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.
On with the list.
30) Kima Greggs
Kima is the series' 4th-most prominent character, so I feel like this is sort of a slap in the face to rank her this low. Truth be told, I didn't find her as compelling as most because she didn't seem that nuanced of a character in her professional capacity. As an officer, Greggs is always portrayed as intelligent, strong, and with a keen loyalty and morals. Most of the other police either have some gray area to their work or experience growth over the course of the series.
Instead, Kima's personal life is what makes her interesting. Her partner Cheryl becomes pregnant through artificial insemination, despite that Kima is lukewarm on the idea of having a child and is far too invested in her job to be any sort of a reliable parent. Ultimately, the two separate because they were never able to see eye-to-eye on the matter.
Greatest Character Moment: I honestly have a hard time picking one. I'd probably say my favorite scene with her is the "If I hear the music, I'm gonna dance" conversation, in which Daniels tries to convince her to join the Sobotka detail in Season Two.
29) Nick Sobotka
Season Two switches the focus onto the union stevedores that work Baltimore's city docks and Nick Sobotka is one of the primary characters through whom the audience explores that world. Thanks in part to deindustrialization, there's not enough work for the stevedores to make a good living, so Nick gets involved with smuggling and drug dealing to make ends meet for himself, his girlfriend, and his daughter.
Throughout Season Two, Nick is an easy character to root for because he has a good head on his shoulders and generally makes good decisions. He earns the trust of the Greeks due to his intelligence and loyalty and constantly has to bail out his cousin Ziggy, who is brash and incompetent.
Greatest Character Moment: The time he strong-armed Frog, and felt the need to inform Frog that he's white.
28) Jay Landsman
Corpulent Jay Landsman would be considered a cartoonish character if everything about him wasn't so believable. Watch him on the show and try telling me there isn't a guy exactly like Landsman in every major police precinct in America. Usually affable and typically seen with fried food or porn magazines, Landsman is a police middle management prototype, generally loyal to those who work for him, but he shows the propensity to be a pain in the ass, such as in Season 3 when he wouldn't get off Bunk Moreland's back about finding officer Dozerman's gun. He gets good results, but is prone to the occasional fuck-up, like when he failed to inform Daniels' unit that Ziggy Sobotka had confessed to murder.
Overall though, Landsman is pretty likable for his comic relief and the fact that he's a bit of a prankster. He doesn't develop much at all over the course of the series and is usually just kinda there. But he's usually entertaining when he's on screen.
Greatest Character Moment: For me, it's a toss up between his three eulogies at the detectives' wakes or the following quote when advising Beadie Russell how to dress:
"For you, l would suggest some pantsuits muted in color. Something to offset Detective Moreland's pinstriped, lawyerly affectations and the brash, tweedy impertinence of Detective Freamon."27) Clay Davis
The Wire is a serious drama, but it definitely has a sense of humor. For the most part, the laughs come from natural dialogue and what we know about the various characters, assisted by superb acting. There's almost no weird gimmicks or catch phrases. Almost.
Maryland Senator Clay Davis, the most corrupt politician in all of Baltimore (hopefully), is the exception to that rule, thanks to the long, drawn-out way that he says the word "shit". I can't do it justice in text, but it says something that the most quoted line from The Wire is a one-word expression from such a minor character (Davis has the 40th-most lines of any character in the series).
Davis is the type of monster that creator David Simon wants us to be aware is prevalent in American politics. He draws money from illegal sources. He takes donations from people (notably Frank Sobotka and Stringer Bell) who hope he will advance their interests, but ultimately Davis does nothing to help them. Wickedly charismatic and capable of delivering a passionate speech, Davis' ability to spin his own image, in addition to immunity drawn from his relationship with key law enforcement personnel, generally keeps him out of harm's way despite his transgressions.
Greatest Character Moment: Just watch this
26) Cedric Daniels
Another highly visible character, Daniels appears in more episodes of The Wire than any other (58 out of 60). One of the first things we learn about Daniels is that he has something of a dirty past, having been the target of an FBI investigation for corruption. However, over the course of the series, he evolves into the character in the Baltimore PD most committed to doing good, effective police work (well, without breaking the law, anyway).
We originally meet Daniels as the leader of the detail assigned to the Avon Barksdale investigation. He originally seems to be some sort of chain-of-command barrier to Jimmy McNulty advancing the Barksdale case, but over time he proves to be capable of both earning the respect of his subordinates and giving them what they need to get the job done, even though he is often acutely aware of what he needs to do to please his superiors and advance his career.
Daniels is another easy guy to root for throughout the series' run because he typically makes the "right" decision and when he doesn't, the show does a good job of helping us to understand why. Undermined by his wife, superiors who care more about numbers than results, and occasionally incompetent underlings, Daniels fights through many challenges and sort of comes out a winner, being promoted to commissioner before being forced to resign and eventually putting his law degree to use.
Greatest Character Moment: Nothing beats pissed-off Daniels, and here's him at his pissedoffiest
No comments:
Post a Comment