Can't wait for the January premiere of Season Five of The Wire? Enjoy these prequels cooked up by HBO. Our favorite is Li'l Omar's big score, above, featuring everyone's favorite benevolent stick-up kid in his first adventure, in 1982. (Or maybe not his first — he's already got the scar.) After the jump, check out the other two episodes, featuring a schoolboy Prop Joe and the epochal first meeting between McNulty and Bunk, which is so booze-soaked we're already psyched for McNulty to be drinking again.

When Bunk Met McNulty (2000)

Young Prop Joe (1962)

Earlier: Jimmy McNulty Is Drinking Again