One thing I've noticed throughout The Wire's history is that David Simon recycles bits of dialogue verbatim. Off the top of my head: Carver's "You do not get to win, we get to win!" from Season 2 [?] is spoken by McNulty in this season. There was a whole lot of that last night. And if I'm not mistaken, Levy says the brisket line in Season 1.

Yeah, not to mention Sydnor echoing McNulty in Phelan's office ("Just keep my name out of it"), Michael echoing Omar both in wording and shotgun wielding, and a bunch of other stuff I can't recall at the moment.

There was also Bunk to Kima: "There you go, giving a fuck when it's not your turn to give a fuck" (in the same location as the Gant murder in season one).

But my favorite had to be Shardene tacking a "and four months" onto Lester's total years of service, the same way he insisted on tacking the number of months (I think it was also four) onto the number of years he sat in the Pawn Shop Unit when telling the story in season one of how he was originally demoted from homicide.

Also, in episode 1 of this season, after major crimes comes down off Marlo behind the budget crisis McNulty says: "I wonder what it feels like to work in a real fuckin’ police department," virtually repeating Sydnor's line from season 3, episode 7: "Someday, I wanna work for a real police department, just to see how the fuck they do it man" after major crimes comes down off Kentel Williamson behind McNulty's manipulations.

However, I have to say, unlike most of the recycled lines mentioned in these posts, I didn't care for this last one. In that same episode (S5E1) Roger Twigg had already quipped: "Someday, I wanna find out what it feels like to work for a real newspaper." Having McNulty express the same sentiment felt a bit heavy handed. Loyal fans of the show would have remembered the Sydnor line from season 3 and connected the dots on their own, there was no need to hit us over the head with the parallels between the broken police department and the broken newspaper.

On another note, there is another nice parallel related to the Carver/McNulty "You do not get to win, we get to win!". The first time Carver says that is early in season 3 on top of a squad car while he is using half the western to apprehend a runner who skyed up with a decoy ground stash. Early in season 4, after his dressing down by Colvin, a similar opportunity for a prolonged and wasteful chase presents itself when Carver spots Donut driving a stolen truck. This time, mindful of Colvin's advice, Carver turns to Herc and says, "I don't need to chase these kids, I know half of them."