"THE WIRE": Your Favorite Characters from: THE PAPER

Cafe Society
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Per the discussion of HBO’s “The Wire” in this thread, as well as the discussion in this thread regarding polling to find out who people’s favorite characters from the show are, here is the first poll of several that **Zeldar **and I will be posting in the near future.

The idea was to break the entire cast (over 300 people have appeared on the show) by sub-groups based on how they fit into the story. We then we narrowed those groups down a bit by cutting out characters that appeared in under 10 episodes.

Of course, there are many recognizable and unforgettable characters in that under-10 range (Brother Mouzone was only in seven episodes, for example) so we cherry picked the ones that we thought should be included in the poll. We were pretty liberal w/ the choices but if you feel we missed somebody, feel free to post your thoughts in the thread for the group that character belongs to.

We will be allowing three (3) votes per person for the smaller sub-groups and around 8 per person for the larger groups (The Game, The Police). Once we find the favorites from each group, we’ll create a master poll to determine the final results.

The poll will be for the sub-group: “The Paper.” These are characters who are mainly involved in the Baltimore Sun story arc of Season Five.

Characters will only be included in a single sub-group each, and since some of the characters like Namond and Michael could have also been included w/ The Street as well as The School, we decided to include them w/ The School because their stories were mostly born out of the school system storyline in season four, that they would fit best in that group for polling purposes. Prez, though, will be included w/ The Police as that’s where a majority of his storylines took place.

Lastly, in case your memory is fuzzy (I know mine was when we started working on this) here is a Wiki link that will help you find out who somebody is, if you don’t remember their name.

Here are the characters that will be voted on in this poll. Please note that the character’s name appears first, followed by the actor’s name and the number of episodes they appeared in.

City Editor Augustus ‘Gus’ Haynes - Clark Johnson (10 episodes)
Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow - David Costabile (10 episodes)
Scott Templeton - Thomas McCarthy (10 episodes)
Alma Gutierrez - Michelle Paress (10 episodes)
Executive Editor James C. Whiting III - Sam Freed (9 episodes)
Bill Zorzi - William F. Zorzi (9 episodes)
Mike Fletcher - Brandon Young (9 episodes)
Metro Editor Steven Luxenberg - Robert Poletick (7 episodes)
Rewrite Man Jay Spry - Donald Neal (7 episodes)
Jeff Price - Todd Scofield (7 episodes)
State Editor Tim Phelps - Thomas J. McCarthy (6 episodes)
Regional Affairs Editor Rebecca Corbett - Kara Quick (5 episodes)
Roger Twigg - Bruce Kirkpatrick (4 episodes)

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Here are the other polls that are up so far:

The Docks

The School

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I had a hard time with this group. Gus, to me, was the only sympathetic/likable character through and through for me. I voted for Zorzi and Fletcher because I felt their stories were more well-drawn and real. If I had had another vote or two to spare, I might have chosen Alma and Kebanow. (I spent a fair amount of time trying to remember where I had seen the actor before and it took IMDb to clear that up. Breaking Bad and Flight of the Conchords were the ones I was “remembering.”) But the character reminded me too much of guys like him that I used to work with, and I wasn’t happy with that connection.

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He’s also the single dad talking to his daughters about being set up on a date in the hilarious T-Mobile “Super Delicious” commercial.

BTW, the actor that played Templeton has written and directed some pretty excellent films: *The Visitor *and The Station Agent. He’s also credited as one of the writers of the story for Up.

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I have seen that commercial but it wasn’t from that that I had the “where have I seen him?” moments.

I did see The Visitor and felt it was Oscar-worthy. And I can’t deny that Templeton’s character was well-presented. I just didn’t like the character, and it’s hard to vote for him on that account. As long as “Favorite” is what we’re after, I have to consider the likable component. That may prevent me from voting for Rawls when the time comes, even though I did gain some respect for the character as he weathered the storm of be shit on from every direction. :slight_smile:

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I went w/ Alma, Templeton, and Fletcher. I didn’t necessarily like Templeton’s character as a person, but I thought it was an interesting character. Fletcher I liked because he’s the one that ends up writing the piece on Bubbles.

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That’s a very different conception of favorite characters than I’ve had in mind. I’m not voting for Templeton here either, but that’s because I find the portrayal weaker than some others.