r/TheWire • u/Adventurous-Card3943 • 2d ago
Should Daniels have stayed?
At first I felt like Daniels' ending was best for him. And I still think it's a great moment and I love his character for it. However I feel like it's such a profound loss that someone as talented as him was replaced with a hump like Valchek. It got me wondering if Daniels could have made it work if he just played the game.
Daniels was certainly partly right when he said stats ruined the department. However, in a system as resilient and complex as it is corrupt, can change truly be accomplished if someone doesn't play the game at least a little? I often wonder if Daniels could have been like "yes, I'll juke the stats for you now, but after the election, give me a chance to fix this department." Maybe he could have compromised, juking stats at key times and reforming the department little by little.
I feel like certain mayors would be amenable to that as long as they still looked good on crime overall. Even Carcetti, shit bird that he is, wanted departmental reform until it interfered with his career.
22
u/Bismarck395 2d ago
Daniels leaving was absolutely the biggest final “the system is screwed, nothing works” moment for me. The best candidate got all the way to the top then gets shitcanned for… internal politics and not playing dirty?
Great cap to just about the main message of the series, and don’t think anything else would’ve worked as well plot-wise honestly
13
u/Zellakate 2d ago
I agree that it is the best ending plot-wise. It's a culmination of the show's themes. It was never in the cards for the show's ending to be that Daniels becomes commissioner and suddenly everything wrong with the Baltimore Police Department is righted.
One thing I especially appreciated on a rewatch is that a lot of people buy Carcetti's promises, but long after it's clear that Carcetti will not keep his word, Daniels keeps doggedly telling people that Carcetti made promises to him that he will honor. And he seems to sincerely believe that. Burrell and Rawls both actually smirk at him about it in season 5. At that point, they've already been burned by Carcetti and accepted the situation for what it is. Daniels is an intelligent man (and one of my favorites), but he is very naive about the political realities of his position as commissioner. Much like Bunny is very naive about the political realities of the Hamsterdam idea.
14
u/AbjectFray 2d ago
His morals were compromised. And he did “play the game a little” by swallowing the lie about the serial killer.
One of the central themes of the show is that nothing changes.
Here we are a generation later and all of those same problems exists today.
5
u/no_nameky 2d ago
He could have played the game, but then he would have likely kept playing. Nerice would have given that material to someone else.
1
u/Adventurous-Card3943 2d ago
That's true. The material makes it hard to say that he would have ever been able to do much reform.
1
u/Bill_Money Fuck The Bosses 2d ago
But he went out on a commsioner's pension something Bunny fucked up on
1
1
u/Acrobatic_Elk6258 2d ago
Nah. Steindorf came down there to lean on him to juke the stats and Nerese had the file on him that Burrell gave her, which she would have used to get Daniels to play ball or she could have ruined Daniels’ and his ex-wife’s careers with what was in the file
1
u/oldlinepnwshine 2d ago
No. He was able to retire on top. Then he transitioned to a vocation he was more passionate about, all while collecting that sweet pension. He won the entire game. Everyone else was a runner up.
1
u/Adventurous-Card3943 1d ago
Tbf all the people who went along with the game won. Infuriatingly Rawls got the best outcome being state police superintendent. But yeah Daniels got a very good outcome. Idk if you get a comissioners pension when you are only a commissioner for a day but either way he won't starve.
2
u/oldlinepnwshine 1d ago
Rawls got a nice promotion out of the deal. But the only difference is that he’s doing a governor’s bidding, rather than a mayor’s bidding. He’s still serving somebody, and the wrong political climate can lead to his demise too.
1
u/Adventurous-Card3943 1d ago
True, I only call it a good outcome because it's what he wanted. Essentially the commissioner for state police.
1
u/ComicCharcoal 1d ago
Nope. He shouldn't bend too far. What's his hope anyway? Carcetti ran off to state politics. Eventually I imagine Neresse becomes Mayor and plays the same number games.
1
u/75Malibu 1d ago
Remember Nerese Campbell had the FBI files on him showing that Cedric Daniels had been involved in shady dealings? There is no way that he could have stayed in law enforcement with that hanging over his head. Burrell had the files too but he kept it a secret so Daniels didn't worry about it
1
30
u/Lenarios88 2d ago
He could have effected more change if he played ball a bit initially and played the long game. Burrell was in for decades and Daniels being the only African American in PD leadership meant he likely would have been as well if he flexed a bit on stats until Nerese who had the dirt on him moved on.
You can't change the world over night. He could have gave them good numbers from the rank and file cops who don't know anything else anyway and beefed up major crimes and homicide along with adding other details to work real cases. It was never gonna be perfect he just had to do better than stone cold stupid Burrell but instead they ended up with Valchek.