I just binge rewatched the series. Snoop’s interaction with the salesman at the hardware store was great, her casual reference to killings, then her tipping the guy $100, telling him he fucking earned it, made her one of my favorite characters in the series.
But man, Prezbelewski. What a sad sack.
Snoop: “How my hair look, Mikey?”
Mikey: “You look good girl.”
It’s been a while since I watched it, but I took that to be another example of institutional dysfunction in the series. He needed to be in witness protection, but they weren’t able to get it for him in a timely manner because of bureaucratic reasons.
Snoop was played by Felicia Pearson, who had recently been released from prison after serving a term for second degree murder:
Quoted from the wiki article
Inspired by this thread, I checked to see if there is a Wire podcast, and of course there is. “Way Down in the Hole” is a Wire rewatch podcast. I’m enjoying it so far, and finding it interesting to get a different perspective on the series.
Trivia question from the podcast: How many times did police officers fire their guns during the series?
Haven’t heard the podcast (yet) but I just rebinged The Wire and I think Prezbewlewski (however it’s spelled) was the only cop to shoot someone, and it was another cop…
Season 4 features the corner boys selling “Pandemic”. That was weird.
It’s been a minute but if I recall correctly the police only fired their guns on 2 separate occassions in the entire series, both by Pryzbylewski. Once when he shot the wall when showing others how light his trigger pull was and once when he killed the undercover cop…no idea how many shots were fired in total.
And this just highlights ANOTHER reason why The Wire is the best TV show ever. It’s feels like every other cop show has cops drawing down on “the bad guys” at least once per episode while The Wire emphasized that a cop’s most potent weapon is their mind and willingness to do the work.
I’ve been walking around saying “WMD” and “Paaandemic” for months now!
As others have noted, you’ve got the timeline out of order there.
The incident with the young woman was while he was still working for the Barksdale crew, before he had the crisis of conscience. he young woman was the girlfriend of one of Barksdale’s dealers, and they suspected that the dealer had been skimming money off the package. Cutty suggested that they follow the girlfriend, because if she’s “wearing ice” (jewelry), then she probably got the money from her boyfriend, and that would support the suspicion that he was stealing from Barksdale.
The two dumb enforcer guys, Sapper and Gerard, follow her up to Towson mall and watch her buy a bunch of stuff. Then, later on, they try to confront her on the street to ask her about her boyfriend. When she brushes them off, Cutty steps forward and whacks her across the side of the face to get her attention and make her talk.
Later in the episode, Sapper and Gerard beat the shit out of her boyfriend with a baseball bat, including stomping his hands to get the rings off them.
I think that situation, specifically Cutty’s involvement, is one of the things that causes him to rethink his life. Before this incident he was gung-ho about getting back into the life, after this incident he started to pay a lot more attention to all of the harm that he was doing.
I agree with your general observation about Barksdale and Stringer here, but not with some of the specifics.
It’s not that Stringer didn’t understand “how many palms have to be greased in order to get permits and work done.” In fact, it was a little bit the opposite: he thought that, as long as you’re willing to grease palms, you can get anything done quickly and easily. That’s why he paid Clay Davis, and why he was so furious that the payment didn’t lead to progress on his buildings and on his grant applications.
There’s a great scene where the lawyer, Levy, explains to Stringer that he got played by Davis. The explanation went something like this: “He rainmade you. A man tells you that if you pay him, he can make it rain. If it rains, he takes the credit; if it doesn’t, he finds a reason for you to pay him more.” In response, Stringer asks how Chunky Coates got all of his grants and approvals, and Levy says, “Chunky Coates gets his grant money like everyone does: he fills out the applications, he makes sure his plans meet spec, and then he prays like hell.”
Stringer was trying to adapt to the straight world of business, and he was doing it quite well in some areas, but in others it was clear that he was in over his head. Hell, the last thing that Stringer does before he dies is rant and yell at Andy Krawczyk over the lack of progress on his building.
Also, Stringer didn’t get betrayed and killed because he tried to “extricate himself from the drug business without agreement.” He got killed because Avon gave him up to Brother Mouzone. Mouzone wanted payback for being shot by Omar at the end of Season 2, and he found out that it was Stringer who had sent Omar after Mouzone by telling Omar that it was Mouzone who had tortured and killed Brandon in Season 1. Avon gave Stringer up because the Brother made clear that, if he didn’t, Avon would lose his connection to the New York drug supply. “What got you here is your word and your reputation. With that, you’ve still got a line to New York. Without it, you’re done!” There was also an implication, I think, that if Avon didn’t give Stringer up, then Brother Mouzone might come after Avon.
One of the key developments at the end of Season 3 is that the longtime friends and allies Avon and Stringer both betrayed each other: Avon gave up Stringer to Brother Mouzone, and Stringer gave up Avon’s war hideout to Bunny Colvin and the cops.
I think that’s right, although even after that he was willing to tool up with Slim Charles and go after Marlo’s people, like the bungled attack on the street corner where the impatient idiots in the car didn’t wait for the signal and got blown away, with Cutty and Slim Charles ditching their guns in the alley and running off.
It really hit him, I think, when he and Charles ran up on another of Marlo’s crews, and Cutty had Marlo’s dealer Fruit (who had previously ripped Cutty off on a package, claiming that the cops took it) right in his sights and couldn’t pull the trigger.
(Can you tell I’ve watched the series about seven times? 
)
There was also the fact that Stringer had D’Angelo Barksdale, Avon’s nephew, killed.
I don’t remember it being played that way… like, they all knew that it was super dangerous for him to be out of their protection for even one more hour, but their hands were tied.
But… haven’t seen it in a while. Clearly time for a re-watch!
Right, and Avon had only found out about that very recently.
One more general point about the show. I loved characters like Shakima Greggs, Rhonda Perlman, Beadie Russell, and Snoop Pearson, but I think that the writers were generally better at writing male characters than women. This probably reflects the world they’re describing, which in many ways is very much a world of men, but I think it also reflects the writing staff, which was overwhelmingly male.
I thought that one big missed opportunity in this area came at the end of Season 1 and the start of Season 2. There was a scene near the end of Season 1, when it was pretty clear that Avon was in trouble, that they moved their operation from the office above the bar to the office above the funeral home. Stringer and Avon’s sister Brianna are talking to Avon outside the home, telling Avon that he should hang back and leave the running of the operation to Brianna and Stringer.
I was expecting to see a much bigger role for Brianna in Season 2. She clearly had the smarts and the ruthlessness to help run the business, and yet we only see her a few times after that, mainly in the context of her relationship with her son D’Angelo, and her grief after his death. Having her step into Avon’s shoes, if not as the outright leader then at least as the family’s representative in the operation, would have been really interesting IMO.
The sticking point was the fact that Sobotka was in the room without a lawyer. Sobotka promises to tell them everything in return for keeping his family safe. Rhonda Perlman tells him that he has to get himself an attorney. He expresses some surprise that they’re not going to take his testimony immediately, and Rhonda reiterates that he needs to get a lawyer and they can do it first thing tomorrow.
Remember that no-one in the Greek’s operation knew (yet) that Frank was turning on them. In fact, Spiros counseled the Greek that they could trust Frank. But Agent Koutris, who had been trading information with the Greek, sees on an internal message that Sobotka has become a witness, and calls the Greek. As Frank is walking up for his meeting under the bridge with the Greek and Spiros, the Greek hangs up his cellphone, turns to Spiros and says, “Your way. It won’t work.”
Stringer and Avon went down because they forgot that they needed each other to maximize their success. They both wanted to move in different directions and eventually stopped trusting each other.
Stringer wanted them to evolve and start to remove themselves from most of the day to day business that could result in their arrest (or murder). Sadly, Stringer had no idea how to do that so he trusted the wrong people and made questionable decisions during a time of crisis.
Avon wanted to regress and go back to reclaim the streets once Marlo made it clear he was coming for his crown. He ignored all of the tenuous supply and distribution problems that Stringer had “fixed” in favor of focusing all of his energy on trying to get to Marlo while Marlo and his crew turtled up and waited for the Avon to make a mistake.
Avon gave up Stringer because of the D’Angelo and Brother situations and Stringer gave up Avon because he was fucking up his carefully laid plans. Both were right and both were wrong and they paid for their mistakes.
I love (what I think is) their last scene together where they are standing on the balcony of Avon’s apartment. It perfectly sums up how they have drifted apart:
Avon: Forget about all that for awhile man…just dream with me…
Stringer: We ain’t gotta dream no more man.
Chad Coleman played the hell out of that role! Especially in that scene with Fruit. The look on both of their faces as Cutty decided what he wanted to do…TV just doesn’t get any better than that.
I agree that Fruit was the final straw and I loved how Cutty just came clean with everyone and admitted that he just doesn’t have that dog in him anymore.
Perfect. Thanks for this.