The Wire
Mission Accomplished
TV Flash files “Mission Accomplished” as the last listed hour of season 3 — The Wire (2002–2008) on HBO, season 3, episode 12, aired 2004-12-19, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S03E12: listed hour 37 of 60 in the The Wire guide, last listed hour of season 3. It aired 2004-12-19 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Middle Ground” (S03E11). Next is “Boys of Summer” (S04E01).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Avon readies his troops for a seemingly endless war against Marlo. The detail works towards the top rungs of the Barksdale organization with the information garnered from the wire. While Royce continues to grapple with Amsterdam, Burrell offers a deal to minimize the fallout. Carcetti's political plans become obvious to his friend and fellow councilman Tony Gray. Bubbles offers his view of the world. McNulty changes tack.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Mission Accomplished sit in the The Wire guide?
S03E12 is listed hour 37 of 60 — last listed hour of season 3, season 3 episode 12.
When did The Wire S03E12 air?
Mission Accomplished aired 2004-12-19 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…
Filed against
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Lance Reddick’s Cedric Daniels is The Wire’s institutional still center — David Simon’s Baltimore as interlocking machines, a novel in five civic volumes, the corner never the point. Badge as ethics, not as merch. On TV Flash he is cable…
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Sonja Sohn’s Kima Greggs made The Wire’s detective work feel like a civic novel, not a merch cop show — David Simon’s Baltimore in five institutional volumes, the corner never the point. On TV Flash she is the badge inside the system:…
- Clarke Peters as Lester Freamon
Clarke Peters’s Lester Freamon made The Wire’s detail work look like poetry — dollhouse miniatures, quiet fury, institutions as characters. Novelistic HBO crime needed his patience. On TV Flash he’s the detective who always had a longer…