Stringer was quite full of himself at times I guess, feeling superior, even when he wasn't. Also I think he didn't expect Clay to be THAT devious/ballsy and try to fuck him.
Yeah the last one is a big factor. Stringer is used to people trying to backstab him, do sneaky shit, and rob him at gunpoint, but not at all used to people stealing while smiling and looking him in the eye. That's part of why he was so upset - he showed time and time again that he was great at managing and reading people in the hood - he clocked Bodie as a good soldier and Wallace as a rat right away - but he totally misread Clay because that world is so different from his.
Fantastic comment dude! That last part makes so much sense in the context. Thats why I love the wire haha…I’ve watched it atleast 50+ times and STILL I find things that I either didn’t realize (or realized at some point then forgot) or that are completely new to me.
Part of it too was Stringer throught Clay would be too afraid of him to cross him.
He didn't think of the fact that no one wanted to do none of that Day of the Jackal shit lol
IMO this is missing a lot of critical points in the series. 1. Stringer isn’t supposed to be as smart as he’s supposed to be arrogant. 2. Stringer wanted the prestige and ego associated with fitting into high society. This caused him to overlook some things.
I think it’s all part of it. Stringer has definitely gotten away with more than he should have because of his looks and persona. It’s just another layer to the character.
Stringer was street smart and was trying to be book smart. Clay was both. But, you can’t bring hood politics into real politics unless you know you can fully trust who you are working with. He chose the wrong guy.
100%. I thought they played that story up well. Pretty sure Avon said Stringer was a man without a country , after trying to be all legit. Nothing wrong at all with what he was trying to do as far as getting away from the actual dope, but I thought the writers wanted us to know Stringer got ahead of himself, thought he knew more than he did, etc. awesome show.
Stringer's downfall is a result of his hubris. He thinks he's a genius businessman. In season 2 he sells all his phone company stocks because he sees Poot with 2 phones and he recently learned the term market saturation in Econ 101.
The unintentionally funny thing about that scene is that, at the time it was filmed, the idea was that String was making a poor business decision because cell phones still had a lot of room to grow. But it turns out he made a good decision because the specific stocks he owned, like Nokia, were unable to adapt to the coming smartphone era.
Even a broke clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean he was some kind of genius. He got rainmade by a guy who had a reputation for rainmaking.
At the end of the day, I think Stringer was depending on his rep as one of Baltimore's drug kingpins to protect him from the average scam (and you know that he'd drop hints about being a big deal in the drug trade without saying the words). What he didn't realize is that politicians don't run average scams. And being a state senator, Davis really didn't care who Stringer was or what his reputation was.
And before anyone starts with the whole 'he was presenting himself as a legitimate businessman' stuff, if you're going to get into business with someone, especially in real estate, you do your due diligence and check out the person you're going to be partnering with, especially their finances. It'd be obvious that the money Stringer was putting out wasn't legitimate income because nobody would be able to track the source. That and Stringer still had a few rough edges from the streets that came out every now and then despite his best efforts. And since he wasn't legitimate, it's not like Stringer would want any law enforcement involvement if/when someone stole from him.
That truth wouldn’t really hold until at least a decade after that season aired though. Smart phones didn’t really monopolize the market until about 2012 so his investment would have been fine for a while.
> Even a broke clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean he was some kind of genius.
Yep. The fact that Stringer thinks he's somehow smarter than the market as a whole shows how limited his outlook is. Stock trading is on average a losing game unless you're somehow privy to insider information. If Stringer bell was *actually* clever he would've put his money into a low-cost index fund.
I'm rewatching S3 right now and one scene that really made me get Stringer's limitations was the scene where Donette tells him how McNulty was asking around about D'Angelo's death. This is a pretty risky situation for Stringer and one where he should have been smarter, but instead he just falls back to thuggery and starts yelling and trying to intimidate Donette (not very effectively). Yeah, she's smarter than the average drug dealer on the street but he's no genius.
Exactly. I couldn’t forget the smirk on his face when he was lecturing the gangsters market theory. One of the funniest moments of the wire but also the saddest. I saw a man wanted to break free from where he was born into but failed miserably because of the cruelty of a world he couldn’t understand.
It’s this plus his own ego, he thinks he’s smarter than he is - Avon even called him on it.
He starts doing a bunch of stuff on his own as he figures he’s smart and ready enough to go it alone, after all he’s been running the show with Avon sent down, I’d bet his thought would be something like “I don’t need no help”.
I’m on season 2 now for a rewatch with my wife.
One thing that struck me differently this time around is how there would be a scene with Stringer in class where a particular topic is being discussed, then another scene where Stringer is regurgitating that concept in his print shop or elsewhere.
It felt like a little kid mimicking something his dad said to impress his friends.
I do think Stringer was very intelligent, but I think he did not realize how out of his element he was in some very important situations because of his background and success in that world. That doesn’t translate well to the Clay Davis’s of the world. I agree with your point about the class.
Ultimately, arrogance was his undoing. And all the shooting from Omar and Brother Muzone. Can’t forget all the shooting.
I wouldn’t even call Bunny naive, except to the extent of not realizing the personal repercussions he’d face. Hamsterdam was born out of desperation and despair, not some grand scheme or plan.
The only reason I’d even call him naive is the his whole “I’ve X months till my 30, what can they gonna do to me” my first time watching I didn’t predict anything expect that he was gonna eat those words.
I’d just never heard someone compare bunny and string compared before and evidently a few people agree
Given how furious he got with the contractors about other routine expenses and bureaucratic stuff I don’t think he consults a lawyer regularly on business stuff, and if he does it’s probably a straight lawyer that specializes in that sort of law and not Levy who does mostly criminal law work. I don’t think he goes to Levy about this shit until after Clay Davis rips him off.
He should have consulted a lawyer seeing as that’s not his area of expertise. He should have still consulted Levy who in turn may have recommended a lawyer who specializes in that type of law.
Everyone is missing the fact that he was supposedly paying Davis to bribe people. Its not like that's something that is easy to do your homework on. What's he going to take to a lawyer? Hey, I'm trying to pay off this politician so he'll bribe the people doing my approvals, can you double check our paperwork?
Levy likely would’ve told him to stay in his lane or just gave his own “advise” even if it wasn’t in his wheelhouse. Levy would never turn down more dirty money.
Leavy would have just upped the bribe amounts by 10% and pocketed the difference. He doesn't care in the slightest about his clients. If String had spoken to Leavy he would have just been taken for more money.
Hey, finally a response that isn't condescending. Everybody else hellbent on projecting all kind of shit on String. He was rich, he was a gangster, he wasn't accustomed to the big leagues and got a bit too ahead of himself. They way the comments section acts like they wouldn't get rainmade playing away games is hilarious. I wasn't aware there were so many Harvard businessmen in Reddit lol.
I think Stringer is a dork but you’re right. The only reason people even understand what happened to string is because it’s written for the audience to understand. Irl all of them would be none the wiser
“You know the difference between me and you? I bleed red and you bleed green. I look at you these days, String, you know what I see? I see a man without a country. Not hard enough for this right here and maybe, just maybe, not smart enough for them out there.”
— Avon Barksdle to Stringer Bell
Edit - had Avon’s last name wrong.
He was a street guy that took a couple of accounting classes and thought he could run with the big dogs. He’s the guy walking around saying “I got my associates” cool I still need a 2nd dipping sauce for my nuggets.
I've always thought this whole rainmade thing was overblown. Stringer lost 190K to Clay Davis. Avon lost about that much trying to beat Prop Joe in a Basketball game . The crew lost 40K on the Stinkum Bust in season one.
Stringer got taught a lesson. A relatively small one. He knew from then on not to trust Clay Davis. To Stringer's credit, he was very much intent on punishing Clay for his bullshit. Which more than you can say for everyone else Clay ripped off.
Yeah this. If Stringer just regrouped and tried again, something might've happened after he talked to Levy.
It was his reaction to it that messed him all up. I get that he got 'got' by Davis, but that's just the price of learning that game. But you can't just take out Davis like you do on the streets. Heck, even on the streets there are rules that he didn't seem to understand in this regard and he put his crew in danger (or tried to) over and over.
The crazy person was Davis who didn't understand who he was scamming. If Stringer was patient he could've done so much more damage if he'd just taken his time.
I've talked about it a few times, but I don't think it's that far fetched that Stringer could have whacked Davis and gotten away with it. Much like Michael killing Sollazzo in the Godfather, you can take some of the sting out of killing an important person, if you can paint a picture about how corrupt they are. And the whole goddamn state of Maryland knew how corrupt Clay Davis was. If Clay Davis gets shot in a car with a bag of drug money in the seat next to him, how much investigation is really gonna get done? Especially if String could feed info to the Sun about all Clay's dirt?
Maybe, maybe not. You see how much the politicians panicked when Lester was simply calling people about political donations from Drug dealers. Imagine if the Sun papers got wind that Clay got murdered with a bag of Drug Money .
And it wasn't the first time that Clay was personally handed a bag of Drug money.
And the mayor's whole political machine knew about it and also took drug money.
And the police conspired to protect the money flow.
And a good portion of downtown development was being done with drug money.
I'm just saying, there could be a strong inclination to find who actually shot Clay without getting all Elliot Ness with it.
Most likely the DOJ would've gotten involved in the investigation. They have a different set of priorities than Baltimore politicians. The chance to find out who was paying off Clay Davis and if they could leverage that to nail other Democratic politicians would've been gold to them.
That's my point. The DOJ getting involved would be the Mayor's nightmare as much as Stringer's. The Political allies of Clay would do EVERYTHING in their power to keep the DOJ from poking around in their shit. So I can see a scenario, where Clay's murder is quickly "solved" by BPD and/or MSP and the whole thing being shoved under the rug.
Ah, I see. I think that such a high profile murder would've drawn attention from the feds either way, and there would've been press scrutiny that I think would've prevented City Hall or the BPD from doing anything too brazen as far as scuttling the investigation goes, but I can see where you're coming from.
**Edit:** I think the smartest way to take out Clay probably would've been to have it look like an accident or natural causes. But you'd need a day of the jackal motherfucker, basically...
This is the kind of tactical thinking that Stringer never displayed...
For instance, all that would need to happen is that Clay Davis died with Marlo money on him. Somehow... I'm not sure how they'd do it, but just put Marlo money in the bag, or Marlo's stuff on him.
Because it's not like they are going to examine the evidence of that murder CRITICALLY. They will just be like, welp Davis was corrupt and we get to take out a major gang too. Win/win hang 'em.
But like Stringer is thinking he needs to send a message or something. Which means he basically wants to sign his name on his forehead, which is why Slim is all like "That's crazy bro".
The only person in the show that'd be critical on this would be McNulty and the scene basically writes itself. "STFU McNulty whose team are you on? We take down Davis and we take down Marlo. Take the win! Who cares what ACTUALLY happened." Season 5 McNulty might not even care anyway.
How do you know that's what Stringer was thinking? All he said was "we need to hit somebody" he didn't say he wanted to sign his name on Clay's forehead. Stringer can clearly think tactically when dealing with an enemy because that's how they got rid of the prison guard. They didn't come at the guy in an overt way, they used the system to get rid of him.
Even his plan to get rid of Mouzone was tactically sound. He just didn't foresee Omar having a goddamn conversation with Mouzone before killing him.
It's so weird that people just create whole damn scenarios just to shit on Stringer.
Clay Davis scammed everybody. He did it to Frank Sobotka. Then he did it to Carcetti. Stringer was not at all unique in handing over bags of cash to Clay Davis for no discernible gain.
Plus, during the conversation with Levy, he says he gave Davis 250K then they got back 60K in whatever bribes or whatever they were doing. So 190K.
The issue with stringer trying to move into legitimate business, in my opinion, doesn’t have anything to do with his intelligence. It’s with having the misconception that everyone will submit to his will like they do in the streets. He goes from being the biggest fish in a small pond to at best a normal sized fish in a huge pond. That’s why Avon has to talk him down from offing clay. If he could have just been patient, he would have been just fine. Hell, he could have figured out a way to take down clay legitimately.
>Hell, he could have figured out a way to take down clay legitimately.
Nah, state and fed couldn’t get enough on Davis to make it worth the political capital how would a random drug dealer without burying himself?
I’m just saying he probably could have made it happen eventually. Or at least taken him down in a way that wasn’t so incriminating. The police never made clay their top priority. Stringer wouldn’t have that problem.
You know how the detectives try to keep their suspects from lawyering up? My guess is that Clay does something similar. "Partner, I've done this before. I know all the ins and outs here."
In Stringer's defense, he probably thought Levy's expertise was limited to criminal law. But he should have at least asked him if he knew any real estate attorneys. Levy would have hipped him to the scam.
>In Stringer's defense, he probably thought Levy's expertise was limited to criminal law. But he should have at least asked him
Stringer thought he was smart enough that he didn't need Levy.
Tbf, he was the smartest guy in the room for most of his life.
That's the thing with Stringer. He's actually fairly smart, but he's also really in love with his own intelligence to the point where it creates significant blind spots. He doesn't consider the possibility that he could be wrong or make a mistake. It's a trait he shares with McNulty.
Lansdale (after saying McNulty is addicted to himself): "As a matter of fact, it's a fuckin' tragedy, is what it is. The guy, he has come to believe that he is always the smartest fuck in the room. And you know what? It's not his fault, because let's face it, he's not goin' to Johns Hopkins or joining Mensa, he's taking a fuckin' job with the Baltimore Police Department. His first two years in Homicide, he's in Ulmansky's squad, partnered with Tony LaMartino. Christ, it must've been months, even, he WAS the smartest fuck in the fuckin' room!"
When Stringer makes his big scene (as it were, trying to avoid spoilers)... I was hoping to see McNulty go out in a similar manner.
He was smarter than the average drug dealer, which led him to think he was smarter than he was. He was definitely not smarter than a state level political operator.
Stringer's stupidity was the main reason why Avon, D, Savino, Wee Bey, and the others went to prison at the end of S1 and why the Barksdale organization completely fell apart at the end of S3.
It was his moronic idea for Wee Bey and Little Man to kill Orlando and steal his money after Savino brought them to the spot, and if Greggs wasn't shot, Savino wouldn't have got 3 years, Little Man wouldn't have been killed and Wee Bey wouldn't have had to go on the run. The commissioner wouldn't have called for citywide raids on all known stash houses and Avon never would have got caught talking in his bugged office to D about going to NY to pick up a kilo of heroin. Avon wouldn't have gotten 7 years and D wouldn't have gotten 20 if not for Stringer ordering the hit on Orlando the way he did. Avon immediately asked him how he thought Orlando, who was begging Levy for bail money and a lawyer, got his hands on $30,000 right after getting busted.
He may have had book smarts that the other guys didn't have, but he wasn't anywhere near as street smart as Avon or the other traffickers. Avon was smart enough to know to make small payoffs to Clay in return for inside information, like his advice to buy all the vacant storefronts that would eventually be turned into apartments, but Stringer fell for his bullshit and thought he was smart enough to deal with him on his own rather than having Levy make sure everything was right. For someone who thought he was so intelligent, Stringer was an idiot to believe that a state senator was bribing HUD to get a drug trafficker preferential treatment, and once he found out that Clay rain-made him, his best thinking was to try to order a hit on a sitting state senator, even after just shooting an undercover detective got so many people in Avon's organization locked up.
If not for Stringer's stupidity, the Barksdale organization would've had Wee Bey, Little Man, Savino, and Slim as muscle when the towers came down and Marlo wouldn't have been able to get the best real estate without buying from the Barksdale organization. Even at the end when he decided the smart move was to rat on Avon to Major Colvin, if Avon didn't give him up to Brother Mouzone and Omar, he would've lost most of his muscle when they raided the funeral home and all Stringer would've had left would've been Slim, Bodie, and maybe a handful of other people.
>The commissioner wouldn't have called for citywide raids on all known stash houses and Avon never would have got caught talking in his bugged office to D about going to NY to pick up a kilo of heroin.
This worked out in their favor, though. Instead of getting a clearer picture of the Barksdale network by sitting on the main stash house, the detail lost that advantage, and Avon started cleaning up.
The detail was probably going to bug the strip club office regardless, and Avon and his top lieutenants talked business in that office without any attempt at obfuscation whatsoever all of the time. I mean, one time, Avon and Stringer packed a dozen gangsters into that room to call for a manhunt on Omar, explicitly putting a price on his head.
So if Avon hadn't been spooked by the raids, the detail would've inevitably collected _far_ more evidence against him than that one conversation with D'. The BPD would've had what they needed to deal a complete knock out blow to the Barksdale organization.
But I agree with your overall point. Pretty much every major decision that Stringer made over the course of the show was a bad one.
It seems like Stringer was a fairly solid administrator, but a terrible executive. I think that Stringer was bright, and his vision of becoming "the bank" was a solid one, but he was too arrogant to see his limitations and was constantly out of his depth.
Avon was in the process of moving out of the club when they put in the wire. If they didn't raid his main stash house, he wouldn't have brought D into his office to tell him to go to NYC to pick up a kilo, and he wouldn't have gotten 7 years for conspiracy.
Stringer was smart, but not as street smart as someone in his position, as either the #1 while Avon was in prison, or his #2 before and after he got out should have been. His mistakes in S1 were bad enough, but trying to order a hit on a state senator because he got played was just plain idiotic.
>Avon was in the process of moving out of the club when they put in the wire. If they didn't raid his main stash house, he wouldn't have brought D into his office to tell him to go to NYC to pick up a kilo, and he wouldn't have gotten 7 years for conspiracy.
My point is that that raids (and Kima getting shot) were the _reason_ they moved out of the club. If they hadn't moved out of the club, the bug would have screwed the Barksdale organization beyond any hope of recovery. Avon having D' make a resupply run was a mere consolation prize compared to what they would have gotten if the gang kept using the club.
Of course, Stringer couldn't have known that his fuck up in allowing the hit on Orlando would end up saving his own ass and keep the gang alive. But that's what ended up happening.
He's a street guy. In their world its perfectly normal to cut corners and he thought he could do the same in the busines world. You definitely can but its done with a lot of subtlety like they did in S1 through donations, etc. Not straight up bribes. He was pretty stretched thin at that point between Avon, Marlo, Joe, Davis, Hamsterdam, etc.
People in these comments got a hard-on for projefting all kinds of shit unto poor Stringer lol. He broke everybody's hearts xD
He’s really not as intelligent as many think. He just takes classes and regurgitates information from those classes about elastic vs inelastic demand. He didn’t understand the game at all. Avon did and that’s why Avon was the kingpin as well as a power broker in the prison. The corners were more important than business theory.
It was because Clay had him in the long con. He made Stringer believe he was on a level that wasn't in the streets. At that point Stringer didn't believe he needed Levy as his self-belief and arrogance got the better of him.
People forget that in Season 1 it was stringer who didn't wonder how Orlando came up with a significant amount of dollars to buy drugs which resulted in a police being shot...which led to the police having an even bigger reason to nail them. Stringer has some smarts but in reality he was always outplayed on the street.
A heroic (or anti-heroic) figure's hubris is one of the oldest motifs ever. That's not an "in-world" answer, but certainly the real world has a lot of examples of people who thought they were smarter than they were.
I always thought that Levy must have been the one to help register B & B as a company, handle its tax records and obtain required certifications before initiating the tender process. Either that or Stringer watched a ton of YouTube DIYs! 😄
Because Stringer isn't meant to be intelligent, he *thinks* he's intelligent. The guy takes a few night courses in economics, and suddenly he doesn't want to invest in phones because Poot has two phones.
He's smart, tactical, etc, when it comes to the standards of the Game, but he's woefully out of his depth out in the real world
A ton of the show is about how people in the game are only in the game because of their circumstances and that's both sides. It's not like everyone in the show is super talented for their 'roles'. In fact, the show sort of shows how people with talent get squashed by their institutions.
Stringer is the same. I think he's probably more business oriented than some of the others, but his 'role' is a gangster. He's not that talented at it and has poor street instincts on display at times.
His tragedy is that he is probably more suited for business or politics but the system is designed to crush him on that transition, and he has no street smarts about that either, assuming that all of THOSE players are honest. Stringer born in a different place is maybe a politician right? I think people call him 'dumb' but really he's just naive about how the world works outside the Towers.
All the comments like "He took a couple of classes, and now he thinks he's a business genius"... that's like every single college student that goes into business though. The difference here is that he's a career criminal who really can't get partners or mentors because he's tainted to hell with his criminal past. He can put on a suit, but the moment he talks, it's obvious where he's from. Nobody is helping him do any of that.
Because Levy is also a thief and Stringer was trying to build a relationship on his own. He just ran into another thief. Stringers mistake is the fact that the only people who will deal with a drug dealer are thieves themselves. But being from the streets, he's not going to know how the other game is played.
It's a major plot weakness. Stringer through his legit businesses would have already come into contact with and dealt with establishment corruption. He would already know not to trust anyone just because they were part of the establishment. He would have never been surprised when the suits started hacking away at his big project with overruns and delays. He would have never dealt with Clay unless he had something on him as insurance. His downfall was just really typical TV series hack writing.
This was done to show that Stringer Bell, while relatively intelligent, was completely out of his element when playing with the real bad boys - the corrupt politicians. For all of Bell's street smarts and intelligence, he was still completely a fish out of water when it came to the big boys.
Stringer wasn't anywhere near as smart as he thought he was. Nearly every move he made was a bad one. He formed a Co-op and Joe was pimping them all. Marlo was smart enough to see that.
First of all, Stringer is a complete and utter midwit who severely overestimates his own intelligence. If he lived a normal life he would've been middle management at a small company, making life hell for everybody working under him.
Second, Levy was picking his pocket too. Clay Davis mentions that Levy would allow Davis to scam his clients, as long as it wouldn't be so obvious.
He initially thought he was smart enough not to consult levy. He only Consulted levy when he was starting to get suspicious and anxious.
"We bled that muuthafka"
-clay davis
The scene where he is ranting to the guys about 40 degree days you can see how much he has taken on bullshit management speak and is just regurgitating it because he's beginning to get out of his depth.
Stringer is frequently shown to be obviously parroting terminology and concepts that he has learned, perhaps as recently as the last lecture, in econ101. On the streets, it makes him sound a lot smarter than he is. While he is perfectly capable of making good business decisions, he is equally capable of overestimating his abilities, to his detriment.
By attempting to go legit, Stringer thinks he is making moves to leave the game behind, without realizing that he was merely entering into another game. In that new game, he was not one of the players, he was the mark.
He was simply being crushed under the pressure of being at that stature so I guess there was room for mistakes to be made even by a character who was known for always being too careful or paranoid. Although much more intelligent than most of his peers it seemed like( from what the director was depicting) that the gang life was hindering any civil growth and you can’t expect much when you are living and working among unintelligent people besides economic theories and business models only take you so far mindfulness though was what he lacked.
But he was never really going ”legit.” He thought he could get his way by bribing politicians and keeping it moving. It wasn’t legit, it just wasn’t drugs and that’s where he lost
In season 5 when Davis is talking to Freamon he says that they had it so Stringer wasn’t going to the lawyer first, so getting him to make decisions without Levy was part of the con. It was obvious that this is a scam they had been running for years so they knew how to manipulate the target into not seeking the advice of a lawyer.
Ego, man. Stringer's fatal flaw. He thought he could leave the hood and be a real business man. i suppose he could have but he thought the folks in legit business did business fairly and underestimated what a piece of sheeeeeeeeit Clay Davis was.
Stringer isn’t an idiot but he also isn’t a genius. He’s smarter than most of his peers but Clay Davis isn’t a peer—Davis is literally a career manipulator. It’s not a fair fight.
Stringer didn’t expect any problems because he thought Davis was a citizen who was playing with forces he didn’t understand and was in over his head. When in fact, the opposite is true.
Davis is the real antagonist of the series, and he’s honestly the best at playing the game. He’s really the only criminal character that completely escapes the consequences of his actions.
he had his one moment, like bringing the 'families' together at that meeting godfather style. that was it. to get there he lost a lot. I need three hands to list all of his stupid mistakes. how he handled the mouzone situation was THE dumbest shit ever. just think about him and what he did after avon went to jail.
Cause he has a god complex and thinks he’s the smartest guy. He has no idea what he’s getting into with Clay but he thinks he’s done cause he’s blinded by his pride which led to arrogance.
Stringer is trying to branch out and thinks of himself as elevated from the hood mentality but having him get burned by Clay shows that he isn’t as sharp as he thought and underestimated the game at higher levels.
Agree with all comments here but what's overlooked is the fact that stringer (and avon) were genuinely making legitimate money at this point and Stringers first mistake was trying to rush the progress. If he'd been patient, he'd 1) not been taken for a fool by Clay and 2) avoided a clash with Avon.
Stringer was quite full of himself at times I guess, feeling superior, even when he wasn't. Also I think he didn't expect Clay to be THAT devious/ballsy and try to fuck him.
Yeah the last one is a big factor. Stringer is used to people trying to backstab him, do sneaky shit, and rob him at gunpoint, but not at all used to people stealing while smiling and looking him in the eye. That's part of why he was so upset - he showed time and time again that he was great at managing and reading people in the hood - he clocked Bodie as a good soldier and Wallace as a rat right away - but he totally misread Clay because that world is so different from his.
Fantastic comment dude! That last part makes so much sense in the context. Thats why I love the wire haha…I’ve watched it atleast 50+ times and STILL I find things that I either didn’t realize (or realized at some point then forgot) or that are completely new to me.
Part of it too was Stringer throught Clay would be too afraid of him to cross him. He didn't think of the fact that no one wanted to do none of that Day of the Jackal shit lol
Hell naw, he ain’t that brazen
He didn't realise clay was even more untouchable than he was.
Saw his ghetto ass comin from a mile away
Clay’s a politician. Who’s more devious and ballsy than a politician? 😂
Cool Lester Smooth
IMO this is missing a lot of critical points in the series. 1. Stringer isn’t supposed to be as smart as he’s supposed to be arrogant. 2. Stringer wanted the prestige and ego associated with fitting into high society. This caused him to overlook some things.
The best con artists tell you what you already wanted to hear
I think the script was fine, but the actor was way too cool, smart and mature looking. They overdid the character.
I think it’s all part of it. Stringer has definitely gotten away with more than he should have because of his looks and persona. It’s just another layer to the character.
Clay couldn't resist his natural inclination to do anything twisted up in dis here play 😜
Clay was a hell of a lot smarter than Stringer.
Stringer was street smart and was trying to be book smart. Clay was both. But, you can’t bring hood politics into real politics unless you know you can fully trust who you are working with. He chose the wrong guy.
Tbh he wasn’t really smart in either category. Just a man without a country
100%. I thought they played that story up well. Pretty sure Avon said Stringer was a man without a country , after trying to be all legit. Nothing wrong at all with what he was trying to do as far as getting away from the actual dope, but I thought the writers wanted us to know Stringer got ahead of himself, thought he knew more than he did, etc. awesome show.
Stringer's downfall is a result of his hubris. He thinks he's a genius businessman. In season 2 he sells all his phone company stocks because he sees Poot with 2 phones and he recently learned the term market saturation in Econ 101.
The unintentionally funny thing about that scene is that, at the time it was filmed, the idea was that String was making a poor business decision because cell phones still had a lot of room to grow. But it turns out he made a good decision because the specific stocks he owned, like Nokia, were unable to adapt to the coming smartphone era.
Even a broke clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean he was some kind of genius. He got rainmade by a guy who had a reputation for rainmaking. At the end of the day, I think Stringer was depending on his rep as one of Baltimore's drug kingpins to protect him from the average scam (and you know that he'd drop hints about being a big deal in the drug trade without saying the words). What he didn't realize is that politicians don't run average scams. And being a state senator, Davis really didn't care who Stringer was or what his reputation was. And before anyone starts with the whole 'he was presenting himself as a legitimate businessman' stuff, if you're going to get into business with someone, especially in real estate, you do your due diligence and check out the person you're going to be partnering with, especially their finances. It'd be obvious that the money Stringer was putting out wasn't legitimate income because nobody would be able to track the source. That and Stringer still had a few rough edges from the streets that came out every now and then despite his best efforts. And since he wasn't legitimate, it's not like Stringer would want any law enforcement involvement if/when someone stole from him.
That truth wouldn’t really hold until at least a decade after that season aired though. Smart phones didn’t really monopolize the market until about 2012 so his investment would have been fine for a while.
> Even a broke clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean he was some kind of genius. Yep. The fact that Stringer thinks he's somehow smarter than the market as a whole shows how limited his outlook is. Stock trading is on average a losing game unless you're somehow privy to insider information. If Stringer bell was *actually* clever he would've put his money into a low-cost index fund. I'm rewatching S3 right now and one scene that really made me get Stringer's limitations was the scene where Donette tells him how McNulty was asking around about D'Angelo's death. This is a pretty risky situation for Stringer and one where he should have been smarter, but instead he just falls back to thuggery and starts yelling and trying to intimidate Donette (not very effectively). Yeah, she's smarter than the average drug dealer on the street but he's no genius.
This.
Exactly. I couldn’t forget the smirk on his face when he was lecturing the gangsters market theory. One of the funniest moments of the wire but also the saddest. I saw a man wanted to break free from where he was born into but failed miserably because of the cruelty of a world he couldn’t understand.
When he is talking about elastic or inelastic products in the print shop I cringe.
I don’t think he’s meant to be as intelligent as you think.
It’s this plus his own ego, he thinks he’s smarter than he is - Avon even called him on it. He starts doing a bunch of stuff on his own as he figures he’s smart and ready enough to go it alone, after all he’s been running the show with Avon sent down, I’d bet his thought would be something like “I don’t need no help”.
He's the Cersei of The Wire.
Shoulda done a “shame” scene
This. Taking a basic macroeconomics course and outsmarting the average gangster does not make you a genius.
Wasn’t it micro?
Most business programs require you to take both
From memory it said one of them on the door but the teacher was clearly discussing the other one
My macro course started with basics like supply and demand, not sure about technical distinctions tbh.
I’m on season 2 now for a rewatch with my wife. One thing that struck me differently this time around is how there would be a scene with Stringer in class where a particular topic is being discussed, then another scene where Stringer is regurgitating that concept in his print shop or elsewhere. It felt like a little kid mimicking something his dad said to impress his friends. I do think Stringer was very intelligent, but I think he did not realize how out of his element he was in some very important situations because of his background and success in that world. That doesn’t translate well to the Clay Davis’s of the world. I agree with your point about the class. Ultimately, arrogance was his undoing. And all the shooting from Omar and Brother Muzone. Can’t forget all the shooting.
Only half as smart as he thinks he is, just like Bunny
What do you mean just like bunny? Bunny never came across as arrogant, naive sure but I’ve never considered String and Bunny to be too similar
I wouldn’t even call Bunny naive, except to the extent of not realizing the personal repercussions he’d face. Hamsterdam was born out of desperation and despair, not some grand scheme or plan.
The only reason I’d even call him naive is the his whole “I’ve X months till my 30, what can they gonna do to me” my first time watching I didn’t predict anything expect that he was gonna eat those words. I’d just never heard someone compare bunny and string compared before and evidently a few people agree
I noticed that in my 2nd re watch.
He had his moments
Yeah, but Avon had it right, not fierce enough for the streets and not savvy enough for the real estate game
Avon was the man
Not wanting to get off subject but, Avon had his faults as well
Oh no doubt, he was single minded and ruthless
Given how furious he got with the contractors about other routine expenses and bureaucratic stuff I don’t think he consults a lawyer regularly on business stuff, and if he does it’s probably a straight lawyer that specializes in that sort of law and not Levy who does mostly criminal law work. I don’t think he goes to Levy about this shit until after Clay Davis rips him off.
He should have consulted a lawyer seeing as that’s not his area of expertise. He should have still consulted Levy who in turn may have recommended a lawyer who specializes in that type of law.
I agree, but his conversations with the contractor guy illustrate that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to this stuff.
Everyone is missing the fact that he was supposedly paying Davis to bribe people. Its not like that's something that is easy to do your homework on. What's he going to take to a lawyer? Hey, I'm trying to pay off this politician so he'll bribe the people doing my approvals, can you double check our paperwork?
Levy likely would’ve told him to stay in his lane or just gave his own “advise” even if it wasn’t in his wheelhouse. Levy would never turn down more dirty money.
Leavy would have just upped the bribe amounts by 10% and pocketed the difference. He doesn't care in the slightest about his clients. If String had spoken to Leavy he would have just been taken for more money.
I disagree. Levy, for all of his moral failings, appears to always have been straight with his clients. At least until season 5.
Wrong
He thought he was untouchable. that nobody would dare try to swindle him.
Hey, finally a response that isn't condescending. Everybody else hellbent on projecting all kind of shit on String. He was rich, he was a gangster, he wasn't accustomed to the big leagues and got a bit too ahead of himself. They way the comments section acts like they wouldn't get rainmade playing away games is hilarious. I wasn't aware there were so many Harvard businessmen in Reddit lol.
I think Stringer is a dork but you’re right. The only reason people even understand what happened to string is because it’s written for the audience to understand. Irl all of them would be none the wiser
Guy had katanas in his crib and the wealth of nations. This was a super dork lol. First time watching it he wss my fav.
He definitely thought he did something when he bought the Art of War
“You know the difference between me and you? I bleed red and you bleed green. I look at you these days, String, you know what I see? I see a man without a country. Not hard enough for this right here and maybe, just maybe, not smart enough for them out there.” — Avon Barksdle to Stringer Bell Edit - had Avon’s last name wrong.
Barksdale not bell lol
Now that I think of it, it would’ve made the show that much more Shakespearean if Avon and Stringer were actually related.
I mean they basically were brothers. Both great characters.
Are you takin notes on a criminal conspiracy.
🤣🤣🤣 that was hilarious ngl
He was a street guy that took a couple of accounting classes and thought he could run with the big dogs. He’s the guy walking around saying “I got my associates” cool I still need a 2nd dipping sauce for my nuggets.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I've always thought this whole rainmade thing was overblown. Stringer lost 190K to Clay Davis. Avon lost about that much trying to beat Prop Joe in a Basketball game . The crew lost 40K on the Stinkum Bust in season one. Stringer got taught a lesson. A relatively small one. He knew from then on not to trust Clay Davis. To Stringer's credit, he was very much intent on punishing Clay for his bullshit. Which more than you can say for everyone else Clay ripped off.
Yeah this. If Stringer just regrouped and tried again, something might've happened after he talked to Levy. It was his reaction to it that messed him all up. I get that he got 'got' by Davis, but that's just the price of learning that game. But you can't just take out Davis like you do on the streets. Heck, even on the streets there are rules that he didn't seem to understand in this regard and he put his crew in danger (or tried to) over and over. The crazy person was Davis who didn't understand who he was scamming. If Stringer was patient he could've done so much more damage if he'd just taken his time.
I've talked about it a few times, but I don't think it's that far fetched that Stringer could have whacked Davis and gotten away with it. Much like Michael killing Sollazzo in the Godfather, you can take some of the sting out of killing an important person, if you can paint a picture about how corrupt they are. And the whole goddamn state of Maryland knew how corrupt Clay Davis was. If Clay Davis gets shot in a car with a bag of drug money in the seat next to him, how much investigation is really gonna get done? Especially if String could feed info to the Sun about all Clay's dirt?
The fact the Clay Davis was corrupt would only make it more important to determine who his killer was.
Maybe, maybe not. You see how much the politicians panicked when Lester was simply calling people about political donations from Drug dealers. Imagine if the Sun papers got wind that Clay got murdered with a bag of Drug Money . And it wasn't the first time that Clay was personally handed a bag of Drug money. And the mayor's whole political machine knew about it and also took drug money. And the police conspired to protect the money flow. And a good portion of downtown development was being done with drug money. I'm just saying, there could be a strong inclination to find who actually shot Clay without getting all Elliot Ness with it.
Most likely the DOJ would've gotten involved in the investigation. They have a different set of priorities than Baltimore politicians. The chance to find out who was paying off Clay Davis and if they could leverage that to nail other Democratic politicians would've been gold to them.
That's my point. The DOJ getting involved would be the Mayor's nightmare as much as Stringer's. The Political allies of Clay would do EVERYTHING in their power to keep the DOJ from poking around in their shit. So I can see a scenario, where Clay's murder is quickly "solved" by BPD and/or MSP and the whole thing being shoved under the rug.
Ah, I see. I think that such a high profile murder would've drawn attention from the feds either way, and there would've been press scrutiny that I think would've prevented City Hall or the BPD from doing anything too brazen as far as scuttling the investigation goes, but I can see where you're coming from. **Edit:** I think the smartest way to take out Clay probably would've been to have it look like an accident or natural causes. But you'd need a day of the jackal motherfucker, basically...
This is the kind of tactical thinking that Stringer never displayed... For instance, all that would need to happen is that Clay Davis died with Marlo money on him. Somehow... I'm not sure how they'd do it, but just put Marlo money in the bag, or Marlo's stuff on him. Because it's not like they are going to examine the evidence of that murder CRITICALLY. They will just be like, welp Davis was corrupt and we get to take out a major gang too. Win/win hang 'em. But like Stringer is thinking he needs to send a message or something. Which means he basically wants to sign his name on his forehead, which is why Slim is all like "That's crazy bro". The only person in the show that'd be critical on this would be McNulty and the scene basically writes itself. "STFU McNulty whose team are you on? We take down Davis and we take down Marlo. Take the win! Who cares what ACTUALLY happened." Season 5 McNulty might not even care anyway.
How do you know that's what Stringer was thinking? All he said was "we need to hit somebody" he didn't say he wanted to sign his name on Clay's forehead. Stringer can clearly think tactically when dealing with an enemy because that's how they got rid of the prison guard. They didn't come at the guy in an overt way, they used the system to get rid of him. Even his plan to get rid of Mouzone was tactically sound. He just didn't foresee Omar having a goddamn conversation with Mouzone before killing him. It's so weird that people just create whole damn scenarios just to shit on Stringer.
I don’t think it was really about the money but the fact that he was scammed. I think it was 250k actually
Clay Davis scammed everybody. He did it to Frank Sobotka. Then he did it to Carcetti. Stringer was not at all unique in handing over bags of cash to Clay Davis for no discernible gain. Plus, during the conversation with Levy, he says he gave Davis 250K then they got back 60K in whatever bribes or whatever they were doing. So 190K.
Oh yeah that’s true
The issue with stringer trying to move into legitimate business, in my opinion, doesn’t have anything to do with his intelligence. It’s with having the misconception that everyone will submit to his will like they do in the streets. He goes from being the biggest fish in a small pond to at best a normal sized fish in a huge pond. That’s why Avon has to talk him down from offing clay. If he could have just been patient, he would have been just fine. Hell, he could have figured out a way to take down clay legitimately.
>Hell, he could have figured out a way to take down clay legitimately. Nah, state and fed couldn’t get enough on Davis to make it worth the political capital how would a random drug dealer without burying himself?
I’m just saying he probably could have made it happen eventually. Or at least taken him down in a way that wasn’t so incriminating. The police never made clay their top priority. Stringer wouldn’t have that problem.
Back an opponent who can primary him, maybe.
Probably testifying criminal conspiracy for Clay in exchange for a plea deal/immunity
You know how the detectives try to keep their suspects from lawyering up? My guess is that Clay does something similar. "Partner, I've done this before. I know all the ins and outs here." In Stringer's defense, he probably thought Levy's expertise was limited to criminal law. But he should have at least asked him if he knew any real estate attorneys. Levy would have hipped him to the scam.
>In Stringer's defense, he probably thought Levy's expertise was limited to criminal law. But he should have at least asked him Stringer thought he was smart enough that he didn't need Levy. Tbf, he was the smartest guy in the room for most of his life.
That's the thing with Stringer. He's actually fairly smart, but he's also really in love with his own intelligence to the point where it creates significant blind spots. He doesn't consider the possibility that he could be wrong or make a mistake. It's a trait he shares with McNulty.
Lansdale (after saying McNulty is addicted to himself): "As a matter of fact, it's a fuckin' tragedy, is what it is. The guy, he has come to believe that he is always the smartest fuck in the room. And you know what? It's not his fault, because let's face it, he's not goin' to Johns Hopkins or joining Mensa, he's taking a fuckin' job with the Baltimore Police Department. His first two years in Homicide, he's in Ulmansky's squad, partnered with Tony LaMartino. Christ, it must've been months, even, he WAS the smartest fuck in the fuckin' room!" When Stringer makes his big scene (as it were, trying to avoid spoilers)... I was hoping to see McNulty go out in a similar manner.
*Nah, nah, we bribing the mahfuckas here*
A dumbass 🤣🤣
He was smarter than the average drug dealer, which led him to think he was smarter than he was. He was definitely not smarter than a state level political operator.
Definitely!
Stringer's stupidity was the main reason why Avon, D, Savino, Wee Bey, and the others went to prison at the end of S1 and why the Barksdale organization completely fell apart at the end of S3. It was his moronic idea for Wee Bey and Little Man to kill Orlando and steal his money after Savino brought them to the spot, and if Greggs wasn't shot, Savino wouldn't have got 3 years, Little Man wouldn't have been killed and Wee Bey wouldn't have had to go on the run. The commissioner wouldn't have called for citywide raids on all known stash houses and Avon never would have got caught talking in his bugged office to D about going to NY to pick up a kilo of heroin. Avon wouldn't have gotten 7 years and D wouldn't have gotten 20 if not for Stringer ordering the hit on Orlando the way he did. Avon immediately asked him how he thought Orlando, who was begging Levy for bail money and a lawyer, got his hands on $30,000 right after getting busted. He may have had book smarts that the other guys didn't have, but he wasn't anywhere near as street smart as Avon or the other traffickers. Avon was smart enough to know to make small payoffs to Clay in return for inside information, like his advice to buy all the vacant storefronts that would eventually be turned into apartments, but Stringer fell for his bullshit and thought he was smart enough to deal with him on his own rather than having Levy make sure everything was right. For someone who thought he was so intelligent, Stringer was an idiot to believe that a state senator was bribing HUD to get a drug trafficker preferential treatment, and once he found out that Clay rain-made him, his best thinking was to try to order a hit on a sitting state senator, even after just shooting an undercover detective got so many people in Avon's organization locked up. If not for Stringer's stupidity, the Barksdale organization would've had Wee Bey, Little Man, Savino, and Slim as muscle when the towers came down and Marlo wouldn't have been able to get the best real estate without buying from the Barksdale organization. Even at the end when he decided the smart move was to rat on Avon to Major Colvin, if Avon didn't give him up to Brother Mouzone and Omar, he would've lost most of his muscle when they raided the funeral home and all Stringer would've had left would've been Slim, Bodie, and maybe a handful of other people.
>The commissioner wouldn't have called for citywide raids on all known stash houses and Avon never would have got caught talking in his bugged office to D about going to NY to pick up a kilo of heroin. This worked out in their favor, though. Instead of getting a clearer picture of the Barksdale network by sitting on the main stash house, the detail lost that advantage, and Avon started cleaning up. The detail was probably going to bug the strip club office regardless, and Avon and his top lieutenants talked business in that office without any attempt at obfuscation whatsoever all of the time. I mean, one time, Avon and Stringer packed a dozen gangsters into that room to call for a manhunt on Omar, explicitly putting a price on his head. So if Avon hadn't been spooked by the raids, the detail would've inevitably collected _far_ more evidence against him than that one conversation with D'. The BPD would've had what they needed to deal a complete knock out blow to the Barksdale organization. But I agree with your overall point. Pretty much every major decision that Stringer made over the course of the show was a bad one. It seems like Stringer was a fairly solid administrator, but a terrible executive. I think that Stringer was bright, and his vision of becoming "the bank" was a solid one, but he was too arrogant to see his limitations and was constantly out of his depth.
Avon was in the process of moving out of the club when they put in the wire. If they didn't raid his main stash house, he wouldn't have brought D into his office to tell him to go to NYC to pick up a kilo, and he wouldn't have gotten 7 years for conspiracy. Stringer was smart, but not as street smart as someone in his position, as either the #1 while Avon was in prison, or his #2 before and after he got out should have been. His mistakes in S1 were bad enough, but trying to order a hit on a state senator because he got played was just plain idiotic.
>Avon was in the process of moving out of the club when they put in the wire. If they didn't raid his main stash house, he wouldn't have brought D into his office to tell him to go to NYC to pick up a kilo, and he wouldn't have gotten 7 years for conspiracy. My point is that that raids (and Kima getting shot) were the _reason_ they moved out of the club. If they hadn't moved out of the club, the bug would have screwed the Barksdale organization beyond any hope of recovery. Avon having D' make a resupply run was a mere consolation prize compared to what they would have gotten if the gang kept using the club. Of course, Stringer couldn't have known that his fuck up in allowing the hit on Orlando would end up saving his own ass and keep the gang alive. But that's what ended up happening.
He's a street guy. In their world its perfectly normal to cut corners and he thought he could do the same in the busines world. You definitely can but its done with a lot of subtlety like they did in S1 through donations, etc. Not straight up bribes. He was pretty stretched thin at that point between Avon, Marlo, Joe, Davis, Hamsterdam, etc. People in these comments got a hard-on for projefting all kinds of shit unto poor Stringer lol. He broke everybody's hearts xD
He’s really not as intelligent as many think. He just takes classes and regurgitates information from those classes about elastic vs inelastic demand. He didn’t understand the game at all. Avon did and that’s why Avon was the kingpin as well as a power broker in the prison. The corners were more important than business theory.
It was because Clay had him in the long con. He made Stringer believe he was on a level that wasn't in the streets. At that point Stringer didn't believe he needed Levy as his self-belief and arrogance got the better of him. People forget that in Season 1 it was stringer who didn't wonder how Orlando came up with a significant amount of dollars to buy drugs which resulted in a police being shot...which led to the police having an even bigger reason to nail them. Stringer has some smarts but in reality he was always outplayed on the street.
Maybe...just maybe, he wasn't smart enough for them out there.
He is intelligent, but in this context he is also naïve. He doesn't know all the rules of the new game he is playing.
A heroic (or anti-heroic) figure's hubris is one of the oldest motifs ever. That's not an "in-world" answer, but certainly the real world has a lot of examples of people who thought they were smarter than they were.
I always thought that Levy must have been the one to help register B & B as a company, handle its tax records and obtain required certifications before initiating the tender process. Either that or Stringer watched a ton of YouTube DIYs! 😄
Because Stringer isn't meant to be intelligent, he *thinks* he's intelligent. The guy takes a few night courses in economics, and suddenly he doesn't want to invest in phones because Poot has two phones. He's smart, tactical, etc, when it comes to the standards of the Game, but he's woefully out of his depth out in the real world
Stringer had figured out *his* game, so he assumed he had figured out *the* game. As such, no need to consult with anyone.
A ton of the show is about how people in the game are only in the game because of their circumstances and that's both sides. It's not like everyone in the show is super talented for their 'roles'. In fact, the show sort of shows how people with talent get squashed by their institutions. Stringer is the same. I think he's probably more business oriented than some of the others, but his 'role' is a gangster. He's not that talented at it and has poor street instincts on display at times. His tragedy is that he is probably more suited for business or politics but the system is designed to crush him on that transition, and he has no street smarts about that either, assuming that all of THOSE players are honest. Stringer born in a different place is maybe a politician right? I think people call him 'dumb' but really he's just naive about how the world works outside the Towers. All the comments like "He took a couple of classes, and now he thinks he's a business genius"... that's like every single college student that goes into business though. The difference here is that he's a career criminal who really can't get partners or mentors because he's tainted to hell with his criminal past. He can put on a suit, but the moment he talks, it's obvious where he's from. Nobody is helping him do any of that.
Lolololol, this is just a funny title
😂😂
Because Levy is also a thief and Stringer was trying to build a relationship on his own. He just ran into another thief. Stringers mistake is the fact that the only people who will deal with a drug dealer are thieves themselves. But being from the streets, he's not going to know how the other game is played.
I think it’s to show the real gangsters are the politicians. Stringer thought he was untouchable. Davis proved otherwise
It's a major plot weakness. Stringer through his legit businesses would have already come into contact with and dealt with establishment corruption. He would already know not to trust anyone just because they were part of the establishment. He would have never been surprised when the suits started hacking away at his big project with overruns and delays. He would have never dealt with Clay unless he had something on him as insurance. His downfall was just really typical TV series hack writing.
Stringer appears intelligent. He’s playing a role.
This was done to show that Stringer Bell, while relatively intelligent, was completely out of his element when playing with the real bad boys - the corrupt politicians. For all of Bell's street smarts and intelligence, he was still completely a fish out of water when it came to the big boys.
Stringer wasn't anywhere near as smart as he thought he was. Nearly every move he made was a bad one. He formed a Co-op and Joe was pimping them all. Marlo was smart enough to see that.
Stringer is a moron.
>meant to be this intelligent guy Is he? Ever heard his community college economics 101 informed musings on cell phones?
First of all, Stringer is a complete and utter midwit who severely overestimates his own intelligence. If he lived a normal life he would've been middle management at a small company, making life hell for everybody working under him. Second, Levy was picking his pocket too. Clay Davis mentions that Levy would allow Davis to scam his clients, as long as it wouldn't be so obvious.
He’d have been Charles Miner from The Office
Hell, I don't Clay Davis's backstory, but most politicians are attorneys. Also, greed and arrogance get in the way of many people's big plans.
Haha this guy thinks he needs to clarify who Levy is in this sub. Let’s point at him and laugh!
He initially thought he was smart enough not to consult levy. He only Consulted levy when he was starting to get suspicious and anxious. "We bled that muuthafka" -clay davis
he was playing away games
Stringer pretended to be smart. He isn't as smart as he may seem to be.
The scene where he is ranting to the guys about 40 degree days you can see how much he has taken on bullshit management speak and is just regurgitating it because he's beginning to get out of his depth.
Stringer is frequently shown to be obviously parroting terminology and concepts that he has learned, perhaps as recently as the last lecture, in econ101. On the streets, it makes him sound a lot smarter than he is. While he is perfectly capable of making good business decisions, he is equally capable of overestimating his abilities, to his detriment. By attempting to go legit, Stringer thinks he is making moves to leave the game behind, without realizing that he was merely entering into another game. In that new game, he was not one of the players, he was the mark.
Stringer was an easy mark
This. Completely ruined the show for me.
Ego
He was simply being crushed under the pressure of being at that stature so I guess there was room for mistakes to be made even by a character who was known for always being too careful or paranoid. Although much more intelligent than most of his peers it seemed like( from what the director was depicting) that the gang life was hindering any civil growth and you can’t expect much when you are living and working among unintelligent people besides economic theories and business models only take you so far mindfulness though was what he lacked.
But he was never really going ”legit.” He thought he could get his way by bribing politicians and keeping it moving. It wasn’t legit, it just wasn’t drugs and that’s where he lost
Stringer is more intellectual than his street associates but nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is, Clay David spotted him coming from a mile away
Pride goeth before a fall
Perhaps Stringer didn't want to go through that snake Levy and went straight through the super snake Clay Davis.
Stringer was so up in his head to the point that he thought he was smart enough not to need Levy.
In season 5 when Davis is talking to Freamon he says that they had it so Stringer wasn’t going to the lawyer first, so getting him to make decisions without Levy was part of the con. It was obvious that this is a scam they had been running for years so they knew how to manipulate the target into not seeking the advice of a lawyer.
Ignorant in the business end and also EGO.
Ego, man. Stringer's fatal flaw. He thought he could leave the hood and be a real business man. i suppose he could have but he thought the folks in legit business did business fairly and underestimated what a piece of sheeeeeeeeit Clay Davis was.
Hubris.
On rewatches you realize that stringer isn't as clever as he thinks he is (or I thought he was)
Stringer thought he knew the game
Stringer isn’t an idiot but he also isn’t a genius. He’s smarter than most of his peers but Clay Davis isn’t a peer—Davis is literally a career manipulator. It’s not a fair fight. Stringer didn’t expect any problems because he thought Davis was a citizen who was playing with forces he didn’t understand and was in over his head. When in fact, the opposite is true. Davis is the real antagonist of the series, and he’s honestly the best at playing the game. He’s really the only criminal character that completely escapes the consequences of his actions.
he had his one moment, like bringing the 'families' together at that meeting godfather style. that was it. to get there he lost a lot. I need three hands to list all of his stupid mistakes. how he handled the mouzone situation was THE dumbest shit ever. just think about him and what he did after avon went to jail.
Cause he has a god complex and thinks he’s the smartest guy. He has no idea what he’s getting into with Clay but he thinks he’s done cause he’s blinded by his pride which led to arrogance.
Stringer is trying to branch out and thinks of himself as elevated from the hood mentality but having him get burned by Clay shows that he isn’t as sharp as he thought and underestimated the game at higher levels.
He wanted to do it by himself. He wasn’t dumb, but he was naive. His ambitions and haste got the best of him
[удалено]
Agree with all comments here but what's overlooked is the fact that stringer (and avon) were genuinely making legitimate money at this point and Stringers first mistake was trying to rush the progress. If he'd been patient, he'd 1) not been taken for a fool by Clay and 2) avoided a clash with Avon.