It Is TV. It's HBO/ List Madness/Down To "The Wire": Top Ten Coolest Characters on "The Wire"

Way down in the hole...

This post has been a long time coming. I have been back at school for about six or seven weeks now, and I have watched every episode of "The Wire" -- all 50 hours -- in that time period. I sort of messed up and (knowingly) started with season 2, because I couldn't find season 1 on any torrents and I figured that the difference between starting at 1 or 2 wasn't that huge. Boy, was this retarded. By the time I knocked off seasons 2-4, I basically knew everything that happened in season 1 (D'Angelo almost flipping, Wallace getting got, Avon being busted, etc.), so watching the entire first season in the past four days has been sort of anti-climactic.

But the past few months have been sort of miraculous nonetheless. I'm not going to talk about how "The Wire" is the best television show maybe ever, because you could read any other review of it to tell you that. Plus, when the fifth and final season starts up in January, I'm gonna be talking about that shit and giving it imaginary awards all day. No, right now I just want to pay tribute to it -- for providing me with such provocative, poignant, gritty entertainment over the past month and a half. I have composed a list of the top ten coolest characters on the show.

This is surely a flawed list: if Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) didn't make it, it would have to be. Every character on the show is brilliantly acted, so this is not an acting award. These are the ten characters on "The Wire" that both entertain and effortlessly handle their shit. You laugh with them, root for them when they gun people down, and you cry when they catch a bullet. It's "The Wire" way.

I want to quickly justify some glaring omissions and shout-out some almost-made-it's, too. I found Avon Barksdale too stupid to be that cool (part of the reason I found season 1 the weakest), and his nephew D'Angelo too wooden. Brother Mouzone may be my least favorite character, because he doesn't exist within the believable parameters of the show's world. And policemen Herk, Carver, Rawls, and Valchek are too asshole-ish to admire. On the other hand, a few characters were SO CLOSE to making this list (just a quick rundown: Daniels, Bunk, Cheese, Bubbles, Slim Charles, Bunny Colvin, and all the kids in season 4) that I have to give them props. For those of you who don't watch the show, you're probably completely lost by now. I apologize (sorry Chris).

10. Councilman Thomas "Tommy" Carcetti -- played by Aiden Gillen

Carcetti is a staple character in seasons 3 and 4, and an odd choice for this list, because it's hard to be cool when you're running for mayor of Baltimore. Still, Tommy is a captivating character because you want to believe that the guy is actually a politician who's not full of bullshit and means what he says. Introduced as a hard-nosed councilman who bribes the police commissioner and sleeps around (not with the commissioner -- yet), Carcetti has evolved into a likable mayor with the help of cool motherfucker Norman Wilson, who deserves his own place on this list. I dunno, Carcetti's just sort of the man.

9. "Proposition Joe" Stewart -- played by Robert F. Chew

Another thing season 1 was lacking was the watchful eye and Southern drawl of Prop Joe, certainly the biggest character of them all. Frankly, it sucks that Proposition Joe isn't given that much to do in the show besides act as a level-headed mediary; even his pivotal plot at the end of season 2, where he organizes a deal with Stringer behind Avon's jailbird back, focuses more on how pissed-off Brother Mouzone gets by the whole ordeal. Anyway, Prop Joe is probably the smartest gangster in Baltimore's game; dude knows how to handle business without getting dirty or violent. He even has the sense to buy back the truck-sized package that Omar stole from him without batting an eye! If Jay-Z's line, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business... man" refers to anyone on "The Wire", it's Prop Joe.

8. Det. Kima Greggs -- played by Sonja Sohn

Kima is the only female character on this list (Rhonda Pearlman was pretty close to it too), but it's hard to outshine a lady when she is as completely awesome as Greggs. The detective is pretty, tough, gay, and loyal, and although she does cheat on her girlfriend, her girlfriend's insufferably boring, so it's understandable. Maybe it's just me, but Kima Greggs is the one character I would wanna hang out with most in real life. I'm also glad that she's a lesbian, for some reason. Just adds to her awesomeness.

7. Marlo Stanfield -- played by Jamie Hector

Marlo Stanfield is a scary motherfucker. Characterized as an out-and-out sociopath, Marlo is made to be the sort of dude who will shoot his uncle in his balding head if he gets interrupted while watching "Access Hollywood"; if homeboy wants you toast, you're toast. But while this untouchability was once boring, season 4 opened Marlo up as a classic villain, even humanizing him through his relationships with Chris and Snoop. It helps that, for my money, Jamie Hector is the best actor on the show. Hell, the way Marlo Stanfield stands -- shoulders stretched back, like he's ready for battle -- is pretty cool. It'll be interesting to see how he's brought down in season 5.

6. Jimmy McNulty -- played by Dominic West

West is the "main character" of the show, which means absolutely nothing on "The Wire". If you don't believe me, check out the way he does NOTHING in season 4... and that's okay. McNulty is a flashy character, but his idiosyncrasies are better displayed when the spotlight's off of him. Yeah, we know he's a drunk, and a hound, and a damn good cop, but he's a lot more interesting when he's looking impatiently at his ex-wife or angrily throwing a file folder across a room when a witness dies. He's a well-drawn character, and compared to other protagonist cop shows, he's clearly the most relatable. Also, huge props for getting with Beadie Russell, who got crazy hot after the docks case, I guess?

5. Lester Freamon -- played by Clarke Peters

Lester is the coolest cop on "The Wire". Period. What could have been a tired Morgan Freeman impersonation is instead a fantastic example of the show's attention to detail. Over the course of the four seasons, Lester has been an essential part of the unit, whether it be busting into D'Angelo's pager or finding Marlo's bodies in the boarded-up houses. Not only is his backstory intriguing -- stuck it to the system, got put in the pawn-shop unit for thirteen years until they "forgot about him" -- but his current role as the wisened cop is so comfortable that it's impossible not to love the guy. Lester knows his shit, and nobody messes with him. Cedric Daniels didn't make this list because Lester Freamon IS Cedric, only cooler.

4. Preston "Bodie" Broadus -- played by JD Williams

Man, I did not see Bodie's death coming at the end of season 4. And I gotta say, I was more upset than I thought I should have been. But then it hit me -- Bodie, the corner stalwart who rolled with the Barksdale crew until it fell apart, is such a real character that you don't even notice his presence until it's taken away. Bodie is not the most likable guy (damn, why'd you have to do Wallace like that, B?), but he's the most unflinchingly honest portrayal of what happens when the corner chews you up and spits you out. Bodie's legacy will be slinging, and he knows it, but he's diligent and good at what he does, which traps him. As a character, Bodie is equal parts hilarious and ruthless; his swagger kept him afloat for a while. I'm gonna miss him.

3. Dennis "Cutty" Wise -- played by Chad L. Coleman

Shocking that I put him up this high, but let's face facts, people. Cutty's season 3 storyline, which chronicled his struggle to stay out of the projects and find his place in Baltimore after finishing a long bout in prision, was so un-"Wire"-like that it's hard to justify its huge presence as anything but "Cutty's just an awesome guy". His rebirth as a boxing coach is just so blissfully pure amidst the depressing arcs of "The Wire" that it's like rays of sunshine breaking out of dark clouds. Seriously, it's unbelievable to think that "The Wire", which is dedicated to exploring the decaying public systems of Baltimore, would give this guy such a positive outcome. Cutty is just a great guy. I will continue to unabashedly love him when the show returns.

2. Omar Little -- played by Michael Kenneth Williams

You gotta be kidding me. Omar? Not at #1? He's an openly gay gangsta with a big-ass scar on his face who robs drug lords of their stashes with the help of a shotgun! He cooperates with the police to give McNulty one of Barksdale's soldiers! He sometimes whistles "The Cheese Stands Alone" before an execution! Not even Marlo can pin a murder on him to get him convicted! Well, Omar's not #1 because he KILLED my choice for #1, but that's besides the point. Omar Little is a hero on the show, and adds a wild-card dimension to the entire Baltimore drug operation. Everything about the guy is superfly, like a Shaft who likes dudes (no pun intended). The only reason Omar's not dead by now is that the writers couldn't afford to lose his bravado. Can anyone bring this guy down??

1. Russell "Stringer" Bell -- played by Idris Elba

Oh Stringer. I hate the fact that Stringer Bell, Avon's second-in-command and brains of the Barksdale operation, is nowhere to be seen in the final two seasons of the show, but we'll always have those first three. Stringer Bell is one of the most enigmatic television characters ever created. He is surely a bad dude, but at times it seems like the good outweighs the evil. Sure, he runs the Barksdales while Avon's locked up, but he's more understanding than power-hungry, sharply contrasting with the irrational blood-thirst of the Stanfield crew in season 3. Stringer is college-educated, savvy, and really tall, but that's not my favorite thing about him. I love the fact that Stringer can do some terrible things, but they never seem grandiose; everything he does seems reasonable. Stringer hates the dirt he does, and wants nothing more than to soak in what he's accomplished and be satisfied with his winnings. The way he tries and inevitably fails to get out of the game by going legit is heartbreaking. After watching Omar and Brother Mouzone gun him down, I could barely breathe, and had to pace around my room for twenty minutes. "The Wire" constantly tries to create overreaching character arcs that connect with the audience and resemble tragic Greek figures. With Stringer Bell (who was wonderfully played by Idris Elba, by the way), the show accomplished this in stunning fashion.

It Is TV. It's HBO/What Went Wrong: End of Season 3/ Season 4 of "Entourage"

It's all about the substance

First off, apologies for the hiatus. It's been a while -- too long, some would say. But now I'm back, and the creative juices are flowing.

Therefore, to return by announcing the creative demise of "Entourage" is a little bittersweet. "Entourage" is one of my favorite shows; I have seen every episode multiple times, including the ones from the just-premiered season. The first season is awkwardly scripted at times, but the concept -- a young movie star and his three hanger-on friends become acquainted with the powers and pitfalls of Hollywood -- was fresh, and the inside look at the film industry was fascinating (especially to a movie fan like myself). More importantly, the cast, notably Adrian Grenier as easygoing actor Vincent Chase, Kevin Dillon as his washed-up but supportive brother, and Jeremy "I Will Fucking Kill You" Piven as super-agent Ari Gold, were undeniably believable, and made the show pop with chemistry. The series hit its apex in its second season, as Vince was cast as the lead in James Cameron's "Aquaman" and had trouble coping with his co-star, former flame Mandy Moore. Simply stated, season two was terrific. The "will-he-or-won't-he-play-Aquaman?" storyline was beautifully paced, subplots involving Ari's boss Terrence (Malcolm McDowell, you're missed, mate) and Johnny Drama's career were involving, and the finale, in which Vince must choose whether or not to subject himself through months of working with the girl who crushed him to achieve film immortality, is downright heartbreaking. This show was original, exciting, and damn funny. And then it all went to hell.

So when did "Entourage" lose its soul? There was no exact moment, but if I had to pinpoint it closely, I'd say as the third season was winding down and the plotlines didn't make any fucking sense. Don't get me wrong, season 3 has its moments -- Vince's new role as "Hollywood bad boy" was interesting, and his decision to fire Ari was pretty surprising -- but there are too many uneven moments as compared to the taut storyline of season 2. For one, the show (like Vince)didn't seem to have any direction: as Vinnie floated around from project to project, never quite having his next job secured, so too were we subjected to pointless transitions in plotting. Come on, did we really need the boys' old pal Dom, big, out on parole and annoying (props for that actor being on "The Wire", though)? Did they really need to waste Martin Landau in a three-episode arc in which he was reduced to senile producer and catchphrase slinger? Did Vince honestly need to hire hot new agent Amanda, become intimidated by her, have sex with her (???), develop a pseudo-relationship with her, and then fire her, in the span of five episodes?

Worst of all, the characters had become reduced to predictable cartoons, with Drama getting irrationally pissed-off a lot, Turtle forever in pursuit of bootay (fuck, WHY did they end his Saigon plot thread so quickly and carelessly?), Vince just sort of smiling and being cool, and E constantly bickering with Ari. Speaking of E, I know I haven't really talked about him, and even though he IS arguably "Entourage"'s main character, he's always been too wishy-washy a character to carry the show. Nowhere is this more evident in season 3, where he's given an outrageous plotline (three-some with Sloane and some blonde chick), and he can't even make THAT interesting. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm skirting the issue: the absolute low point of the season is in the next-to-last episode, where moneyman Yair Marx offers to finance "Medellin"... as long as Vince fucks his wife. This is where "Entourage" stopped being about the inside peek of Hollywood and became a circus act/soft-core porn. I invite anyone to watch this episode (319, titled "The Prince's Bride") and not be confused, appalled, or just really, really sad.

Anyway. Season 3 ends with Vince finally getting his dream project "Medellin" off the ground, with the help of lunatic "Queen's Boulevard" director Billy Walsh. I could write a dissertation about Billy Walsh as a character; he is an apparent spoof of the young filmmakers who view themselves as avant-garde gods and remain unapproachable to anyone they deem unworthy of touching their gift (simply stated, they're cocks). And hey! Billy was fun in the first two seasons, when he clashed with E and gave Vince indie cred. In season 4, which details the production and subsequent marketing of "Medellin" before it is unveiled at the Cannes film festival, Billy is given a huge amount of screen time, and it makes the show grating. "Entourage" has always benefited from being an easy-going show, with the main characters enjoying the hell out of the good life and the audience living vicariously. Billy Walsh disrupts the entire mood of the show, and it doesn't look like he's going away anytime soon, as Vince has already committed to doing ANOTHER movie with him, this time a laughable sci-fi epic called "Silo". Blame the writers for being too reliant on recycling old characters instead of introducing new faces and expanding the scope of the show. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think characters such as Dom, Amanda, and E's girlfriend Sloane were very well-drawn, but at least they added new dimensions to a show that frequently feels trapped in its own silly boundaries.

As for the rest of season 4... it's not HORRIBLE. It just kind of glides on a well-treaded mediocrity, and it's very disappointing. Drama gets pissed off, Vince smiles, Turtle enjoys women, Ari screams at people, places, and things. We get it. The episodes range from enjoyably stupid (E and Turtle race to have unemotional sex with a random girl) to let's-watch-"John From Cincinnati" bad (Drama helps the mayor of Beverly Hills hook up with a transvestite). E becomes Anna Faris' manager, which is weird. Worst of all, we just don't seem to care about Vince's career anymore. "Medellin" has lost its mystique by being too heavily relied on, and "Silo" just sounds boring. As "Medellin" gets booed at Cannes and Walsh curses off the audience, we realize that we're watching the shell of a great show, now stale from poor writing and a sense of immobility.

I'll keep watching "Entourage", even though deep down I know it's not going to improve anytime soon. It's still entertaining, although rarely of the high quality of the first two seasons. "Entourage" always has the potential to get back on track, though. So here's hoping. Plus, you can't knock HBO too dramatically, since they axed "Lucky Louie" and gave us "Flight of the Conchords". That shit is hott.

It Is TV. It's HBO: The Last Episode of "The Sopranos"

When I think about "The Sopranos", which I began watching around Season 4, I think about how the overall quality of television has improved over the past decade or so.

No, seriously.

Don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of shit on TV right now. If you don't believe me, watch MTV at any given time for half an hour, and then watch "American Idol" for half an hour. You'll want to cry, and that's okay. If you look closer at network programming, however, you'll see that, over the last decade, the general structure of television shows has been revolutionized. Comedies have evolved out of the tedious three-camera format, ditched the laugh track, and found more relatable ways of making people laugh. Take a show like "The Office": the idea of characters breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera, mockumentary-style, is an idea that would have never flied as soon as 10 years ago. Meanwhile, dramas have moved away from the starry-eyed soaps of the '80s and focused more on grittiness. Simply put, we are experiencing some of the most captivating, original premises for dramatic television ever; look at the far-reaching ideas behind shows like "Lost", "24", and "Big Love" if you don't believe me.

"The Sopranos" makes me think of all of these general improvements in thematic scope because I feel like it was responsible for starting a lot of these trends. It is a series about mobsters, in theory; in actuality, it is deeply psychoanalytic, unabashedly cold-hearted toward its protagonists, and more concerned with the moments of emotional clarity more than the moments of violence that have defined some of its most memorable moments. It is the anti-mob drama, the one that will always be remembered for being different from anything before it. Oh, and it was probably the best-written television show in history.

It surprises me how outraged I have read/heard people react toward its final episode, which was written and directed by series mastermind David Chase. Everyone expected a big, conclusive bow on the damn thing, either Tony getting killed or flipping or going into witness protection or doing something grandiose. He didn't. People expected a war between Tony's family and that of Phil Leotardo. Didn't happen; Phil got popped, almost predictably, after waving bye-bye to his grandkids at a gas station. People expected AJ to do something important, and to some extent, he did, by accepting the fancy lifestyle he had started to resent in favor of wild cynicism. Whatever. All of this seemed to be a pre-cursor for the final scene.

Fuck, man. That last scene. Tony and the wife and son, eating onion rings at a family restaurant, Journey playing on the jukebox, everything seeming to be FINALLY okay after a season of bickering and shootings and suicide attempts and dead Ukrainian Phil look-alikes. We see a shady man at the counter, looking over at Tony. AJ pops another onion ring in his mouth. Meadow has trouble parking the car. See, all of this is mind-blowingly important because it HAS to be; I have never seen a single unimportant camera shot while watching "The Sopranos", and I know that each one of these shots have been carefully constructed, as if to lead up to something. The man at the counter goes to the bathroom. The door of the restaurant opens, presumably Meadow. Tony looks up. Then -- black.

To those who could have possibly believed that their cable went out: seriously? Is that what you thought? You thought that David Chase gave you a monumental, action-packed ending, and your HBO wouldn't allow you to see it? You're only kidding yourself. This was the perfect ending to the show, in my opinion. Nothing tied up neatly, no one in a body bag, just Tony looking up as a door opens, probably scared out of his mind that THIS is his moment to pay for his sins, and we know he probably always will be. Some people have suggested that the cut-to-black represents Tony's death, the end he never saw coming. Others have suggested that nothing wrong has happened, that life goes on for Tony Soprano. Still others have said that the various people in the restaurant represent Tony's possible fates. To me, both theories are believable, but neither is definite. This series ended on an ambiguous note for a reason. Against all conventions, Tony was not given a Greek tragedy-esque end, nor was he given a damnation to continue walking the earth in suffering. We must take this as it a statement of uncertainty that the entire episode was trying to make clear: no one knows what exactly happened in that last scene, but isn't it so much more meaningful, so much more satisfying, that way? Here are things that the last scene reminded me of: the last sequence of "Broken Flowers", the last 15 minutes of "Mulholland Dr.", the thing Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett Johannson in "Lost In Translation", what the man in the road finally says in Radiohead's video for "Just". All of these are good things.

Admit it, you're still thinking about that ending, late at night when you can't sleep, when you're at work and staring into space, just mulling it over one last time in your mind. That's what a great conclusion to any work of art -- movie, TV series, book -- does. For years, "The Sopranos" left me entranced, and last night, it did so one last time. To all the haters who regard the ending with disgust: tell me specifically how it could have ended more impressively. Because I can't find a better way to close out a show as complex, subtle, and brilliant as this.