The Hunt (The Wire)

The episode was written by Joy Lusco from a story by David Simon and Ed Burns and was directed by Steve Shill.

Observing from a nearby church roof, Santangelo and Herc watch Bodie receiving a resupply of drugs from the towers.

As warrants are served on Savino, Freamon and Prez find a page made to Stringer from a payphone near the scene of the shooting.

Levy brings Savino in and claims that he had planned to defraud Orlando (by selling him baking soda, rather than actual cocaine), and was not involved in the shooting.

However, Major Bobby Reed confronts Daniels about withholding targets, making him realize they have a mole in the detail.

McNulty visits Phelan at a campaign fundraiser and fails to convince him to help with Burrell, as the judge has been reinstated on the mayor's ticket.

[1][2][3] The title refers to the knee-jerk police effort to identify the shooter(s) of Detective Greggs and the beginnings of a hunt for a rat in the detail.

Dope on the damn table.The epigraph refers to the commissioner's desire to seize drug dealers' assets in response to the shooting of a police officer, irrespective of how it will affect larger cases.

Strick - Unfriendly Game (during the car ride with D'Angelo and Wee-Bey) During the scene showing Cheryl's grief over Greggs' grave injury, Nina Simone's "Sugar in My Bowl" is playing.

In a 2009 retrospective of The Wire season one for The Guardian, Paul Owen analyzed this episode as exposing McNulty's "unsympathetic characteristics" that disqualify him from being a protagonist.

Owen praised the scene where Cheryl cries after seeing the highlighter mark that Greggs left on her sofa as "a lovely, subtle moment" but criticized "the confusing segment where D'Angelo, the inexperienced and conflicted young dealer, thinks Stringer has ordered his enforcer Wee-Bey to murder him.

"[4] The scene where Wee-Bey shows a surprised expression after learning that shooting victim Greggs was a police officer resurfaced as a reaction GIF over 15 years after this episode was originally aired.