Member Profile for bigantho1  -  272  Views

I'm new here, so I have to ask: Do you guys think Omar takes away from The Wire's realism? I do. A lot of the stuff he does seems too unlikely. He's like an action hero. Simon has said that Omar's individuality is symbolic of the fact that he doesn't belong to any institution, and thus, can play by his own rules. And as far as his survival on the streets goes, it's true that many stickup men have had long careers. But how has he been able to avoid prosecution for so long? It's true that he's been a big help to the police department, and that he doesn't harm civilians, and that the police don't investigate the murder of people in "the game" the same way that they do taxpayers, but still. A murder is a murder. Omar dropped Stinkum in Season 1. He was involved in the stash-house shootout that killed Tosha. He KILLED Stringer and his bodyguard. In real life, wouldn't someone as notorious as Omar have been pulled into a police line by now, and identified by SOMEBODY? He intimidated that one Bruiser guy after the Tosha incident, so that's one thing, but that Krawcheck guy sure could've ID'd him after he hit Stringer. The Bunk stays on his ass, but he always manages to avoid arrest. When Bunk bailed him out of jail last year, he told him that if he could go back on some of the other murders he dropped, he'd be going right back in. What does Omar say: "I know?" Huh? That's an admission. I know he found that police gun and all, but...actually, that's kind of my point: There always seems to be some kind of extenuating circumstance that keeps Omar from being locked up. He's a very good and likable man as far as stickup kids go, but he's also a murderer.

I've been doing some reading and looking at different opinions, and I've come to a possible theory (just testing it to see what you guys think) that The Wire isn't really all that realistic. Remember the famous 'fuck' scene between McNulty and Bunk, or the courthouse testimony by Omar, or the showdown in the alley between Omar and Mouzone, or Bunny legalizing drugs, or the idea of anyone agreeing to walk into a vacant building to be killed...does any of that seem believable? Would any of that happen in real life?

Whadayathink?