Cutty: He's A Man Now

We know from watching The Sopranos and various other organized crime stories that once you enter the life you can't just leave it. It is during Season 3 that we are introduced to Dennis "Cutty" Wise, a Barksdale solider getting ready to leave prison after an extended stint.

When we first meet Cutty in the prison courtyard he is one day away from going home. Weebay and Avon offer him up a phone number to call when he gets home to help him get back on his feet. Right away we can tell that Cutty is not a typical Barksdale solider. He has obviously done his stint with no complaints and gets great respect from Avon. A man of little words, we are not sure at first what to make of him: is he going to leave prison and return to The Game or will he attempt to go straight?

Reform is the main theme of Season 3 and there is no character that sums up that reform better than Cutty. Once out of prison he has some initial complications trying to get legit work that force him down the only path he has ever known: the streets. Cutty re-ups with Bodie and gets Marlo's boy Fruit to move the package for him. Once Fruit steals the stash we wonder what Cutty is going to do. He does nothing. We are left wondering if The Game has passed him by or he has simply grown out of it.

Once the war between Barksdale and Marlo starts Cutty is a main soldier on the Barksdale side. However, after a shoot out he realizes that this life is not for him anymore. In a great scene we see Cutty telling Avon that The Game "ain't in me no more. Whatever makes you flow the way you flow, it ain't in me." Amazingly, Avon allows Cutty to leave the life. Slim Charles mentions how Cutty was the man in his day, to which Avon responds, "he a man now."

After his "escape" from The Game Cutty moves towards opening a boxing gym for local troubled teens. We start to see that Cutty is truly trying to turn his life around while having difficulty adjusting to his new life on the outside. He is a man on a mission and dare I say his storyline actually gives you some hope that reform might work.

Cutty goes on to have some success with the gym and even finds himself a sudden attraction to all the kids single mothers. We root for Cutty because we see a genuine "good" guy in his nature and a man who lived a life of crime before but has matured in a man who would rather use his knowledge of the streets and boxing to help some of the young hoppers in his hood. During Season 4 he developes relationships with Michael Lee and Namond. Though very different relationships, both kids respect Cutty for what he is and what he is trying to do.

I have to admit that at first I was not a fan of the Cutty storyline at all. I found it tedious and without direction. But as his arc played out I realized that Cutty was an analogy for reform (and how it can work). The Wire goes out of its way to show you how often the system fails those it is trying to help. We see that during Season 4 with Dukie, Randy and the school systems and during Season 3 with Bunny Colvin's Hamsterdam. However, with Cutty we see a man that learned how to use the system to his advantage and we, dare I say, feel good about it. He is the one character that we can actually say has turned his life around for the better.

It makes you feel about as good as The Wire will ever allow you to.