Bubbles is a crucial police informant throughout the series due to his extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the streets of Baltimore and their inhabitants.

Bubbles is an intelligent and compassionate man who genuinely cares about his friend Johnny Weeks and Sherrod, the teenager he informally adopts.

At the end of season two, he is arrested by Michael Santangelo while trying to steal needles and morphine from an ambulance; in exchange for his release, he tips off Greggs and McNulty to the new alliance between Proposition Joe and Stringer Bell.

Bubbles puts them in touch with an undercover Lester Freamon, allowing the unit to sell pre-tapped burner phones directly to the gang.

As the investigation progresses Bubbles begins to supplement the income he is earning as an informant by collecting discarded cell phones and T-shirts to sell out of a shopping cart; upon discovering Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin's "Hamsterdam" zones he expands his inventory to suit the needs of the dealers and addicts there.

Bubbles shares an abandoned garage with a teenager named Sherrod, peddling small goods from a shopping cart to support themselves.

To stop this daily assault, Bubbles concocts a "hot shot" of heroin and sodium cyanide that he supposes the vagrant will steal from him and then consume.

Consumed by guilt and grief, Bubbles goes to the police and confesses his actions, before unsuccessfully attempting suicide in the Homicide interrogation room.

[4][5] Eventually Bubbles comes to terms with his role in Sherrod's death and has his life story published in an article in the Baltimore Sun.

In his final scene of the series, he is seen being brought back into his sister's life when she allows him upstairs from the basement to have dinner with her and her child.