Pawns, they just get played —

Early in the first season of The Wire, D’Angelo explains to Wallace and a still heedless Bodie the rules of chess by using the analogy of the Barksdale crew and its drug trafficking operation. The King stays the King but the Queen is the real power; the pawns, street level dealers like the three protagonists, are expendable foot-soldiers. They can promote but usually “get capped quick”. “They be out the game early,” remarks D’Angelo. “Unless they some smart ass pawn,” retorts Bodie.

Fast forward to the end of season four, D’Angelo and Wallace are dead and Bodie —the last standing piece of the gutted Barksdale crew— has reluctantly joined Marlo’s organization to save his corner. In his penultimate scene, a talk with Detective McNulty that will eventually cause his demise, Bodie recalls D’Angelo’s lesson and aknowledges being just like a pawn. The scene concludes with the camera panning out, a king-looking statue in the foreground impassively overlooks McNulty and Bodie as they now appear insignificant, sitting on the side of a park lawn reminiscent of a chess board.

Soon after, when Marlo’s muscle finally comes after him, it’s as a figthing pawn that Bodie goes down: As he can’t turn back and run, Bodie has to stand his ground and fight. He shoots at Chris and Snoop as they move toward him diagonally like Bishops. O-dog then steps forward out of the doorway where he was hiding, walks straight to Bodie and kills him in a Knight L-shaped move. Marlo, the King, is nowhere to be seen. 

BBC’s The Shadow Line first episode opening sequence. Anyone watching this show ? It’s pretty neat.