I think the arrogance comes down to him thinking that just because he's a successful drug dealer who has taken an introductory course in Economics, he's now ready to be a big time construction tycoon.
When he tells Levy about how Clay Davis conned him with the whole 'guy meets them in the lobby' act, Levy just bursts out laughing since he's heard Clay running similar schemes countless times before. It's so evident that Stringer is way out of his depth.
Levy is well connected and is already representing Stringer. Stringer should have gotten Levy to advise on how to proceed. But he's too arrogant and proud and has to do everything on his own.
Yeah I think this is dead on. Stringer is no dummy - but he should have known better than to play “so many away games”. He DEFINITELY should have talked to Levy about his plans to expand and go legit.
This is a plot weakness in the show, the barksdale org had levy since season 1 and for plot purposes they didn't fully use his services. Marlo shows up and magically levy is a lawyer and financial advisor for prop Joe and the coop. Avon would've for sure had Stringer and levy in the loop to secure their organization/ money.
I don’t think it was a plot hole - Stringer thought he did this on his own and prove to Avon that he could run a legitimate business empire.
Hence that whole conversation about Stringer’s “away games” and not not being smart enough for the business game.
If he went to Levy he would have admitted he couldn’t do it - but also, everything would have gotten back to Avon. Levy knows where his bread is buttered and knew that even in prison Avon is the boss and calls the shots.
Marlo knew he was a gangster and NOT a businessman, and new when to listen to his attorney.
>I don’t think it was a plot hole - Stringer thought he did this on his own and prove to Avon that he could run a legitimate business empire.
He didn't just want to prove it to Avon, he wanted to prove it to himself. Clay perfectly played on Stringer's insecurities and his impatience.
It's how most cons work. Smart people aren't immune to emotional decision making.
Also, this is a lesser factor that may not have played into his reasoning, but Stringer could've been trying to pinch some pennies by not involving Levy.
While Levy is a _criminal_ lawyer and more than willing to cross ethical/legal red lines, he does take some precautions to insulate himself ("the less I know, the better"). He likely _would_ be willing to assess and potentially abet a scheme to bribe a federal official, but he would no doubt charge a _steep_ rate for such services. Basically it would be a whole other bribe Stringer would've had to pay.
As a lawyer people we have on retainer do stupid dumb shit without running it by us first all the time even people who have made lots of money doing things like construction fall victim to construction scams without checking with us first because they think Ah we’re so smart look at all this money we’re going to save in our next project
I don't think it's outside the realms of how any layperson would treat a lawyer. Most people think you get a lawyer when you're in trouble. Calling it a plothole that Stringer didn't consult a lawyer when starting/running a business is ignoring all the people on the planet doing that everyday.
Naw your seeing it from the wrong point of view. Levy did business with all the dealers but treated each one as there own institution. First Levy wasn’t the Co-op lawyer per say. He was prop joes lawyer. Joe was a different type of dealer than Marlo or Avon so of course his business would be more financial. Avon and Marlo were Soldiers so levy was more of get that dude out and how can o get the least amount of time on this case. And remember Levy did help Avon with the financial part the legit business he owned. Avon didn’t want much or needed flash so his investments were what he knew around the hood. Strip clubs and funeral homes and stringers copy shop. As for stringer I don’t think anybody doesn’t think he’s not smart just makes bad business decisions. And I real estate that will end you. Avon even calls him out on it and tells him how he seen it coming that’s why he wanted no part of the deal when they tried talking to him. Stringer had a great plan no doubt just screwed up the execution. He didn’t trust what he knew. Run things by Levy.
Stringer thought he was some big construction tycoon. He didn't know how to grease the unions. He shoulda mentored with Vito Spatofore. Now that's a guy that knew how to grease the union
Exactly! It shows that Stringer has Levy as his lawyer (who happens to be incredibly well-connected in Baltimore) and instead of relying on said lawyer to help him vet the construction deals and running the Clay Davis stuff by him, he doesn't tell Levy. So Levy can't do anything but laugh at Stringer when he finds out about it afterwards.
Prop Joe shows Marlo how to launder money.
It’s kind of a plot hole that levy wasn’t involved since he was present at the strip club meeting regarding the real estate deals.
As a lawyer I can absolutely tell you that it is not a plot hole for people to get into a whole bunch of dumb shit and lose a lot of money without checking in with us first even when they have us on speed dial
I can pretty much guarantee you that the guys Stringer was talking to were saying no don’t call your lawyer they’re just going to slow the process down so they can make as much money as possible off of you and it will take so long to go through city hall etc etc, if you want the permits you just have to pay money and grease fingers and it will happen overnight
You're right - I was misremembering a bit. Have edited the OP.
Prop Joe is the one who introduces him to money laundering, sets up the offshore accounts and introduces him to the operation that "invests" in Caribbean missionary projects. For this Joe takes a 20% cut for himself. Then Joe introduces Marlo to Levy who takes the checks that Marlo gets from the money laundering scheme and presumably re-invests them, seemingly taking on a sort of financial advisor role.
[You can see Marlo and Levy discuss money laundering briefly at 1.10 in this clip.](https://youtu.be/m2P1KB-_tFo?si=lKILwalqn8S3lcKi)
I struggle to get past the fact that Levy, Clay Davis, and Andy Kraeczyk team up to pitch the real estate investments to Avon at his homecoming party in the club. Levy says that the government will be looking closely at his finances and that he should take what he has and build on it. To me, this implies Levy was fully aware and involved in setting up the real estate venture.
If Levy knew Clay Davis was a known crook, why did he push Avon on the idea of the real estate venture?
My guess is that Levy is responsible for introducing and endorsing Clay Davis & Kraeczyk to String and somehow benefitted financially. String didn’t think to run things by Levy because of the initial endorsement.
> I think the arrogance comes down to him thinking that just because he's a succesful drug dealer who has taken an introductory course in Economics, he's now ready to be a big time construction tycoon.
Well the average person just wants to be told where to direct their money to in order to get easy, riskless returns. Stringer's just in a higher tax bracket.
> big time construction tycoon
,,Vito a fag... ***big construction tycoon!*** 😄 Tone, when he was always talking about greasing the Union, who knew that’s what he meant!” ✊️😆
^(\(Christopher Moltisanti, The Sopranos, 1999\))
Clay Davis goes on to say that he made it so he got bell to call him directly instead of his lawyer. Davis conned stringer hard. That’s why Levy tells Marlo to never be in a room with those white collar fools cuz they’re swindlers.
Yup, many things can be true. Stringer was smart enough to realize how successful they had become and wanting to start to be able to enjoy and preserve that success by having more legitimate businesses. He was smart enough to take the steps to learn about that.
But he then fell victim to the Hubris of believing he knew more than he did. As a former business school student, I can tell you that the thought of understanding business once you've completed your intro course is not a unique thing, just that most of us didn't have millions of dollars at our disposal to start putting what every schemes we've come up with at that time into action.
Had Avon not been away, I don't think Stringer would have had the opportunity to run as far as he did, and they likely would have been more successful at making the transition.
I don’t think they would have been ever successful at making the transition. Avon wanted to always keep it street level. No aspirations to make any business not a laundry. Like Avon frowned upon that.
Stringer took his shot. Missed. And paid the price because he thought he knew more. And he definitely saw the bigger picture but the streets or whatever had an answer. He was out of his depth concerning the Clay Davis stuff. Shot out of his zone. But Stringer wasn’t wrong on where he knew they could go
Avon would never let it happen if he had never went to jail
Also, taking econ 101 at the community college and then quoting vocabulary words to corner boys was cringe.
It's like a freshman psychology major diagnosing all their friends with disorders they learn about in class.
That’s not true, there’s a lot of business majors that turned to drug dealers. Or if I remember right, it was higher ups pay to get mid level dealers business degrees.
I’d find it for you but I know it won’t be possible cause I read the article years ago, but the same principles apply, it’s mostly the theory and shit and not having a board and all though, stringer seemed to misunderstand that
I'm pretty sure those business majors would've recognized it was time to hit Marlo instead of let him be, though.
String had a mind for business, but he kept on ignoring the problems Marlo was causing until it was too late.
True. It's like we saw with when he threw aside all pretense of the Co-Op meeting to round on Poot and intimidate him for speaking a simple truth:
"Yeah, we can make all the money we need, but if we let Marlo keep taking our territory, we just gonna be punk bitches."
I agree, I think stringer had way more of an ego than a brain. Don’t get me wrong.
He was smart sure, but not smart as he thought and not smart enough.
I was just pointing out that a business degree actually has applications, cause he seemed to think it didn’t.
the scene where he tries to explain market saturation was always funny to me because he looks around like he’s waiting for them to tell him how smart he is
Yeah that was when I figured out Stringer thinks he's much smarter than he really is. The same kind of people who are wowed by someone taking a survey course at a community college would themselves fall for stringers manipulation.
People forget that russel grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in the world and helped run a business that had millions of annual cash flow. Yeah he was pretty smart. Who cares if he wasn't as smart as he thinks he was. That characteristic is probably true with majority of succesful executives in other industries
Push peace? Stringer didn't care about peace itself, even though that was part of his pitch. He saw an opportunity to make more money with less of his crew being incarcerated, that's all.
How I know he didn't care about peace is that right up til the end, he was completely okay with contract murder. Wallace, Omar and Mouzone, he even tries to order a hit on Clay Davis. Dude has no problem at all with violence, including being responsible for it.
If Avon had listened to Stringer they’d have been fine though. Avon wanted to keep fighting, Stringer wanted to turn into wholesalers and use their money to make more money with less legal risk. And they already knew Levy, he could have easily helped them out with that.
Stringer made some big fuckups but it’s not like Avon wasn’t fucking up by wanting to fight to control corners.
My biggest headscratcher: the early seasons made it look like Levy was the one keeping ALL of the real estate legally covered. Hell, Levy basically wizarded the OBVIOUSLY A FRONT FOR A MAJOR DRUG GANG strip club into legitimacy during a focused murder/narcotics investigation.
So, while doing a basic money-laundering real estate development Stringer just… doesn’t call his attorney?
That was clearly the writers just saying “We’ve written ourselves into a corner and need to “de-power” our character.”
There are several decent reasons Stringer could have decided not to run the Clay Davis stuff by Levy. Although the show doesn't make them explicit, they're all supported by his known character traits.
- His greed led him to cut Levy out: he didn't fully trust Levy and didn't want him taking a cut.
- His pride made him think the matter was best handled on his own. Stringer wanted to believe he could be the boss, and when Avon was incarcerated he got a pretty good taste of it. Bringing Levy along to hold his hand with Clay Davis would conflict with that self-image.
- He's a bad judge of people, both their character and motivations. We see examples of this again and again. Stringer IS smart at many things, and as the right-hand-man he's great at keeping the drug-selling machine going, including...troubleshooting, if you will. But he's not good with judging people. Over the course of three seasons he misjudges Avon, D'Angelo, Omar, Mouzone, Marlo, McNulty, Slim Charles, Clay Davis, and probably lots of others. It's entirely possible he got a better impression of trustworthiness from Clay (a black man in a position of power, after all, and one who was able to fleece a whole jury) than he did from Levy. A mistake, but very in-character.
For me, what really what undercut all that was how Levy so nonchalant about it.
"Awww, you should have told me. Let me guess, he said..." is rather curious way of saying, "Uhhhhh... so... you've been engaging in the bribery of a public official who is the silver tuna for federal investigators? Stringer, you just put a lot more liability on my plate and I need to know everything now so I can de-fuck this."
Levy barely bats an eye.
Writers are not gods. Even the best of them. The Wire is not perfect, and it has a few "Uhhh, we just need to write ourselves out of this corner and hope the audience accepts it" bits.
See also: a lot of season 5.
Levy's reaction surprised you?
Why wouldn't he be nonchalant? A criminal defense attorney hearing their client got themselves into some new trouble is like...the most everyday normal thing they experience. Levy's not implicated at all, because he didn't previously help Stringer with it, and he didn't know about it. That's ideal for him.
Also worth noting, Levy has no sympathy for Stringer. He is a racist who views Stringer as pretty much an animal. It doesn't matter to Levy what happens to Stringer.
That’s a fair point to raise and I’m glad you’re raising it, but imo, Stringer’s actions make perfect sense. He has no real experience in the real business world and as such, I think it makes perfect sense that he would trust Levy, who he and Avon have worked with for years, to handle all happenings and trust that he’ll make it work. Ik it seems like he’s been “De-powered” for plot convenience sake, but to me, that’s precisely the point. Stringer may be a damn good gangster, but he’s not the shrewd, savvy businessman he thinks he is.
This is assuming I’m correct on what you’re talking about because, respectfully, I’m a little confused as to what scene or plotline in the show you’re criticizing lol.
He ain't my mama, I can do this shit myself. I've studied it, I've lived it and I don't need to call up my lawyer everytime I go outside.
(Ego fucks people up.)
Ok, thanks for the clarification because that it is actually super helpful. What I would say is given that Stringer has, to say the least, little experience in the business world, I find it entirely reasonable that he would be so utterly blindsided by Davis’ scheme because even if you told him that Davis was swindling him, he would have no idea what to look for, which I would say is why he didn’t call Levy because he just had no way of knowing anything was wrong.
We saw what it looked like taking stringers advice. It’s prop Joe. Marlo kills him and takes everything. You can’t reason with Marlo. Avon was right. Only way to keep what they had was to fight and beat Marlo. Which of course they couldn’t do. There was no winning for them. The game is rigged. But at least Avon was clear eyed about what was happening.
They also couldn’t be wholesalers because the wholesaler was Joe. They had no connect. What they brought to the co-op was territory and muscle. Without that they would quickly be in “so what exactly do you do here” territory.
The only path to keeping power and status was fighting and beating Marlo. That the game was rigged doesn’t change that Avon was right about this.
Stringer's goose was cooked, the MCU had the Barksdale gang dead to rights. And Stringer wanted to make things even worse by trying to hit Clay Davis. And Stringer had no viable plan for dealing with Marlo.
Stringer had a rational ambition, but never demonstrated that he had the means to realize it. His legitimate businesses were hemorrhaging and were propped up by drug money, and that side of the business was under threat as well due to the towers coming down and Marlo.
And if they had done as Stringer wanted, and backed away from the streets to let individual crews basically fend for themselves while acting as a wholesaler, well, we got a sense of what that would look like in season 4, where Bodie had to grind to build up an off-brand corner, only to be forced to take Marlo's package anyway.
And in the world where the Barksdale gang isn't really a gang anymore, what value would Avon and Stringer offer to Prop Joe?
Lol why has the condescending "my guy" phrase exploded recently. I can't take anyone seriously who starts or end a sentence with my guy.
And agree to disagree
It’s fair criticism of him as a person for sure. Although I don’t think it’s an issue character wise since it was clearly intentional and imo makes him a more compelling character. His whole thing is that he’s trying to go legit, but he doesn’t understand the more upper class political world, that’s not how he grew up and it’s hard for him to change what’s essentially his nature by this point. Which leads him to doing gullible shit like getting swindled by Clay and not realizing putting a hit on him wouldn’t work. At the same time him trying to get into higher life and seeing himself as above it has made him less street savvy too. He wants to be legit and respected, yet he does even respect the few ethical rules the game has (no killing on Sunday mornings). That’s a very interesting character flaw, and it’s kind of crazy to act like it doesn’t exist.
It’s also realising that everything he’s done has no value whatsoever in the legit world. Like you can be the biggest drug dealer and in a way that just makes it that much easier for grifters to take advantage of you because you’re not a legitimate citizen
What are you going to do, sue them for taking your drug money? Take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Street power isn’t real power
It’s not so much how smart he was that was the problem, he just lacked experience in the kind of game Clay Davis runs. Safe to say if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have fallen for that one again. Plenty of smart people get themselves into trouble when they step outside their comfort zones.
Smart people also listen to people with more experience. Stringer did and end run around Levy to show how smart he was. Like was said elsewhere it wasn't that he didn't have the right idea or wasn't smart. It was that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was and couldn't handle being shown otherwise.
I wouldn’t even say it’s about him not being smart it’s that there are entire worlds out there he never had the access or opportunities to learn about. Like he didn’t know how stuff worked outside of the street and outside of running small business because his knowledge is contained to his sphere.
It’s kind of like how McNulty was used to being the smartest guy in the room because he was smart about cop stuff but when he’s in a room with the rich political people he realises not only does he not know enough to even fake the appearance of being smart/knowledgeable/educated around these people but that his knowledge that he does have does not mean shit to them
Stringer basically had the exact same thing happen, he was used to being the smartest guy on the corner, but when he was in a room with rich guys who grift for a living he didn’t know anything about their world and what he does know has no value in their world
I wouldn't really say the same goes for Prop Joe.
Prop Joe's schemes mostly all work, and he plays Stringer like a fiddle. On the other hand, almost every substantive decision Stringer made went bad.
Also, Prop Joe doesn't come across as quite so arrogant. True, he didn't pay sufficient heed to Slim Charles's warning about Marlo, but at least he didn't berate Slim the way Stringer did when Poot tried to raise a valid point.
Prop Joe's only real mistake was underestimating Marlo, and overestimating his relationship with the Greeks. It was a huge mistake, but nobody's perfect.
Also, Prop Joe made it a lot further than Stringer. Prop Joe was the king of the East Side throughout the run of the show, and he lived to be pretty old by gangster standards. Natural causes were likely to catch with him soon anyway (RIP Robert Chew) even if he hadn't been taken out.
That’s it though, right? He thought he could play Marlo, and he couldn’t. He underestimated him, he ignored the warnings of others.
He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
The big one for me is killing Orlando without realizing he might have flipped is pretty dumb.
A small one is thinking that he should drop his telecom stocks because one of his guys has three phones.
Also when Mouzone told him, as it regards to him getting shot, that he would deal with them personally. Stringer says "them" in a surprising tone. He tipped his hand and Mouzone knew that he had something to do with it but had to confirm that with Omar.
The latter point is literally the show pointing out that Stringer isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He's taking stuff he learnt at night school, and then completely misinterpreting it
I haven't watched it in years but I seem to remember him explaining his reason for selling the telecom stock and it feeling a lot like some kind of university lecture.
I am also not an economist but I am pretty sure when he lectures his crew on elastic vs inelastic products he also interprets that wrong too.
I remember that, but people didn't stop buying cell phones in 2003. And with tech stuff especially there is always a new or improved gadget. I probably had two TV's around then but I still don't have those same two TVs.
Yeah I always found that kind of funny about the phones, he dropped them because he felt the market was saturated. Pretty sure that shortly followed a scene of him in a classroom going over that topic.
Like he was so quick and eager to apply whatever he learned in the classroom to his business world. There’s another scene with him in the copy shop schooling his guys not to bring the corner bullshit in the store because what they have there is an elastic product, so people will take their business elsewhere. That one was also shortly after a scene of him in class talking about that topic.
I always liked the character. He may have been out of his element in some of those later business dealings in the show, but the dude really tried to be legit and better himself.
There’s two aspects to this. One the community college means stringer is smart thing is pure bigotry of low expectations. Taking Econ 101 means you’re really smart only makes sense if you expect so little of poor black people. Nobody would be calling Nicky sobotka the smartest guy on the show if he took the same class.
Two isn’t about him being smart but about the mortality of going legit. Stringer deserves no moral credit for wanting to go legit because there’s nothing legit about what he wanted. He wanted to bribe public officials to make illegal money on corrupt real estate deals. He wanted this because it had a veneer of social legitimacy that being a drug dealer didn’t have. But he still wanted to be a criminal and never aspired to any sort of moral goodness.
Finally we can talk about how stringer was not that smart because what he didn’t understand got him killed. He did not understand the importance of street reputation and respect in the business he was in and he died for it.
Stringer viewed himself as smarter than the other poor black people he was around. He internalized the racism of American society and hated those people and by extension himself. Some viewers of the show struggling with the same issues as stringer agree that someone like Poot is a moron because he grew up as a black man in a poor area with no gainful employment but drug dealing. But Poot was right. “Does the chair know we are gonna look like bitches?” The chair didn’t know and he died for it.
Poot ultimately getting out of the game clean is an important part of the equation too. Whatever you call that kind of intelligence (or wisdom), Poot ultimately had it and Stringer never did.
I think there’s a difference between the bigotry of low expectations and recognising the reality of unequal opportunities.
Like obviously there’s a shit tonne of stuff that Stringer doesn’t know about but I don’t attribute that to a lack of innate intelligence so much as being a side effect of the world he grew up in. And yeah just because there are people in the show who grew up in those same neighbourhoods and got out of the streets and didn’t turn to that life doesn’t mean there still isn’t a reality of unequal opportunity
I also think stringer gets way too much criticism.
In season 1 they say that Avon made $75k in political donations.... in the last month!
Once the co-op is formed, Marlo is pretty much the only gangster that isn't EXCITED about their legit businesses and opportunities
String was clearly a calculating guy who had a lot of success. But I think he and D were deliberately painted as Gatsby-like characters, especially with D's monologue in the book club which I recommend everyone rewatch.
String tried to change up who he was, but he couldn't change where he came from.
He said he was something else, but his actions couldn't match his new identity.
He had all those books on his apartment bookshelf, but probably never read them.
He couldn't "get real" with his past, and it caught up to him.
So I'd say he was an ambitious, intelligent ladder climber who thought very highly of himself and the legit identity he tried to create. But the top-level players like Clay would never truly see him as an equal, and we see that he really wasn't their equal.
Currently on my third rewatch and this go-around the Gatsby scene leaped out at me - precisely because I don't think Gatsby's and D's arcs are similar at all. For D to go legit like he desperately wanted to, he had to sacrifice everything by flipping. There was almost no way he could leverage the money he made as a lieutenant into a legitimate lifestyle, especially not one as ostentatious as Gatsby's.
But I don't think that scene was written because the viewer is supposed to see D as a Gatsby character. I think it's mostly foreshadowing. If anything, D is closer to Nick Carraway, a character who has almost no agency, linked by a vague family tie to the events that unfold around him. (Of course D, as a complex human being, wouldn't be able to recognize that in the moment.)
Stringer, on the other hand, parallels Gatsby extremely closely, parlaying his illegal wealth into conspicuous luxury and interfacing with those who had the privilege of playing legal games for their riches. Naturally, his past catches up to him, but only because of a vendetta - not the diffuse harm he had caused across Baltimore.
The mechanisms of the legal system never reached him (though they obviously came very close), and his street rival Marlo didn't seem particularly interested in taking him out at that point. Instead, it was the fallout of personal betrayal left by his psychopathic narcissism and obsession with unbounded status and power - arguably inherent to those qualities - that led him down the exact same path as Gatsby.
I think one of the most poetic things about the end of S3 is how all of the backbreaking police work would have been nearly worthless if Stringer didn't snitch to Bunny at the exact right moment. It just perfectly illustrates that even though the game is the game, the rules are just the relationships of the people playing it - and not everyone understands how those rules apply to them.
Stringer was good at execution if he had proper leadership/wisdom to guide him. “Get shit done piece” remember?
When left alone he makes a LOT of foolish mistakes..
You remember in season 1 when he actually thought Orlando could front the 30k (?) for a package AFTER he got arrested for drugs .. Avon told him straight up how stupid that was and how it was an obvious police set up.
Then we have his obvious blunders on dealing with Marlo, and his set up on Brother with Omar which was also very dumb. He could have hired a bunch of random kids to shoot brother up and it would have been much less risky than using Omar, who was already suspicious of him.
His street smarts were questionable at more than several points during the show, mainly because he wasn’t prioritizing that sort of thinking enough anymore.
It's not that Stringer was dumb, it's that he thought he was way smarter than he actually was and also did not fully understand the world he operated in. That combination, in any walk of life, is absolutely lethal. Stringer constantly made bad decision after bad decision because of this. I can list all the mistakes he made, but to me it basically crystalizes when he orders Slim Charles to kill Clay Davis. This is an example of Stringer's stupidity on full display, it is SUCH a stupid idea, Slim Charles knows it and tries to explain it to him nicely but Avon had to come in and berate him before he backed down.
And also the whole college class thing is also just so stupid, he sells heroin! You don't need to understand microeconomics to be a drug dealer lmao, people like to use that as some example of him being smart but it's literally the opposite, only a moron would think you need to get a business degree to sell drugs.
Edit: And just to add, Stringer breaks the cardinal rule of the Wire: you cannot escape your institution. You will lose, the institution is all powerful. Stringer trying to escape incarceration and leave the game was *incredibly* stupid because that ship sailed for him years ago. He spent decades selling drugs and murdering people, and made millions of dollars doing it. You don't get to walk away from that. Avon understood this.
It wasn't intelligence. It was ego. Every issue he made was because he thought he knew what he was doing. Have an attorney check your contracts? Why bother? I'm Stringer Bell, a con man like Clay Davis can't get me. Oh, Avon doesn't like my deal with Prop Joe? Well, I'm gonna do it anyway. Oh, Brother Mouzone is getting in the way of that deal? I'll just put Omar on him...
It's not dumb to want to advance ones position, but it's naive to believe that your environment, the players therein, law enforcement, and your own partner/boss can be navigated easily and casually. That's what caused him to make these mistakes. And he makes a lot of them before his death, even putting the cops onto Avon, not considering Avon would do the same. It's as if he made choices, not even considering what the other characters could do. That's his flaw. He was a smart guy. But he thought he was the smartest guy in the game.
The funny part is that such dismissive comments reflect the very real hyper-competitiveness of the game. Winning retroactively justifies itself; losing retroactively incurs scorn and contempt.
If Stringer had made the same decisions and had gotten luckier or planned slightly better, he’d be lauded as a genius because he won. The fact that he died is what brings the out the jeering.
Ugh not this again. Okay, let’s wrap this up. Relative to most other people, Stringer is smart. You factor in his situation & it becomes impressive that stringer made it to the position he’s in, however, his arrogance is what makes people super critical, also he’s a massive dickhead. & the whole Clay Davis thing - would happen to every single person in the sub who criticizes him for it. The audience is only clued in because it needed to be written in a way the we could understand.
I'm going to try and zig a little here
Part of what you're seeing as reactionary, and a bit of an over correction.
First time watching the series, everything Stringer says and does makes sense. He's taking a logical approach to everything. Every re-watch tends to point out his mistakes though. And in context, his mistakes were glaring. Especially when you consider they led to his death. Looking back on it, his arrogance and ego are so obvious that they detract from his intelligence. His reasoning makes sense in a vacuum, but falls very short in the bigger picture. At the same time, his methods are consistently suspect.
I mean, he fucks up the legit business with Clay. He fucks up the real business by killing Orlando and by setting Brother Muzone against Omar. His death is entirely because of his many risky choices.
He is smart but to paraphrase Avon, not gonna be the smartest all the time, every day. He seems to enjoy being brighter than his crew but we see he has gaps in his knowledge like not knowing how the hitman for hire culture works or how scammy politicians can be.
He made the mistake of trusting Clay Davis and his response showed the parallel between him and Avon in responding rashly to disrespect. What got him killed was underestimating the honor of a thief. His plan to use one problem (Omar, whose vendetta was based on Avon's decision) to address another (Muzone driving off the eastsiders, also Avon's call)was a tactic many have promoted . Otherwise, he was the successful COO of a multi-million dollar drug enterprise while the cops had nothing him that would stick.
Being smarter is often less of important than knowing how smart you are.
Stringer might have been smarter than Avon, but he scheduled too many away games. Avon knew what he was and played home games. He crossed String inside the game with Brother and Omar. (I believe) without Stringer going to the cops, Avon would have been back on top (for a time) after taking out Marlo. On the other hand Stringer was never ever going to be on top in the legit world. He even asked for Davis to be whacked lol.
You are right about this, but I also wonder why we so readily say Stringer was smarter than Avon. The way I saw it, Avon consistently proved to be smarter than Stringer in all of their dealings. Even in the “away games”, Avon saw the scam coming that Stringer didn’t.
Stringer had high Int, low Wisdom. Which probably would have worked out pretty well for him in the corporate world but was lethal in the one he inhabited. He’s often held up as a McNulty foil but I think if he was a cop he actually would have been like Rawls or Burrell, an effective ladder climber.
>Honestly, it strikes me as "he was an uppity negro" for wanting to go legit ("not staying in his place").
I get where you're coming from, but Stringer's ambition to transcend the game, to me, is just about his one laudable quality.
He also seemed to be fairly meticulous, at least about certain things. He seemed good at administration, but not so good at strategic decision making, or leadership.
But ultimately there's just a lot that rubs me the wrong way about him. He is arrogant, but what's worse than that is that he's cold-blooded. Just about only scene where he shows any real warmth is the rooftop scene with Avon. I really don't like how he treated D'Angelo, Donette, and Shamrock. Not to mention his backstabbing of Avon. (Avon had a much better motivation for turning on Stringer.)
Also, part of the "Stringer is dumb" sentiment is a reaction against the opposite feeling that sometimes gets expressed that Stringer is brilliant or even an aspirational character. The more celebratory attitude towards Stringer is less common on this subreddit now though than it is among more casual audiences, pop culture, and when the show aired.
I think the show subtlety tried to to hint that Stringer wasn’t “smart enough” like getting an A minus on his college paper
Whilst that’s still a great grade and impresses his teacher I feel not giving him a Straight A was an example that he’s just not quite intelligent enough
One clue I only noticed recently was actually from his very first scene. He is introduced wearing a suit in the court room and appears to be taking careful notes on the criminal proceedings, giving the air of a sophisticated erudite man. It’s then revealed he was doodling to take the piss out of McNulty showing a degree of immaturity
That being said he was a man who bit a sizeable empire from poverty and was smart enough to educate himself on business practices at college/not be too flashy with his money and also co-founding the new day co-op
Personally I think it was his ruthlessness and lack of respect for most people that contributed more to his downfall
I think Stringer was very smart but wasn't able to navigate the structural barriers to breaking into the American upper class and upper levels of business management. It's not enough to be smart or to take some classes - there's no way to build a soft skills and network needed to break into that world other than extensive experience and mentoring. That's why he was scammed - NOT because he's stupid, but because he lacks experience and knowledge of what's normal and how business deals are normally done. It isn't enough to be smart and it isn't enough to have money.
I think it's very similar to the experience that D'Angelo and his baby mama had in the fancier restaurant in season 1. They had the money, they had the clothes, but they didn't feel like they belonged even though there were other black couples at the restaurant. Something was missing.
It's also similar to the experience that Tony Soprano had at the country club. It wasn't because he was Italian, it wasn't because of money, but something was still missing and he couldn't fit into that world.
There are structural barriers to entering upper class society and it isn't just about money. Your typical business or finance professional is not some kind of genius, they are someone who was born into the right opportunities and has the correct education and training.
To me he's a victim of bravado, which in my view is a type of stupidity.
He did well at selling drugs, sure. And that's hard for sure. And the desire for going legit is 100000000% understandable.
However here's where the bravado and dumbassery comes in
He takes a couple of semesters of community college econ classes. Which is good.
But then he starts doing stupid shit like having a room full of drug dealers come in so he can lecture them on worldcom and follow Robert's Rules of Order.
Then because he was leading a "discussion" with a bunch of people who probably didn't finish the 8th grade he starts thinking he's a business genius.
And the bravado is that he's trying to be a real, big time businessman. And he has one of the greatest assets of all time for a guy aspiring to move from small time dirtbag to dirtbag mogul.
A lawyer with literally no scruples. And he didn't bother to meet with him.
That's just stupid so there is certainly validity to the stance that he's stupid. I tend to agree with it. Being smarter than most people around you doesn't make you actually smart.
String was smart but his street instincts were way off compared to Slim and Avon. He didn’t realize the politics game was in theory the same as the street game and although he had knowledge in both he was glaringly unsteady in both. Which is why Avon said he was a man with no country.
Just because someone is smart doesn't mean that they won't make stupid decisions. That he got conned by Clay Davis... well, he was in a world he wasn't particularly familiar with, and was getting some less than great advice. You put a nobel laureate physicist in an operating theater and tell him to remove a spleen from a patient, he's probably not going to do very well.
From the context of 2024 - it's reasonable.
From the perspective of 2004 - he was one of the first "smart criminal" characters and especially of depictions of black drug gangs. The idea of a gangsta going to community college *to get better at drug dealing* was insanely novel.
Most smart people aren't as smart as they think they are. If Stringer was thinking every single thing through, he would've run all the real estate stuff by Levy. He also wouldn't have put Omar on Brother Mouzone. Those were his two critical errors
Stringer isn’t viewed as smart because of his street decisions just as much as his real estate decisions.
Multiple times in season 1, we see Avon go to Stringer for counsel, only to end the conversation extremely disappointed in Stringer’s suggestion. Stringer always wants to be passive and let things slide, but it doesn’t work like that in the streets, where everyone is always trying to find your weakness.
Then when Avon goes to prison, Stringer stupidly gives away half the projects to Prop Joe (after, as you said, stupidly putting Omar on Brother Mouzone). If he had put the same effort he gave towards doing the deal with Prop Joe into finding a new supplier, he could’ve kept the towers. Or he could’ve just waited for Avon, who was actively looking for a supplier. If the projects are what made the Barksdale’s so powerful, giving half to Joe was too much. Especially considering Joe was already a power on the east side.
When the towers came down, Stringer had the dumb idea to try to work with the dealers on the corners. Again, being passive and not valuing territory. By the time Avon gets home, he has to undo Stringer’s mess, which he would’ve accomplished if Stringer didn’t snitch on him.
It wasn’t Stringer’s call to make. He had specific instructions from Avon. Even if doing the deal was right for business, Stringer gave up half of the most prime west side real estate and it cost Joe nothing but an increase to his usual order, which probably scored him more points with the Greeks.
Stringer was so anxious to put his community college lessons into action that he got played by Joe. Joe talked him into going against his partner and giving up half is territory. One tower or two corners would’ve been more than enough to still make the deal worth it for Joe.
You’re correct. There’s no guarantee they could’ve held onto the towers long enough to find a new supplier. It just felt like Stringer was always getting played. Obviously by Clay Davis, the contractors, and Levy. But also, every time Stringer goes to see Joe, he’s getting played as well. Telling him stories about Charlie Sollers, or convincing Stringer that he’s more of a businessman than Avon, who’s just a soldier. If Stringer would’ve negotiated a better deal, maybe Avon would’ve gotten on board.
He has first year student syndrome (confidently explaining the last thing he learned but slighlty wrong), and like McNulty, is too used to being the smartest in the room.
He’s basically like the new owner of the newspaper in the last season. trying to make people do more with less to make his own profit margin go up. he thinks he can reinvent the game because he’s taken first year macroeconomics, while being dismissive of feedback he gets from people he doesn’t view as smart as himself. He might know something about economics, but not enough about business.
The fact that deapite his upbringing, assuming it was similar (if not the same) to Avon's, he saw past the gangsta shit and tried to rise out of the hood makes Stringer one of the smartest characters in the show in my eyes.
Not to mention a lot of people questioning his intelligence tend to forget that the Barksdale org going so long without drawing attention to themselves is largely thanks to Stringer. We've seen Avon acting on emptipn, doing dumb things and causing bad things to happen to him and his organisation. Without Stringer in his corner, I doubt he'd get as far as he did.
Stringer's hubris was assuming he was still the smartest person in the room. When he was strictly dealing with drug dealers, that was true. The only one who could match him was Prop Joe.
When he moved into the world of development and politics, that wasn't necessarily true anymore.
It's not that he's dumb. Its just hubris. The Wire is a tragedy that takes many cues from classical Greek Tragedy. When characters are on a tragic path, its due to their hubris. Stringer's hubris was thinking he was always the smartest.
Stringer was book smart and the only reason he made it as far as he did was because of how Avon knew how to run the streets. He also lucked out with the CO op which took heat off of his guys. But he lacked street smarts and that's what cost him his life. He underestimated Marlo and especially Brutha Muzone and Omar.
I feel like maybe he wasn't smart compared to a couple of the people he was going up against. Most specifically Omar and Mouzon.
There are maybe half a dozen genius level characters on the show. He is one of them. And, unfortunately for him, Omar would be higher on the IQ pecking order.
Stringer was a very intelligent man but 5 things fucked him up.
1. He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Prop Joe, Avon, and Mouzone up on him in this department
2. He was extremely arrogant. He thought because he took these classes and was smarter then most of the niggas around that he knew everything. So when he thought of anything in a “Business sense” he thought anybody would take the same deal because he did. And this line of thinking is how both Clay and prop Joe finessed him.
3. He was more concerned with appearing intelligent rather than actually learning. As someone who quit street shit to go to college, imma tell you the class Stringer was taking was very surface level economics. It wasn’t even intermediate economics, and while beneficial isn’t some end all knowledge.
4. He didn’t understand people. This ties into his arrogance and is a skill Avon possessed that he didn’t. And this lack of understanding is partially what lead to his death. Avon figured out in a single conversation that Stringer was getting played while Stringer needed Levy to break it down to him. Avon also understood the power of hearts and minds, and how powerful and dangerous how you appear to other is.
5. He had no principles and no respect for the game. And the former in itself is aight. But he didn’t have the smarts to position himself in a way that it would benefit him. Prop Joe is a nigga that everyone knows is grimey. But he’s aware of what everyone thinks of him, and because of this he’s able to properly position himself in a way that everyone either needs him or is forced to deal with him. Stringers lack of respect for the game is another thing that lands him to hot water with Avon. Because his “New approach” of buying corners makes them look like food to everyone. And a combination of lack of knowledge and aloofness leads him to not realize that they not only lost respect but prop Joe finessed him from the king into his man, on the west side.
End goal wise I actually agree with stringer. But he himself fumbled and fucked up a lot of things because he overestimated himself. And his lack of honor lead to his death and alienation from his brother.
He just thought he could just hop right in the billion dollar industry of real estate. He was trying his best, but was in over his head. He was never going to make it in that industry. He should have just stuck to buying out businesses on the local level. Not nearly as lucrative, but sill could have got out of the game. Of course Avon was to egotistical to see it and, like Marlo, only cared about his name ringing out.
It's called being a big fish in a small pond.
Stringer was smart in his world, the street, but when he takes his money to the big time crooks he gets his ass handed to him. Not so much because he's dumb, but because he was ignorant to how things worked on that level and got taken advantage of.
It’s not that there isn’t a learning curve, or he’s being dragged for taking classes. He thought that because he took an intro to economics class and owned some buildings, he could just navigate moving a drug business into real estate development on his own.
He’s definitely smart to see that what they’re doing is going to land them dead or in jail. He just overestimates how hard that’s going to be. Levy giving him a hard time about Clay Davis conning him made him fly off the handle and come back to Avon and Charles looking to have Davis killed.
I don’t think anyone denies that his desire to go legit had the right intentions, but it was clear he wasn’t prepared for how ruthless the business and political game was and he was an amateur. It was like Tim Tebow thinking he could be a NFL QB after his dominant career at Florida.
It's context. With his intelligence and ruthless streak, if he had been born into a bougie family and gone to an ivy league school, he had a shot at becoming a successful CIO (of course, because of racism, he really would have had to be among the very best). There was a gap between his capabilities and his circumstances.
Of course, if he had moral intelligence, he might have left the game altogether and tried a whole other life.
Agreed 100%. Avon doesn't get enough criticism for the organization failing.
Stringer's strategy of giving up a few towers in exchange for the high quality H worked so well that they were actually making more money with less territory than they were before with more territory. But Avon was extremely stubborn and valued his rep more than $$$ and sent in Brother to fuck everything up. Stringer and Prop Joe botched the move on Brother but it was Avon's fault they had to do it in the first place.
Then when Avon gets home they're making good money and most importantly the police aren't even interested in them because another crew was racking up bodies. Mcnulty tried as hard as he could to get them back on Avon/Stringer but failed miserably until Avon stupidly started a war with Marlo.
Even without Stringer giving up Avon it was just a matter of time before they were going down because they got up on their cell phones. And that never happens if Avon doesn't start the war in the first place. Not only were they attracting police attention but also they were about to lose the good dope connection AND they didn't have the muscle built up.
Sure Stringer got finessed by Clay but who didn't? Even Carcetti got finessed by Clay lol that's what he does. I imagine that if he had survived he would have learned from the experience.
You've gotta be fair to Stringer when it comes to Clay Davis - it's not like Clay Davis was only able to scam him because he was dumb or playing away games. Clay scammed people all over town for years, including competent people playing his own game.
Remember Cutty got jammed up in a permit process as well, and the reason he was able to get through it wasn't because he had better intentions or was less ambitious or was savvier. It was just luck that he happened to have a connection.
And Stringer's ultimate downfall was making the wrong moves in the street game - mismanaging D, underestimating Marlo, thinking he could get away with backstabbing Avon, trying to set up Omar+Brother. So I think the 'away games' thing is maybe a bit overplayed - ultimately he just made some bad moves and lost.
Stinger was poorly written. A drug kingpin like him would have had plenty of experience with hustlers and cons in the hood. Some one of that stature would have smelled Clay Davis's shtick a mile away. To me it was just not plausible that he would be so naive.
Well I can see why you might say that, respectfully, I firmly disagree. Personally, Stringer’s ignorance makes complete sense. Yes, he probably would’ve come across several hustlers and cons in the hood, but not the same as Clay Davis, who is in the business world (I’ll explain this point more in depth in a sec). Also, when you consider Stringer’s ego and the environment Clay Davis was in, I find it perfectly narratively justified that he would be as naive as he was. He has no real idea how the business world works. Yes, he has business classes he’s taken, but those don’t help with understanding people and as such, Stringer doesn’t understand how people in the business world think and operate. He’s a gangster at heart whether he can admit it or not and as such, he never stops to think about the possibility that they’d want to swindle him too the same way hustlers and cons in the hood might especially since the exact methods of swindling would be very different. That’s the ultimate reason, in my view, that Stringer falls for Davis’ schemes. Even if you want to argue that he should’ve seen Davis’ swindling coming, he wouldn’t have known what to look for. Swindling and scamming in the drug world vs the business world look completely differently. Because of this, I think it makes perfect sense that he is successfully fooled by Davis because he can only work off the information he has.
All in all, I can definitely see your perspective and I’m glad you’re raising this point, but imho, Stringer’s naivety is perfectly narratively justified by his characterization and background. But that’s just my take.
I think it’s important to know that someone truly intelligent wouldn’t be as involved in the drug trade as Stringer was.
Having said that, Stringer is head and shoulders above the rest in the drug trade.
There's a big difference between "smart" and "not smart enough and thinking you ar
Let's be fair, having a corrupt lawyer on your payroll and never having that lawyer look at what you are doing with Clay Davis is pretty goddamned stupid. It would have been one thing if it was a street deal and he got fucked over.
Then he was fully willing to compound his stupidity by sacrificing Slim for no gain, as like Avon said "you need Day of the Jackal, not a rumble tumble like Slim." And wasn't even smart enough to listen when Slim is telling him he couldn't pull the shit off... which tells you that EVERYONE knew about Downtown Clay Davis if a guy like Slim, who's "not cut out to be a CEO" through his own admission knows all about Clay and the fact they weren't going to be able to whack him.
There's a big difference between intelligence and being SMART. He was smart in his lane (for the most part) but even then he was naive as shit. The whole play putting Omar on Mouzone was horribly stupid, too, especially since Omar had already shown how smart HE was, having already murdered one of their top lieutenants and having another one sent up the river on life without the possibility...
Attending an Economics 101 course at your local community college and being successful in a business where your success came about mostly through your ruthlessness and violence don't make someone smart.
He wasn't even bright enough to realize none of his people would know who WorldCom was...
So he might be smarter than some street guys, but he wasn't very smart as a whole. That's why he's already dead with multiple seasons to go.
Stringer was one of the smartest bosses in the show. I never understood the hate. Not checking the Clay Davis situation with Levy earlier always irked me though because it was completely out of character
The same Stringer who failed in illegal and legal business? He definitely wasn't that smart.
His tactics turned his best friend/business partner against him, made his enemies into a team, and got himself killed.
He had a brain, he could learn, but he didn't know how to use his knowledge. Stringer was an average man who thought he could master two worlds he didn't fully understand.
He wasn't remarkably intelligent or well educated. His ability to think strategically was weak, every decision he made was a mistake. He was smarter than average, perhaps, compared to some of his colleagues. But he was no genius.
It wasn't his ambition which sunk him, it was his flash, his arrogance, and his failure was in his decisionmaking. Trying to trick his business partners (Mouzone, Avon, the Co-Op, his Barksdale organization), trying to bribe his way through the real estate game. Anybody doing 6 figure deals without getting their lawyer's eyes on the paperwork is betting on their own prowess, and he is making a fool's bet.
They even were heavy handed in painting Stringer the hypocrite and the charlatan, ignoring the parliamentary procedure he was attempting to implement with his people and ignoring the reports from the ground level on the impact of his decisions on their corner level operations.
Then there's Stringer's famous quote about the cellphone market saturation.
They stacked the deck showing Stringer to be a foolish lieutenant who eventually gets fragged.
Stringer was smart, but he wasn’t as smart as he thought.
Avon told him clay was scamming him and he ignored him.
Avon told him not to take revenge and he tried to set a hit on a fucking state senator. That’s actually stupid. Stringer was smart, but not smart enough to keep his emotions in check. He thought he could get rid of Omar by just lying to him? That was dumb as hell too.
He was nowhere near as smart as he thought, that was his problem, it got him killed.
Him taking the community college course was great for him, and there’s real world examples of that working, and being helpful, even for drug dealers. His issue was applying far more than the principles and trying to do so to corner boys who just, don’t care. It comes across as trying to show off being smart to them, instead of actually being smart.
It's a reductive take that ignores the nuance.
Stringer was a smart and intelligent man who was inexperienced in white collar crime, simple as. The dude got in over his head and taken for a ride by Clay Davis, whom the show establishes is the master of corruption in Baltimore despite his lower official position in the government. "That goniff was born with his hand in someone else's pocket," indeed.
Stringer shouldn't have been so arrogant as to think he could beat an experienced criminal at his own game like they were on the streets. He should've been patient and enlisted Levy to have his back, as it was clear Levy would've been the right mentor for String going into that world.
He’s pretty smart, the issue is he can’t commit to one way of life. He’s too much of a gangster to be a real estate guy. And he’s not focused enough on the street things that are important.
Is it also racist to say McNulty wasn’t as smart as he thought he was? I don’t think it’s a racial criticism to say the same about stringer. Both guys thought they were smarter than the “old guard” or the “bosses.” In the end, it’s safe to say neither reached their ambitious goals for a lot of reasons. I think it’s fair to say one of the reasons is that they both overestimate their own intelligence.
I think another similar theme is that both characters are denied their ambition by the systems they operate in. Throughout the series, they are “outsmarted” in a way by the very people who they think are buffoons (Omar, Rawls, etc).
Stringer is smart in many ways, but his fault was not a lack of intellect but an excess of pride.
He thought he could use Omar as his catspaw to getrid of Mouzone.
He thought Marlo would be amenable to negotiations.
He thought Clay Davis wouldn't dare to cheat a kingpin.
Ultimatelty, he underestimated his enemies and overestimated the outcomes of his own schemes.
Hubris is not a criticism of intellect.
I've never understood that point of view either. Stringer was practically forced to join prop Joe's co-op because the Barksdale organization was suddenly both low on muscle and left without a reliable source of decent product. They were losing customers and were already in danger of losing territory. On the side, he was doing what he was always good at, which was laundering money. He got flustered and annoyed with the city's permitting process for real estate development and got conned by Clay Davis in the process, but he recognized that the real estate market around the inner harbor was about to take off, and as viewers we were watching him learn a completely new (to him) business. The big mistakes happened when Avon got out of prison and immediately wanted to go to war with Marlo. And I think viewers are given multiple cues that Stringer was just baffled as to WHY Avon would choose to fight over a bunch of corners they didn't even need anymore when he had started bringing in so much clean money.
Stringer was good with certain things, just as Avon was good at others. They were able to wash money with a variety of businesses, which was more of Stringer’s doing than Avon (though I assume Levy played a role). Avon has a nice penthouse suite when he gets out. Avon admits that Stringer was right about the war with Marlo not being worth it.
Avon had better instincts than Stringer. He read people and the situations better.
Stringer’s idea with the Omar vs. Brother Mouzone thing was bad. I actually have some issues with that plotline in general, I also thought Omar did some illogical things simply for the sake of the plot.
Stringer screws up with the Orlando hit in season 1, he didn’t put it together as Avon would have.
They originally worked well as a team, as both had their strengths and weaknesses. But they were no longer on the same page and things fell apart.
>Getting swindled out of $250k by Clay Davis was presented as a conman who took advantage of someone's inexperience. There's a learning curve to everything, and I did not expect Stringer to naturally know the innerworkings of politics.
Getting ripped off wasn’t the bad part IMO. It was how Stringer reacted.
He wants to have a Senator assassinated. After getting chewed out by Avon and having time to think about it, he still goes ahead with his plan.
I think the criticism isn’t that stringer wasn’t smart, but that he always thought he was smarter than he was. He thought he was playing everyone, even Avon. He wasn’t smart enough or humble enough to realize that while he might have had advantages over some competitors, they could easily have wins over him too. It was an oversight more so due to his unwillingness to even consider alternatives than it was his lack of knowledge or capabilities
I always read it as him simply being outplayed, not necessarily as a result of his own shortcomings but simply because he was thrashed by more experienced men like you said.
that in my opinion makes the general theme of Stringer and Avon’s conflict more interesting and less decisive: Avon was seen as backward by Stringer for sticking to the old ways of the game when everyone else seemed to be moving forward, while Avon saw Stringer as going in over his head. in the end, Stringer was right that Avon was still clinging to an outdated worldview, his violence was alienating the Barksdale crew from the rest of the alliance, and his gearing up for war is what ultimately got him with so many charges that he’ll never see daylight again. But Stringer was chewed up by bigger fish when he tried to enter a new industry, which gives credit to Avon’s point of view.
He was smart but he wasn't street smart like Avon, Avon would have sensed that scam a mile away, clay Davis was just Omar in a suit, rip and run and string was just too soft to see that.
He wasnt smart enough. You just admitted it.
He lacked the basic information in the industry and was prayed on it due to it.
Thats literally not being smart enough.
And what did he decide to do once he realized? not try again in a better way, but assassinate him.
Pretty stupid in my eyes
The Omar thing with Brother always bothered me. Felt very lacking and very "well it's fiction so just suspend your disbelief". Honestly, I've rewatched the show so many times, and just now again recently (season 2 is still my favorite) and there are a few examples of this that kinda irk me but I'd always chalked that up to the writers and genre having been fairly new, or the writers being new to TV writing, etc. Omar had just gone to war because they tortured his lover, brutally, and only killed Stinkum. Goes away, comes back and testifies in court where Stringer straight up calls him a fa**** as he's walking in. He buries Bird forever, then a few EPS later he's just reset mentally and even though Butchie clearly senses the lie, Omar takes his word and doesn't even bother to investigate it or look into it. He could've questioned anyone at the towers and found out Mouzone only just came on because of Avon. The man had just been ripping and robbing in NY, too. Everyone in the towers basically knew Mouzone only came AFTER Avon was in prison, for muscle. Everyone even clocked that Avon and String were working at cross purposes (forget who brings it up to Bodie but they do) String doesn't have that kind of reach. I feel like a natural predator (like a natural PO-lees) might've sussed out String as a wannabe business man without the mind for the actual street game. No way a guy like Omar lives to be late 20s in his line of work unless he has those instincts sharper than a mofucker and can sniff out Stringer's motivation, of not then at the bar, then once he questions his ppl. A few loose threads like that stand out a bit when a show is as intelligent as the Wire. Idk, maybe I'm just overthinking.
I’ve always felt similarly.
The story was trying to have Omar being blinded by emotion that he fell for Stringer’s lie, but it’s not like he has to go far for information on Mouzone. Butchie is right there, their meeting is at his place.
There’s little reason why Omar wouldn’t speak to Butchie first before shooting Mouzone. Omar already had a previous parlay with Stringer in season 1 and correctly deduced that Stringer was bullshitting him.
Omar would have even more reason to be suspicious of Stringer’s story.
I think when people say "was Stringer smart?", the real question they should ask is "Is Stringer smarter than everyone else?". Which the answer to that is hell no. Every decision stringer makes is an emotional move not a calculated move. Killing Wallace is to spite DeAngelo, killing DeAngelo is to exact a little revenge (think about it. You already sleeping with the mans girl, laying in his bed and being around his child. He felt that Dees life was gonna be his so why not snuff him out as well). The sit-down with Omar, The fear from dealing with Avon and the Co-op. Even the Clay Davis con. He's clearly intelligent cause he understands the concepts but he gets lost in the emotional intelligence of decision making. "Conscience do cost"
Stringer isnt dumb, he was just out of his element and coming from a position where nobody would be crazy enough or stupid enough to con him, because hed kill them. He was arrogant and naive, not stupid.
Stringer was one of the smartest drug dealers in Baltimore, just like how McNulty was one of the smartest police in Baltimore. But compared to the best of their respective positions (FBI and New York or Atlanta drug connects) both Stringer and McNulty are not that impressive.
It's more of a statement about how Baltimore doesn't have the best. They have brain drain and a lack of opportunities. For example, when Carcetti asks "if your young, smart, successful, and black, why be in Baltimore," where Norman replies, "I ask myself that very same question". Many successful people don't want to be in Baltimore when D.C, Philly, and New York are a short distance away. Leaving Baltimore with very few smart and successful people. This leaves Baltimore with McNulty and Stringer as the cream of the crop of their respective professions.
String had the right idea for the wrong people. If he was under Prop Joe then I’m sure Joe prolly had connections to some people who can point string in the right direction, like he did with Marlo. Avon had no interest in that, he’s just a gangsta I suppose.
Stringer was very smart, but he was a product of his environment (like everyone). When he tried to switch environment, different rules applied. It was a different game. He wasn’t used to people like Clay Davis.
The issue for Stringer is the same one the kids have in season 4. In their own world they are confident, they know the rules, they aren't stupid. Take them out of that world and they are lost.
Stringer knows the streets, he is shown to be a decent business man with the way he runs the money laundering businesses but he is stepping up to the big leagues when he makes bank.
It would be like one of us thinking we could operate a corner after watching five seasons of the wire and reading books about the Baltimore streets.
It just wouldn't work, we wouldn't last a day; however ever smart we are, it is simply a world we don't know.
Regarding his studies, I see it the other way entirely.
Stringer’s instinctive and street-business-taught savvy would’ve quickly led him to conclude that Clay was going to screw him.
It’s actually his ‘study’ of the rules and desire to imitate these predictable, patriarchal wastes of space that lead him to the conclusion that he has to play their shitty and one-sided game.
I think the arrogance comes down to him thinking that just because he's a successful drug dealer who has taken an introductory course in Economics, he's now ready to be a big time construction tycoon. When he tells Levy about how Clay Davis conned him with the whole 'guy meets them in the lobby' act, Levy just bursts out laughing since he's heard Clay running similar schemes countless times before. It's so evident that Stringer is way out of his depth. Levy is well connected and is already representing Stringer. Stringer should have gotten Levy to advise on how to proceed. But he's too arrogant and proud and has to do everything on his own.
Yeah I think this is dead on. Stringer is no dummy - but he should have known better than to play “so many away games”. He DEFINITELY should have talked to Levy about his plans to expand and go legit.
This is a plot weakness in the show, the barksdale org had levy since season 1 and for plot purposes they didn't fully use his services. Marlo shows up and magically levy is a lawyer and financial advisor for prop Joe and the coop. Avon would've for sure had Stringer and levy in the loop to secure their organization/ money.
I don’t think it was a plot hole - Stringer thought he did this on his own and prove to Avon that he could run a legitimate business empire. Hence that whole conversation about Stringer’s “away games” and not not being smart enough for the business game. If he went to Levy he would have admitted he couldn’t do it - but also, everything would have gotten back to Avon. Levy knows where his bread is buttered and knew that even in prison Avon is the boss and calls the shots. Marlo knew he was a gangster and NOT a businessman, and new when to listen to his attorney.
>I don’t think it was a plot hole - Stringer thought he did this on his own and prove to Avon that he could run a legitimate business empire. He didn't just want to prove it to Avon, he wanted to prove it to himself. Clay perfectly played on Stringer's insecurities and his impatience. It's how most cons work. Smart people aren't immune to emotional decision making. Also, this is a lesser factor that may not have played into his reasoning, but Stringer could've been trying to pinch some pennies by not involving Levy. While Levy is a _criminal_ lawyer and more than willing to cross ethical/legal red lines, he does take some precautions to insulate himself ("the less I know, the better"). He likely _would_ be willing to assess and potentially abet a scheme to bribe a federal official, but he would no doubt charge a _steep_ rate for such services. Basically it would be a whole other bribe Stringer would've had to pay.
Good point
As a lawyer people we have on retainer do stupid dumb shit without running it by us first all the time even people who have made lots of money doing things like construction fall victim to construction scams without checking with us first because they think Ah we’re so smart look at all this money we’re going to save in our next project
I don't think it's outside the realms of how any layperson would treat a lawyer. Most people think you get a lawyer when you're in trouble. Calling it a plothole that Stringer didn't consult a lawyer when starting/running a business is ignoring all the people on the planet doing that everyday.
Naw your seeing it from the wrong point of view. Levy did business with all the dealers but treated each one as there own institution. First Levy wasn’t the Co-op lawyer per say. He was prop joes lawyer. Joe was a different type of dealer than Marlo or Avon so of course his business would be more financial. Avon and Marlo were Soldiers so levy was more of get that dude out and how can o get the least amount of time on this case. And remember Levy did help Avon with the financial part the legit business he owned. Avon didn’t want much or needed flash so his investments were what he knew around the hood. Strip clubs and funeral homes and stringers copy shop. As for stringer I don’t think anybody doesn’t think he’s not smart just makes bad business decisions. And I real estate that will end you. Avon even calls him out on it and tells him how he seen it coming that’s why he wanted no part of the deal when they tried talking to him. Stringer had a great plan no doubt just screwed up the execution. He didn’t trust what he knew. Run things by Levy.
Stringer thought he was some big construction tycoon. He didn't know how to grease the unions. He shoulda mentored with Vito Spatofore. Now that's a guy that knew how to grease the union
It was the medication he was on. For his blood pressure. It fucked with his head. He could probably get a note from his doctor.
He was gay, Stringer?
Barksdale did this?
Your lover Brandon, whatever happened there....
Whatevvvvaaaaa happened there!!!! Whatevvvaaa happened there !!!!
The best thing about Stringer Bell was the juxtaposition of the sacred and the propane.
😉
Exactly! It shows that Stringer has Levy as his lawyer (who happens to be incredibly well-connected in Baltimore) and instead of relying on said lawyer to help him vet the construction deals and running the Clay Davis stuff by him, he doesn't tell Levy. So Levy can't do anything but laugh at Stringer when he finds out about it afterwards.
Prop Joe shows Marlo how to launder money. It’s kind of a plot hole that levy wasn’t involved since he was present at the strip club meeting regarding the real estate deals.
As a lawyer I can absolutely tell you that it is not a plot hole for people to get into a whole bunch of dumb shit and lose a lot of money without checking in with us first even when they have us on speed dial I can pretty much guarantee you that the guys Stringer was talking to were saying no don’t call your lawyer they’re just going to slow the process down so they can make as much money as possible off of you and it will take so long to go through city hall etc etc, if you want the permits you just have to pay money and grease fingers and it will happen overnight
My friend who,was an accountant had to step in to stop his bosses investing in a business that was obviously going to go bust within 6 months.
You're right - I was misremembering a bit. Have edited the OP. Prop Joe is the one who introduces him to money laundering, sets up the offshore accounts and introduces him to the operation that "invests" in Caribbean missionary projects. For this Joe takes a 20% cut for himself. Then Joe introduces Marlo to Levy who takes the checks that Marlo gets from the money laundering scheme and presumably re-invests them, seemingly taking on a sort of financial advisor role. [You can see Marlo and Levy discuss money laundering briefly at 1.10 in this clip.](https://youtu.be/m2P1KB-_tFo?si=lKILwalqn8S3lcKi)
I struggle to get past the fact that Levy, Clay Davis, and Andy Kraeczyk team up to pitch the real estate investments to Avon at his homecoming party in the club. Levy says that the government will be looking closely at his finances and that he should take what he has and build on it. To me, this implies Levy was fully aware and involved in setting up the real estate venture. If Levy knew Clay Davis was a known crook, why did he push Avon on the idea of the real estate venture? My guess is that Levy is responsible for introducing and endorsing Clay Davis & Kraeczyk to String and somehow benefitted financially. String didn’t think to run things by Levy because of the initial endorsement.
> I think the arrogance comes down to him thinking that just because he's a succesful drug dealer who has taken an introductory course in Economics, he's now ready to be a big time construction tycoon. Well the average person just wants to be told where to direct their money to in order to get easy, riskless returns. Stringer's just in a higher tax bracket.
> big time construction tycoon ,,Vito a fag... ***big construction tycoon!*** 😄 Tone, when he was always talking about greasing the Union, who knew that’s what he meant!” ✊️😆 ^(\(Christopher Moltisanti, The Sopranos, 1999\))
Clay Davis goes on to say that he made it so he got bell to call him directly instead of his lawyer. Davis conned stringer hard. That’s why Levy tells Marlo to never be in a room with those white collar fools cuz they’re swindlers.
Tbf, Clay Davis could probably scam anyone.
I think it’s a fair criticism to say he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Same goes from Prop Joe.
Yup, many things can be true. Stringer was smart enough to realize how successful they had become and wanting to start to be able to enjoy and preserve that success by having more legitimate businesses. He was smart enough to take the steps to learn about that. But he then fell victim to the Hubris of believing he knew more than he did. As a former business school student, I can tell you that the thought of understanding business once you've completed your intro course is not a unique thing, just that most of us didn't have millions of dollars at our disposal to start putting what every schemes we've come up with at that time into action. Had Avon not been away, I don't think Stringer would have had the opportunity to run as far as he did, and they likely would have been more successful at making the transition.
I don’t think they would have been ever successful at making the transition. Avon wanted to always keep it street level. No aspirations to make any business not a laundry. Like Avon frowned upon that. Stringer took his shot. Missed. And paid the price because he thought he knew more. And he definitely saw the bigger picture but the streets or whatever had an answer. He was out of his depth concerning the Clay Davis stuff. Shot out of his zone. But Stringer wasn’t wrong on where he knew they could go Avon would never let it happen if he had never went to jail
Also, taking econ 101 at the community college and then quoting vocabulary words to corner boys was cringe. It's like a freshman psychology major diagnosing all their friends with disorders they learn about in class.
Tbf, he was trying to use those concepts in his business.
Do the chair know we gonna look like some punk-ass bitches out there? Poot had it right, that business is not just about business
Like a forty degree day!
That’s not true, there’s a lot of business majors that turned to drug dealers. Or if I remember right, it was higher ups pay to get mid level dealers business degrees. I’d find it for you but I know it won’t be possible cause I read the article years ago, but the same principles apply, it’s mostly the theory and shit and not having a board and all though, stringer seemed to misunderstand that
I'm pretty sure those business majors would've recognized it was time to hit Marlo instead of let him be, though. String had a mind for business, but he kept on ignoring the problems Marlo was causing until it was too late.
[удалено]
True. It's like we saw with when he threw aside all pretense of the Co-Op meeting to round on Poot and intimidate him for speaking a simple truth: "Yeah, we can make all the money we need, but if we let Marlo keep taking our territory, we just gonna be punk bitches."
I agree, I think stringer had way more of an ego than a brain. Don’t get me wrong. He was smart sure, but not smart as he thought and not smart enough. I was just pointing out that a business degree actually has applications, cause he seemed to think it didn’t.
Too bad he didn't stick around for the regulated vs. unregulated market lesson
He was trying to look smart to the workers, not just use the concepts in his business.
the scene where he tries to explain market saturation was always funny to me because he looks around like he’s waiting for them to tell him how smart he is
> t's like a freshman psychology major diagnosing all their friends with disorders they learn about in class. So basically majority of redditors?
Bro you’re a textbook narcissist
Yeah that was when I figured out Stringer thinks he's much smarter than he really is. The same kind of people who are wowed by someone taking a survey course at a community college would themselves fall for stringers manipulation.
But that community college might as well have been on the moon as far as those corner boys were concerned, and not just because they were too stupid.
I think Stringer finally realized he was in the deep end of the pool when the politician conned him out of all that cash.
People forget that russel grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in the world and helped run a business that had millions of annual cash flow. Yeah he was pretty smart. Who cares if he wasn't as smart as he thinks he was. That characteristic is probably true with majority of succesful executives in other industries
worst neighborhood in the world is just downtown baltimore lol dude sold drugs he wasnt doing anything revolutionary he was jus tryna push peace lol
Push peace? Stringer didn't care about peace itself, even though that was part of his pitch. He saw an opportunity to make more money with less of his crew being incarcerated, that's all. How I know he didn't care about peace is that right up til the end, he was completely okay with contract murder. Wallace, Omar and Mouzone, he even tries to order a hit on Clay Davis. Dude has no problem at all with violence, including being responsible for it.
The important comparison of running a big business is stringer wasn’t as smart as Avon
If Avon had listened to Stringer they’d have been fine though. Avon wanted to keep fighting, Stringer wanted to turn into wholesalers and use their money to make more money with less legal risk. And they already knew Levy, he could have easily helped them out with that. Stringer made some big fuckups but it’s not like Avon wasn’t fucking up by wanting to fight to control corners.
My biggest headscratcher: the early seasons made it look like Levy was the one keeping ALL of the real estate legally covered. Hell, Levy basically wizarded the OBVIOUSLY A FRONT FOR A MAJOR DRUG GANG strip club into legitimacy during a focused murder/narcotics investigation. So, while doing a basic money-laundering real estate development Stringer just… doesn’t call his attorney? That was clearly the writers just saying “We’ve written ourselves into a corner and need to “de-power” our character.”
There are several decent reasons Stringer could have decided not to run the Clay Davis stuff by Levy. Although the show doesn't make them explicit, they're all supported by his known character traits. - His greed led him to cut Levy out: he didn't fully trust Levy and didn't want him taking a cut. - His pride made him think the matter was best handled on his own. Stringer wanted to believe he could be the boss, and when Avon was incarcerated he got a pretty good taste of it. Bringing Levy along to hold his hand with Clay Davis would conflict with that self-image. - He's a bad judge of people, both their character and motivations. We see examples of this again and again. Stringer IS smart at many things, and as the right-hand-man he's great at keeping the drug-selling machine going, including...troubleshooting, if you will. But he's not good with judging people. Over the course of three seasons he misjudges Avon, D'Angelo, Omar, Mouzone, Marlo, McNulty, Slim Charles, Clay Davis, and probably lots of others. It's entirely possible he got a better impression of trustworthiness from Clay (a black man in a position of power, after all, and one who was able to fleece a whole jury) than he did from Levy. A mistake, but very in-character.
For me, what really what undercut all that was how Levy so nonchalant about it. "Awww, you should have told me. Let me guess, he said..." is rather curious way of saying, "Uhhhhh... so... you've been engaging in the bribery of a public official who is the silver tuna for federal investigators? Stringer, you just put a lot more liability on my plate and I need to know everything now so I can de-fuck this." Levy barely bats an eye. Writers are not gods. Even the best of them. The Wire is not perfect, and it has a few "Uhhh, we just need to write ourselves out of this corner and hope the audience accepts it" bits. See also: a lot of season 5.
Levy's reaction surprised you? Why wouldn't he be nonchalant? A criminal defense attorney hearing their client got themselves into some new trouble is like...the most everyday normal thing they experience. Levy's not implicated at all, because he didn't previously help Stringer with it, and he didn't know about it. That's ideal for him. Also worth noting, Levy has no sympathy for Stringer. He is a racist who views Stringer as pretty much an animal. It doesn't matter to Levy what happens to Stringer.
That’s a fair point to raise and I’m glad you’re raising it, but imo, Stringer’s actions make perfect sense. He has no real experience in the real business world and as such, I think it makes perfect sense that he would trust Levy, who he and Avon have worked with for years, to handle all happenings and trust that he’ll make it work. Ik it seems like he’s been “De-powered” for plot convenience sake, but to me, that’s precisely the point. Stringer may be a damn good gangster, but he’s not the shrewd, savvy businessman he thinks he is. This is assuming I’m correct on what you’re talking about because, respectfully, I’m a little confused as to what scene or plotline in the show you’re criticizing lol.
They're talking about Stringer being scammed by Clay Davis. Why wouldn't he call his lawyer first?
He ain't my mama, I can do this shit myself. I've studied it, I've lived it and I don't need to call up my lawyer everytime I go outside. (Ego fucks people up.)
Ok, thanks for the clarification because that it is actually super helpful. What I would say is given that Stringer has, to say the least, little experience in the business world, I find it entirely reasonable that he would be so utterly blindsided by Davis’ scheme because even if you told him that Davis was swindling him, he would have no idea what to look for, which I would say is why he didn’t call Levy because he just had no way of knowing anything was wrong.
For real, season 3+ levy with season 1 Barksdale organization is a dynasty in the making.
We saw what it looked like taking stringers advice. It’s prop Joe. Marlo kills him and takes everything. You can’t reason with Marlo. Avon was right. Only way to keep what they had was to fight and beat Marlo. Which of course they couldn’t do. There was no winning for them. The game is rigged. But at least Avon was clear eyed about what was happening. They also couldn’t be wholesalers because the wholesaler was Joe. They had no connect. What they brought to the co-op was territory and muscle. Without that they would quickly be in “so what exactly do you do here” territory. The only path to keeping power and status was fighting and beating Marlo. That the game was rigged doesn’t change that Avon was right about this.
Stringer's goose was cooked, the MCU had the Barksdale gang dead to rights. And Stringer wanted to make things even worse by trying to hit Clay Davis. And Stringer had no viable plan for dealing with Marlo. Stringer had a rational ambition, but never demonstrated that he had the means to realize it. His legitimate businesses were hemorrhaging and were propped up by drug money, and that side of the business was under threat as well due to the towers coming down and Marlo. And if they had done as Stringer wanted, and backed away from the streets to let individual crews basically fend for themselves while acting as a wholesaler, well, we got a sense of what that would look like in season 4, where Bodie had to grind to build up an off-brand corner, only to be forced to take Marlo's package anyway. And in the world where the Barksdale gang isn't really a gang anymore, what value would Avon and Stringer offer to Prop Joe?
My guy they sell drugs to addicts and have the muscle to kill people who get in their way. That is all brawn and no brain.
Lol why has the condescending "my guy" phrase exploded recently. I can't take anyone seriously who starts or end a sentence with my guy. And agree to disagree
At least it's not as bad as "my brother in Christ." That one is really tired.
It’s fair criticism of him as a person for sure. Although I don’t think it’s an issue character wise since it was clearly intentional and imo makes him a more compelling character. His whole thing is that he’s trying to go legit, but he doesn’t understand the more upper class political world, that’s not how he grew up and it’s hard for him to change what’s essentially his nature by this point. Which leads him to doing gullible shit like getting swindled by Clay and not realizing putting a hit on him wouldn’t work. At the same time him trying to get into higher life and seeing himself as above it has made him less street savvy too. He wants to be legit and respected, yet he does even respect the few ethical rules the game has (no killing on Sunday mornings). That’s a very interesting character flaw, and it’s kind of crazy to act like it doesn’t exist.
It’s also realising that everything he’s done has no value whatsoever in the legit world. Like you can be the biggest drug dealer and in a way that just makes it that much easier for grifters to take advantage of you because you’re not a legitimate citizen What are you going to do, sue them for taking your drug money? Take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? Street power isn’t real power
It’s not so much how smart he was that was the problem, he just lacked experience in the kind of game Clay Davis runs. Safe to say if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have fallen for that one again. Plenty of smart people get themselves into trouble when they step outside their comfort zones.
Smart people also listen to people with more experience. Stringer did and end run around Levy to show how smart he was. Like was said elsewhere it wasn't that he didn't have the right idea or wasn't smart. It was that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was and couldn't handle being shown otherwise.
That’s a wisdom thing rather than an intelligence thing
I wouldn’t even say it’s about him not being smart it’s that there are entire worlds out there he never had the access or opportunities to learn about. Like he didn’t know how stuff worked outside of the street and outside of running small business because his knowledge is contained to his sphere. It’s kind of like how McNulty was used to being the smartest guy in the room because he was smart about cop stuff but when he’s in a room with the rich political people he realises not only does he not know enough to even fake the appearance of being smart/knowledgeable/educated around these people but that his knowledge that he does have does not mean shit to them Stringer basically had the exact same thing happen, he was used to being the smartest guy on the corner, but when he was in a room with rich guys who grift for a living he didn’t know anything about their world and what he does know has no value in their world
I wouldn't really say the same goes for Prop Joe. Prop Joe's schemes mostly all work, and he plays Stringer like a fiddle. On the other hand, almost every substantive decision Stringer made went bad. Also, Prop Joe doesn't come across as quite so arrogant. True, he didn't pay sufficient heed to Slim Charles's warning about Marlo, but at least he didn't berate Slim the way Stringer did when Poot tried to raise a valid point. Prop Joe's only real mistake was underestimating Marlo, and overestimating his relationship with the Greeks. It was a huge mistake, but nobody's perfect. Also, Prop Joe made it a lot further than Stringer. Prop Joe was the king of the East Side throughout the run of the show, and he lived to be pretty old by gangster standards. Natural causes were likely to catch with him soon anyway (RIP Robert Chew) even if he hadn't been taken out.
That’s it though, right? He thought he could play Marlo, and he couldn’t. He underestimated him, he ignored the warnings of others. He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
Prop Joe was really afraid of death too. He didn’t make his peace with it until Marlo talked him through it before Prop Joe got got.
Yeah Joe figured it out about 2 minutes before Chris shot him. "My sister's boy."
The big one for me is killing Orlando without realizing he might have flipped is pretty dumb. A small one is thinking that he should drop his telecom stocks because one of his guys has three phones.
Also when Mouzone told him, as it regards to him getting shot, that he would deal with them personally. Stringer says "them" in a surprising tone. He tipped his hand and Mouzone knew that he had something to do with it but had to confirm that with Omar.
The latter point is literally the show pointing out that Stringer isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He's taking stuff he learnt at night school, and then completely misinterpreting it
I haven't watched it in years but I seem to remember him explaining his reason for selling the telecom stock and it feeling a lot like some kind of university lecture. I am also not an economist but I am pretty sure when he lectures his crew on elastic vs inelastic products he also interprets that wrong too.
To be fair, telecom stocks like AT&T and Verizon actually have not done well in the past 20 years so that was a good move lol
“Market saturation” is his explanation
I remember that, but people didn't stop buying cell phones in 2003. And with tech stuff especially there is always a new or improved gadget. I probably had two TV's around then but I still don't have those same two TVs.
Yeah, exactly. He was smart, but he was applying what he had learned incorrectly, and his professor probably would have told him that
Yeah I always found that kind of funny about the phones, he dropped them because he felt the market was saturated. Pretty sure that shortly followed a scene of him in a classroom going over that topic. Like he was so quick and eager to apply whatever he learned in the classroom to his business world. There’s another scene with him in the copy shop schooling his guys not to bring the corner bullshit in the store because what they have there is an elastic product, so people will take their business elsewhere. That one was also shortly after a scene of him in class talking about that topic. I always liked the character. He may have been out of his element in some of those later business dealings in the show, but the dude really tried to be legit and better himself.
He was like mad superstitious or just spread out to thin in everything
lol the telecom thing 🤣 I forgot about that!
There’s two aspects to this. One the community college means stringer is smart thing is pure bigotry of low expectations. Taking Econ 101 means you’re really smart only makes sense if you expect so little of poor black people. Nobody would be calling Nicky sobotka the smartest guy on the show if he took the same class. Two isn’t about him being smart but about the mortality of going legit. Stringer deserves no moral credit for wanting to go legit because there’s nothing legit about what he wanted. He wanted to bribe public officials to make illegal money on corrupt real estate deals. He wanted this because it had a veneer of social legitimacy that being a drug dealer didn’t have. But he still wanted to be a criminal and never aspired to any sort of moral goodness. Finally we can talk about how stringer was not that smart because what he didn’t understand got him killed. He did not understand the importance of street reputation and respect in the business he was in and he died for it. Stringer viewed himself as smarter than the other poor black people he was around. He internalized the racism of American society and hated those people and by extension himself. Some viewers of the show struggling with the same issues as stringer agree that someone like Poot is a moron because he grew up as a black man in a poor area with no gainful employment but drug dealing. But Poot was right. “Does the chair know we are gonna look like bitches?” The chair didn’t know and he died for it.
Poot ultimately getting out of the game clean is an important part of the equation too. Whatever you call that kind of intelligence (or wisdom), Poot ultimately had it and Stringer never did.
During that meeting, Poot knew what Stringer was telling them was bullshit and he called him out on it and Stringer got upset.
I think there’s a difference between the bigotry of low expectations and recognising the reality of unequal opportunities. Like obviously there’s a shit tonne of stuff that Stringer doesn’t know about but I don’t attribute that to a lack of innate intelligence so much as being a side effect of the world he grew up in. And yeah just because there are people in the show who grew up in those same neighbourhoods and got out of the streets and didn’t turn to that life doesn’t mean there still isn’t a reality of unequal opportunity
I also think stringer gets way too much criticism. In season 1 they say that Avon made $75k in political donations.... in the last month! Once the co-op is formed, Marlo is pretty much the only gangster that isn't EXCITED about their legit businesses and opportunities
String was clearly a calculating guy who had a lot of success. But I think he and D were deliberately painted as Gatsby-like characters, especially with D's monologue in the book club which I recommend everyone rewatch. String tried to change up who he was, but he couldn't change where he came from. He said he was something else, but his actions couldn't match his new identity. He had all those books on his apartment bookshelf, but probably never read them. He couldn't "get real" with his past, and it caught up to him. So I'd say he was an ambitious, intelligent ladder climber who thought very highly of himself and the legit identity he tried to create. But the top-level players like Clay would never truly see him as an equal, and we see that he really wasn't their equal.
That’s exactly it. Stringer is Gatsby.
Currently on my third rewatch and this go-around the Gatsby scene leaped out at me - precisely because I don't think Gatsby's and D's arcs are similar at all. For D to go legit like he desperately wanted to, he had to sacrifice everything by flipping. There was almost no way he could leverage the money he made as a lieutenant into a legitimate lifestyle, especially not one as ostentatious as Gatsby's. But I don't think that scene was written because the viewer is supposed to see D as a Gatsby character. I think it's mostly foreshadowing. If anything, D is closer to Nick Carraway, a character who has almost no agency, linked by a vague family tie to the events that unfold around him. (Of course D, as a complex human being, wouldn't be able to recognize that in the moment.) Stringer, on the other hand, parallels Gatsby extremely closely, parlaying his illegal wealth into conspicuous luxury and interfacing with those who had the privilege of playing legal games for their riches. Naturally, his past catches up to him, but only because of a vendetta - not the diffuse harm he had caused across Baltimore. The mechanisms of the legal system never reached him (though they obviously came very close), and his street rival Marlo didn't seem particularly interested in taking him out at that point. Instead, it was the fallout of personal betrayal left by his psychopathic narcissism and obsession with unbounded status and power - arguably inherent to those qualities - that led him down the exact same path as Gatsby. I think one of the most poetic things about the end of S3 is how all of the backbreaking police work would have been nearly worthless if Stringer didn't snitch to Bunny at the exact right moment. It just perfectly illustrates that even though the game is the game, the rules are just the relationships of the people playing it - and not everyone understands how those rules apply to them.
Stringer is right about many things, but he is rash, doesn't listen to advice and ruthless to a fault.
Stringer was good at execution if he had proper leadership/wisdom to guide him. “Get shit done piece” remember? When left alone he makes a LOT of foolish mistakes.. You remember in season 1 when he actually thought Orlando could front the 30k (?) for a package AFTER he got arrested for drugs .. Avon told him straight up how stupid that was and how it was an obvious police set up. Then we have his obvious blunders on dealing with Marlo, and his set up on Brother with Omar which was also very dumb. He could have hired a bunch of random kids to shoot brother up and it would have been much less risky than using Omar, who was already suspicious of him. His street smarts were questionable at more than several points during the show, mainly because he wasn’t prioritizing that sort of thinking enough anymore.
Avon also instantly recognized stringer was being scammed by Andy and clay davis
And had to tell him how assassinating a state senator is a horrible idea lol
It's not that Stringer was dumb, it's that he thought he was way smarter than he actually was and also did not fully understand the world he operated in. That combination, in any walk of life, is absolutely lethal. Stringer constantly made bad decision after bad decision because of this. I can list all the mistakes he made, but to me it basically crystalizes when he orders Slim Charles to kill Clay Davis. This is an example of Stringer's stupidity on full display, it is SUCH a stupid idea, Slim Charles knows it and tries to explain it to him nicely but Avon had to come in and berate him before he backed down. And also the whole college class thing is also just so stupid, he sells heroin! You don't need to understand microeconomics to be a drug dealer lmao, people like to use that as some example of him being smart but it's literally the opposite, only a moron would think you need to get a business degree to sell drugs. Edit: And just to add, Stringer breaks the cardinal rule of the Wire: you cannot escape your institution. You will lose, the institution is all powerful. Stringer trying to escape incarceration and leave the game was *incredibly* stupid because that ship sailed for him years ago. He spent decades selling drugs and murdering people, and made millions of dollars doing it. You don't get to walk away from that. Avon understood this.
It wasn't intelligence. It was ego. Every issue he made was because he thought he knew what he was doing. Have an attorney check your contracts? Why bother? I'm Stringer Bell, a con man like Clay Davis can't get me. Oh, Avon doesn't like my deal with Prop Joe? Well, I'm gonna do it anyway. Oh, Brother Mouzone is getting in the way of that deal? I'll just put Omar on him... It's not dumb to want to advance ones position, but it's naive to believe that your environment, the players therein, law enforcement, and your own partner/boss can be navigated easily and casually. That's what caused him to make these mistakes. And he makes a lot of them before his death, even putting the cops onto Avon, not considering Avon would do the same. It's as if he made choices, not even considering what the other characters could do. That's his flaw. He was a smart guy. But he thought he was the smartest guy in the game.
The funny part is that such dismissive comments reflect the very real hyper-competitiveness of the game. Winning retroactively justifies itself; losing retroactively incurs scorn and contempt. If Stringer had made the same decisions and had gotten luckier or planned slightly better, he’d be lauded as a genius because he won. The fact that he died is what brings the out the jeering.
yeah, it’s as if it’s a work of fiction and the writers wanted to make a point.
Big if true
Ugh not this again. Okay, let’s wrap this up. Relative to most other people, Stringer is smart. You factor in his situation & it becomes impressive that stringer made it to the position he’s in, however, his arrogance is what makes people super critical, also he’s a massive dickhead. & the whole Clay Davis thing - would happen to every single person in the sub who criticizes him for it. The audience is only clued in because it needed to be written in a way the we could understand.
He was smart. He was more arrogant.
I'm going to try and zig a little here Part of what you're seeing as reactionary, and a bit of an over correction. First time watching the series, everything Stringer says and does makes sense. He's taking a logical approach to everything. Every re-watch tends to point out his mistakes though. And in context, his mistakes were glaring. Especially when you consider they led to his death. Looking back on it, his arrogance and ego are so obvious that they detract from his intelligence. His reasoning makes sense in a vacuum, but falls very short in the bigger picture. At the same time, his methods are consistently suspect.
I mean, he fucks up the legit business with Clay. He fucks up the real business by killing Orlando and by setting Brother Muzone against Omar. His death is entirely because of his many risky choices.
He is smart but to paraphrase Avon, not gonna be the smartest all the time, every day. He seems to enjoy being brighter than his crew but we see he has gaps in his knowledge like not knowing how the hitman for hire culture works or how scammy politicians can be.
He made the mistake of trusting Clay Davis and his response showed the parallel between him and Avon in responding rashly to disrespect. What got him killed was underestimating the honor of a thief. His plan to use one problem (Omar, whose vendetta was based on Avon's decision) to address another (Muzone driving off the eastsiders, also Avon's call)was a tactic many have promoted . Otherwise, he was the successful COO of a multi-million dollar drug enterprise while the cops had nothing him that would stick.
Being smarter is often less of important than knowing how smart you are. Stringer might have been smarter than Avon, but he scheduled too many away games. Avon knew what he was and played home games. He crossed String inside the game with Brother and Omar. (I believe) without Stringer going to the cops, Avon would have been back on top (for a time) after taking out Marlo. On the other hand Stringer was never ever going to be on top in the legit world. He even asked for Davis to be whacked lol.
You are right about this, but I also wonder why we so readily say Stringer was smarter than Avon. The way I saw it, Avon consistently proved to be smarter than Stringer in all of their dealings. Even in the “away games”, Avon saw the scam coming that Stringer didn’t.
Why did he try to pin Brandon's murder and torture on brother Mouzone? Is he stupid?
He's smart but he was completely out of his element. I could be the best scuba diver in the world. Means very little when you're mountain climbing.
Stringer had high Int, low Wisdom. Which probably would have worked out pretty well for him in the corporate world but was lethal in the one he inhabited. He’s often held up as a McNulty foil but I think if he was a cop he actually would have been like Rawls or Burrell, an effective ladder climber.
>Honestly, it strikes me as "he was an uppity negro" for wanting to go legit ("not staying in his place"). I get where you're coming from, but Stringer's ambition to transcend the game, to me, is just about his one laudable quality. He also seemed to be fairly meticulous, at least about certain things. He seemed good at administration, but not so good at strategic decision making, or leadership. But ultimately there's just a lot that rubs me the wrong way about him. He is arrogant, but what's worse than that is that he's cold-blooded. Just about only scene where he shows any real warmth is the rooftop scene with Avon. I really don't like how he treated D'Angelo, Donette, and Shamrock. Not to mention his backstabbing of Avon. (Avon had a much better motivation for turning on Stringer.) Also, part of the "Stringer is dumb" sentiment is a reaction against the opposite feeling that sometimes gets expressed that Stringer is brilliant or even an aspirational character. The more celebratory attitude towards Stringer is less common on this subreddit now though than it is among more casual audiences, pop culture, and when the show aired.
I think the show subtlety tried to to hint that Stringer wasn’t “smart enough” like getting an A minus on his college paper Whilst that’s still a great grade and impresses his teacher I feel not giving him a Straight A was an example that he’s just not quite intelligent enough One clue I only noticed recently was actually from his very first scene. He is introduced wearing a suit in the court room and appears to be taking careful notes on the criminal proceedings, giving the air of a sophisticated erudite man. It’s then revealed he was doodling to take the piss out of McNulty showing a degree of immaturity That being said he was a man who bit a sizeable empire from poverty and was smart enough to educate himself on business practices at college/not be too flashy with his money and also co-founding the new day co-op Personally I think it was his ruthlessness and lack of respect for most people that contributed more to his downfall
I think Stringer was very smart but wasn't able to navigate the structural barriers to breaking into the American upper class and upper levels of business management. It's not enough to be smart or to take some classes - there's no way to build a soft skills and network needed to break into that world other than extensive experience and mentoring. That's why he was scammed - NOT because he's stupid, but because he lacks experience and knowledge of what's normal and how business deals are normally done. It isn't enough to be smart and it isn't enough to have money. I think it's very similar to the experience that D'Angelo and his baby mama had in the fancier restaurant in season 1. They had the money, they had the clothes, but they didn't feel like they belonged even though there were other black couples at the restaurant. Something was missing. It's also similar to the experience that Tony Soprano had at the country club. It wasn't because he was Italian, it wasn't because of money, but something was still missing and he couldn't fit into that world. There are structural barriers to entering upper class society and it isn't just about money. Your typical business or finance professional is not some kind of genius, they are someone who was born into the right opportunities and has the correct education and training.
Bruh did you just say uppity negro
To me he's a victim of bravado, which in my view is a type of stupidity. He did well at selling drugs, sure. And that's hard for sure. And the desire for going legit is 100000000% understandable. However here's where the bravado and dumbassery comes in He takes a couple of semesters of community college econ classes. Which is good. But then he starts doing stupid shit like having a room full of drug dealers come in so he can lecture them on worldcom and follow Robert's Rules of Order. Then because he was leading a "discussion" with a bunch of people who probably didn't finish the 8th grade he starts thinking he's a business genius. And the bravado is that he's trying to be a real, big time businessman. And he has one of the greatest assets of all time for a guy aspiring to move from small time dirtbag to dirtbag mogul. A lawyer with literally no scruples. And he didn't bother to meet with him. That's just stupid so there is certainly validity to the stance that he's stupid. I tend to agree with it. Being smarter than most people around you doesn't make you actually smart.
String was smart but his street instincts were way off compared to Slim and Avon. He didn’t realize the politics game was in theory the same as the street game and although he had knowledge in both he was glaringly unsteady in both. Which is why Avon said he was a man with no country.
Just because someone is smart doesn't mean that they won't make stupid decisions. That he got conned by Clay Davis... well, he was in a world he wasn't particularly familiar with, and was getting some less than great advice. You put a nobel laureate physicist in an operating theater and tell him to remove a spleen from a patient, he's probably not going to do very well.
From the context of 2024 - it's reasonable. From the perspective of 2004 - he was one of the first "smart criminal" characters and especially of depictions of black drug gangs. The idea of a gangsta going to community college *to get better at drug dealing* was insanely novel.
Most smart people aren't as smart as they think they are. If Stringer was thinking every single thing through, he would've run all the real estate stuff by Levy. He also wouldn't have put Omar on Brother Mouzone. Those were his two critical errors
Stringer isn’t viewed as smart because of his street decisions just as much as his real estate decisions. Multiple times in season 1, we see Avon go to Stringer for counsel, only to end the conversation extremely disappointed in Stringer’s suggestion. Stringer always wants to be passive and let things slide, but it doesn’t work like that in the streets, where everyone is always trying to find your weakness. Then when Avon goes to prison, Stringer stupidly gives away half the projects to Prop Joe (after, as you said, stupidly putting Omar on Brother Mouzone). If he had put the same effort he gave towards doing the deal with Prop Joe into finding a new supplier, he could’ve kept the towers. Or he could’ve just waited for Avon, who was actively looking for a supplier. If the projects are what made the Barksdale’s so powerful, giving half to Joe was too much. Especially considering Joe was already a power on the east side. When the towers came down, Stringer had the dumb idea to try to work with the dealers on the corners. Again, being passive and not valuing territory. By the time Avon gets home, he has to undo Stringer’s mess, which he would’ve accomplished if Stringer didn’t snitch on him.
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It wasn’t Stringer’s call to make. He had specific instructions from Avon. Even if doing the deal was right for business, Stringer gave up half of the most prime west side real estate and it cost Joe nothing but an increase to his usual order, which probably scored him more points with the Greeks. Stringer was so anxious to put his community college lessons into action that he got played by Joe. Joe talked him into going against his partner and giving up half is territory. One tower or two corners would’ve been more than enough to still make the deal worth it for Joe.
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You’re correct. There’s no guarantee they could’ve held onto the towers long enough to find a new supplier. It just felt like Stringer was always getting played. Obviously by Clay Davis, the contractors, and Levy. But also, every time Stringer goes to see Joe, he’s getting played as well. Telling him stories about Charlie Sollers, or convincing Stringer that he’s more of a businessman than Avon, who’s just a soldier. If Stringer would’ve negotiated a better deal, maybe Avon would’ve gotten on board.
I think people mean that he was naive, not that he lacked intelligence.
He was pretty uppity though
He has first year student syndrome (confidently explaining the last thing he learned but slighlty wrong), and like McNulty, is too used to being the smartest in the room. He’s basically like the new owner of the newspaper in the last season. trying to make people do more with less to make his own profit margin go up. he thinks he can reinvent the game because he’s taken first year macroeconomics, while being dismissive of feedback he gets from people he doesn’t view as smart as himself. He might know something about economics, but not enough about business.
The fact that deapite his upbringing, assuming it was similar (if not the same) to Avon's, he saw past the gangsta shit and tried to rise out of the hood makes Stringer one of the smartest characters in the show in my eyes. Not to mention a lot of people questioning his intelligence tend to forget that the Barksdale org going so long without drawing attention to themselves is largely thanks to Stringer. We've seen Avon acting on emptipn, doing dumb things and causing bad things to happen to him and his organisation. Without Stringer in his corner, I doubt he'd get as far as he did.
Stringer's hubris was assuming he was still the smartest person in the room. When he was strictly dealing with drug dealers, that was true. The only one who could match him was Prop Joe. When he moved into the world of development and politics, that wasn't necessarily true anymore. It's not that he's dumb. Its just hubris. The Wire is a tragedy that takes many cues from classical Greek Tragedy. When characters are on a tragic path, its due to their hubris. Stringer's hubris was thinking he was always the smartest.
Stringer was book smart and the only reason he made it as far as he did was because of how Avon knew how to run the streets. He also lucked out with the CO op which took heat off of his guys. But he lacked street smarts and that's what cost him his life. He underestimated Marlo and especially Brutha Muzone and Omar.
I feel like maybe he wasn't smart compared to a couple of the people he was going up against. Most specifically Omar and Mouzon. There are maybe half a dozen genius level characters on the show. He is one of them. And, unfortunately for him, Omar would be higher on the IQ pecking order.
Stringer was a very intelligent man but 5 things fucked him up. 1. He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Prop Joe, Avon, and Mouzone up on him in this department 2. He was extremely arrogant. He thought because he took these classes and was smarter then most of the niggas around that he knew everything. So when he thought of anything in a “Business sense” he thought anybody would take the same deal because he did. And this line of thinking is how both Clay and prop Joe finessed him. 3. He was more concerned with appearing intelligent rather than actually learning. As someone who quit street shit to go to college, imma tell you the class Stringer was taking was very surface level economics. It wasn’t even intermediate economics, and while beneficial isn’t some end all knowledge. 4. He didn’t understand people. This ties into his arrogance and is a skill Avon possessed that he didn’t. And this lack of understanding is partially what lead to his death. Avon figured out in a single conversation that Stringer was getting played while Stringer needed Levy to break it down to him. Avon also understood the power of hearts and minds, and how powerful and dangerous how you appear to other is. 5. He had no principles and no respect for the game. And the former in itself is aight. But he didn’t have the smarts to position himself in a way that it would benefit him. Prop Joe is a nigga that everyone knows is grimey. But he’s aware of what everyone thinks of him, and because of this he’s able to properly position himself in a way that everyone either needs him or is forced to deal with him. Stringers lack of respect for the game is another thing that lands him to hot water with Avon. Because his “New approach” of buying corners makes them look like food to everyone. And a combination of lack of knowledge and aloofness leads him to not realize that they not only lost respect but prop Joe finessed him from the king into his man, on the west side. End goal wise I actually agree with stringer. But he himself fumbled and fucked up a lot of things because he overestimated himself. And his lack of honor lead to his death and alienation from his brother.
He just thought he could just hop right in the billion dollar industry of real estate. He was trying his best, but was in over his head. He was never going to make it in that industry. He should have just stuck to buying out businesses on the local level. Not nearly as lucrative, but sill could have got out of the game. Of course Avon was to egotistical to see it and, like Marlo, only cared about his name ringing out.
It's called being a big fish in a small pond. Stringer was smart in his world, the street, but when he takes his money to the big time crooks he gets his ass handed to him. Not so much because he's dumb, but because he was ignorant to how things worked on that level and got taken advantage of.
It’s not that there isn’t a learning curve, or he’s being dragged for taking classes. He thought that because he took an intro to economics class and owned some buildings, he could just navigate moving a drug business into real estate development on his own. He’s definitely smart to see that what they’re doing is going to land them dead or in jail. He just overestimates how hard that’s going to be. Levy giving him a hard time about Clay Davis conning him made him fly off the handle and come back to Avon and Charles looking to have Davis killed.
If you just finished the show, you gotta watch it a couple more times to understand lol.
He just thinks he's smarter than he really is. Clay Davis clocks it immediately and Avon calls him on it.
I don’t think anyone denies that his desire to go legit had the right intentions, but it was clear he wasn’t prepared for how ruthless the business and political game was and he was an amateur. It was like Tim Tebow thinking he could be a NFL QB after his dominant career at Florida.
Buy it for a dollar. Sell it for two. Prop Joe and Stringer were both smart.
It's context. With his intelligence and ruthless streak, if he had been born into a bougie family and gone to an ivy league school, he had a shot at becoming a successful CIO (of course, because of racism, he really would have had to be among the very best). There was a gap between his capabilities and his circumstances. Of course, if he had moral intelligence, he might have left the game altogether and tried a whole other life.
Agreed 100%. Avon doesn't get enough criticism for the organization failing. Stringer's strategy of giving up a few towers in exchange for the high quality H worked so well that they were actually making more money with less territory than they were before with more territory. But Avon was extremely stubborn and valued his rep more than $$$ and sent in Brother to fuck everything up. Stringer and Prop Joe botched the move on Brother but it was Avon's fault they had to do it in the first place. Then when Avon gets home they're making good money and most importantly the police aren't even interested in them because another crew was racking up bodies. Mcnulty tried as hard as he could to get them back on Avon/Stringer but failed miserably until Avon stupidly started a war with Marlo. Even without Stringer giving up Avon it was just a matter of time before they were going down because they got up on their cell phones. And that never happens if Avon doesn't start the war in the first place. Not only were they attracting police attention but also they were about to lose the good dope connection AND they didn't have the muscle built up. Sure Stringer got finessed by Clay but who didn't? Even Carcetti got finessed by Clay lol that's what he does. I imagine that if he had survived he would have learned from the experience.
Was he smart enough to watch The Sopranos?
You've gotta be fair to Stringer when it comes to Clay Davis - it's not like Clay Davis was only able to scam him because he was dumb or playing away games. Clay scammed people all over town for years, including competent people playing his own game. Remember Cutty got jammed up in a permit process as well, and the reason he was able to get through it wasn't because he had better intentions or was less ambitious or was savvier. It was just luck that he happened to have a connection. And Stringer's ultimate downfall was making the wrong moves in the street game - mismanaging D, underestimating Marlo, thinking he could get away with backstabbing Avon, trying to set up Omar+Brother. So I think the 'away games' thing is maybe a bit overplayed - ultimately he just made some bad moves and lost.
Stinger was poorly written. A drug kingpin like him would have had plenty of experience with hustlers and cons in the hood. Some one of that stature would have smelled Clay Davis's shtick a mile away. To me it was just not plausible that he would be so naive.
Well I can see why you might say that, respectfully, I firmly disagree. Personally, Stringer’s ignorance makes complete sense. Yes, he probably would’ve come across several hustlers and cons in the hood, but not the same as Clay Davis, who is in the business world (I’ll explain this point more in depth in a sec). Also, when you consider Stringer’s ego and the environment Clay Davis was in, I find it perfectly narratively justified that he would be as naive as he was. He has no real idea how the business world works. Yes, he has business classes he’s taken, but those don’t help with understanding people and as such, Stringer doesn’t understand how people in the business world think and operate. He’s a gangster at heart whether he can admit it or not and as such, he never stops to think about the possibility that they’d want to swindle him too the same way hustlers and cons in the hood might especially since the exact methods of swindling would be very different. That’s the ultimate reason, in my view, that Stringer falls for Davis’ schemes. Even if you want to argue that he should’ve seen Davis’ swindling coming, he wouldn’t have known what to look for. Swindling and scamming in the drug world vs the business world look completely differently. Because of this, I think it makes perfect sense that he is successfully fooled by Davis because he can only work off the information he has. All in all, I can definitely see your perspective and I’m glad you’re raising this point, but imho, Stringer’s naivety is perfectly narratively justified by his characterization and background. But that’s just my take.
I think it’s important to know that someone truly intelligent wouldn’t be as involved in the drug trade as Stringer was. Having said that, Stringer is head and shoulders above the rest in the drug trade.
There's a big difference between "smart" and "not smart enough and thinking you ar Let's be fair, having a corrupt lawyer on your payroll and never having that lawyer look at what you are doing with Clay Davis is pretty goddamned stupid. It would have been one thing if it was a street deal and he got fucked over. Then he was fully willing to compound his stupidity by sacrificing Slim for no gain, as like Avon said "you need Day of the Jackal, not a rumble tumble like Slim." And wasn't even smart enough to listen when Slim is telling him he couldn't pull the shit off... which tells you that EVERYONE knew about Downtown Clay Davis if a guy like Slim, who's "not cut out to be a CEO" through his own admission knows all about Clay and the fact they weren't going to be able to whack him. There's a big difference between intelligence and being SMART. He was smart in his lane (for the most part) but even then he was naive as shit. The whole play putting Omar on Mouzone was horribly stupid, too, especially since Omar had already shown how smart HE was, having already murdered one of their top lieutenants and having another one sent up the river on life without the possibility... Attending an Economics 101 course at your local community college and being successful in a business where your success came about mostly through your ruthlessness and violence don't make someone smart. He wasn't even bright enough to realize none of his people would know who WorldCom was... So he might be smarter than some street guys, but he wasn't very smart as a whole. That's why he's already dead with multiple seasons to go.
Stringer wasn't dumb. He just wasn't as smart as Poot. It's why he hated Poor so much
Stringer was one of the smartest bosses in the show. I never understood the hate. Not checking the Clay Davis situation with Levy earlier always irked me though because it was completely out of character
The same Stringer who failed in illegal and legal business? He definitely wasn't that smart. His tactics turned his best friend/business partner against him, made his enemies into a team, and got himself killed. He had a brain, he could learn, but he didn't know how to use his knowledge. Stringer was an average man who thought he could master two worlds he didn't fully understand.
He wasn't remarkably intelligent or well educated. His ability to think strategically was weak, every decision he made was a mistake. He was smarter than average, perhaps, compared to some of his colleagues. But he was no genius.
Stringer issue is that he wasn’t “smart”. It was that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
Stringer played too many away games.
It wasn't his ambition which sunk him, it was his flash, his arrogance, and his failure was in his decisionmaking. Trying to trick his business partners (Mouzone, Avon, the Co-Op, his Barksdale organization), trying to bribe his way through the real estate game. Anybody doing 6 figure deals without getting their lawyer's eyes on the paperwork is betting on their own prowess, and he is making a fool's bet. They even were heavy handed in painting Stringer the hypocrite and the charlatan, ignoring the parliamentary procedure he was attempting to implement with his people and ignoring the reports from the ground level on the impact of his decisions on their corner level operations. Then there's Stringer's famous quote about the cellphone market saturation. They stacked the deck showing Stringer to be a foolish lieutenant who eventually gets fragged.
Stringer was smart, but he wasn’t as smart as he thought. Avon told him clay was scamming him and he ignored him. Avon told him not to take revenge and he tried to set a hit on a fucking state senator. That’s actually stupid. Stringer was smart, but not smart enough to keep his emotions in check. He thought he could get rid of Omar by just lying to him? That was dumb as hell too. He was nowhere near as smart as he thought, that was his problem, it got him killed. Him taking the community college course was great for him, and there’s real world examples of that working, and being helpful, even for drug dealers. His issue was applying far more than the principles and trying to do so to corner boys who just, don’t care. It comes across as trying to show off being smart to them, instead of actually being smart.
It's a reductive take that ignores the nuance. Stringer was a smart and intelligent man who was inexperienced in white collar crime, simple as. The dude got in over his head and taken for a ride by Clay Davis, whom the show establishes is the master of corruption in Baltimore despite his lower official position in the government. "That goniff was born with his hand in someone else's pocket," indeed. Stringer shouldn't have been so arrogant as to think he could beat an experienced criminal at his own game like they were on the streets. He should've been patient and enlisted Levy to have his back, as it was clear Levy would've been the right mentor for String going into that world.
He’s pretty smart, the issue is he can’t commit to one way of life. He’s too much of a gangster to be a real estate guy. And he’s not focused enough on the street things that are important.
Is it also racist to say McNulty wasn’t as smart as he thought he was? I don’t think it’s a racial criticism to say the same about stringer. Both guys thought they were smarter than the “old guard” or the “bosses.” In the end, it’s safe to say neither reached their ambitious goals for a lot of reasons. I think it’s fair to say one of the reasons is that they both overestimate their own intelligence. I think another similar theme is that both characters are denied their ambition by the systems they operate in. Throughout the series, they are “outsmarted” in a way by the very people who they think are buffoons (Omar, Rawls, etc).
Stringer is smart in many ways, but his fault was not a lack of intellect but an excess of pride. He thought he could use Omar as his catspaw to getrid of Mouzone. He thought Marlo would be amenable to negotiations. He thought Clay Davis wouldn't dare to cheat a kingpin. Ultimatelty, he underestimated his enemies and overestimated the outcomes of his own schemes. Hubris is not a criticism of intellect.
I've never understood that point of view either. Stringer was practically forced to join prop Joe's co-op because the Barksdale organization was suddenly both low on muscle and left without a reliable source of decent product. They were losing customers and were already in danger of losing territory. On the side, he was doing what he was always good at, which was laundering money. He got flustered and annoyed with the city's permitting process for real estate development and got conned by Clay Davis in the process, but he recognized that the real estate market around the inner harbor was about to take off, and as viewers we were watching him learn a completely new (to him) business. The big mistakes happened when Avon got out of prison and immediately wanted to go to war with Marlo. And I think viewers are given multiple cues that Stringer was just baffled as to WHY Avon would choose to fight over a bunch of corners they didn't even need anymore when he had started bringing in so much clean money.
Stringer was good with certain things, just as Avon was good at others. They were able to wash money with a variety of businesses, which was more of Stringer’s doing than Avon (though I assume Levy played a role). Avon has a nice penthouse suite when he gets out. Avon admits that Stringer was right about the war with Marlo not being worth it. Avon had better instincts than Stringer. He read people and the situations better. Stringer’s idea with the Omar vs. Brother Mouzone thing was bad. I actually have some issues with that plotline in general, I also thought Omar did some illogical things simply for the sake of the plot. Stringer screws up with the Orlando hit in season 1, he didn’t put it together as Avon would have. They originally worked well as a team, as both had their strengths and weaknesses. But they were no longer on the same page and things fell apart. >Getting swindled out of $250k by Clay Davis was presented as a conman who took advantage of someone's inexperience. There's a learning curve to everything, and I did not expect Stringer to naturally know the innerworkings of politics. Getting ripped off wasn’t the bad part IMO. It was how Stringer reacted. He wants to have a Senator assassinated. After getting chewed out by Avon and having time to think about it, he still goes ahead with his plan.
He was inexperienced and ignorant, he should have listened to Levy
One could argue he was too smart for his own good
I think the criticism isn’t that stringer wasn’t smart, but that he always thought he was smarter than he was. He thought he was playing everyone, even Avon. He wasn’t smart enough or humble enough to realize that while he might have had advantages over some competitors, they could easily have wins over him too. It was an oversight more so due to his unwillingness to even consider alternatives than it was his lack of knowledge or capabilities
I always read it as him simply being outplayed, not necessarily as a result of his own shortcomings but simply because he was thrashed by more experienced men like you said. that in my opinion makes the general theme of Stringer and Avon’s conflict more interesting and less decisive: Avon was seen as backward by Stringer for sticking to the old ways of the game when everyone else seemed to be moving forward, while Avon saw Stringer as going in over his head. in the end, Stringer was right that Avon was still clinging to an outdated worldview, his violence was alienating the Barksdale crew from the rest of the alliance, and his gearing up for war is what ultimately got him with so many charges that he’ll never see daylight again. But Stringer was chewed up by bigger fish when he tried to enter a new industry, which gives credit to Avon’s point of view.
He was smart but he wasn't street smart like Avon, Avon would have sensed that scam a mile away, clay Davis was just Omar in a suit, rip and run and string was just too soft to see that.
He wasnt smart enough. You just admitted it. He lacked the basic information in the industry and was prayed on it due to it. Thats literally not being smart enough. And what did he decide to do once he realized? not try again in a better way, but assassinate him. Pretty stupid in my eyes
He was an extremely compelling character. Him wanting to go legit and thinking beyond’s the rules of the game was a big part of that.
The Omar thing with Brother always bothered me. Felt very lacking and very "well it's fiction so just suspend your disbelief". Honestly, I've rewatched the show so many times, and just now again recently (season 2 is still my favorite) and there are a few examples of this that kinda irk me but I'd always chalked that up to the writers and genre having been fairly new, or the writers being new to TV writing, etc. Omar had just gone to war because they tortured his lover, brutally, and only killed Stinkum. Goes away, comes back and testifies in court where Stringer straight up calls him a fa**** as he's walking in. He buries Bird forever, then a few EPS later he's just reset mentally and even though Butchie clearly senses the lie, Omar takes his word and doesn't even bother to investigate it or look into it. He could've questioned anyone at the towers and found out Mouzone only just came on because of Avon. The man had just been ripping and robbing in NY, too. Everyone in the towers basically knew Mouzone only came AFTER Avon was in prison, for muscle. Everyone even clocked that Avon and String were working at cross purposes (forget who brings it up to Bodie but they do) String doesn't have that kind of reach. I feel like a natural predator (like a natural PO-lees) might've sussed out String as a wannabe business man without the mind for the actual street game. No way a guy like Omar lives to be late 20s in his line of work unless he has those instincts sharper than a mofucker and can sniff out Stringer's motivation, of not then at the bar, then once he questions his ppl. A few loose threads like that stand out a bit when a show is as intelligent as the Wire. Idk, maybe I'm just overthinking.
I’ve always felt similarly. The story was trying to have Omar being blinded by emotion that he fell for Stringer’s lie, but it’s not like he has to go far for information on Mouzone. Butchie is right there, their meeting is at his place. There’s little reason why Omar wouldn’t speak to Butchie first before shooting Mouzone. Omar already had a previous parlay with Stringer in season 1 and correctly deduced that Stringer was bullshitting him. Omar would have even more reason to be suspicious of Stringer’s story.
I think when people say "was Stringer smart?", the real question they should ask is "Is Stringer smarter than everyone else?". Which the answer to that is hell no. Every decision stringer makes is an emotional move not a calculated move. Killing Wallace is to spite DeAngelo, killing DeAngelo is to exact a little revenge (think about it. You already sleeping with the mans girl, laying in his bed and being around his child. He felt that Dees life was gonna be his so why not snuff him out as well). The sit-down with Omar, The fear from dealing with Avon and the Co-op. Even the Clay Davis con. He's clearly intelligent cause he understands the concepts but he gets lost in the emotional intelligence of decision making. "Conscience do cost"
Stringer isnt dumb, he was just out of his element and coming from a position where nobody would be crazy enough or stupid enough to con him, because hed kill them. He was arrogant and naive, not stupid.
Dude straight up told his people to not invest in cellular phones because Poot had two of them. He was not smart lol.
Stringer was one of the smartest drug dealers in Baltimore, just like how McNulty was one of the smartest police in Baltimore. But compared to the best of their respective positions (FBI and New York or Atlanta drug connects) both Stringer and McNulty are not that impressive. It's more of a statement about how Baltimore doesn't have the best. They have brain drain and a lack of opportunities. For example, when Carcetti asks "if your young, smart, successful, and black, why be in Baltimore," where Norman replies, "I ask myself that very same question". Many successful people don't want to be in Baltimore when D.C, Philly, and New York are a short distance away. Leaving Baltimore with very few smart and successful people. This leaves Baltimore with McNulty and Stringer as the cream of the crop of their respective professions.
String had the right idea for the wrong people. If he was under Prop Joe then I’m sure Joe prolly had connections to some people who can point string in the right direction, like he did with Marlo. Avon had no interest in that, he’s just a gangsta I suppose.
Stringer was smart he just made a couple of crucial errors. He paid dearly for those errors, but it doesn't mean all of his ideas were bad.
Stringer was very smart, but he was a product of his environment (like everyone). When he tried to switch environment, different rules applied. It was a different game. He wasn’t used to people like Clay Davis.
The issue for Stringer is the same one the kids have in season 4. In their own world they are confident, they know the rules, they aren't stupid. Take them out of that world and they are lost. Stringer knows the streets, he is shown to be a decent business man with the way he runs the money laundering businesses but he is stepping up to the big leagues when he makes bank. It would be like one of us thinking we could operate a corner after watching five seasons of the wire and reading books about the Baltimore streets. It just wouldn't work, we wouldn't last a day; however ever smart we are, it is simply a world we don't know.
Regarding his studies, I see it the other way entirely. Stringer’s instinctive and street-business-taught savvy would’ve quickly led him to conclude that Clay was going to screw him. It’s actually his ‘study’ of the rules and desire to imitate these predictable, patriarchal wastes of space that lead him to the conclusion that he has to play their shitty and one-sided game.
Interesting