(Season 4, Episodes 8-10)
Well, the season isn’t getting any lighter. Not that I expected it would, but man it can really be tough to watch at times. I’m certainly not unhappy with the season, and I’m still enjoying and appreciating the well done show, it’s just a lot heavier than previous seasons… and where the heck is McNulty? It’s odd seeing Dominic West‘s name first in the credits. It seems like he hasn’t even been in half the episodes.
I was really expecting that all the bodies in the vacants would have been discovered by now, but they’re dragging that out. Oh well, there’s plenty going on…
“Corner Boys”
Things are going bad for Michael. With Bug’s dad getting released from prison and returning home, I’m afraid that he’ll end up with Marlo’s crew. I’ll say it again: what a depressing season.
The situation with the children is obviously a downer, but I find the constant politicking almost as frustrating and sad. Whether it’s the police fudging numbers to improve their stats, the schools teaching directly to the state exams just to look good, or Landsman getting upset because Bunk does the right thing and helps Omar. It seems priorities are in the wrong places everywhere.
Things are starting to look bad for Herc, too. It would seem that “Fuzzy Dunlop” is finally going to come back and bite him in the ass. I’ve never been a huge fan of Herc’s, though. I won’t mind seeing him fall.
“Know Your Place”
It was somewhat encouraging watching the school pilot program class working together, building their erector set models. Any progress that was made there, however, seems to have been undone with the prize. I’ll admit that I was nervous about Colvin taking a group of the kids out to a nice restaurant for completing their model first. I figured it wouldn’t turn out well, and it didn’t, even if it was in an unexpected way. The expectation was that the kids would act out, as they did in normal classes. That wasn’t the problem though. The problem was that they were so out of place they ended up feeling really bad about themselves. Ouch. Just keep heaping it on.
As if that weren’t depressing enough, Michael ended up going to Marlo and Chris with his problem. What can you say when a kid feels like the only place he can turn for help is the local drug dealer? What a complete and utter failure of the system. I suppose that’s the point. It doesn’t make it any easier to watch, though.
“Misgivings”
Namond’s mother officially won the award for world’s worst mom in this episode. She was pissed at Namond because he was trying to avoid going into lockup? Really? Oh man, this poor kid.
It would appear that Michael isn’t the only character with some unresolved father issues. Watching Chris brutally beat Bug’s father to death, I couldn’t help but wonder what the situation with his own father was. Clearly he has some anger issues to work out. I’m pretty much writing off any hope that I had for Michael at this point. I don’t think there’s any coming back from this for him.
I’m really getting sick of seeing poor Bubbles getting beaten up too. His little trick on Herc, setting him up to pull over and harass a minister was pretty genius, though, not to mention hilarious. Of course, more trouble is the last thing Herc needed at this point. We’ll see where that goes…
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Feb 24, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
Be patient, when I look back at my “Wire” experience, the 4th season is my favorite, but it wasn’t at the time. I think what intially makes this season so hard to digest is that you feel so badly for those kids. Oh yeah and lack of McNulty.
Press on!
I am so jealous of everybody who gets to watch that show with fresh eyes. season 4 is my favorite, and every episode down the stretch gets better than the previous.