Just before the shooting war between the mayor and the governor broke into the open this week, a series of guerrilla strikes promised the first signs of life in Albany for months. Other than the two most powerful legislators’ being arrested, nothing much had happened since January, although all kinds of laws needed to be fixed or extended.

The government had failed, and now it was time to roll the blame ball around.

Last Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s aides anonymously complained to reporters about state legislators and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. A day later, “a source close to the governor” kicked the mayor down the block.

Articles appeared in The Daily News and The New York Post in which Mr. de Blasio was painted as a political naïf and doofus by an individual identified as a “top Cuomo administration source” in one report and a “Cuomo source” in the other.

All the language used was in the singular diction of Mr. Cuomo.

“You sit down there as a mayor and you believe you’re the captain of the ship,” the Unnamed Governor said. “But really everything is subject to state law. You want to change the speed limit? You want to put in red-light cameras? You need to flush the toilet? You need a state law.”