TV Club

Week 6: Predicting Who Lives and Who Dies

Dear David,

What kind of Jew is Amy Winehouse? My guess is a heroin-addicted Jew. With a great voice. 

She’s actually the offspring of London blue-collar Jewry (her father’s a taxi driver), which is a fast-disappearing subset of a fast-disappearing community; and she’s apparently excited—when she’s not cooked—by her Jewishness. In fact, she keeps threatening to make a Hanukkah album, which, by the way, I’m all for. Winehouse would stand a good chance of introducing danger back into a once-thrilling and complicated holiday (When Elephants Attack Jews!—go look it up) that’s been pasteurized and homogenized to within an inch of its eight-day life.

Interesting, very smart, point from Emily Bazelon. Maybe she’s identified the reason that we’ve been so discombobulated by this season. I’m particularly unhappy with Lester’s transformation. He and Bunk were the moral centers of the cop-shop, and I need Lester to be Lester, not McNulty’s partner in stupidity. It’s strange to flip the script on us so late in the story, and it’s not working. This is why I think there’s still a chance Lester will trap Marlo, rather than Bunk; because if he doesn’t, then he’s just a shmuck, and that’s a terrible way to end this show, with Lester a shmuck. What would be the argument for turning Lester into a shmuck? That the city, its oafishness, made its greatest detective crazy by denying him a shopping run to Best Buy?

Chris dies. That’s my prediction. You’re right about Marlo—Marlo has to live, because capitalism can’t be put down, but Chris can be shed. Snoop, however, is too smart to die. And corruption most certainly won’t die, which is why I predict that Clay Davis is left standing, and maybe Templeton, too. No, almost certainly Templeton: I can’t imagine David Simon letting the good guys—and Gus is Simon’s dashboard saint—win in the Baltimore Sun newsroom. For him, that would be a fairy tale.

As for Omar, I think it’s quite possible Omar dies, for the same reason that Marlo lives. Omar still has a code; he’s a throwback—he robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and he listens to Motown, just in case you didn’t get that he’s a throwback. Omar’s way of life is over, and I think he could be over, as well.

Jeff