The Wire: the Complete Fourth Season

HBO’s The Wire is, in my opinion, the finest piece of art television has ever produced. Its fourth season is its greatest. Ostensibly a “cop show,” The Wire more closely resembles a thoroughly grounded and realistic Greek tragedy. Rather than tell the story of a few characters boiled down to cops vs. robbers, the show instead tells the story of an American city, in this case Baltimore, and how bureaucracy, indifference and crime are destroying it, rotting it from the inside out. If one attempts to affect a positive difference, they’re ground down by a system that’s either incapable or unwilling to change. Where the first three seasons dealt with a special unit of the police department and its lengthy narcotics investigations, season four focuses mainly on the public school system, specifically a group of junior high school students. Most of what occurs in the show is based in reality, as the series boasts executive producers that have been an ex-crime reporter and a cop-turned-schoolteacher. Everything that happens to the characters, especially those young boys, will completely break your heart. The Wire is not, as I’ve probably made it sound, depressing. It’s sad, yes. But it’s hard not to get wrapped up in such a vital, rich world populated by these very real characters. What makes it ultimately hopeful is simply the journey; watching people struggle and succeed or fail (and here they usually fail) is often just as rewarding as if the cops always caught the bad guys.