The Wire: Season 5 Episode 8 (Spoilers!)

(Because, Indeed)

One more warning. SPOILERS! DO NOT READ if you didn't watch.

So half of my prediction of how awful 2008 will be came true.

Omar is dead. Killed on some City of God type shit. Knockout Ned RIP. If you don't know what I am talking about, please watch City of God.

As much as I wanted Omar to have some dramatic rainy showdown with Marlo after waging a series of urban terror attacks to draw him out, I knew that type of ending would not be true to the show.

Omar had to die on some bullshit.

The Associated Press of all places, has a pretty good eulogy to Omar.

• Omar had been in danger for a while. Targeted by Marlo's killers, he miraculously escaped a trap by leaping from a sixth-story balcony. Then he vengefully limped around the streets on a makeshift crutch as he harassed Marlo's minions.

  Viewers who paid close attention to Kenard were rewarded: As other fled in terror from Omar, the boy made a point of how unimpressed he was with the injured gunslinger.

  Williams brought a foreboding sadness to his performance in this, the show's fifth and final season. Omar lacked his usual swagger; he became reckless, desperate, alone.

  "You kind of see that he feels like the last of a dying breed," Williams said. "All the blood that's on his hands, it all comes to a head. At least that's where I was mentally when I was doing those scenes."

  Inspired by real stickup men series creator David Simon met during his time as a crime reporter for The Sun, Omar was also larger than life, with his intelligence, rigorous moral code and florid, profanity-free speaking style ("indeed"). Plus, he was gay, a fascinating wrinkle.

  While robbing drug dealers was lucrative for Omar, he often did good deeds and was hailed by critics and fans as a modern-day Robin Hood. As he told drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield while robbing him at a poker game, "Money ain't got no owners. Only spenders."

  Even presidential contender Barack Obama expressed his admiration for Omar — albeit with the caveat that he didn't endorse Omar's behavior.

A president who loves the Wire. The possibilities that provides are too much to go into right now.

What is hard for me to get is how many fans don't get this show or the Sopranos. So many people were pissed with how the Sopranos ended and it seems the same morons wanted some Neo/Mr. Smith Matrix showdown with Omar and Marlo.

• "His murder was swift and unexpected, probably not unlike the way many guys in his line of work meet their ends," fan Anthony Wilson wrote on his blog. But the stark realism of Omar's death stood in contrast to the optimism he represented.

  "He beat the odds time and again over five seasons," Wilson wrote. "I thought Omar was supposed to prosper. Why get him got now? Doesn't make sense to me."

  Williams, though, is prospering. Omar was the first recurring TV role for the 42-year-old actor, who acquired his distinctive facial scar when he was slashed with a razor during a bar fight. The wrap party for the show's fourth season was modeled after a high school prom and graduation, and it was an emotional night for Williams, a high school dropout who grew up in rough East Flatbush, Brooklyn. (My damn neighborhood)
  

He died because he was alone, no backup, no car, a broken leg and the entire drug dealing establishment out to kill him. He's not Batman, he had to catch one to the dome. This isn't Batman: Year One.

Reading HBO message boards is nauseating because there are so many stupid people on there but I saw one post that is pretty on point

• cliffg3134
  
  Posts: 53
  Registered: 1/28/07

  (14 of 146) Re: Episode 58: Clarifications Feb 21, 2008 10:21 AM Report Abuse

  The Kennard scene all makes sense if you go back in watch the episodes from season 3 in which omar was involved in that gun fight in which tasha was killed. When Bunk got to the scene Kennard was one of the three kids acting like they were Omar. If you sit down and think about it, Kennard idolized Omar and Omar let him down when he showed up on there corner in Season 5. He saw that Omar wasnt all that he thought he built up to be so he acted out of dissapointment. -- Game's the same, jus got more fierce

That is a great point. What better way to be your hero than to kill him in the sick diseased mind of the inner city.

And his death actually gave a key piece of info to the Baltimore PD to bring down Marlo. Two Eps left... I can't deal.

Now to completely destroy my year, Vic Mackey will be killed on the Shield.
I just feel it coming and I am still not ready.

Pour one out for Omar, the most compelling and idiosyncratic character to grace TV in quite some time.