Quote:
| I would actually want McNulty on the case because I know he will work it until it's finished or until they drag him away kicking and screaming |
From what we've seen, I'd say the "kicking and screaming" option is the more likely. Except that it would probably be "staggering and puking".
There's been an interesting evolution from season 1. When McNulty got into trouble with Rawls, it wasn't really his fault. His only offense was attending D'Angelo's trial as an interested spectator, which got him called into Judge Phelan's chambers for a conversation. It was the judge who pressured Rawls to make the Barksdale gang a priority, and McNulty ended up a kind of innocent victim of the conflict between Rawls and Judge Phelan.
In season 2 we see McNulty become more active in the institutional infighting, when he steers the dock murders back to homicide. But his main motive is to get back at Rawls.
Now in season 3 we see him go behind Daniels' back to keep the Barksdale gang a priority. It's a brazen move that will probably have major career consequences; the argument he has with Freamon about it was one of the ugliest personal confrontations in the series to date. But as I think about it, the motives are very different this time. There's no judge urging him on, no personal score to settle (if anything, he
owes Daniels, and his treatment of a guy who did him a big favor has been pretty shabby). In fact, the smartest thing that McNulty could do right now, career-wise, would be to take any opportunity to distance himself from the Barksdale investigation and establish himself as a guy who's seen the light and knows how to get along/go along.
But in a very real sense, the Barksdale case has become McNulty's career, even if he fell into it by accident (or, rather, by judicial "activism"). He's put years into it, he's sacrificed his position in homicide for it, and in the process he's become so attached that he just can't let it go. And there's a strong personal rivalry with Stringer, something I was reminded of while watching the pilot again, where Stringer flashes McNulty a drawing with "fuck you" in the courtroom at D'Angelo's trial, just after a prosecution witness has recanted.
McNulty may be
The Wire's most extreme example of someone who does "the right thing" for motives that are . . . complicated.
M.
