A look at the Wire: The Tragedy of Ziggy
Posted by Tycho on March 30, 2009
This post contains some pretty big spoilers for season 2. If you haven’t made it that far in the series don’t ruin it for yourself. Also, please don’t spoil anything for me, as I’m not yet done with the season yet.
Ziggy is loud, dumb and obnoxious. His one major fault is that he never knows when to shut his mouth, which is often what gets him into the worst trouble. Yet, despite this, I found him strangely endearing, and could sympathize with him. He’s one of the most tragic characters so far from the series, and, looking back, that’s no small feat to live up to. There’s Bubbles (who’s getting far too little air-time in S2), D’Angelo, Wallace, and, to an extent, McNulty.
Ziggy is low man on the totem pole in everything he does. He’s not very bright, or attractive, and even though his dad is the boss of the docks, he can’t even get regular shifts to make any kind of supportable income. Like the anti-Midas, everything he touches turns to shit. This extends to his illegal extra-curricular activities, which get him into quite a bit of trouble throughout the course of the season.
The main problem is that Ziggy wants to be an old-school gangster. Money is always secondary to him; respect is the important thing. The only thing. Without respect, the money doesn’t matter, and he’ll often throw money away in an attempt to prove that point. He tries hard once to build a foundation for himself, by buying a package and selling it himself. His soldiers start skimming from him, and he’s not able to make enough to pay back the gangster who sold him the drugs. He ends up getting bailed out by his cousin, Nick, with quite a bit of help from some higher-up gangsters.
When Ziggy and Nick steal a few cameras from the docks, Ziggy nearly blows the whole deal by running his mouth and annoying the hell out of the fence. The next time they have to make a business call, Nick leaves Ziggy behind and pays him off later. Ziggy, jilted by the slight, burns the money. He’s constantly on the lookout to get recognition or respect. It’s no surprise he’s constantly flashing people. It’s the one area where he’s *ahem* gifted.
Nick and Ziggy end up stealing some chemicals for the fence and are offered drugs as payment. Nick is unfamiliar with dealing, but accepts anyways. Ziggy sees this as his golden opportunity, since he has experience selling, but he’s quickly forced out by Nick. Nick does all the work and pays Ziggy off in the end. Ziggy throws the money away and looks for his own score. This time he’s stealing luxury cars.
For once, Ziggy’s plan actually works, and he’s able to deliver the cars as promised, when promised. When his fence changes the offer, Ziggy gets upset and starts trying to intimidate him. This doesn’t work, so Ziggy resorts to name calling, and promptly gets his ass handed to him. Ziggy takes the money and goes back to his car pissed as all hell. He returns minutes later and kills the fence. The deed done, Ziggy realizes he made the biggest mistake of his life, and breaks down instead of trying to get away.
Despite wanting all the respect and power that he feels he deserves, Ziggy doesn’t have the fortitude to do the things necessary to get that respect. Even after committing murder, he’s still a terribly tragic character, because he’s not truly a bad person, even though he wouldn’t mind being one. It’s rare to see a murderer feeling full blown remorse for their deeds, rarer still to see one feeling remorse not just because they got caught.
Ziggy, who tries his hardest to walk the walk and talk the talk is excellently contrasted by Brother Mouzone, who shows up as muscle for the Barksdale gang. Seeing Mouzone, muscle is the last adjective you could think of to describe him. Looking like a version of what Steve Urkel could’ve grown up to become, Mouzone seems more at home behind a desk in a library than he does in the streets. After a little difficulty declaring himself to the rival gang, all Mouzone has to do is make himself be seen in order for the enemies of Barksdale’s gang stay far away.
Mouzone has everything that Ziggy wants. The difference is that with the power and respect Mouzone has, he decides against living the gangster lifestyle and instead would rather wear three piece suits with bow ties and spend his evenings reading Harper’s.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:17 am
I like this piece. A big thing for the series is a lot of mentor/mentee or father/child relationships, most of which don’t work out in a healthy way, this being one of them. Ziggy’s dad is not a bad man, but he’s a dockworker and union man first, and a father distant second. You get the feeling that Ziggy was never cut out for that kind of life, and while he shoulders most of the blame for being such a loser, the scenes between him and his father are devastating.