Jimmy McNulty

Jimmy McNulty
File:The Wire Jimmy McNulty.jpg
First appearance	The Target (episode 1.01)
Created by	David Simon
Portrayed by	Dominic West
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Title	Officer
Occupation	Officer (formerly detective)

Detective James "Jimmy" McNulty is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by British actor Dominic West.

McNulty is an Irish-American police detective in the Baltimore Police Department who is a dedicated officer. When off the job, however, he has frequent problems involving alimony, alcoholism, child support, relationships, and money. On the force, while he has proven to be a canny and tenacious detective, he is disliked by several of his superiors such as William A. Rawls and later Cedric Daniels. McNulty nevertheless manages to play the role as one of the more competent officers in several of the largest drug-related arrests that take place within Baltimore. Favourite Quote: "What the fuck did I do"

Biography

Season One

McNulty began the show as a homicide detective in season one. McNulty was responsible for the formation of the Barksdale detail. He noticed a number of drug related homicides that went unsolved or without conviction tied to the same group of dealers - the Barksdale crew. McNulty began following homicides that were not his case and attended the trial of D'Angelo Barksdale where he noticed the presence of Stringer Bell and several Barksdale soldiers, for his part Stringer also noticed McNulty. He was present when one of the cases major witnesses changed her story and refused to identify Barksdale in court. McNulty reported the collapse of the case to Det. Barlow, the investigating officer, and when a not guilty verdict was rendered Judge Daniel Phelan asked McNulty to come and see him. In the Judge's chambers McNulty was frank about his observations and the lack of investigation so far, prompting Judge Phelan to bring it up in a meeting with the Deputy Commissioner. McNulty's involvement was noticed by his commanding officer, Major Rawls, who assigned him to the detail and was furious with him for going around the chain of command. McNulty denied that he had any intention of starting an investigation but later revealed to his friend and partner William "Bunk" Moreland that he hoped that this investigation would lead to a case that meant something to him.

McNulty's commanding officer on the detail was Lt. Daniels - Daniels was warned about McNulty's insubordinate tendencies and knew McNulty's role in getting him assigned the detail. McNulty learned from Bunk to expect Daniels to be a career officer with a promotion soon around the corner. Daniels and McNulty argued about how to handle the case at their first meeting - McNulty suggested surveillance and wiretaps and Daniels wanted a fast case with buy busts and McNulty working on trying to pin a homicide to the Barksdales. Soon after the investigation began McNulty learned that Daniels had been investigated for having questionable liquid assets from his friend in the FBI, Special Agent Terrence "Fitz" Fitzhugh. McNulty's relationship with Daniels continued to be complicated by their mutual distrust. Contact with Fitz opened McNulty to the possibility of using wiretaps and other high tech surveillance techniques in the Barksdale investigation.

McNulty and Bunk often spend their evenings drinking heavily together; McNulty drives while drunk, turns up for work inebriated and sometimes sleeps in the office. Both men are alcoholics and unfaithful to their wives or loved ones. They often cover for one anothers absences with their respective partners. McNulty once had to pick up a drunken Bunk from a woman's house after he locked himself in her bathroom. Bunk burned his clothing so that his wife would be unable to find trace evidence of his infidelity.

McNulty was estranged from his wife, Elena, who later divorced him, and had limited contact with his two sons, Sean and Michael. At one point, Elena tried to have an emergency order placed against him to stop him seeing his sons when she learned he had involved them in tailing a suspect.

An inveterate womanizer, McNulty had a casual relationship with Assistant State's Attorney Rhonda Pearlman and would often turn up at her house drunk in the middle of the night when she would take him in. Elena knew about this relationship before the separation and she had a private investigator photograph the two together. Pearlman later ended the relationship and subsequently became involved with Daniels.

Working on the Barksdale detail McNulty developed a mutual respect with Det. Shakima "Kima" Greggs. Together they tracked down the elusive Omar Little, gaining his respect and cooperation. Frustrated by the fact that Barksdale's dealers didn't use cell phones, they came up with the notion of cloning the pagers used by the drug dealers instead, an idea which bore fruit when Det. Lester Freamon scored D'Angelo Barksdale's pager number. Kima also introduced McNulty to her CI "Bubbles". When Kima was shot in a buy-bust sting operation gone wrong McNulty took it particularly hard. Rawls was the one to tell him, none too gently, that the shooting was not his responsibility. Rawls reminded McNulty that he hated him and that if there was any blame on McNulty he would be the first to point it out. Following Kima's shooting McNulty had a frank discussion with Daniels where he admitted that the Barksdale case had been all about him - a chance for him to show how clever he was and how messed up the department was. Daniels told him that everyone had known this all along but that the case had taken on meaning for those involved and that McNulty needed to get back to work.

McNulty became friends with Freamon while working on the Barksdale investigation. He learned that the older Freamon had once been like McNulty and was reassigned to a dead end job because of his defiance of his superiors. Freamon often tried to temper McNulty's aggressive attitude towards Daniels.

When the Barksdale investigation closed McNulty was demoted to a boat patrol officer by his former boss, Major Rawls. Rawls personally questioned McNulty about his career hopes and gave him the assignment as punishment because he knew McNulty would hate it.

Season Two

In the marine unit he was partnered with Claude Diggins. He was bored by his new job, and missed detective work. He attempted to fill the hours by continuing to work with his old detail unofficially.

While on harbor patrol, he spotted the body of a dead girl in the water. His ex-boss, Colonel Rawls, argued that the case did not lie in his jurisdiction. Defiant as ever, McNulty successfully got revenge by showing that the investigation was Rawls' responsibility, spending three hours poring over wind and tide charts to prove his case. When Beadie Russell found thirteen dead bodies in a shipping container on the Baltimore docks, McNulty poked around, finding evidence that the deaths were murders, not accidental, and, with the help of the city medical examiner, Doc Frazier, showed that they lay within Rawls' jurisdiction.

In the meantime, McNulty was obsessed with discovering the identity of the murdered girl he had found, but despite all his efforts, he was unable to do so. Bunk Moreland was also after him to find Omar, who was needed as a witness for the William Gant case. After a fruitless search, McNulty ran into Bubbles and coerced him into looking for the elusive stick-up man. Bubbles was more successful than McNulty had been, and Omar agreed to testify.

When Daniels' unit was recreated to investigate Frank Sobotka, a vengeful Rawls refused to allow Daniels to have McNulty. McNulty seemed to accept this with good grace. He had decided to give up alcohol and detective work, two of the main reasons for his failed marriage, as he was trying to reconcile with his estranged wife Elena. When he was unsuccessful, he grew despondent, desperately wanting to return to investigative work, and began drinking heavily again. Eventually, Daniels persuaded Rawls to let McNulty return to the unit by taking on the murders McNulty had endeavored to have Rawls investigate. Appropriately, his first assignment was to go undercover as a john visiting a local whorehouse, a task he enjoyed greatly, much to the amusement of his colleagues. He also flirted with Beadie Russell, who had been assigned to Daniels' detail, though they did not begin a relationship.

While on surveillance, McNulty watched the Greek's subordinate Vondas send a text message. He reasoned that the time and location from which it was sent could be used to retrieve it from the phone company's databases; it was from this message that the detail learned that the Greek had shut down his operations.

Season Three

McNulty managed to get back his detective position when the Major Case Unit was formed in season three. He reconnected with his old commanding officer from the beginning of his career Major Colvin.

At the end of season 3 he requested another transfer and was shown in uniform walking a beat in the Western district, back where he began his career and apparently very happy.

Critical response and analysis

The character has been described as "irresistibly charming, a classic anti-hero; a modern-day Rockford." The role of McNulty's character has been described as defying genre conventions - although his actions drive several plot points he is not exactly the central character you might expect from the shows opening or promotional material. Flak magazine also picked McNulty as a central character - they commented on the uncommon experience of having the main character fit to a standard police character archetype ("He has poor impulse control. He's personally fearless and outspoken, and he bangs babes like a hunchback rings bells.") but also exposing the archetype as self destructive and emotionally immature. Salon described McNulty as "The heart, soul and oft-impaired nervous system of "The Wire"", again selecting him as a central character. Salon also chose McNulty's pride as his main character trait - they described this aspect of his personality as being the thing which gives him his success as an investigator and his failure in most other aspects of his life. EW picked McNulty as offering one of the shows most wicked ironies, he is one of the characters you would expect to be on the side of law and order as a police detective but they describe him as a "boozing cop who pisses on authority and order."

Origins

David Simon, the character's creator, has described his goal of presenting McNulty as ambiguous in his motivations. Based on his experiences of real detectives he feels that most crime dramas present their police characters with the inherent falsehood that they care deeply about the victims in the cases they are investigating. Simon states that in his experience a good detective is usually motivated by the game of solving the crime - he sees the crime as an "insult to his intellectual vanity" and this gives him motivation to solve it.

The character was originally named Jimmy McArdle but executive producer Robert F. Colesberry suggested renaming him to Jimmy McNulty (after his maternal grandmother) because no-one liked the name. Dominic West's original audition tape for the part was recorded with him as the sole actor leaving spaces for the lines that would be spoken back to him. The producers were amused by the tape and agreed that they had to give him an audition.