Written by I know I’m late to the party, but I just finished up all 60 episodes over 5 season of HBO’s The Wire. The show, set in the streets of Baltimore, ended its six year run in 2008. I heard good things at that time about the series, just never had the opportunity to ever see it until recently.
In a nutshell, The Wire covers different facets of Baltimore, like drug trade on the streets and government corruption. Having worked in downtown Baltimore for years, much of what I saw in the city was portrayed very realistically on the show.
Omar Little
Omar Little is one of the reoccurring characters throughout the five seasons. Omar is a street-renowned thug who makes a living robbing other dealers stashes and “re-ups”, or the refill shipment of drugs. When Omar comes strolling by, usually sporting a sawed-off shotgun and whistling “A Farmer In The Dell”, everyone runs, including kids. He has a very strict moral code, despite being a gangster. He never cusses and doesn’t allow his partners to do so either. Once a month, he even goes to church with the grandmother who raised him.
Omar sporting his trademark shotgun
Omar, played brilliantly by Michael K. Williams, shows a multitude of different levels during the show’s run. First and most obvious, he is a thug who has at least ten murders to his name. That being said, one of his biggest rules is he never robs or murders anyone that isn’t in “the game”. He continually does battle with street gangs, first the Barksdale clan, later with Marlo’s group. In the counter-intelligence and stalking Omar does for nearly every robbery or murder, it’s apparent that he is of higher intelligence. He consistently remains one step ahead of his adversaries. He develops complex plans and executes them to perfection. In a different world, he’d be a great special ops mission planner.
In the third episode, we are presented with the fact that Omar is gay. This is a surprising departure from many TV dramas, who present the “thug” as a sterotypical “man’s man”. In an interview, show creator David Simon explains: “I thought Omar, as an unaffiliated character, could be boldly and openly homosexual in a way that a gay man within the organized drug trade or within the police department could not be.” Williams added, ”The way I decided to play it was, So what?” He said, “Yeah, he’s gay, but that’s not the thing you’re gonna remember him for if you meet him down an alley. It’s that shotgun that will have you worried, not his gayness. I didn’t want it to define him.”
