I wish I was like you, easily amused

If you haven’t seen the last episode of The Wire yet, don’t read this post.

In my 22 (almost 23) years of watching TV, I have never had such a visceral hatred for a fictional character as I do for Marlo Stanfield. There aren’t very many characters in The Wire (the greatest show on TV save for The West Wing) that are purely unlikeable. There’s generally something in each character that the viewer can feel some sympathy for. Not the case with Marlo. With the other drug kingpins in the show, when they want someone dead, there’s generally a valid reason, as far as “the game” goes. There’s sort of an unwritten rule that ordinary citizens not involved in “the game” are not to be touched. Marlo? If someone so much as looks at him the wrong way, you can be pretty sure that the offender is going to end up with hot lead in the back of his head from Chris or Snoop. A convenience store security guard for chastising him, not actually catching and reporting him, for stealing some lollipops (Marlo has millions of dollars, no reason to steal other than the sheer fact that he can because he is who he is). June Bug for allegedly insulting Marlo. The lady delivering chips to Old Face Andre’s convenience store just so he could frame Omar. He kills because he can, not because he needs to.

Okay, so far just an evil character that kills or orders murders on impulse. Not that out of the ordinary in drug culture I guess? But then this week, he murdered Prop Joe. After getting schooled by the older drug lord on the art of laundering money and shipping money to accounts overseas to literally getting clean dollar bills to finding him a lawyer, Marlo kills Prop Joe just because he wants to be at the top. He has no real beef with Prop Joe. He just wants to wear the crown. Even after Prop Joe offers to disappear and pass on the crown to Marlo, he gets one in the back of the head from Chris as Marlo looks on icily.

Sure Prop Joe was one of my favorite characters and I didn’t want to see him go. But the ice cold look in Marlo’s eyes as the Joe is shot in the back of the head is the look of evil incarnate (amazing acting job by Jamie Hector). I think I speak for just about every fan of The Wire when I say, using the words that have been become his trademark: Marlo? He got to fall.