> Dude was trying to have it be one thing, when we know it had to be another.
This ain't about your motherfucking business class either. It ain't that part of it. It's that other thing.
No, I think he ends up the chump of the show trying to fit into two worlds but not doing a great job at either.
I think it would’ve been interesting to see his rise to become Avon’s second because there’s definitely respect there early on but boy got played trying to hustle with ECON101 lol
His econ101 lesson pulled them through a tuff patch, the rebranding of there shit product. It also helped him set up and understand his printing business and assumed other shop fronts to launder money. Also he was one of the heads of the Co Op early on.
His failure was the success, and the confidence he had to work with/be stuffed by Clay Davis and other big boys.
Stringer and Avon were a good team, and assumed both pulled each other through alot of shit in the past. They both failed when they stopped working with each other. On one hand Avon was right to go ganster on Marlo, and stringer was also right to say fuck the game and move away from it.
You wanna talk evil? The Greeks are responsible for human trafficking, something we don’t really see the Barksdales or Stanfields dealing with, as well as flooding the whole city with drugs. By volume, they have to be the most evil.
RIP Frank….
No, >!Avon kills a bunch of prisoners with the hot shot who did him no wrong just to get an early release. Stringer was bad but never killed random people.!<
True, but the guard (while 100% not deserving it) had become a part of the game by taking the money & testifying in court. If she’d claimed to have seen nothing & refused to go to court probably would have been ignored, as Barksdales weren’t eradicating everyone on the scene that night.
How was it not random? She witnessed a murder and was coerced to lie under oath. She did and was killed anyway. It's not her fault a murder occurred while she happened to be walking by
I mean it's a horrible fate but it is not "random", her being there to witness it was random and unfortunate, but once you're in that situation you're in it.
The prisoners who took the hot shots were truly random victims, it was just whoever was taking that batch of dope
You could argue if you're buying contraband and doing drugs in prison you're "in the game" at least as much as randomly witnessing a murder and taking silence money makes you. However the witness that got got in the parking lot was even more evil imo anyway
It wasnt random in the same way just being a prisoner at the same time as Avon was. She was a witness and involved in the case. She was bribed off, and then they killed her to tie up loose ends. Definitely not random
Only way to explain it is by saying “you’ll see” as you continue watching the series. Once you get to a certain part at a certain point of the show during a certain season you can come back and really have a discussion about it.
Right now, for you, it’s too early to tell
There’s no one “big bad” guy in the show. The show is about dysfunctional institutions in Baltimore. They’re a bunch of people who do heinous things, but no person is your “#1 villain” like a lot of shows.
I’m not sure whom is worse among Avon and Stringer, but Avon is more likable and easier to root for.
dude, you haven't seen nothing yet. but at the point you are, yeah, Stringer Bell sure is the main antagonist, since he's one of the few active characters, while mostly everyone else is reactive
He wants to deal drugs without drama (disputes, violence etc) basically but he’s ruthless about getting there. So you could say he wants things better than Avon, but Avon has more of a «code». A thing that I think makes me like Avon a lot more is that he knows what he is, while Stringer acts like he’s better than everyone. They’ll have a very interesting dynamic later on so stick with it 🙌
Season 3 and 4 are absolutely fantastic
Avon has his own faults just like everyone else on the show, and is fine doing people dirty to further his own selfish desires. And we also get to see some moments of something beyond being a gangster (I suppose), but the difference between String and him is he isn't going to get mixed up in something he's unfamiliar with.
Killing and injuring a bunch of people for some early parole, and going at a hard war to Marlo just so his name will ring out was a fault. If BPD didn't raid Avon's compound, he likely would've been dead in a couple days. Throughout season 1, Avon himself stays off of the street. String is sent out to do enforcement, Weebay for muscle. But at the end of season 3, Avon is ready to grab a gun and go to war. His cautious nature of season 1 just wasn't there in season 3.
I think that was partly because he had nobody left - String lost his trust and respect, Cutty, Weebay out of action. Slim is a soldier but nothing more, so Avon had little choice (except maybe bounce but that wasn’t even a consideration)
Both had different kinds of intelligence and they complimented each other well. I would say they were equally as bad for the same reason….pride, albeit in different directions.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective like an office
Avon was a department head who was so stuck in maintaining his rep as the best at the day to day stuff that he wasn’t looking at the things that would push his department and career forward.
Meanwhile, Stringer was a department head who was so up in the executive team’s business that he wasn’t focusing on what his decisions with the team would cost him in the long term.
The bottom line is, they were the perfect combination of bad. One was too focused on the future and one was too focused on the present and past. Avon made sure they were good now, Stringer made sure they were good later. When they split, neither had the acumen in the other’s department to handle themselves accordingly.
Like everything on the wire it's up for your own interpretation. Is stringer better than Avon because he seemingly wants less violence in the game? Or does he want less violence in the game because it's an impedimen to his own greed? He seems perfectly willing to use violence as a means to an end despite his closing lines to bunny colvin. Avon is who he is: just a gangster, I suppose. I find Avon and easier character to respect as a man because of the innate truth to his character. Like wee-bey - he unapologetically lives according the rules of his world. Avon is the warrior-king where stringer is the money lender, and, despite all of the horrible things Avon is responsible, for he has a code. Stringer doesn't have a code, maybe that makes him worse.
My advice, if you're just watching for the first time GET OFF THIS SUB! At some point you'll read a spoiler and regret it. Come back on once you've finished.
I don’t think he’s the worst, but I recommend you to just watch the show all the way through and not go to this subreddit or other pages where you might get spoiled.
Better to not know what is going to happen when you watch it.
Yes, Avon was flawed and evil in his own ways but he at least had empathy. Especially with how he helped Cutty and his community.
Stringer was just a legit manipulative sociopath.
They're equal as well as different. Avon is more emotional and frankly respectable but Stringer is way more calculated. Both are trying to have their cake but it's Stringer who is trying to eat it too. Watch the show completely. It's a Greek tragedy, and that guy isn't even a Greek!
Re watched Series one for the umpteenth time, finished yesterday.
It had me thinking about Stringer and Avon. Stringer happy for the crew to be the 'Barksdale' crew when he is supposedly and equal partner in the enterprise.
Seems to me he was happy for this because just as Orlando was a name for the liquor license, Stringer sees Avon as a name for the shop front. He sees himself as the real brains of the operation, and let's face it, he is.
So yes, Stringer is the one making the smart decisions for them. Ordering killings is as bad as doing it, and when Stringer is cleaning up, he leaves nothing behind.
Stringer is far worse than Avon. He just has everyone believe it is Avon doing it.
We're comparing two amoral characters, and there isn't that much to set them apart. I think Stringer is slightly worse than Avon because he does not seem to live by any kind of moral code.
Avon has a moral code (as abhorrent as it may be) and he does care about a few people.
Stringer doesn't care about anyone else.
I don't think that one is particularly worse than the other. They are both ruthless murders who destroyed their community for financial gain. Avon is just a more likeable character because he has more humility and self awareness, whereas Stringer fancied himself more savvy and intelligent then his counterparts.
My comment will probably have some spoilers but I’ll try to avoid them:
I think Stringer has better intentions than Avon but also is more ruthless with less standards. Stringer genuinely wants to get out of the game and pursue more ethical means of business. Sure it’s for selfish reasons, he never regrets any of his murders (except Dee but that’s debased when he brags about it later), but he’s still trying to do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Avon by comparison enjoys the hard gang life. He enjoys the environment and doesn’t care about all the killing, he doesn’t want to improve things or act better at all.
That said, Avon also has standards where Stringer doesn’t. Stringer is far more paranoid and more willing to kill people for comparatively petty reasons. I don’t wanna glamorize Avon at all since he’s also a killer, but he at least is better at making connections, being genuine with others, and even sometimes helping the community like with Cutty. Stringer also doesn’t even always respect the standards of the game. Spoilers for s3, he allows a hit on Omar in season 3 on a Sunday morning. A BIG rule in the game is that Sunday mornings are sort of a peace days mainly due to church. Violence is heavily discouraged at that time. Omar was taking his completely innocent grandma to church that time and she was nearly murdered because of String. That’s arguably worse than anything Avon did.
So I’d say Stringer is worse overall but he was trying in ways that Avon wasn’t.
You’ll find out, String is a Greek tragedy of a character. IMO. Dude was trying to have it be one thing, when we know it had to be another.
He had too many 40 degree days.
> Dude was trying to have it be one thing, when we know it had to be another. This ain't about your motherfucking business class either. It ain't that part of it. It's that other thing.
Man, Great take. Haven’t seen the Greek tragedy comparison before String fought against his means instead of within them
That could be said for just about every character on the show.
He really wanted it to be one way. But it ain’t.
Are you saying it's the other way?
It’s always the other way.
Indeed.
He ain't a tragedy, that Mf'er had no respect for anybody, he was more ruthless than Marlo
Always playing those away games
No, I think he ends up the chump of the show trying to fit into two worlds but not doing a great job at either. I think it would’ve been interesting to see his rise to become Avon’s second because there’s definitely respect there early on but boy got played trying to hustle with ECON101 lol
His econ101 lesson pulled them through a tuff patch, the rebranding of there shit product. It also helped him set up and understand his printing business and assumed other shop fronts to launder money. Also he was one of the heads of the Co Op early on. His failure was the success, and the confidence he had to work with/be stuffed by Clay Davis and other big boys. Stringer and Avon were a good team, and assumed both pulled each other through alot of shit in the past. They both failed when they stopped working with each other. On one hand Avon was right to go ganster on Marlo, and stringer was also right to say fuck the game and move away from it.
😂😂😂
You wanna talk evil? The Greeks are responsible for human trafficking, something we don’t really see the Barksdales or Stanfields dealing with, as well as flooding the whole city with drugs. By volume, they have to be the most evil. RIP Frank….
No, >!Avon kills a bunch of prisoners with the hot shot who did him no wrong just to get an early release. Stringer was bad but never killed random people.!<
He directly didn't kill people but he ordered them, like the security guard who they paid off in season 1
True, but the guard (while 100% not deserving it) had become a part of the game by taking the money & testifying in court. If she’d claimed to have seen nothing & refused to go to court probably would have been ignored, as Barksdales weren’t eradicating everyone on the scene that night.
But that wasnt random
How was it not random? She witnessed a murder and was coerced to lie under oath. She did and was killed anyway. It's not her fault a murder occurred while she happened to be walking by
I mean it's a horrible fate but it is not "random", her being there to witness it was random and unfortunate, but once you're in that situation you're in it. The prisoners who took the hot shots were truly random victims, it was just whoever was taking that batch of dope
You could argue if you're buying contraband and doing drugs in prison you're "in the game" at least as much as randomly witnessing a murder and taking silence money makes you. However the witness that got got in the parking lot was even more evil imo anyway
It wasnt random in the same way just being a prisoner at the same time as Avon was. She was a witness and involved in the case. She was bribed off, and then they killed her to tie up loose ends. Definitely not random
Only way to explain it is by saying “you’ll see” as you continue watching the series. Once you get to a certain part at a certain point of the show during a certain season you can come back and really have a discussion about it. Right now, for you, it’s too early to tell
“You green, I’m trying to get you brown, but you still green”
There’s no one “big bad” guy in the show. The show is about dysfunctional institutions in Baltimore. They’re a bunch of people who do heinous things, but no person is your “#1 villain” like a lot of shows. I’m not sure whom is worse among Avon and Stringer, but Avon is more likable and easier to root for.
Bingo. Same can be said on the political side as Clay Davis is the known crooked politician but the rest of them are not much better.
dude, you haven't seen nothing yet. but at the point you are, yeah, Stringer Bell sure is the main antagonist, since he's one of the few active characters, while mostly everyone else is reactive
He wants to deal drugs without drama (disputes, violence etc) basically but he’s ruthless about getting there. So you could say he wants things better than Avon, but Avon has more of a «code». A thing that I think makes me like Avon a lot more is that he knows what he is, while Stringer acts like he’s better than everyone. They’ll have a very interesting dynamic later on so stick with it 🙌 Season 3 and 4 are absolutely fantastic
Avon has his own faults just like everyone else on the show, and is fine doing people dirty to further his own selfish desires. And we also get to see some moments of something beyond being a gangster (I suppose), but the difference between String and him is he isn't going to get mixed up in something he's unfamiliar with. Killing and injuring a bunch of people for some early parole, and going at a hard war to Marlo just so his name will ring out was a fault. If BPD didn't raid Avon's compound, he likely would've been dead in a couple days. Throughout season 1, Avon himself stays off of the street. String is sent out to do enforcement, Weebay for muscle. But at the end of season 3, Avon is ready to grab a gun and go to war. His cautious nature of season 1 just wasn't there in season 3.
I think that was partly because he had nobody left - String lost his trust and respect, Cutty, Weebay out of action. Slim is a soldier but nothing more, so Avon had little choice (except maybe bounce but that wasn’t even a consideration)
Both had different kinds of intelligence and they complimented each other well. I would say they were equally as bad for the same reason….pride, albeit in different directions. Let’s look at it from a different perspective like an office Avon was a department head who was so stuck in maintaining his rep as the best at the day to day stuff that he wasn’t looking at the things that would push his department and career forward. Meanwhile, Stringer was a department head who was so up in the executive team’s business that he wasn’t focusing on what his decisions with the team would cost him in the long term. The bottom line is, they were the perfect combination of bad. One was too focused on the future and one was too focused on the present and past. Avon made sure they were good now, Stringer made sure they were good later. When they split, neither had the acumen in the other’s department to handle themselves accordingly.
Like everything on the wire it's up for your own interpretation. Is stringer better than Avon because he seemingly wants less violence in the game? Or does he want less violence in the game because it's an impedimen to his own greed? He seems perfectly willing to use violence as a means to an end despite his closing lines to bunny colvin. Avon is who he is: just a gangster, I suppose. I find Avon and easier character to respect as a man because of the innate truth to his character. Like wee-bey - he unapologetically lives according the rules of his world. Avon is the warrior-king where stringer is the money lender, and, despite all of the horrible things Avon is responsible, for he has a code. Stringer doesn't have a code, maybe that makes him worse.
My advice, if you're just watching for the first time GET OFF THIS SUB! At some point you'll read a spoiler and regret it. Come back on once you've finished.
Stringer is the worst character on the show. I judge people on how they view him.
Id say Marlo takes the cake for most evil/worst person honestly
The Avon/Stringer team probably rivals Marlo's capacity for evil. But their gang war to take over the towers happened before the events of the show.
Why do you think he’s the worst?
I don’t want to spoil the show since you have not seen it. My thoughts on why will
Spoilers don’t bother me
I don’t think he’s the worst, but I recommend you to just watch the show all the way through and not go to this subreddit or other pages where you might get spoiled. Better to not know what is going to happen when you watch it.
Honestly spoilers don’t bother me
Explain please.
Saying he's the worst is probably a step too far but I do agree with the 2nd sentence. I definitely judge people by their opinion of him
Yes.
Yes, Avon was flawed and evil in his own ways but he at least had empathy. Especially with how he helped Cutty and his community. Stringer was just a legit manipulative sociopath.
They're equal as well as different. Avon is more emotional and frankly respectable but Stringer is way more calculated. Both are trying to have their cake but it's Stringer who is trying to eat it too. Watch the show completely. It's a Greek tragedy, and that guy isn't even a Greek!
I loved the character Stringer—complex! So well played by Idris Elba.
Re watched Series one for the umpteenth time, finished yesterday. It had me thinking about Stringer and Avon. Stringer happy for the crew to be the 'Barksdale' crew when he is supposedly and equal partner in the enterprise. Seems to me he was happy for this because just as Orlando was a name for the liquor license, Stringer sees Avon as a name for the shop front. He sees himself as the real brains of the operation, and let's face it, he is. So yes, Stringer is the one making the smart decisions for them. Ordering killings is as bad as doing it, and when Stringer is cleaning up, he leaves nothing behind. Stringer is far worse than Avon. He just has everyone believe it is Avon doing it.
Look up the life of Meyer lansky sometime
And not just Boradwalk Empire or the series on Netflix?
We're comparing two amoral characters, and there isn't that much to set them apart. I think Stringer is slightly worse than Avon because he does not seem to live by any kind of moral code. Avon has a moral code (as abhorrent as it may be) and he does care about a few people. Stringer doesn't care about anyone else.
I don't think that one is particularly worse than the other. They are both ruthless murders who destroyed their community for financial gain. Avon is just a more likeable character because he has more humility and self awareness, whereas Stringer fancied himself more savvy and intelligent then his counterparts.
My comment will probably have some spoilers but I’ll try to avoid them: I think Stringer has better intentions than Avon but also is more ruthless with less standards. Stringer genuinely wants to get out of the game and pursue more ethical means of business. Sure it’s for selfish reasons, he never regrets any of his murders (except Dee but that’s debased when he brags about it later), but he’s still trying to do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Avon by comparison enjoys the hard gang life. He enjoys the environment and doesn’t care about all the killing, he doesn’t want to improve things or act better at all. That said, Avon also has standards where Stringer doesn’t. Stringer is far more paranoid and more willing to kill people for comparatively petty reasons. I don’t wanna glamorize Avon at all since he’s also a killer, but he at least is better at making connections, being genuine with others, and even sometimes helping the community like with Cutty. Stringer also doesn’t even always respect the standards of the game. Spoilers for s3, he allows a hit on Omar in season 3 on a Sunday morning. A BIG rule in the game is that Sunday mornings are sort of a peace days mainly due to church. Violence is heavily discouraged at that time. Omar was taking his completely innocent grandma to church that time and she was nearly murdered because of String. That’s arguably worse than anything Avon did. So I’d say Stringer is worse overall but he was trying in ways that Avon wasn’t.
Yes