Recently rewatched Final Grades from season four. The scene following Bubbles’ suicide attempt, when Jay Landsman (who’s usually a petty jobsworth) does the decent thing and orders Norris not to charge Bubbles with Sherrod’s killing, might just be my favourite scene in the entire series.

I love how The Wire refuses to accept black and white notions of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, and focuses on the vast grey area in-between. And I’ve always been a sucker for stories where unsympathetic or amoral characters reveal themselves to have more of a capacity for compassion than previously thought. The actor who plays Landsman (Delaney Williams, according to Wikipedia) plays the scene beautifully. His facial expressions, as he weighs up whether or not to disobey Rawls’ orders and send Bubbles to rehab, absolutely kill it. His delivery of “fuck the stats” is brilliant.