(Note: I’ve decided to make my female character posts a bi-weekly feature rather than a weekly one.)
This character is very different from the ones I’ve featured so far. I usually write about characters I admire, look up to, or relate to on a personal level. This character, however, just scares the crap out of me. Her name is Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and she shares her name with the actress who plays her. (WARNING: Massive spoilers for The Wire follow.)
Name: Felicia “Snoop” Pearson
Her Story: Snoop made her first appearance in season three of The Wire, right when Marlo Stanfield’s crew started to butt heads with Barksdale Organization. She worked in Marlo’s inner circle as part of an unstoppable assassin duo with fellow murderer, Chris Partlow. After watching the Barksdales in action for two seasons, the viewers (like the Barksdales themselves) wondered about these scrappy upstarts – who were they to infringe on the most powerful drug organization in Baltimore? But Marlo, Chris, and Snoop quickly proved to be more than a match for them, making drug lord Avon Barksdale and murderer Stringer Bell seem like fluffy puppies in comparison.
Then we got a closer look at Snoop herself in the very first scene of the fourth season.
This scene tells us almost everything we need to know about Snoop. We already knew she was a killer, but now we see she’s a much more ruthless killer than anyone in the Barksdale organization. While they used guns, Snoop eagerly talks about using a nail gun to drop people. Not only that, but she shares this information with the hardware store salesman in casual conversation!
As the series continues and we see Snoop in action, this joy of the kill resurfaces again and again. While Chris commits most of the actual murders and Snoop mostly helps with the disposal of the bodies, she displays a casual indifference to the taking of human life, an indifference that Chris doesn’t have. Granted, he’ll kill anyone that Marlo tells him to, even someone innocent like a woman making deliveries to a convenience store, but when Snoop plays around with the clothing of someone they killed, he curtly tells her, “Don’t play with a dead man’s hat.” Chris delivers his deaths with a quick bullet to the head, ensuring that his victims feel no pain (the glaring exception being Michael Lee’s stepfather), while Snoop doesn’t seem to care about that.
And yet, she’s not without a code. Look back at that scene in the hardware store. She gives the salesman a $100 cash tip because, in her words, “[he] earned that bump like a motherfucker!” He did good work for her, so she rewards in kind.
She’s also not without friends. Her relationship with Chris is deeper and more meaningful than a simple business partnership. They like each other. They enjoy each other’s company. (One of the few times we see Chris smile is when he comments on Snoop’s eagerness to get more work, because it’s been too long since they’ve had a kill.) And most importantly, they trust each other completely. When Marlo and his compatriots get locked up and someone suggests Snoop as the rat that put them there, Chris dismisses the idea as a ridiculous one, and no one pushes the issue further. Snoop is, first and foremost, loyal.
In Snoop’s last scene of the show, where she is killed by Michael Lee (my favorite character on the show after Omar), she demonstrates her loyalty once more:
Even at the end, Snoop stands up for her core belief: when you belong to a group, you do as you’re told and you don’t ask questions.
If you think about it, Snoop is really the ideal employee. She’s great at her job, she loves her job, she can teach and train newer people in the organization, and she never, ever questions her boss’s authority or motives.
Snoop is loyal, hardworking, and has a playful sense of humor. Imagine what she could have been if she hadn’t grown up where she did. She was born into a world of poverty and crime. I don’t see her as a victim, not when she’s taken so many lives, but she is a product of her environment. She didn’t have the chance to turn into anything else.
That’s why, even though Snoop deserves everything that’s coming to her, I get a tear in my eye and a slight spasm in my throat when she smooths down her cornrows and asks Michael how her hair looks – the last words of a proud gangster after acting feminine for the first time.
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That’s a lovely piece.
That “How my hair look, Mike” is an amazing moment- it’s not only her first feminine act, but the first time she asks anything about herself or attempts a human connection. And the show never pleaded for her or told us what horrible background she came from, which it does with Chris. She doesn’t ask for mercy, not after quoting Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven immediately beforehand. The show loves its westerns, and all the business about what your code is straight out of Peckinpah(the writers quietly stuck half the script of the The Wild Bunch in there). It takes daring to put all that on the weight of a first time actor, and it’s where other shows have faltered before (The Sopranos stumbled frequently when it tried to make us care about the edges of Tony’s crew.) And she delivers it beautifully. As an actress, Felicia “Snoop” Pearson probably doesn’t have the widest range, but she deserves a post-Wire career, something in the mold of Lee Van Cleef.
I didn’t think of that connection to Westerns, but you’re right. Nice observation.
And the show never pleaded for her or told us what horrible background she came from, which it does with Chris.
I read a few things about the real Snoop, and apparently she was born so prematurely that she had to be fed with an eyedropper until she reached a normal size. I don’t know how many similarities real Snoop shares with fictional Snoop, but that bit of information is so poignant and sad.
I can’t claim credit for the Westerns observation- a friend on a forum noticed that they kept using lines from The Wild Bunch, obscure lines that easily fit into a different context, not the famous ones, and then Dennis Lehane mentioned in an interview that he based Omar’s failed stash house raid on the bank robbery at the beginning of Bunch.
Yeah, the real Snoop’s life is tragic as hell, and apparently continues to be with her arrest.
I just finished watching The Wire a few weeks ago. What a brilliant show.
I was never able to get into Snoop as a character. Compared to the rest of the characters who are so complex and well developed, I found Snoop one-dimensional. Besides the fact that she shows a complete lack of appreciation for human life, I came away from the show knowing nothing about her. No idea what her motivations are or what she does outside of killing people. Chris isn’t a terribly deep character either, but at least we see glimpses of his personality and backstory. In a show where everyone inhabits a moral grey zone I thought Snoop was one of the few characters without redeeming qualities (at least none that I saw).
Anyway, I just discovered your blog and am enjoying reading your posts. I’d love to see more posts about The Wire.
Thanks for commenting (she said 11 days late). I get what you’re saying about Snoop, but for me, this is one of the few cases where I didn’t want or need more character development. I thought the mystery of not knowing how she became who she was made her more intriguing, and what I imagined was probably more horrifying than what I would have seen onscreen. (Although, I can’t swear to that – this IS The Wire we’re talking about).
I might post more about The Wire later on because it’s so good I’m tempted to do a re-watch.
Digging this up, but Pam, from personal experience I can tell you that she was ‘one-dimensional’ in most cases because in that world, even moreso than the corporate world or anything like that, it’s a boys club. Most girls in gangs are ‘sexed in’, for example. Some aren’t, but you don’t get to show much more than ruthless if you want that kind of respect.