“ Ain't nothing wrong with holding on to grief. As long as you make room for other things too.”
"The Wire" is a show about sleezy people doing bad things to line their pockets with money and good people being forced to compromise on their values. The show has often been acclaimed for its grey morality and it lacking a hero in the traditional sense. You could say the hero is McNulty, who we follow for all five seasons and is always actively hunting the drug dealers in the show, but he is an active womanizer motivated as much by his own ego as catching the bad guys.
Omar, the Robinhood figure, adheres to a strict code of killing no innocent people but murders several drug dealers throughout the show and keeps all the money.
Every character on the show has their flaws. One character overcomes them: Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins.
Bubbles starts the show as a drug addict. We meet him when he and his friend Johnny are coming up with a scheme to use fake money to pay for drugs. This scheme works the first time but the second time it gets his friend Johnny beat up and put in the hospital. That is where he is approached by his friend Kima to work as an informant to help bring down the gang that beat up Johnny. The way Bubbles is introduced is genius because it shows that Bubbles is not just a drug addict. His money scam is pretty smart as he makes sure there is real money mixed in with the fake. He shows this intellect throughout the series. He shows an emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit by selling stolen t-shirts and other items to people. His drug addiction is not something that happened because he was too dumb to work a normal job. He cares about Johnny enough to keep him out of harm's way and becomes an informant just to get revenge on the people who beat him up.
Bubbles is also a people person who suffers more than most characters in the series. There is a scene where McNulty takes Bubbles along with him while he picks up his kids and Bubbles attempts to shake hands with McNulty's ex wife but she refuses to shake hands with him and gives him a dirty look.
Viewers know Bubbles is a decent person who is struggling with addiction, but society doesn’t and ultimately doesn’t care about Bubbles. They see him as nothing but a dope fiend. Which leads to his rock bottom.
In Season 4, Bubbles adopts a kid named Sherrod, another homeless addict. After Sherrod overdoses, Bubbles turns himself into the police and confesses to a murder.
In one of the saddest scenes in the series he tells one of the cops there that he took care of Sherrod because he thought he could be a father to him and wanted to convince himself that he was a better person than he was. He wanted to convince himself that he wasn’t another dope fiend.
In Season 5, Bubbles has gotten sober. He lives with his sister and works selling newspapers and in a soup kitchen.
Worth noting is Bubbles' relationship with his sister. He lives with her but she makes it a rule that he must live in the basement and leave the house when she is not around. It makes sense why his sister would want to be at arm's length with him. At one point, he sold all her silverware to get money for drugs.
But for all the bad stuff that happens in the show, Bubbles stays sober throughout Season 5. In the finale scene, we see him go upstairs out of the basement to have dinner with his family. His sister trusts him now.
In the end, Bubbles is the hero of the show not because he helps people, but because he overcomes being an addict and becomes a better person. The show is about institutions failing people and people trying to change but failing. But Bubbles does change and is one of the few characters who gets an unambiguously happy ending. He defies the odds and shows us that even at rock bottom we can still improve ourselves.
Omar, the Robinhood figure, adheres to a strict code of killing no innocent people but murders several drug dealers throughout the show and keeps all the money.
Every character on the show has their flaws. One character overcomes them: Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins.
Bubbles starts the show as a drug addict. We meet him when he and his friend Johnny are coming up with a scheme to use fake money to pay for drugs. This scheme works the first time but the second time it gets his friend Johnny beat up and put in the hospital. That is where he is approached by his friend Kima to work as an informant to help bring down the gang that beat up Johnny. The way Bubbles is introduced is genius because it shows that Bubbles is not just a drug addict. His money scam is pretty smart as he makes sure there is real money mixed in with the fake. He shows this intellect throughout the series. He shows an emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit by selling stolen t-shirts and other items to people. His drug addiction is not something that happened because he was too dumb to work a normal job. He cares about Johnny enough to keep him out of harm's way and becomes an informant just to get revenge on the people who beat him up.
Bubbles is also a people person who suffers more than most characters in the series. There is a scene where McNulty takes Bubbles along with him while he picks up his kids and Bubbles attempts to shake hands with McNulty's ex wife but she refuses to shake hands with him and gives him a dirty look.
Viewers know Bubbles is a decent person who is struggling with addiction, but society doesn’t and ultimately doesn’t care about Bubbles. They see him as nothing but a dope fiend. Which leads to his rock bottom.
In Season 4, Bubbles adopts a kid named Sherrod, another homeless addict. After Sherrod overdoses, Bubbles turns himself into the police and confesses to a murder.
In one of the saddest scenes in the series he tells one of the cops there that he took care of Sherrod because he thought he could be a father to him and wanted to convince himself that he was a better person than he was. He wanted to convince himself that he wasn’t another dope fiend.
In Season 5, Bubbles has gotten sober. He lives with his sister and works selling newspapers and in a soup kitchen.
Worth noting is Bubbles' relationship with his sister. He lives with her but she makes it a rule that he must live in the basement and leave the house when she is not around. It makes sense why his sister would want to be at arm's length with him. At one point, he sold all her silverware to get money for drugs.
But for all the bad stuff that happens in the show, Bubbles stays sober throughout Season 5. In the finale scene, we see him go upstairs out of the basement to have dinner with his family. His sister trusts him now.
In the end, Bubbles is the hero of the show not because he helps people, but because he overcomes being an addict and becomes a better person. The show is about institutions failing people and people trying to change but failing. But Bubbles does change and is one of the few characters who gets an unambiguously happy ending. He defies the odds and shows us that even at rock bottom we can still improve ourselves.
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