brba/bcs sideblog

the community was writing letters about how this was bettering the streets of west baltimore. once the bosses found out about what bunny was doing, after their initial fury, they literally considered keeping it going until their hand was forced bc they saw the merit in what bunny was doing. at best what he did was making a positive impact, and i think he was. but at very least he wasn’t making things any worse than they already were. i do see it as a net positive though.

I think often about how The Wire was inspired by Greek tragedies and how tragedy encapsulated Stringer and Avon's relationship through the seasons.

In all three seasons, he is the definition of a liminal character. Avon telling him he’s not enough of a gangster. Stringer telling Jimmy “I’m here. You want to find me, I’m here.” His glasses that he wears to uni, and when he’s in the copy shop. But then he’s the one ordering kids to kill other kids.

straight stringer, street stringer. He’s both and neither.

Chiron the centaur straddled the world of his people and the world of men. Too barbarous to be human; too refined to be a beast. He is the archetypal liminal character. Stringer occupies this space in the narrative.

The most common line we have from him is “Shut/lock that door!”. He is compartmentalising like his life depends upon it. He has made his own distinction between these two worlds and he is desperate to make that line matter.

His two worlds converge and converge and converge until he is cornered - literally and figuratively - by the forces of both. He dies in his straight investment building at the hands of gangsters he tried to put against one another. He becomes his own pinch point. And after his death, we see his apartment for the first time. He has tantos under his books. He tried to be both the pen and the sword and because he couldn’t be both he could be neither, and this was his undoing.

Walt’s windshield breaks a total of three times after Jane dies. In a way it represents him being unable to see the way forward in his life during this time, just as the broken glass prevents him from seeing the road ahead of him clearly. He is trying to shove down the guilt he feels about what he’s done, he’s unable to predict the consequences of his actions, and he can’t see what’s right in front of him. But on a more specific level, all three windshield incidents are Jesse-related - the breaks represent their relationship and Walt's emotional volatility in relation to Jesse. Walt can’t predict him, which he both thrives on and is eternally frustrated by, but he also can’t predict what HE will do FOR Jesse because it’s often a decision made on emotional impulse and not a carefully laid plan. He is at his most impulsive when Jesse is involved, which is a huge factor in why his feels so alive in this business.

Anyway, the first break comes from the plane accident - a direct result of Walt’s 'in the moment' decision to let Jane die. He made that choice for Jesse’s sake, to ‘never give up on family’, but also selfishly, because with Jane out of the picture, there is no one to pull Jesse away from him and no one to turn him in or threaten to. The plane crash that follows is something Walt grapples with for a while, trying to reason his way out of feeling responsible for that tragedy. But he knows, deep down, that his choice to ‘save’ Jesse from Jane came at a great cost (and really the dominoes began to fall way before that).

Walt takes a long time to fix that windshield because he doesn't want to face his involvement in breaking it. He doesn’t want to see the path forward, he takes comfort in the obstructed view, but the broken windshield also serves as a reminder of what he’s caused. Just like the teddy bear’s eyeball, the broken windshield keeps the plane crash with him, it keeps Jane and her father with him, and it tells him ‘this is what your attachment has wrought, but it was worth it because he’s still alive’.

The second windshield break comes when Walt pushes Jesse over the edge with his cold-ass “I’m in, you’re out” line in Saul’s office. This is the moment in S3 when their relationship is most fractured. Walt is mad because he sees Jesse as ungrateful for his help, for paying for rehab and giving him a place to sleep. To Jesse, he is only doing what he thinks is the only thing he’s good at and he wants Mr. White to be proud of what he accomplished on his own. But in Walt’s mind, Jesse thanked him by turning around and ‘stealing his formula’ (which Jesse views as THEIR formula) and trying to poach his distributor. So Walt plays nasty, effectively telling Jesse that not only are they done as partners, but he actually means nothing to Walt on a personal level, either, which devastates and infuriates Jesse.

Walt doesn’t anticipate Jesse’s emotional reaction to that level of rejection. It’s just money, right? But for Jesse, who has been abandoned by every trusted adult in his life through rejection, neglect , or death, it’s so much deeper than just not being allowed to cook. Walt isn’t just taking the formula, Walt is taking their shared history. So Jesse is the one who breaks the windshield this time, by throwing a rock at it (not sure how Walt didn’t predict this, since Jesse always throws things when he’s mad, like a frustrated housewife). I think it’s significant that although Walt does get the glass fixed quickly, he leaves the tape on the windshield for literally the rest of the season - a reminder of that moment, that betrayal, as he spends the remaining episodes of S3 ‘repairing’ his connection to Jesse. The blue tape is there to remind him as he moves forward, 'you did this, Walt, and don't forget it’. But it’s all a bandaid, ultimately - from paying for rehab to bringing Jesse into the super lab, none of it addresses his deeper feelings, so the wounds are all still there.

And then, of course, the final break is when Walt impulsively runs the two dealers over with no regard to the consequences for himself. This is maybe one of the only truly selfless things Walt ever does (though he retroactively makes it selfish by using this event to manipulate Jesse later). He walks out on his family to stop Jesse from getting himself killed knowing full well he could just as easily die trying, but he doesn’t give it a second thought. And so the windshield comes full circle - the first time it breaks is the result of ‘saving’ Jesse, but in doing so he also so thoroughly ruined Jesse, and the final time it breaks is also the result of saving Jesse, though he can’t anticipate how these dominoes will fall either.

It’s worth noting that Walt regains a lot of confidence from doing this. He’s been a cog in Gus’ machine but now he can don his Heisenberg hat and confidently meet Gus in the desert to not only defend Jesse’s actions as well as his own, but to make demands to keep them both safe for the moment. And, again, he keeps the broken windshield until Mike tells him he HAS to get it fixed. A reminder, but this time it’s a positive one, a brag, even - ‘see the lengths I will go for him, no matter the cost’. No half measures, right Mike? (But that’s an essay for another day).

The evolution of the glass mirrors Walt’s own evolution - at first, he avoids facing the shame he feels for his choices, the second time around he wants the reminder of the damage he caused so that he will feel bad, and by the third time he’s proud of the damage. ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair’ and all that jazz…

I feel like this ask could have been written by most of the characters that Kim interacts with. Howard and Rich Schweikart and Suzanne Ericsen and Kevin Wachtell be like, I can’t understand Kim’s temperament or motivations!

Not every character on this show is in the habit of giving long expository monologues, but Kim in particular has LOTS of scenes where she is deliberately keeping quiet, saying nothing, revealing nothing. Think of the scene where Chuck tells her about Jimmy’s stealing, for example, or her interview at Schweikart & Cokely, or when that one judge just conversationally was like “Hurt your arm?” and she was like “Yes. 🗿” Or when this tendency was heightened almost to parody in 609 when she had to be pushed and pushed and pushed to reveal to the judge that she had already resigned from the bar—I could go on.

Her silence itself reveals temperament and motivation: she has a very strong protective instinct, and is very defensive of both herself and the people she cares about. “Loose lips sink ships”-type deal. In her flashbacks with her mom, Kim shows that same defensive instinct in actions rather than words by refusing to get in the car with her mom who’s been drinking. And of course, you have basically Everything that Ever happens between her and Jimmy—defending him against Howard in 109 (also trying to shield him from finding out the truth about Chuck in the same episode), defending him throughout season 2, staying silent instead of revealing that he lied about the Mesa Verde commercial, staying silent while Chuck gives his long spiel, casting doubt on Chuck’s allegations against him when she knows them to be true, defending him (literally) in court in 304 and 305… again, I could go on, but I would just be recapping the events of the entire show.

When Kim takes that turn at the end of season five, a lot of fans were confused by it, and while Kim Understanders may boast a complete lack of shock, I think there is a change evident in her. The question is, what kind of change?

Is it merely bad writing, a forced reversal driven by plot wants rather than character needs?

Is it evidence of Jimmy’s corrupting influence on her, taking a previously moral person and turning her amoral?

Is it evidence of a deep hidden evil coming to the surface?

Or is it an evolving manifestation of the same traits Kim has always exhibited?

Looking at Kim’s defensive and protective instincts more closely, we can see that it’s not just that she wants to always do the safe thing forever. She is willing to take risks if a couple conditions are satisfied:

The end is at least acceptable (e.g. Mesa Verde getting a larger branch approved, from which nobody is likely to really suffer), and ideally righteous (e.g. the Kettlemans being forced to pay back their victims and being too scared to scam again).

She’s in on it.

That’s why she was on board for the entire Mr. Acker scheme and then furious when Jimmy went ahead with it without her approval. The first condition was satisfied (“Everybody wins!”) but the second was not.

When she comes up with the idea to scam Howard, both conditions are satisfied—the residents of Sandpiper Crossing will get their money faster, everyone involved with the case still gets paid, and when Jimmy gets paid, they will use that money to help more people. And she’s in on it.

She consistently wants to satisfy both of those two conditions, and those two conditions satisfy her basic instincts. Acting righteously (in a sort of utilitarian sense) satisfies her instinct to protect the people she cares about—because she does deeply care about the people she works for, and is clearly trying both before 607 and after (when she goes to the legal aid clinic to volunteer) to dedicate her life to them. And being in on it satisfies her defensive, self-protective instinct. When things are good between her and Jimmy and everything is going right, it’s like they have an invisible force field around them. No one else can see it, “nobody knows what we’re doing but us”—in that way it offers a level of safety far above and beyond that of, say, Jimmy’s dad, who acts righteously but also plays everything above board and ends up getting fucked over as a result.

Anyway,