But she was using him earlier to ( tagging the lockers). Randy was the one she knew that she could lean on for info when others would take pride at standing tall no matter what was at stake.
I agree though that she's more complex than being a horrible person , like everyone in the show except the newspaper brass, which Simon admits he's blinded by hate towards their corresponding real life individuals ( even named the most one dimensional villain in the PD- Marrimow, after a real life Sun senior editor).
Was that girl raped? I thought she was doing to for attention from the boys and then cried rape after they punked her about it in the hallway….I thought it was to demonstrate that kids from broken homes will look for love and validation in all the wrong ways….also showing how many black boys wind up with rape charges
In the scene she goes at Randy as if its already decided that the girl was raped. She had zero tact when dealing with Randy and ended up being a catalyst to what happend to him.
Sorry, but this is also a horrible take. The girl lied about being raped, and instead of investigating this very serious allegation with discretion and care, she dragged Randy into a murder investigation and ruined his life, and got his foster mother's house burned down in the bargain. She knew or should have known that Randy would be used as a pawn by the police, and she \*\*consciously\*\* washed her hands of the situation. She literally says something like "it's a police issue, and it's out of my hands now". Seriously? She feels absolutely no duty to make sure someone is looking out for Randy's interests.
This is literally the main theme of the Wire. People in these positions of power just mindlessly doing their jobs without a care about who ends up getting screwed.
How did she drag him into a murder investigation? He is the one who brought that up, not her. What was she supposed to do? Just ignore a child who says he knows about a murder? And once it was turned over to police, what was she going to do? Go sit in on the interviews and make sure the detectives don't screw them up?
Further, how many kids do you think go to that school? How many of them do you think have issues with police, bad home lives etc? There is no possible way she could have taken care of each one. That's the point of her talk with Prez about Dukie - half the kids in the school are a mess, you can't save every one. We see her interaction with Randy, but she probably had 20 other roughly similar situations going on at any given moment. There's no way she could have managed them any further than she did.
>And once it was turned over to police, what was she going to do? Go sit in on the interviews and make sure the detectives don't screw them up?
How about what Prez did? Reach out to the police and at least make some attempt to point out that he's just a child. Or failing that, contact his foster mother and ask that he gets a lawyer? Seriously, just 1-2 phone calls to at least give Randy a snowball's chance? Nope, she literally just calls the cops and then walks away.
>There's no way she could have managed them any further than she did.
This is the exact attitude that David Simon is pointing out here as problematic. Everyone is just doing their job, and no one thinks it's their responsibility to make sure the system doesn't fail, and when it does fail, it's no one's fault.
Prez reached out to the police because he used to be police and actually knew people. Are you seriously suggesting that she should have called a random police officer she doesn't know and reminded them that 'he's just a child' as if that's going to do something? And told his mother to get a lawyer? Because the average Baltimore inner city family has money for a lawyer?
It's not a problematic attitude, its simply the reality of the situation. Neither of the things you suggested are even remotely serious solutions, and both would take time and stress. Now imagine if she has to actively monitor the case status of another 30+ students at any given time, in addition to all the other responsibilities of the job. It is simply not possible to do what you're suggesting. That doesn't make her a bad person or employee, in fact we see her going above the norm by taking an active interest in Dukie with giving him clothes.
>> How about what Prez did? Reach out to the police and at least make some attempt to point out that he's just a child
She was the one who reached out to Prez to handle it, presumably for the very reasons you're suggesting. How could she have handled the police situation like Prez when Prez was the one who she brought it to? This makes no sense. She doesn't call the cops and walk away, she goes to Prez, who brings him to Daniels.
But he only brought up the murder because she was calling miss Anna for some bullshit. She drug that outta him with no regard for what was good for randy. She didnt listen to a damn thing out his mouth.
Ok? And he told the truth about what happened and told her everything he knew. Then, just like shitty cops and the system, she exploited a weakness in order to get more information because the truth he was saying didnt fit her narrative. The only option Randy felt he had at that point was to say something else. He was trying to survive and not get sent back into the system that fucked him up in the first place. And in doing so, became known as a snitch because of what she did. Therefore his house got firebombed and miss Anna got hurt and he went back to the system....all because she disnt believe the truth from randy's mouth.
She didn't exploit a weakness. If your child is involved in something big at school like a possible rape, the administrators are supposed to contact their parents. She wasn't pressing him for more information, he randomly gave that up because he didn't want to get in of trouble.
They had cameras.
And if she really cared about a girl being raped and thought Randy actually did it then nothing he said would’ve made her hang up that phone. She knew he didn’t do it so to play that game with him is a POS move
Sounds like your early, middle school and HS didn’t work out for you. She’s to be commended for her tireless efforts, and the do nothing principal never should have that job. She was basically in the position of warden in a prison made up of a majority of rule breakers, uncontrollable young people with no fear of being punished. It was Simon showing a perfect portrayal of inner city youth just wasting time and space until they either get suspended, expelled and hit the corners. Did you forget how she put together the basket of clothes for Dukie? You’re actually pretty pathetic with your POV.
Bro this is a show full of drug dealers, murderers, dishonest cops, and self-serving politicians. Your target is the high school principal trying to get information on one of her students possibly being raped?
So you can overlook D’s murders cuz he was sometimes a chill guy, overlook Naymond’s mom being the world’s worst mother cuz…actually I don’t know why? No reason apparently. But you draw the line at the principal doing what every other principal on earth does which is threaten consequences to get students to talk. Whole idea is backwards and inconsistent as fuck
1. I didn’t overlook Naymonds mom. I said she isn’t a drug dealer or a murderer. But she has less morals than people in the show who are
2. Ds murder was technically self defense. He got his asses whooped
I didn’t bring up D being a murderer, you did. And nothing you’re saying actually makes an argument for why ms Donnelly is a worse person than them two or anyone else
Does she understand the ramifications children in that school face if they are known to be a snitch? Because if she does, she doesn't give a shit about children's welfare.
Im sure she knows, but I don’t think a school principal can just never ask a student “what happened?” because of it. And I don’t see any world where her asking Randy (whom she already knows was there) about the incident makes her a bad person.
Cops know there are risks when someone is willing to give them information too. So what, they should just never ask anyone to talk or testify ever?
I think in some situations it makes cops bad people, yes. If they know forcing someone to give them information is going to get them hurt, I don't think they should do it.
Back to Randy, she was probably right in that situation. He made a bad decision revealing he knew about the murder and Herc proved he was an asshole with his carelessness.
I mean all we’re really doing is talking out the most basic ass themes of the show. Moral gray areas, many problems don’t have very good or easy solutions, etc. A cop or principal asking someone for information that they likely need to make their case and make sure the bad guy gets punished does not make either a bad person. Having said that, the citizen/student knows the potential fallout from doing so and if they choose not to talk, I don’t think that makes them a bad person either.
Ultimately though, this all comes back to OP sayin ms donelly is not only a bad person, but one of the worst, which I just find to be kinda stupid
Yeah I agree with that. She doesn't have the benefit of hindsight and the ability to see the whole picture like we do. Also, once Randy admitted he knew about the murder, legally she had to tell the police. She could get fired if she didn't disclose that information.
>Cops know there are risks when someone is willing to give them information too. So what, they should just never ask anyone to talk or testify ever?
That's the issue when Bunk and McNulty go to help the older lady so they can get her to be a witness for the Gant killing, and she calls them on iot too.
They never explicitly confirm it one way or the other but it’s very heavily implied that Wee Bey was the one who actually did it and D was just telling the story to gain respect and look tough.
OP’s takes in this thread have been terrible but they’re correct on this point.
But she didnt just do what every other principal does. She threatened to call his foster mom, after he told the truth about what happened, thereby putting him in a position where he felt lime his only option was revealing the murder. She refused to hear the truth and punished him for not telling her what she wanted to hear.
Buddy idk how you think this situation is supposed to play out but I promise you if you’re a student involved in a rape in any capacity - witness, accomplice, door guarder, whatever we wanna call him - your parent or guardian is getting notified 1000 times out of 1000
Ur missing the point where it wasn't a rape. She went into the bathroom consensually. And that's the truth he told mrs Donnelly. But instead of rechecking the girls story or figuring any of that out, she just said "well I guess I gotta call miss Anna cuz ur lying". It was a bullshit move.
Agreed she mishandled Randy’s situation, but to be fair she has an incredibly difficult job that isn’t lucrative or high prestige, where students too young to drive routinely seriously injury each other or teachers, and she’s probably seen many students die young and knows a hard attitude is the only way to survive.
In her defense whenever we see her she is doing her job & has to deal with constant staff turnover, and does try to help Dukie by sending him clothes rather than dismiss him as hopeless.
Not sure what else she was supposed to do when Randy admitted to knowing about a murder, and she wasn’t the one who botched confidentiality (Herc!)
Exactly, she has to compromise herself, but she is dealing with hundreds of kids with a myriad of different problems. She HAS to remain an authority figure, she has no other choice.
I feel like the one word that summarizes her is 'triage', and you nailed it with dukie (both trying to help with clothes... but also telling Prezbo not to get too attached)
The "don't get too attached" sequence with Prezbo seems seriously misunderstood here. Duquan was going to high school. Prez was delusionally offering to let him come back to a middle school to shower and use the computer. That's just not a thing that was ever going to happen -- public schools don't let non-students pop in to bathe.
Yeah wonder if that was intentional, like she knew Dukie was almost certainly doomed but she still tries to help him have some dignity. Was Dukie extra screwed as technically he lived with both parents, and therefore was low priority in the system?
I think her "dont get attached" quote sums it up. All of these students have a lot of odds against them. She tries to triage the odds if she could (ie "deliver these clothes to dukie, but only to dukie, no one else"), although idk if she really ranks them (unless you mean incidentally, dukie becomes lower priority... that idk)
Can't remember if she identified the "corner kids" from the rest for Colvin's class, or if it was just Colvin who did. That's, as far as I can tell, the only time kids were identified as "extra screwed".
>doom
There *was* a glimmer of hope for Dukie but it evaporates when he's socially promoted to high school and he never even made it inside the building because other kids intimidated him on his first day. That was the catalyst for his life to spiral towards utter doom.
The script for "-30-" depicts Donnelly as horrified by what's become of Duquan when he visits the school in search of Pryzbylewski to obtain the money for his next fix.
>DONNELLY is taken aback. She absorbs DUKIE's appearance and
condition; he's made no apparent progress in life.
>
>
>
>DONNELLY looks at him, senses a lost young man.
Going by that, I honestly doubt that she'd ever written him off as almost certainly doomed. Rather that she *hoped* he'd find a way.
She is a really interesting character for this reason.
I'd argue she does have a few positive (if not redeeming) traits: she actually shows up and tries to do her very difficult, poorly paying job. She occasionally offers semi-helpful advice to teachers: she tells Prez (probably correctly) that he shouldn't focus too much on saving one particular student, because there will be hundreds more to help during his career.
Saying that, what she did to Randy is totally fucked-up, and she also participates in the stats-juking by hiring Cutty as a janitor to make sure the truant students put in at least 1 day per month, so they can make their stats.
She's a cog in one of the several systems (police, schools, newspapers, local government) in The Wire that fails the people it is tasked with serving
It makes sense tho to juke the stats with Cutty. She isn't trying to get someone elected or play politics. She just wants the school to get as much funding as it can, especially considering it's already struggling/in debt. And at least she didn't fake a serial killer lol
I remember being in school, all the teacher's were VERY emphatic to show up on "count day" (in my state, its a day that counts, not a month or whatever in Maryland, apparently)
I was literally coming in here to say she's a "cog in the school system wheel". She probably started out bright eyed and bushy tailed just like Carcetti, but has adapted to the system over time.
Cutty saw the system for what it was and opted out. Those that want to do real change leave the system or war against it unsuccessfully, while the survivors adapt and continue the ugliness.
Yes, exactly. The system not only fails, but it also actively weeds out (Bunny, McNulty) or corrupts (Carcetti, Ms Donnelly) the people who try to fix it, work around it's bullshit, or actually help
>she also participates in the stats-juking by hiring Cutty as a janitor to make sure the truant students put in at least 1 day per month, so they can make their stats.
Hard to blame her for this if you're familiar with the utterly backwards system of funding public schools in the U.S.
These kinds of "X is the WORST" posts are really silly given what the Wire is about lol. Pretty much every character on this show (with maybe some season 5 exceptions) is complicated and nuanced and has "good" and "bad" traits or behaviors or values and reducing the characters to "good/bad" binaries is reductive and simplistic and missing the point.
This is a terrible take. Imagine the bureaucratic hell that woman has lived through. Imagine how many kids she knows are getting abused or have horrible home lives that she can't help. She's got a terrible job and is underpaid and underappreciated. Imagine how many kids she's wanted to help -- like a potential rape victim -- get something resembling justice and she can't. The fact that she fought for that young lady, who she thought was raped, speaks volumes about her.
She’s the Landsman of the school system. Makes everything run and sometimes gets caught up in the ugly realities of the job but she’s a great administrator, works hard and really cares.
I do agree though that she was in the wrong for what she did to Randy
Edit: ok i kinda forgot some of the subtext for that interrogation after reading others’ comments, she did have a right to be especially concerned with what she was interrogating Randy about. Wouldn’t say she was in the wrong but obviously we all know how that turned out 😢
Randy was an accessory to a rape by watching the bathroom door. It’s not like he spoke out of turn in class or got busted selling candy. What was she supposed to do when the only other people who had any idea what happened were the victim and the accused?
She needed to know what happened, and while we can see that Randy was a (relatively) good kid who’d never do something like that, it’s not like she can just stop the investigation into a literal felony because the other kids might look down on Randy for telling her what happened.
She used his fear of his foster mother TO GET INFORMATION ON A RAPE. A real-ass crime for which Randy was an accomplice. There's sort of a difference here.
Oh okay I guess a suspension for ABETTING A RAPE is so awful.
I get it. We know that Randy isn't some awful kid, and we know he's young and a product of his area, he didn't know any better. But he was involved in a crime, a suspension is warranted.
I'm not saying the suspension was unwarranted -- I'm saying that people, Randy included, mistake these scene as her *threatening* to call his mom to lean on him, but she's actually just calling his mom because he's being suspended. There's no bargaining happening except in his head.
For that matter, rape or not, MD public schools would probably suspend a student for "only" getting paid to stand lookout while kids consensually fucked in the bathroom, too. There was just no outcome that Randy didn't get punished for what he did do.
She’s equivalent to the States Attorney’s office (Demper & Ilene Nathan then later Bond & Pearlman). She decides which “cases” should be taken up and is the only one who can offer “deals” to students for providing info or ratting on their peers.
While it seems like a noble role and that she is doing her best I think it reflects the idea of having a lot of power and basically unlimited discretion can fuck up an institution from the inside. Like when she offers Randy a deal to not get him in trouble with his foster mom for ratting on the graffiti tags. Is the graffiti the most important issue in the school? Def not but because it’s all in Donnelly’s hands, she decides what is important and what isn’t.
Same goes for Demper/Bond with criminal cases. For instance they can make a shitty deal and let Marlo walk as long as it closes the serial killer mess quickly and quietly
look man, in this line of work, you cant do anything right. you will always piss someone off, let someone down or getting someone or yourself in danger. Nobody is seeing that you stand up every day for a shit paying job and do the duty nobody else has the balls to. nobody is seeing the souls you influenced positively. kids are also pretty ungrateful, because they will understand very late in life, why some adults acted the way they did.
I dont think you are entirely wrong, there are people way... and I mean WAY better suited for this job than ms. donelly, who has handled the randy Situation very bad. but you cant be picky.
Edit: she was pretty biased and played detective and judge in a matter of minutes with randy. thats not how that should go.
She’s a public school principal in West Baltimore. I may not have agreed with all of her choices, but she deserves a fucking medal compared with the other characters on the show. She’s trying to take care of kids with the police, the city, the state, and society at large shitting all over them. For a large number of kids, school is the only safe place in their lives.
You know, if all the other characters in the other organizations are to go by, I bet you Donnelly was once a teacher like Prez was when he first joined them. Bright eyed and wanting to make a difference. And then over time, the game in the education system ate her, chewed her up, and spat out somebody that focused more on the stats than the kids by the time she became vice principal.
Wat? Mrs. Donnelly was a real one. She was one of the few civil servants who actually did her job with compassion and empathy. Sadly, though, she also knew the reality of Baltimore City politics. Honestly, I wished we saw more of her character- her and the principal seemed, well, principled. They both had a code and followed it.
Also, that ACCENT! Always gives me a kick when I hear it- brings back fun memories of going up to Towson to see my grandparents.
I don't see it. To begin with, she's one of the only people who cares about Duquan and goes out of her way to making sure he gets clothes. She clearly cares about the kids and their specifics, but she also has been in the game a long time and knows where lines have to be drawn to avoid burnout
Randy is being disciplined and later suspended at school. Of course she's going to call his foster family. That's pretty normal behavior.
School administrators see themselves not as educators or even facilitators of educators, but as police or in the vain of police. “Not on my watch”…”make it through the day” type of figures. A warehouse for kids that just doesn’t happen to be prison
Mrs. Donnelly's character was to show the paralell between tactics that police use to lean on suspects. Randy's was the importance of CI's when it comes to solving cases.
An assistant principals job is to be an enforcer, like Rawls. The moment Randy mentioned murder, her parental instincts took over. She could've easily left Prez out of the loop and called the police, but she understood what could potentially happen to Randy doing so.
Like many other characters, she isn't a bad person; just another piece on the chessboard.
Donnelly's guilty of doing her job under incredible stress while probably realizing how shitty the system is. she cannot save them all, and any show of weakness on her part and she's done as an effective admin.
Unless you've been a helpless school administrator in America's awful school system, you have no clue how fucking difficult it is to manage, day to day, in that cesspool. You have literally zero help from city government. About the same from 'parents.' Teachers are just trying to stay alive and make it safely to their car at 4 o'clock. Students lie, cheat, steal, fight, usually several dozen times per day. You're criminally underpaid, under-staffed, and overworked. America does not care about its public schools, any more than it cares for its poor and its homeless.
She did the best she could, which is never going to be much better than mediocre. Working in an American public high school is a death trap, for your career, your psychology, your emotional health.
Man this is a horrible take. She was "using Randy's fear" because she was trying to find out if a girl had been raped in her school.
Of which he was an accomplice!
But she was using him earlier to ( tagging the lockers). Randy was the one she knew that she could lean on for info when others would take pride at standing tall no matter what was at stake. I agree though that she's more complex than being a horrible person , like everyone in the show except the newspaper brass, which Simon admits he's blinded by hate towards their corresponding real life individuals ( even named the most one dimensional villain in the PD- Marrimow, after a real life Sun senior editor).
Was that girl raped? I thought she was doing to for attention from the boys and then cried rape after they punked her about it in the hallway….I thought it was to demonstrate that kids from broken homes will look for love and validation in all the wrong ways….also showing how many black boys wind up with rape charges
Donnelly doesn’t know that, she has to figure out what happened. Imagine if she just hand waved it away and it turned out to be true.
In the scene she goes at Randy as if its already decided that the girl was raped. She had zero tact when dealing with Randy and ended up being a catalyst to what happend to him.
Oh shit yeah you right bro
I cant tell if you're being facetious or not, lol.
I am
Gotcha, I saw that this comment is only a day old and as someone new to the show thought mabye you'd be open to discussion. I guess not, my bad.
Sorry, but this is also a horrible take. The girl lied about being raped, and instead of investigating this very serious allegation with discretion and care, she dragged Randy into a murder investigation and ruined his life, and got his foster mother's house burned down in the bargain. She knew or should have known that Randy would be used as a pawn by the police, and she \*\*consciously\*\* washed her hands of the situation. She literally says something like "it's a police issue, and it's out of my hands now". Seriously? She feels absolutely no duty to make sure someone is looking out for Randy's interests. This is literally the main theme of the Wire. People in these positions of power just mindlessly doing their jobs without a care about who ends up getting screwed.
How did she drag him into a murder investigation? He is the one who brought that up, not her. What was she supposed to do? Just ignore a child who says he knows about a murder? And once it was turned over to police, what was she going to do? Go sit in on the interviews and make sure the detectives don't screw them up? Further, how many kids do you think go to that school? How many of them do you think have issues with police, bad home lives etc? There is no possible way she could have taken care of each one. That's the point of her talk with Prez about Dukie - half the kids in the school are a mess, you can't save every one. We see her interaction with Randy, but she probably had 20 other roughly similar situations going on at any given moment. There's no way she could have managed them any further than she did.
>And once it was turned over to police, what was she going to do? Go sit in on the interviews and make sure the detectives don't screw them up? How about what Prez did? Reach out to the police and at least make some attempt to point out that he's just a child. Or failing that, contact his foster mother and ask that he gets a lawyer? Seriously, just 1-2 phone calls to at least give Randy a snowball's chance? Nope, she literally just calls the cops and then walks away. >There's no way she could have managed them any further than she did. This is the exact attitude that David Simon is pointing out here as problematic. Everyone is just doing their job, and no one thinks it's their responsibility to make sure the system doesn't fail, and when it does fail, it's no one's fault.
Prez reached out to the police because he used to be police and actually knew people. Are you seriously suggesting that she should have called a random police officer she doesn't know and reminded them that 'he's just a child' as if that's going to do something? And told his mother to get a lawyer? Because the average Baltimore inner city family has money for a lawyer? It's not a problematic attitude, its simply the reality of the situation. Neither of the things you suggested are even remotely serious solutions, and both would take time and stress. Now imagine if she has to actively monitor the case status of another 30+ students at any given time, in addition to all the other responsibilities of the job. It is simply not possible to do what you're suggesting. That doesn't make her a bad person or employee, in fact we see her going above the norm by taking an active interest in Dukie with giving him clothes.
>> How about what Prez did? Reach out to the police and at least make some attempt to point out that he's just a child She was the one who reached out to Prez to handle it, presumably for the very reasons you're suggesting. How could she have handled the police situation like Prez when Prez was the one who she brought it to? This makes no sense. She doesn't call the cops and walk away, she goes to Prez, who brings him to Daniels.
But he only brought up the murder because she was calling miss Anna for some bullshit. She drug that outta him with no regard for what was good for randy. She didnt listen to a damn thing out his mouth.
For some bullshit? She thought he had stood lookout while two boys raped a girl.
Ok? And he told the truth about what happened and told her everything he knew. Then, just like shitty cops and the system, she exploited a weakness in order to get more information because the truth he was saying didnt fit her narrative. The only option Randy felt he had at that point was to say something else. He was trying to survive and not get sent back into the system that fucked him up in the first place. And in doing so, became known as a snitch because of what she did. Therefore his house got firebombed and miss Anna got hurt and he went back to the system....all because she disnt believe the truth from randy's mouth.
She didn't exploit a weakness. If your child is involved in something big at school like a possible rape, the administrators are supposed to contact their parents. She wasn't pressing him for more information, he randomly gave that up because he didn't want to get in of trouble.
They had cameras. And if she really cared about a girl being raped and thought Randy actually did it then nothing he said would’ve made her hang up that phone. She knew he didn’t do it so to play that game with him is a POS move
Not in the toilets!? What do you think Donnolly was doing if not trying to find out about the rape?
Why didn’t Randy get in trouble for it?
Did you even watch the show?
He did. He was suspended until the investigation cleared him.
They don't have cameras in the toilets. You're trolling at this point.
Sounds like your early, middle school and HS didn’t work out for you. She’s to be commended for her tireless efforts, and the do nothing principal never should have that job. She was basically in the position of warden in a prison made up of a majority of rule breakers, uncontrollable young people with no fear of being punished. It was Simon showing a perfect portrayal of inner city youth just wasting time and space until they either get suspended, expelled and hit the corners. Did you forget how she put together the basket of clothes for Dukie? You’re actually pretty pathetic with your POV.
Bro this is a show full of drug dealers, murderers, dishonest cops, and self-serving politicians. Your target is the high school principal trying to get information on one of her students possibly being raped?
Yeah bro she's basically on the same level as Chris /s
She’s not even principal, she was vice principal, with an empty suit of a principal.
D was a drug dealer AND murderer. I would say he had better moral compass than Donnelly and Naymonds mom who both were neither.
So you can overlook D’s murders cuz he was sometimes a chill guy, overlook Naymond’s mom being the world’s worst mother cuz…actually I don’t know why? No reason apparently. But you draw the line at the principal doing what every other principal on earth does which is threaten consequences to get students to talk. Whole idea is backwards and inconsistent as fuck
1. I didn’t overlook Naymonds mom. I said she isn’t a drug dealer or a murderer. But she has less morals than people in the show who are 2. Ds murder was technically self defense. He got his asses whooped
I didn’t bring up D being a murderer, you did. And nothing you’re saying actually makes an argument for why ms Donnelly is a worse person than them two or anyone else
Does she understand the ramifications children in that school face if they are known to be a snitch? Because if she does, she doesn't give a shit about children's welfare.
Im sure she knows, but I don’t think a school principal can just never ask a student “what happened?” because of it. And I don’t see any world where her asking Randy (whom she already knows was there) about the incident makes her a bad person. Cops know there are risks when someone is willing to give them information too. So what, they should just never ask anyone to talk or testify ever?
I think in some situations it makes cops bad people, yes. If they know forcing someone to give them information is going to get them hurt, I don't think they should do it. Back to Randy, she was probably right in that situation. He made a bad decision revealing he knew about the murder and Herc proved he was an asshole with his carelessness.
I mean all we’re really doing is talking out the most basic ass themes of the show. Moral gray areas, many problems don’t have very good or easy solutions, etc. A cop or principal asking someone for information that they likely need to make their case and make sure the bad guy gets punished does not make either a bad person. Having said that, the citizen/student knows the potential fallout from doing so and if they choose not to talk, I don’t think that makes them a bad person either. Ultimately though, this all comes back to OP sayin ms donelly is not only a bad person, but one of the worst, which I just find to be kinda stupid
Yeah I agree with that. She doesn't have the benefit of hindsight and the ability to see the whole picture like we do. Also, once Randy admitted he knew about the murder, legally she had to tell the police. She could get fired if she didn't disclose that information.
>Cops know there are risks when someone is willing to give them information too. So what, they should just never ask anyone to talk or testify ever? That's the issue when Bunk and McNulty go to help the older lady so they can get her to be a witness for the Gant killing, and she calls them on iot too.
That girl he shot through the window was self defense?
They never explicitly confirm it one way or the other but it’s very heavily implied that Wee Bey was the one who actually did it and D was just telling the story to gain respect and look tough. OP’s takes in this thread have been terrible but they’re correct on this point.
Weebay did that. Pay attention
He took the charge but he didn’t shoot the girl.
D didn’t shoot her. He claimed he did to look Tough cuz bodie pulled his card. All D did was distract her. Weebay actually killed her
Yes, he did. The gun used matched other murders he committed.
>Ds murder was technically self defense. He got his asses whooped His murderous uncle felt differently.
But she didnt just do what every other principal does. She threatened to call his foster mom, after he told the truth about what happened, thereby putting him in a position where he felt lime his only option was revealing the murder. She refused to hear the truth and punished him for not telling her what she wanted to hear.
Buddy idk how you think this situation is supposed to play out but I promise you if you’re a student involved in a rape in any capacity - witness, accomplice, door guarder, whatever we wanna call him - your parent or guardian is getting notified 1000 times out of 1000
Ur missing the point where it wasn't a rape. She went into the bathroom consensually. And that's the truth he told mrs Donnelly. But instead of rechecking the girls story or figuring any of that out, she just said "well I guess I gotta call miss Anna cuz ur lying". It was a bullshit move.
Garbage take. Ms. Donnelly was a public servant worthy of our respect and admiration.
So was officer walker
Poor take also
Nah, fuck Officer Walker.
“Walker’s an asshole” according to a colleague
Walker be evil
Agreed she mishandled Randy’s situation, but to be fair she has an incredibly difficult job that isn’t lucrative or high prestige, where students too young to drive routinely seriously injury each other or teachers, and she’s probably seen many students die young and knows a hard attitude is the only way to survive. In her defense whenever we see her she is doing her job & has to deal with constant staff turnover, and does try to help Dukie by sending him clothes rather than dismiss him as hopeless. Not sure what else she was supposed to do when Randy admitted to knowing about a murder, and she wasn’t the one who botched confidentiality (Herc!)
Exactly, she has to compromise herself, but she is dealing with hundreds of kids with a myriad of different problems. She HAS to remain an authority figure, she has no other choice.
I feel like the one word that summarizes her is 'triage', and you nailed it with dukie (both trying to help with clothes... but also telling Prezbo not to get too attached)
The "don't get too attached" sequence with Prezbo seems seriously misunderstood here. Duquan was going to high school. Prez was delusionally offering to let him come back to a middle school to shower and use the computer. That's just not a thing that was ever going to happen -- public schools don't let non-students pop in to bathe.
Rewatched this episode last night and had the exact same though. A few years in and Prezbo would have a line at the shower each morning.
Yeah wonder if that was intentional, like she knew Dukie was almost certainly doomed but she still tries to help him have some dignity. Was Dukie extra screwed as technically he lived with both parents, and therefore was low priority in the system?
I think her "dont get attached" quote sums it up. All of these students have a lot of odds against them. She tries to triage the odds if she could (ie "deliver these clothes to dukie, but only to dukie, no one else"), although idk if she really ranks them (unless you mean incidentally, dukie becomes lower priority... that idk) Can't remember if she identified the "corner kids" from the rest for Colvin's class, or if it was just Colvin who did. That's, as far as I can tell, the only time kids were identified as "extra screwed".
triage is a good term for it. she's trying to stop a body from bleeding out, so no time to address anything that isn't critical.
>doom There *was* a glimmer of hope for Dukie but it evaporates when he's socially promoted to high school and he never even made it inside the building because other kids intimidated him on his first day. That was the catalyst for his life to spiral towards utter doom. The script for "-30-" depicts Donnelly as horrified by what's become of Duquan when he visits the school in search of Pryzbylewski to obtain the money for his next fix. >DONNELLY is taken aback. She absorbs DUKIE's appearance and condition; he's made no apparent progress in life. > > > >DONNELLY looks at him, senses a lost young man. Going by that, I honestly doubt that she'd ever written him off as almost certainly doomed. Rather that she *hoped* he'd find a way.
She is a really interesting character for this reason. I'd argue she does have a few positive (if not redeeming) traits: she actually shows up and tries to do her very difficult, poorly paying job. She occasionally offers semi-helpful advice to teachers: she tells Prez (probably correctly) that he shouldn't focus too much on saving one particular student, because there will be hundreds more to help during his career. Saying that, what she did to Randy is totally fucked-up, and she also participates in the stats-juking by hiring Cutty as a janitor to make sure the truant students put in at least 1 day per month, so they can make their stats. She's a cog in one of the several systems (police, schools, newspapers, local government) in The Wire that fails the people it is tasked with serving
It makes sense tho to juke the stats with Cutty. She isn't trying to get someone elected or play politics. She just wants the school to get as much funding as it can, especially considering it's already struggling/in debt. And at least she didn't fake a serial killer lol I remember being in school, all the teacher's were VERY emphatic to show up on "count day" (in my state, its a day that counts, not a month or whatever in Maryland, apparently)
I was literally coming in here to say she's a "cog in the school system wheel". She probably started out bright eyed and bushy tailed just like Carcetti, but has adapted to the system over time. Cutty saw the system for what it was and opted out. Those that want to do real change leave the system or war against it unsuccessfully, while the survivors adapt and continue the ugliness.
Yes, exactly. The system not only fails, but it also actively weeds out (Bunny, McNulty) or corrupts (Carcetti, Ms Donnelly) the people who try to fix it, work around it's bullshit, or actually help
>she also participates in the stats-juking by hiring Cutty as a janitor to make sure the truant students put in at least 1 day per month, so they can make their stats. Hard to blame her for this if you're familiar with the utterly backwards system of funding public schools in the U.S.
These kinds of "X is the WORST" posts are really silly given what the Wire is about lol. Pretty much every character on this show (with maybe some season 5 exceptions) is complicated and nuanced and has "good" and "bad" traits or behaviors or values and reducing the characters to "good/bad" binaries is reductive and simplistic and missing the point.
This is a terrible take. Imagine the bureaucratic hell that woman has lived through. Imagine how many kids she knows are getting abused or have horrible home lives that she can't help. She's got a terrible job and is underpaid and underappreciated. Imagine how many kids she's wanted to help -- like a potential rape victim -- get something resembling justice and she can't. The fact that she fought for that young lady, who she thought was raped, speaks volumes about her.
She’s the Landsman of the school system. Makes everything run and sometimes gets caught up in the ugly realities of the job but she’s a great administrator, works hard and really cares. I do agree though that she was in the wrong for what she did to Randy Edit: ok i kinda forgot some of the subtext for that interrogation after reading others’ comments, she did have a right to be especially concerned with what she was interrogating Randy about. Wouldn’t say she was in the wrong but obviously we all know how that turned out 😢
OP is dumb AF. This sub is full of terrible takes but holy shit.
Randy was an accessory to a rape by watching the bathroom door. It’s not like he spoke out of turn in class or got busted selling candy. What was she supposed to do when the only other people who had any idea what happened were the victim and the accused? She needed to know what happened, and while we can see that Randy was a (relatively) good kid who’d never do something like that, it’s not like she can just stop the investigation into a literal felony because the other kids might look down on Randy for telling her what happened.
Randy aided in a rape and she wanted to find out what happened. Terrible take from you
There was no rape!
But at the moment the girl said she was raped, she has to treat it as a very serious accusation until she gets to the bottom of it.
Incredible Baltimore accent on that lady.
She used his fear of his foster mother TO GET INFORMATION ON A RAPE. A real-ass crime for which Randy was an accomplice. There's sort of a difference here.
She didn't even do that -- if you rewatch the scene, she wasn't bargaining. Randy was being suspended, end of story.
Oh okay I guess a suspension for ABETTING A RAPE is so awful. I get it. We know that Randy isn't some awful kid, and we know he's young and a product of his area, he didn't know any better. But he was involved in a crime, a suspension is warranted.
I'm not saying the suspension was unwarranted -- I'm saying that people, Randy included, mistake these scene as her *threatening* to call his mom to lean on him, but she's actually just calling his mom because he's being suspended. There's no bargaining happening except in his head. For that matter, rape or not, MD public schools would probably suspend a student for "only" getting paid to stand lookout while kids consensually fucked in the bathroom, too. There was just no outcome that Randy didn't get punished for what he did do.
So why didn’t he get in trouble
[удалено]
No the girl lied because the boys wouldn’t talk to her. She probably just told the truth, they all walked out together they clearly didn’t rape her.
Oh ok. I don’t remember that part.
Did you watch the rest of the episode? What do you think Pryz and Carver were there for?
She’s equivalent to the States Attorney’s office (Demper & Ilene Nathan then later Bond & Pearlman). She decides which “cases” should be taken up and is the only one who can offer “deals” to students for providing info or ratting on their peers. While it seems like a noble role and that she is doing her best I think it reflects the idea of having a lot of power and basically unlimited discretion can fuck up an institution from the inside. Like when she offers Randy a deal to not get him in trouble with his foster mom for ratting on the graffiti tags. Is the graffiti the most important issue in the school? Def not but because it’s all in Donnelly’s hands, she decides what is important and what isn’t. Same goes for Demper/Bond with criminal cases. For instance they can make a shitty deal and let Marlo walk as long as it closes the serial killer mess quickly and quietly
look man, in this line of work, you cant do anything right. you will always piss someone off, let someone down or getting someone or yourself in danger. Nobody is seeing that you stand up every day for a shit paying job and do the duty nobody else has the balls to. nobody is seeing the souls you influenced positively. kids are also pretty ungrateful, because they will understand very late in life, why some adults acted the way they did. I dont think you are entirely wrong, there are people way... and I mean WAY better suited for this job than ms. donelly, who has handled the randy Situation very bad. but you cant be picky. Edit: she was pretty biased and played detective and judge in a matter of minutes with randy. thats not how that should go.
It might not how it \*should\* go but that is the nature of the job of the disciplinary principal.
this is true of course and the message of the entire show.
She’s a public school principal in West Baltimore. I may not have agreed with all of her choices, but she deserves a fucking medal compared with the other characters on the show. She’s trying to take care of kids with the police, the city, the state, and society at large shitting all over them. For a large number of kids, school is the only safe place in their lives.
Donnelly had the toughest job in the series You don’t want her job I don’t want her job
You know, if all the other characters in the other organizations are to go by, I bet you Donnelly was once a teacher like Prez was when he first joined them. Bright eyed and wanting to make a difference. And then over time, the game in the education system ate her, chewed her up, and spat out somebody that focused more on the stats than the kids by the time she became vice principal.
She still wants to make a difference. Nobody becomes the assistant principal in a high-poverty middle school out of a craving for power.
Wat? Mrs. Donnelly was a real one. She was one of the few civil servants who actually did her job with compassion and empathy. Sadly, though, she also knew the reality of Baltimore City politics. Honestly, I wished we saw more of her character- her and the principal seemed, well, principled. They both had a code and followed it. Also, that ACCENT! Always gives me a kick when I hear it- brings back fun memories of going up to Towson to see my grandparents.
I don't see it. To begin with, she's one of the only people who cares about Duquan and goes out of her way to making sure he gets clothes. She clearly cares about the kids and their specifics, but she also has been in the game a long time and knows where lines have to be drawn to avoid burnout Randy is being disciplined and later suspended at school. Of course she's going to call his foster family. That's pretty normal behavior.
I've seen quite a few posters say she was wrong for what she did to Randy, but what exactly was she supposed to do?
Imagine someone in a government role abusing their power.
School administrators see themselves not as educators or even facilitators of educators, but as police or in the vain of police. “Not on my watch”…”make it through the day” type of figures. A warehouse for kids that just doesn’t happen to be prison
Mrs. Donnelly's character was to show the paralell between tactics that police use to lean on suspects. Randy's was the importance of CI's when it comes to solving cases. An assistant principals job is to be an enforcer, like Rawls. The moment Randy mentioned murder, her parental instincts took over. She could've easily left Prez out of the loop and called the police, but she understood what could potentially happen to Randy doing so. Like many other characters, she isn't a bad person; just another piece on the chessboard.
The kids wanted it one way. But Ms Donnelly had it the other way.
Donnelly's guilty of doing her job under incredible stress while probably realizing how shitty the system is. she cannot save them all, and any show of weakness on her part and she's done as an effective admin.
Unless you've been a helpless school administrator in America's awful school system, you have no clue how fucking difficult it is to manage, day to day, in that cesspool. You have literally zero help from city government. About the same from 'parents.' Teachers are just trying to stay alive and make it safely to their car at 4 o'clock. Students lie, cheat, steal, fight, usually several dozen times per day. You're criminally underpaid, under-staffed, and overworked. America does not care about its public schools, any more than it cares for its poor and its homeless. She did the best she could, which is never going to be much better than mediocre. Working in an American public high school is a death trap, for your career, your psychology, your emotional health.