The Wire
Bad Dreams
TV Flash files “Bad Dreams” as hour 24 of 60 in the TV Flash guide — The Wire (2002–2008) on HBO, season 2, episode 11, aired 2003-08-17, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S02E11: listed hour 24 of 60 in the The Wire guide, hour 11 of 12 in season 2. It aired 2003-08-17 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Storm Warnings” (S02E10). Next is “Port in a Storm” (S02E12).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
"I need to get clean." – Sobotka Stringer manipulates Omar into pursuing Brother Mouzone. Omar shoots Mouzone and then leaves him alive having realized his mistake. The detail serves warrants on the targets of their investigation. A raid of Nick's home turns up large amounts of cash and heroin but Nick himself escapes arrest. Frank Sobotka is arrested when the FBI storms the union offices. Valchek ensures the press is there to see Sobotka embarrassed in a perp walk. Sobotka agrees to work with the investigation into the Greeks in exchange for leniency for Nick and Ziggy. In the wake of the arrests the Greeks decide to cut their losses and leave Baltimore. Vondas lures Sobotka into danger by offering him a meeting with The Greek and a promise to help Nick and Ziggy. The Greek receives warning of Sobotka's plan from a contact in the FBI.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Bad Dreams sit in the The Wire guide?
S02E11 is listed hour 24 of 60 — hour 11 of 12 in season 2, season 2 episode 11.
When did The Wire S02E11 air?
Bad Dreams aired 2003-08-17 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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