The Wire
Old Cases
TV Flash files “Old Cases” as hour 4 of 60 in the TV Flash guide — The Wire (2002–2008) on HBO, season 1, episode 4, aired 2002-06-23, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E04: listed hour 4 of 60 in the The Wire guide, hour 4 of 13 in season 1. It aired 2002-06-23 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “The Buys” (S01E03). Next is “The Pager” (S01E05).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Bodie wakes up from his injuries in a Washington, D.C. juvenile detention center and manages to escape just before Herc and Carver arrive to interrogate him. Avon discusses the loss of the pit's stash with his enforcers and marks Omar and his crew for death. McNulty and his partner from homicide Bunk Moreland investigate an old murder that may be related to D'Angelo.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Old Cases sit in the The Wire guide?
S01E04 is listed hour 4 of 60 — hour 4 of 13 in season 1, season 1 episode 4.
When did The Wire S01E04 air?
Old Cases aired 2002-06-23 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Where should I start The Wire?
Episode one of season one. The show is a five-volume novel; skipping the corner season to “get to the good part” is how you miss the grammar.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Watch it as a civic novel that happens to be television: each season a new institution, the same city refusing to be solved. Characters function inside systems, not merch. Start at the corner; stay for the report card — and for a newsroom closer that still argues with the first wire.
Open on a street that is already an argument. The first hour of The Wire does not introduce a hero so much as a jurisdiction: a corner, a courtroom, a police department already lying to itself about what it can solve. David Simon and Ed Burns write Baltimore as a set of interlocking machines — drugs, docks, City Hall, schools, the newsroom — and then ask television to behave like a novel that refuses a narrator’s mercy. If you came for an antihero origin story, the text will starve you politely. If you came to…
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