It's the Other Way.

Marlo Stanfield: It's the Other Way - Page 3 - The Corner - TWoP Forums:

 [Posted Apr 11, 2008 @ 7:46 PM]
-Mutante:  I hope the notion that Marlo is a one-dimensional character and that Jamie Hector is not a good actor have finally been put to bed.
Marlo's story is so richly fascinating in many ways.
One way that I haven't seen mentioned is in *how* TPTB put his story together.
There've been gripes, and rightfully so at the time, that we never see Marlo do anything that would suggest that Chris, Snoop, and the rest would follow him so loyally. He does kill Devon, but that's about it. But his last scene, his very last scene, shows the skill he could bring at any time to a fight. You have to kind of retroactively piece together what his rise up was like, fighting over turf, forming an alliance with Chris, etc. In about 99% of TV and movies, Marlo's last scene is the kind of scene that happens first when introducing a villain, or a hero. .. how else to easily show that but by having him kill a bunch of goons in the first reel. What's Marlo's first scene, it's the one where Bubbles & Johnny push their shopping cart into one of Marlo's henchman's cars. I think it's Monk. And Monk is about to shoot Bubbles and Marlo comes out of the building and says something like, "Do it or don't. I got somewhere to be." // well. powerful. casual power. //
 By being so unconventional with how TPTB treated Marlo's story, it's so enriching but it requires the patience to watch it all. You lose the viewers who only catch a few bits of Marlo here and there in the show and conclude that his character is weak, or that it's poorly acted, etc. But it's rewarding who watch it all the way through. This is kind of a wonky analogy, but think of the Villain as a ball of string. Most of the time, you get shown the whole ball at once, marvel at the size and scope of his evilness, then watch as the ball is pulled apart layer by layer, until the villain is nothing but the end of string. Marlo, by contrast, is shown as just the end of the string first, and by the time he is on the corner at the end of the show, you can see the complete ball of string.
And it's also ironic that his scene kicking ass on the corner, which normally would be shown first as a character intro to show how powerful and dangerous Marlo is, is placed at the end and cements what is the weakest we ever see Marlo. He can still be violent, he is capable of that, but he was never about that. He was about the power, and that's gone for good. He can do it or don't, but now he has nowhere to go.