Are You Excited About the Final Season of The Wire?

New York magazine featured an interview with Andre Royo, the actor who plays "Bubbles," the noble hero, homeless junkie and sometime confidential informant on the hit HBO series The Wire. The series' final season launches Sunday night, and I'm looking forward to it as much as any TV show in quite a long while. If nothing else, given my interest in "snitching," Royo's character surely is the most graphic portrayal of the cold realities of a street informant in the history of television.

Since we've been recently discussing public attitudes toward snitching, I found interesting his recollection of the real "Bubbles," who he'd met, and the informant's attitude toward working with police, revealed in the response to this question:

"Snitches or potential snitches on The Wire tend to get clipped. How is it that Bubbles, a confidential informant, has stayed alive for so long?
Being a snitch has a negative connotation in our community. I thought that might reflect on me. But Bubbles was a real-life character, he was an informant for [series producer] Ed Burns. He said that the whole neighborhood knew Bubbles was snitching, but they also knew he was a junkie and he was killing himself. What would be the point of getting a body when that person’s already killing himself? Snitching has more weight when it comes to turning on your boys, lying to your friends. If I come into a group and then I turn on my group, that’s a snitch. If I’m on the street, there’s no loyalty there. I’m just doing what I have to do to get high."

RELATED:

• Witness intimidation makes solving crimes harder, but so does public distrust of the justice system, Toronto Star
• So many crimes and reasons not to cooperate, NY Times
• Beauty and the Snitch: Art meets the police state, American Chronicle