"Time After Time" is the first episode of the third season of the HBO original series, The Wire. The episode was written by David Simon from a story by David Simon & Ed Burns and was directed by Ed Bianchi. It originally aired on September 19, 2004.

The title refers to the cyclical process of initiating reform, change and return to the status quo.

Bodie says this referring to Poot's repetitive behavior with women but it also refers to the season's theme of reform through explaining entrenched behavior. McNulty alludes to this theme later in the episode when he examined the files for the original Barksdale investigation and the port case, remarking to another detective, "If you don't look at what you did before, you do the same shit all over." McNulty could just as easily have been talking about himself because he is showing signs of continuing the same kind of egotistical insubordination that he did in the first go-around in the Crimes Unit. This is the first time in which the epigraph's quote is said during the cold open sequence rather than during the main episode itself.

Howard "Bunny" Colvin describes rookie officer Aaron Castor's uncle Lloyd Castor as "good police." According to the DVD commentary on this episode, this is a reference to an actual Baltimore police officer by that name.

In reality, in the year 2000, Baltimore's annual murder rate dropped to below 300 for the first time in a decade. Observers credited this to the new commissioner's dedication to wire-tapping and high-end police work. This commissioner was Ed Norris, who plays a homicide detective by the same name on The Wire. In the year 2003 (the last full year prior to the airing of this episode), there were 270 murders; though this is low for Baltimore, as suggested in the episode, it is more than five times the national rate in the same year. 2004 and 2005 also had similar numbers.

Lt. Mello, as played by real-life former detective Jay Landsman, ends his morning announcements by saying "Don't get captured". According to Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, Landsman used to frequently end his speeches with this pronouncement when he was a sergeant with Homicide.

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