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.
Previous Installments
Characters #30 - #26
Characters #25 - #21
Characters #20 - #16
Characters #15 - #11
Characters #10 - #6
5) Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins
The Wire didn't attract all that much attention during its run; it's certainly no Game of Thrones in that regard. If I had to pick one person deserving of some kind of hardware for acting on this show, it would've been Andre Royo for his portrayal of Bubbles.
The Wire largely focuses on two groups of people: those that move drugs and the police that try to bring down people who move drugs. As a person who actually uses heroin, Bubbles adds a new dimension to The Wire, even though he's typically not driving the primary action of the series. Sure, he helps the police as an informant with a tip here or there, but his story is mostly its own animal.
Bubbles is representative of the effect that the drug trade has on the community from an addiction perspective. We don't know much about his background, but we learn enough to understand that this once was an intelligent (his vocabulary is insanely good for a street bum) and caring man whose life was completely ripped to shreds by heroin. Now, he's living scam-to-scam, aside from collecting the occasional Andrew Jackson from detectives for identifying criminals. He tries to get clean a few times during the show's run, but doesn't succeed in doing so until late in the series.
Bubbles' most tragic storyline is that from Season Four, in which he mentors a teenager named Sherrod and tries to set him on a good life path. It's a struggle coming from a man in Bubbles' position, but he generally proves to be a good influence. Unfortunately, a thug begins repeatedly beating up and robbing Bubbles. Bubbles goes to the police for help, but one Herc screw-up later, he tries to poison his tormentor and winds up accidentally allowing Sherrod to fatally shoot the tainted drugs instead. The result is Bubbles unsuccessfully attempting suicide in one of Landsman's interrogation rooms.
Over a year later, Bubbles is clean and working honestly selling newspapers. His sister lets him stay in her basement, but does not allow him to partake in any aspect of her life. All the while, he's grief-stricken for what he let happen to Sherrod and gradually becomes able to open up about the experience, both in his Narcotics Anonymous meetings and in an article published about him in The Baltimore Sun. In the last episode of the series, he's seen having dinner with his sister and her child. It's a simple and ordinary scene, but given everything Bubbles has been through, it's nothing short of a triumphant moment.
Greatest Character Moment: Bubbles speaking out about what happened to Sherrod at one of his Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
4) Frank Sobotka
We only get to spend one season with Frank Sobotka, but damn, the man made an impression.
Frank is a secretary treasurer for the International Brotherhood of Stevedores. He has great passion for the union and his line of work, but unfortunately, the shipping industry of Baltimore is in decline. Furthering the threat of deindustrialization is a film Frank watches -- which Frank later calls a "horror movie" -- with some of his colleagues suggesting robots could automate the union's work, making many of their jobs obsolete.
Preserving the future of the stevedores union is what drives nearly everything Frank does. He tries to lobby politicians to re-open a grain pier and deepen the canal to boost shipping traffic. To do this, he has to get funding, which he obtains from the Greek's organization in exchange for smuggling various things into Baltimore. In addition to bribing politicians, Frank's able to support his union brethren when they run low on work. This is an important point -- though he's operating on the wrong side of the law, everything he earns goes towards supporting the men he works with.
Unfortunately for Frank, he flashed his cash a little bit too much, and he wound up attracting police attention (from a damn pissing match with Major Stan Valchek over a stained glass window in a church, of all things). The smuggling investigation became tied together with the murder of thirteen women, found dead in one of the Greek's shipping containers in Frank's port. This made Frank sick to his stomach and almost resulted in him withdrawing entirely from the Greek's operation.
Eventually, Frank's police attention scares off the politicians from whom he's seeking support, and all hope of improving the port's situation is lost, not to mention the money put towards that effort. Frank's reaction to that is one of his best scenes. It largely parallels the issues with other institutions shown throughout the series.
Of course, lost in all of Frank's obsession about his profession is the fact that he has a son, Ziggy, who's heading down a bad path and getting himself in all sorts of trouble. If there's one place we can find fault with Frank on a moral level, it's his negligence in his relationship with Ziggy. Once Ziggy snaps and kills one of the Greeks, Frank essentially gets himself killed trying to save him rather than continuing to collaborate with the police. It's easy to see that in the corrupt landscape of Baltimore, he's pretty much doomed from the start with regards to his efforts to save the union, but his and his son's lives could have been saved (the former literally, and the latter figuratively) had he been a more attentive father.
Greatest Character Moment: When Bunk and Beadie show up to deliver a grand jury summons to Johnny Fifty and others at the docks, Frank has an impassioned rant waiting for them. One thing I love about this scene is that Bunk, who doesn't know Frank, could easily just see everything Frank says as posturing, but it's clear to the viewer that Frank's defiance is borne out of genuine disgust at why the police are even there.
3) Preston "Bodie" Broadus
Normally, when a TV show makes the viewer do a complete-180 on how they feel about a character, it usually takes some big moment in which a previously repulsive person makes a single important decision to do the right thing in a key situation. This is not a normal TV show.
Bodie is introduced in Season One as a member of D'Angelo's crew in the pit. He's mostly concerned with appearing tough and pleasing his superiors. You can tell simply from watching the chess scene in the third episode that Bodie has designs on advancing his career pretty far within the Barksdale Organization. He's cool with using violence to enforce the rules of 'the game' and is visibly puzzled when D'Angelo offers a more sensitive or forgiving take on a situation. Bodie then co-commits (albeit slightly hesitantly) the most heinous act of Season One, the murder of Wallace. The kid couldn't be any more despicable (unless he was Poot).
So when this punk gets killed at the end of Season Four, how did it somehow become sadder than the aforementioned murder?
One of the things that becomes more apparent with each re-watch of The Wire is that the show is great at playing the long game. Even when Bodie is at his worst early in the series, he has some entertaining, often lighthearted banter with Herc and Carver. That keeps up during Seasons Two and Three, even though Bodie is not a heavy focus of the storylines. In addition to Simon giving us little moments that make Bodie more familiar and approachable, he becomes a notably sharper mind as he gains experience. It's clear he learned plenty from his time under D'Angelo, and his citing of "contrapment" (entrapment) to beat an arrest in Season Three even impressed McNulty, king shit of all that is brilliant and clever. Bodie's never front-and-center, but the viewer's always aware of what he's up to and how he's doing. The abominable murder of Wallace slowly begins to feel more and more like a blip.
With all that buildup in place, Bodie takes on a greater role in Season Four. He's running his own corner and ultimately is forced to work under Marlo Stanfield. A growing, righteous hatred of Marlo begins to brew within Bodie over the course of the season as the former's ruthless, baseless killings get out of control. McNulty, who's charged with patrolling the western district, has developed a casual rapport with Bodie by this time (including a pretty great scene in a sandwich shop) and tries to get Bodie to flip on Marlo. Unfortunately, one of Marlo's guys sees the two together, which effectively seals Bodie's fate. He goes out in a matter befitting his character, bravely defending his corner rather than accepting a quiet, painless fate in one of the vacants.
Greatest Character Moment: His conversation with McNulty on the park bench, shortly before his death. McNulty looks straight at him and tells him he's a soldier, with utmost sincerity. It's a powerful moment built upon years of excellent character development.
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