there was a relationship that was established and there's something going on but he
never followed his gut that's a perfect example if you see something wrong you you see evil you see
evil being done but you don't do anything about it that happens too many times in these situations
even from a head up a sergeant of all that matters he didn't follow his gut he didn't look into it
because he didn't want to get in trouble he didn't want his money to be taken away he didn't want to
be looked at as one of those people that snitches on his fellow brothers and sisters in the police
force it shows you that corruption going on and even someone that might have been a good sergeant
made a bad call which i think was highlighted in this moment here which brings us back to after
tapping antonio's phones david discovers that him and g-money are consistently in communication
we see this conversation between the two talking about the tracker and we see david talking to his
you know fellow police officer who's investigating the situation with him did he get sloppy or did
we just get lucky in catching this conversation which brings us to checking back in with jamal
who's talking with his involvement with fbi and he brings up that a sergeant was even involved in his
corruption because of overtime because of getting more money again a sergeant is doing these things
and taking advantage of the system for extra money to put in your pockets throwing people in jail for
they can get paid it's a numbers game it's all about the bodies you bring in as they mentioned
several times in this episode which brings us to a situation back in 2009 in which 11 000 was
stolen and we see the moment as this man's getting pulled over for we don't know for what reasons
and he has eleven thousand dollars because he's trying to refina refinance his house we see the
police just like call you know blow it off and we ultimately see them taking the money and this
is where jamal kind of goes into his mindset of like i'm gonna take advantage of it because
he tells us this particular story in which he was caught with cocaine in his office and we see that
the case was dropped and he was just suspended two years later he's back on the streets if that
ain't messed up i don't know what is as we end the episode with september 30th 2004 we see wayne on
an arrest and we see him adding to the situation put a fuel on fire there's one there's one guy
on on the stoop like 10 cops taking him down when we see this again going back to what he learned
from eddie he's telling them take advantage of this tell put in the report that he swung on you
to make a false report just showing you what he learned and how he's implemented into his
day-to-day life which brings us back to february 7 2005. we see now wayne is the man in charge
now he has someone to train by the name of tim in the same lines that eddie told him throw all that
stuff out that you learned from the academy this is baltimore we see john berthold say the exact
same thing to tim which like i mentioned earlier it's just a you know domino effect he learned from
eddie eddie learned from someone else we see that wayne learned that from eddie now he's given that
information to this new trainee by the name of tim and it's just an ongoing cycle as he now has
time in the pen thinking about all these terrible situations that he's been in and he's made as we
see steele has officially meets herschel he talks about getting so many complaints just because he's
doing his job and these are criminals of course they're lying i'm trying to clean up these streets
as we see still very cool common collective woman shock was fantastic she's like i'm not here to
investigate you i'm just trying to learn what you do for day to day he's like you know what ma'am
i've had enough you know i'm not going to speak anymore i'm just doing my job
and i think we're going to definitely see her being the one responsible for bringing him
and bringing him in from all the corrupt and evil things that he's done throughout his uh his career
as a police officer so we in the episode on that note if i were and this is where my review kind
of comes in as far as my criticism goes with this show i think the acting's great i think there's
some you know the stuff going on with wayne and learning his early corrupt days and how that kind
of sprinkled into their after department no one made a change the stuff going on with g-money
and antonio and aaron and fbi bringing them down again i mentioned last week i think david's plot
the fbi plot is showing us that there are good cops that are trying to clean up the streets
from criminals but also from their own you know peers in the police force all that stuff is
fascinating nicole and hers was fascinating my issue with the show is the way that they
tell the story it's like some stuff connects from one scene to the next but we will be in
wayne scene and then we'll transition to davidson again i know it's gonna all come together and even
within this episode things are coming together within a narrative but it is very jarring when
you're invested in this story and they take you to this story you go from here to there and it's just
cohesively speaking it makes the experience kind of makes me okay i really want to know
oh but i can't go here again i know it's six episodes we're gonna explore more of it
i just wish the show was more cohesively told in which we can follow one main narrative maybe
throw in a couple other things but the fact that we're touching on every single plot and bouncing
from here to there to everywhere it kind of makes the experience very jarring in my opinion again
it connects no doubt about it there's the whole theme is corruption and where it starts from the
from the top to the bottom it's just that when we shift so often from a plot b to plot a to plot a
to plus c to c to b it makes it just very jarring in my opinion again not knocking the performances
not knocking the message in the themes that we got here it's just the way they're telling the story
can be very confusing if i'm not being about me or not is the way i'm taking my notes like i have to
okay this is all plot a this is all plot b versus if i were to go from scene to c in a c it'll be
like wait you bounce from here to there it makes it just a little bit like i said incohesive at
points and it can be a little bit frustrating if i'm not if i'm being honest but again
i appreciate what the show is trying to show us and what they're trying to give us in regards to
the corruption in the baltimore police department and how people are trying to make a change i do
appreciate that so hey that's just my thoughts i love talking about these conversations he's more
real life you know of course i love my sci-fi my marvel my dc but it shows like this too that i do
appreciate hbo the people of the wire these great actors giving us these type of stories
to show us because there's unfortunately people in the world that don't think anything is going
on in the police force in the government and shows like this that highlights the
type of corruption that's going on these streets so hey let me know your thoughts in the comments
pros cons which plot is your favorite so far how are you enjoying the experience how do you feel
about how they're telling the narrative let me know your thoughts in the comments thank you all
for sticking on to this point in review if you can do me a favor again i appreciate all support but
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