The Wire
Ebb Tide
TV Flash files “Ebb Tide” as the first listed hour of season 2 — The Wire (2002–2008) on HBO, season 2, episode 1, aired 2003-06-01, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S02E01: listed hour 14 of 60 in the The Wire guide, first listed hour of season 2. It aired 2003-06-01 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Sentencing” (S01E13). Next is “Collateral Damage” (S02E02).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
"Ain't never gonna be what it was." – Little Big Roy Jimmy McNulty is sidelined to harbor patrol. He discovers a corpse in the harbor and pays back Colonel Rawls by proving City Homicide bear responsibility for the investigation.Major Valchek feels slighted when the boss of a local stevedore union named Frank Sobotka donates a more impressive gift to a local Polish church. Sobotka meets with other union leaders and learns that a crucial pier is still in a state of disrepair. Sobotka instructs his nephew Nick to see The Greek regarding payment for a clandestine container that he is smuggling through the port. Later, Port Police Officer "Beadie" Russell stumbles across The Greek's container and discovers the bodies of over a dozen young women inside.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Ebb Tide sit in the The Wire guide?
S02E01 is listed hour 14 of 60 — first listed hour of season 2, season 2 episode 1.
When did The Wire S02E01 air?
Ebb Tide aired 2003-06-01 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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