Black History Month SUS Style: The Wire-Part III: City Hall and other badass characters

City Hall

Former Mayor Clarence Royce
Was Mayor for seasons 1, 2, and part of 3. Loved power. Loved women. Basically a Baltimore Marion Barry. No complaints on my end.

Mayor Tommy Carcetti
Basically the fictional equivalent of current Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. Power hungry sonuvabitch who probably cares about the people but REALLY cares about becoming Governor in a few years. If you want to talk about the impact of this show, Carcetti’s character has made me lose some respect for the real life O’Malley. Ironically enough, people in Maryland hate O’Malley as much as most Baltimore people hate Carcetti.

Jennifer Carcetti
Tommy’s wife. I have nothing to add, except that her picture is fairly bizarre.

Norman Wilson
Tommy’s right hand man. For the first 5 episodes that his character appeared, I thought Lester Freamon switched jobs.

Clay Davis
Best. Politician. Ever. Davis makes Marion Barry look as honest as Jimmy Carter. Lester Freamon was working on his case for years, and did a damn good job too, only to have Davis perform masterfully on the witness stand and get an acquittal. His most famous line is ‘shhheeeeeeiiiiiiiiitttt,’ and let’s just say that there is some truth to the rumor that BH and myself were in works to create a “Free Clay Davis” t-shirt until the good people of Baltimore did the job themselves.

Badass Characters

These are far and away the two best characters on The Wire. To go with their descriptioins, brief Youtube clips are required to do their characters justice.

Omar
A career street thug with a code. He makes his living by pointing his shotgun at drug dealers and stealing their stash. In the mean streets of Baltimore, no one is feared more by other street thugs and respected by cops more than Omar. Barksdale’s crew tried to take Omar out but they never could. Prop Joe tried to take out Omar but never could. Marlo tried to take out Omar, and unfortunately, succeeded. This is reason 5,204 that Marlo needs to die in the series finale. Oh, and Omar was gay. Very much so.

Brother Muzzone
The most well-read criminal of all time. An ex-Nation of Islam member who probably isn't exactly following in Malcolm X's footsteps. He scares the hell out of everyone, Avon and Stringer brought him in to protect their corners against Prop Joe in season 2. After taking care of business, Stringer tried to set him up by telling Omar that Muzzone killed one of his people. After wounding him, Muzzone convinced Omar that Stringer set them up. And that’s how Stringer Bell met his demise. When he’s not out there shooting people to prove a point, he can be spotted in his glasses and bowtie, reading The Atlantic or The Nation.

And finally, just because:


Enjoy the final episode a week from Sunday!