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The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season
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	List Price: $59.99 Our Price: $48.99 You Save: $11 *Features* • AC-3 • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Subtitled • NTSC In Theaters : 2005 DVD Release : 04 December, 2007
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The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season description
Even if you missed the first three seasons (the character guides and thorough episode recaps on HBO's website are recommended), and with only one season left, it's not too late to get in under The Wire. In fact, season 4 is an accessible introduction for those who know The Wire only by its street cred as arguably the very best show on television. For them especially, this season will be, as befitting its theme, a real education. Without resorting to melodramatics that other ratings-challenged series employ to gain that frustratingly elusive audience, The Wire shakes things up this season in a way that is true to the series and its characters. A major character, Dominic West's McNulty, plays a minor role as a contented street cop and family man, while a former supporting player, Jim True-Frost's Roland Pryzbylewski, goes to the head of the class as a new eighth grade teacher at beleaguered Edward Tilghman Middle School. It may take a couple of episodes to orient yourself to the Baltimore backrooms, squad rooms, classrooms, and street corners where The Wire's intense dramas play out, and new viewers may miss something in character nuance, but they will easily grasp the big picture. A politically motivated shake-up sends Major Crimes detectives Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Greggs (Sonja Sohn) to Homicide. The gloves come off in the mayoral race between black incumbent Clarence Royce (Glynn Turman) and idealistic white challenger Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen). Gang leader Marlo (Jamie Hector) quietly and deliberately becomes the city's new drug kingpin, managing to subvert all surveillance efforts. Meanwhile, while "Prez" tries to reach his students, four highly at-risk kids will be drawn into the drug trade.

Mere synopsis does not do The Wire justice. The series deftly juggles its myriad storylines and characters, all of whom make an impression, from Marlo's cold-blooded enforcers, Snoop (Felicia Pearson) and Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe), to boxing instructor "Cutty" (Chad L. Coleman), determined to keep his young charges off the corners. There is not a false note in the performances or the writing. Richard Price (Clockers) and Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) again contributed episodes. That this series has only been nominated for only one Emmy (for writing) is a travesty. As engrossing as the finest novels and in a class by itself, this isn't television; it's The Wire. --Donald Liebenson

The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season Customer Reviews

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Masterpiece

Twenty years ago most cop shows were simplistic tales of good verses evil and to learn about the real world one had to read books. This show however is probably better than any novel that I have read and is a remarkable portrayal of how systems work and fail to work. The systems that are examined are the police system, the school system and the criminal underclass. It is also an indictment on urban decay and how its corruption touches everyone. Even a politician who starts of as seriously motivated to reform a corrupted system.

The first series of the Wire was about a successful police operation which targeted a criminal gang. This series shows how police forces can fail. The way that the drug gangs work in this show (and no doubt in real life) is that they are hierarchical. Distribution is done by dealers on street corners employing low level operatives. The ones who handle the drugs are under age children who face lower level penalties if caught. The organisation is run by bosses who don't touch the drugs and use enforcers to kill as a means of enforcing discipline and controlling territory. The easiest targets are the street operatives but their arrest does little to cripple the organisation as there is a reservoir of young people looking to get into the game. Lazy policing targets the street operatives as it leads to arrests but doesn't dent the basic organisation. Successful policing looks at the means of arresting the bosses and enforcers. This of course is infinitely more difficult. The organisational dynamics of the police force are that success is not measured in terms of shattering criminal organisations but in arrest statistics. Thus the police focus on the lower level of the criminal system and are at best an irritant rather than a threat to the criminal gangs.

Series four looks at the education system in a decaying city and how it spawns a cadre of youth keen to go into drug dealing as the one sure career path available to them. How the notion of "leaving not children behind" in practice means the rote teaching of exam questions to maintain school funding and the total failure to engage the pupils of the school. The means of viewing the educational system is for the series having a new teacher trying to make a difference and the frustration he faces in trying to make a difference. Whilst he has his little successes it is against the background of a failing system.

In past series the skills of police were on display. In this series a number of the heroes of the past series have been moved out of centre stage and some of the hopeless have been moved forward. A sergeant promoted above his competence is put in charge of a serious drug investigation. His surveillance camera is spotted by its target and the gang leader under surveillance plays games with him setting up a dummy operation were an innocent is arrested. The sergeant moves from one blunder to another losing his camera and then losing focus on doing his job. He is responsible for one of the central tragedies of the series when he carelessly reveals the identity of a 14 year old informant who then becomes the subject of violent reprisals. He also fails to protect another informant who works out his own revenge.

Yet not only is the series a portrayal of the decay of a modern American city it is a drama with realistic and rounded characters whose world the viewer is drawn into.

The last series of the Wire was a little below the high level of the first two series. However this is a blistering return to form and is without doubt some of the greatest television ever made.

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