History Characters / TheWireBarksdaleOrganization

* HeterosexualLifePartners: Avon and Stringer, aka B&B have this dynamic in the first season, which gets strained in the second when Avon is in prison and Stringer figuratively gets into bed with Prop Joe without telling Avon, which is treated like Stringer having an affair behind Avon's back. In the third season, they play traditional gender roles; Stringer is the distant "husband" who arrives suitcase in hand, late and tired after a day's work, while Avon is the "housewife" who stays at home taking care of it and of the internal problems.

* BigBadWannabe: What he ultimately is. Stringer is smarter than the average Baltimore gangster, but he is only really educated and intelligent by the standards of his street peers, and worse he tends to misunderstand the nature of the game, to the point of Avon often having to correct him when he attempts reckless solutions to his problems (such as ordering a hit on a friggin' Senator). He overestimates his own intelligence and underestimates the intelligence of those around him as a result, not realising that street smarts matter more than college smarts when it comes to ''street'' crime. And as Avon points out, he may be too smart for his fellow criminals, but he might not be smart enough for the white collar world he aspires to, and is thus playing an intellectual more than actually being one.

* SmugSnake: While he is undoubtedly intelligent, he is only an educated character in a world full of BookDumb heroes and villains and thus, probably not quite as clever or refined as he would like to imagine himself to be. And he is so obsessed with climbing the social ladder that he underestimates or ignores the people from his own social class and fails to quite fit in, which is particularly dangerous given those people are murderous drug dealers who are not quite as dumb as he thinks they are.

* BigBadWannabe: What he ultimately is. Stringer is smarter than the average Baltimore gangster, but he is only really educated and intelligent by the standards of his street peers, and worse he tends to misunderstand the nature of the game, to the point of Avon often having to correct him when he attempts reckless solutions to his problems (such as ordering a hit on a prominent gangster). He overestimates his own intelligence and underestimates the intelligence of those around him as a result, not realising that street smarts matter more than college smarts when it comes to ''street'' crime. And as Avon points out, he may be too smart for his fellow criminals, but he might not be smart enough for the white collar world he aspires to, and is thus playing an intellectual more than actually being one.

* A soldier of the Barksdale organization. He shots Kima Greggs during a sting operation.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: A minor, background enforcer. His shooting of a police officer becomes a very serious, game-changing event. The police brass feel that they should respond in force and the Barksdale investigation suffers from it, as Daniels' detail has to hit the main stash prematurely, forcing B&B to change up and adapt, with Stringer getting away.
* StupidCrooks: In a display of poor judgement, he shoots Kima without the approval of Wee-Bey just because he's surprised by her presence,
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Killed by his bosses after proving to be unreliable and a weak link.

* IdiotBall: His usual shrewdness leaves the building when he tips his hand to Brother Mouzone by asking, in a surprised tone, about the existence of more than one assailant

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Even '''his own wife''' calls him "Bey".

* XanatosGambit: When he is caught for a murder, he gets the DA to agree to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for a full confession, then confesses to ''every'' murder the Barksdale Organization had committed.

An especially foul-mouthed and vicious soldier in the Barksdale crew, he is responsible for the murder of the State's Witness who testified against D'Angelo in episode 1 and played a large role in the torture and murder of Omar's lover Brandon. Those two acts come back to haunt him, as it makes him a major target of the police and makes Omar willing to cooperate with the cops and testify against Bird in court.

* PutOnABus: Life imprisonment without parole

A top enforcer in the Barksdale Organization who, along with Wee-Bey, participated in the shooting that nearly killed Kima. He surrenders himself to police custody afterwards, although thanks to Levy's legal magic he only gets sentenced to several years. After getting out of prison the Barksdales have fallen apart, so he joins the Stanfield crew. Is killed by Omar as part of his feud against Marlo.

'''Omar: ''' Bein' that you muscle for Marlo, what you was gonna do if you was there, huh? Riddle me that. Yeah. You know what, yo? ''(Omar shoots him in the head)''

[[folder: Other]]

!De'londa Brice
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/delonda_4592.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"What niggas call a dragon lady."'']]

-->''That boy need to get hard.''

Wife of Wee-bey and mother of Namond. Forces her son to become a drug dealer after no longer getting any money from the Barksdale Crew.

* AbusiveParents
* EvilMatriarch
* ItsAllAboutMe
* StageMom: A criminal version.
* TeachHimAnger: Tries to do this to Namond.

!Wendell "Orlando" Blocker

->'''Played by''': Clayton [=LeBouef=]

A front man for the Barksdale Organization, manager of the eponymous strip club Orlando's.

* BoxedCrook: After he's arrested, he has to play a key role in a sting operation. It goes awry.
* SpannerInTheWorks: As a figurehead, all he has to do is keeping a clean record. He starts derailing the organization when he begins to deal drugs on his own and gets busted by the cops.

!Sean "Shamrock" [=McGinty=]
->'''Played by:''' Richard Burton
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shamrockrobert_1264.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Laid back and shit."'']]

--> ''Robert Rules say we gotta have minutes for a meeting, right? These the minutes.''

Acting number two of the Barksdale organization during Avon's incarceration.

* NumberTwo: Stringer's second in command while Avon is in jail.
* ThePeterPrinciple: He's way out of his depth, but ranks high in the Barksdale organization because competent members grow increasingly scarce.
* PutOnABus: Arrested in the season 3 finale and never seen again.
* SophisticatedAsHell: A hoodlum with a dictionary. Stringer retooling the gang towards a parliamentary ThievesGuild leads to Shamrock overseeing or making several faux pas.
* StupidCrooks: A supervisor who can't even get rid of a gun properly. A prime contributor to [[SurroundedByIdiots Stringer's lack of amusement with his underlings]]
-->'''Stringer:''' Nigger, is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?

* ThoseTwoGuys: Always paired with Gerard.

* {{Badass}}: The last quality muscle of the Barksdale organization.

West-side drug kingpin, head of the eponymous Barksdale Organization. A vengeful but calculating gangster, he is a lifelong player of The Game and takes both it and his street reputation ''very'' seriously. He starts the show at the peak of his influence, outwitting police surveillance until he is eventually caught by a hidden camera. Influential even in prison, he attempts to run his criminal empire while behind bars, but his longtime friend and NumberTwo Stringer ends up making a couple major decisions behind Avon's back that forever change the direction fo the Barksdale Organization. He manages to orchestrate a scheme that gets him early parole (serving only a couple years of his seven year sentence), but when he's released, he finds that much of his best territory is in the hands of a rival drug crew. Against Stringer's advice, he starts a war with the rival Stanfield gang, which leads to Stringer betraying him by giving a tip to the cops. When the police catch him in a safehouse full of weapons, he is arrested and forced to serve out the remainder of his previous sentence with no hope of parole. Afterward, the Barksdale Organization collapses entirely, but he manages to retain some of his influence in prison.

* SympatheticCriminal: Most of the criminals on the show receive at least some sympathy, but D'Angelo in particular stands out.

'''Played by''': Clayton [=LeBouef=]

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: More on a meta-level. Two of the baddest killers around need to team up just to take him down. He does try to run at first, sure. But once he sees he can't get away, he stants tall and reaps what he had sewn.
* DragonAscendant: When Avon is caught on a hidden camera but he is not, that means de facto takes over the reins of the Barksdale group. At first he tries to continue coordinating the Organization's moves with Avon, but he increasingly becomes a DragonInChief and moves to truly take over the Organization.

* PragmaticVillainy: His market strategy abhorres violence not out of moral qualms but because it's bad for business and brings the attention of the law.

* SmartPeopleWearGlasses: Needs glasses to read, and is among the few people in his organization who actually does read. The glasses give him an intellectual aurea.

* SurroundedByIdiots: Sometimes PlayedForLaughs a bit, the more he interacts with his subordinates, the more it becomes evident. By season 3 you can tell this is going through his head as he tries to use his business smarts to reform the Barksdale gang. Comically agravatted by his use of advanced economics terms with barely literate underlings whose intelligence is [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttbQTz8tAE like a 40 degree day]].

* WrongGenreSavvy: He ends up treating the game like a gentlemen's or clinical world where market rules ultimately dictate everything, but the reality is more complex than what it's taught in college.

* SpannerInTheWorks: As a figurehead,all he has to do is keeping a clean record. He starts derailing the organization when he begins to deal drugs on his own and gets busted by the cops.

* SophisticatedAsHell: A hoodlum with a dictionary. Stringer retooling the gang towards a parliamentary ThievesGuild leads to Gerard overseeing or making several faux pas.
* StupidCrooks: He can't even get rid of a gun properly. A prime contributor to [[SurroundedByIdiots Stringer's lack of amusement with his underlings]]