Marlo"s crew makes a move on picking up around $16 million worth of product from the Greeks, so Freamon"s crew -- now plugged in to just what those images of clocks mean -- make a move on them. Monk and Cheese are both arrested, drugs in hand, and warrants are also issued for Marlo and Chris; the latter also gets charged for his part in the beat-down death of Michael"s stepfather. Freamon, Bunk, et al, get to celebrate a job well done, and Carcetti gets to brag that he"s beating back the scourge of crime -- and just in time to bolster his gubernatorial hopes, too.
As if that weren"t enough, while sitting in lock-up, Marlo finally learns all the untoward things Omar was saying about him and has a right old hissyfit about protecting the value of his good name. Even from beyond the grave, Omar enjoys a level of revenge.
Freamon doesn"t rest on his Marlo-busting laurels. He meets Clay Davis in a bar, and the state senator fingers Maurice Levy -- attorney to the drug-dealing stars -- as the man bankrolling the leaks in the State"s Attorneys Office. So Freamon is one step closer to dispensing some rich, thick Lester-y justice in that case, too.
As for Templeton: Gus enlists the help of the Sun"s newly recalled London bureau chief -- budget cuts, remember? -- to go over the fabulist"s copy with a fine-toothed comb to see if everything"s up to snuff. It isn"t -- as Gus quickly learns, when he discovers that the quotes about Daniels backstabbing Burrell were apparently spun out of whole cloth, and when the handless vet from Terry Hanning"s story confirms that much of Templeton"s account of the incident outside Fallujah is, in fact, bullshit.
Bonus warm fuzzies for an increasingly cleaned-up Bubbles going a year without needing a fix, and for Namond, who appears ever so briefly and none the worse for the wear, we might add.
So, "a good day for the good guys," as Daniels tells the newspapers. Nothing more to see here! Let"s just wrap things up, and let everyone end the last five years feeling good about themselves and fostering hope for the future.
Oh wait -- what fucking show am I talking about here? Yeah, the police get to congratulate themselves on a job well done, but it"s apparently going to be short-lived. McNulty spends most of the episode moping when he realizes that extricating himself from this fake serial killer thing is going to prove more difficult than he was hoping. And for good reason: Kima, who apparently is covering for Bunk in the making-faces-at-McNulty detail, has decided that she"s had enough, and blabs about the entire enterprise to Daniels. A quick trip down to the evidence locker to test the phone the police think was used by the serial killer confirms that McNulty is a no-good liar who lies.
As for Marlo and company: yeah, they"re locked up, but they couldn"t help noticing that Michael is not, especially after he was interviewed by police. Chris vouches for Michael"s loyalty, but he"s not willing to bank his life on it, so Snoop is given the order to make sure that dead Michaels tell no tales. Michael, however, senses that something"s up and gets the drop on her -- so...hooray? Not quite: Michael realize that he"s a marked man and has to go his separate way from both Bug and Dukie in a pair of farewell scenes that kicked up a fair amount of dust Chez Sobell. Goddamn you, Swiffer products, for leaving all that eye-moistening detritus around!