We open at the happiest place on Earth: the hospital. Daniels strides stone-faced down a hall and through a door to a waiting McNulty, who immediately asks, "How is she?" "In and out of the morphine drip," says Daniels. "They got her stabilized is all I know." McNulty sets his jaw, and Daniels tells him, "Go on in." "No," says McNulty hoarsely. Daniels, the most disappointed dad of all time, rolls his eyes: "Unfreeze your ass off that wall, then. Either pay your respects, or get your head back into this case." I guess that's the cop equivalent of "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean." "Aw, fuck this case," whines McNulty, the most sullen teenager of all time. "Fuck it, huh?" spits Daniels. "Now you're just gonna, what, call off your little crusade?" McNulty snorts: "Is that what you think it was? A crusade?" So far it's been about as bloody and ill-fated as the original, so if the armor fits.... McNulty goes on: "Avon Barksdale was just a way for me to show how smart I was and how fucked up the department is, that's all." Well, at least he admits it. As Daniels shakes his head, McNulty adds, "It was never about Avon Barksdale, Lieutenant. It was all about me." "You think I didn't know that?" says Daniels, like, SERIOUSLY. McNulty doesn't exactly have the best poker face in Maryland. "You think we all didn't know?" Daniels leans in and quietly tells McNulty, "This case is gonna move forward, with you or without you." "This case got her shot," says McNulty simply. "I put a battery up her ass and got her thinking this case meant something." You put...a battery up...you know what, now's not the time, MOVING ON: "And you know what? Burrell and Rawls and them -- they were right. This case means exactly shit." Well, what the hell have I been doing wasting my time recapping it then, goddammit?! Daniels says that it meant near nothing to him when McNulty made such a big old stink about it in the first place: "But now we got that woman in there, that good police, breathing through a fucking tube, because it meant something to her. And the shooters who dropped Kima? They're still in the wind. And whoever sent those motherfuckers into that alley needs to get got too." Daniels actually bares his teeth as he takes it home: "So you can stand there, dripping with liquor-smell and self-pity if you got a mind to, but this case -- it means something. Now." Daniels moves on, leaving McNulty wondering if he needs to switch deodorant. And mouthwash. And whether he's been wearing this shirt for more than three days straight.