The 30 Greatest Characters on 'The Wire', #20 - #16

If you have not seen The Wire:

Step 1) Stop reading immediately (though you probably would do this anyway). There are spoilers below, and I will not be held responsible for ruining the greatest show of all time.

Step 2) Watch the entire series on HBO Go. If you do not get HBO, this is a fixable problem.

Step 3) Come back and read all of the character reviews I've completed so far.  If you enjoy good TV, you will binge all 60 episodes and finish the show before I finish the character rankings.

Step 4) Find a new job. In retrospect, that was a bad decision watching a full season of The Wire every day for five days because your employer expected you to show up to work. You need a means to pay for HBO so that you can watch all the episodes again.

Previous Installments
Characters #25 - #21
Characters #30 - #26

20) Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson

Marlo's terrifying third-in-command, while portrayed as a dangerous enforcer, provides some much needed comic relief to the Stanfield crew.  Don't get me wrong, she's extremely vicious and merciless, but tends to get more animated and vocal than the more soft-spoken Chris and Marlo. Snoop plays a lesser role in Season Three, but we see Marlo and Chris grooming her to become added muscle for their expanding enterprise, a role she takes on in Seasons Four and Five

Everyone's favorite fact about Snoop is that she's played by an actress by the same name. Felicia Pearson (the actress) was actually a Baltimore drug dealer that Michael K. Williams (the actor who portrayed Omar) encountered at a club one night; Williams then encouraged her to try out for the show.

Greatest Character Moment: I was pretty tempted to put Snoop below Ziggy and Wallace on this list, but she's responsible for one of my three favorite scenes in the entire series, in which she purchases the Cadillac of nail guns ("He mean Lexus, but he ain't know it.") from a hardware store worker at the beginning of Season Four.

19) Avon Barksdale

Avon is portrayed as a traditional drug lord, concerned with territory, respect, and family ties. He's most interesting in Seasons Two and Three, as his long-standing friendship with Stringer Bell starts to unravel over disagreements in how to run their business. While Stringer is most concerned with profiting from the business, which occasionally requires keeping the peace to avoid police attention, Avon is too proud to let other gangs' infringe on his territory without consequence.

When one sees how much Stringer is doing to grow the operation while Avon is in prison, it seems petty for Avon to return and demand that his crew get involved in violent conflict over a few measly corners. He seems like the pigheaded one, but he was right all along about Stringer's inability to make it beyond the drug trade. Plus, once the two had turned on each other, Stringer went to the police, but Avon went for the kill. You couldn't call either character "moral", but Avon's love of family and his generosity towards Cutty sure made him more likable, even if he was the less compelling character of the two.

Greatest Character Moment: His scene on the rooftop with Stringer in which the two reminisce about their past as two people who seem like the best of friends, but in reality have already turned on one another.

18) Duquan "Dukie" Weems

For a show that's so enjoyable to watch, The Wire sure throws a lot of unfathomably sad characters out there. Dukie is probably the saddest of them all.

When we first meet him, Dukie lives in a house with drug addicts and no running water. He gets made fun of by his peers because he wears dirty clothes and smells bad. Even his time with his three friends (Namond, Michael, and Randy) isn't all that great because Namond is constantly picking on him. From the outset, it feels like there's pretty much no way that this is going to end well.

Things start to improve a bit for Dukie when his eighth grade teacher, Prez, takes an interest in him. He allows Dukie to shower at school and provides him with clean clothes, while also encouraging him to build up his computer skills. As it turns out, Dukie has quite the aptitude for learning; before the end of Season Four, the schools promote him to the ninth grade. He's a genuinely nice kid that treats everyone he encounters with respect, and it was good to see him succeed, even if that was short-lived.

I think David Simon wanted to show what could be made possible through a little kindness and compassion towards a kid like Dukie. Unfortunately, the larger theme of The Wire is that everyone is trapped in their own little unjust system, and Dukie can't escape. The only person who can support him is Michael, and Michael only has the means to do so because he's been swept up in -- you guessed it -- the drug trade. When Michael's actions force him to go on the run, no one is left to support Dukie. Dukie then goes to live with a heroine addict and swindles money from Prez. Just like that, Baltimore has created another Bubbles.

Greatest Character Moment: An incident in Prez's classroom results in one girl slashing another in the face with a boxcutter. While everyone scram bles to get help for the injured girl, the assailant sits on the floor in shock. Dukie quietly slides over to her and gives her his small electric fan to help calm her down. It's just a nice moment that helps show what a kind heart the kid has.

17) Dennis "Cutty" Wise

There's success stories on The Wire, but they're few and far between. With Cutty, David Simon gave us someone we could genuinely feel good about. Upon being released from a long prison sentence, the former drug gang enforcer finds himself entangled with the Barksdale organization. He shows that he still has the intelligence and general acumen for the job, but he walks away from 'the game' when he realizes that killing is no longer in him,

In the later stages of Season Three, Cutty tries to open a boxing gym. The show does a good job of showing just how much bureaucratic BS one has to walk through just to start up something like that for the good of the community. It stops short of making Cutty just another chapter in the "everyone is trapped" novel, however; a deacon's political connections ultimately help him to get the gym off the ground. Cutty is shown to be a good mentor, coach, and friend to the kids of the community. He has mixed results with getting them to make good choices in their own lives, but it's at least nice to watch someone trying.

Greatest Character Moment: Cutty telling Avon that he can't be part of 'the game' anymore and walking out with Avon's respect is his best moment.

16) Thomas Carcetti

Carcetti shows up for the first time in Season Three as a politician who seems genuinely interested in making a positive difference in Baltimore. He's portrayed in stark contrast to others in the political realm who are more interested in their own career interests than doing anything to help the city. Carcetti decides to run for mayor and does so by promising things that are believable and earnest and he ultimately succeeds, even though he wakes up white in a city that ain't.

Yet, much like the very characters he despises, Carcetti's attention wavers from helping Baltimore in his capacity as mayor because he's more interested in making a run at becoming governor of Maryland. He gets a shock early in his mayoral tenure when he is informed that the school system is severely in debt. The governor of Maryland offers to bail him out, but only on the condition that Carcetti make the bailout extremely public, which would hurt his gubernatorial campaign. Carcetti refuses the money, and in Season Five, is shown to place an emphasis on the very statistic-based evaluation of police work that he originally opposed.

There's an argument that Carcetti's story is one of the most horrifying on The Wire, even though it doesn't involve any murder, violence, or theft. Carcetti bursts onto the scene as someone hell-bent on solving 'the problem'; once empowered, it doesn't take very long before he becomes a big part of it.

Greatest Character Moment; In the Series Finale, Carcetti finds out the truth about Baltimore's serial killer, and his reaction is stupendous.