Baltimore. After the Barksdale crime gang was arrested, a new one appeared, led by Marlo Stanfield, who distributes drugs in even more vicious manner, employing kids as his clerks and killing any kind of opposition through his henchmen Chris Partlow and Snoop, who hide the corpses inside abandoned buildings. After Detective Freamon finds out about the pattern, the Police Department now has scores of corpses to identify. Councilman Tommy Carcetti manages to win the election for Mayor, beating the African-American Mayor Royce due to a crime wave. Ex-Detective Prez now works as a teacher in a high school, but has troubles reaching the rebellious teenagers, yet finds a friend in the neglected Duquan. His teenage friend Randy is assaulted because he reported about the murders by Marlo. Disgusted by his friend, Michael, who turned to Marlo's crime ring, Namond decides to quit this path and is adopted by ex-police major Colvin.
The fourth season of the popular series by David Simon shifted its focus on the arena of high school and position of the Mayor, confirming once again two things: "The Wire" is very good, but still a little bit overrated. Its major problems were never mitigated and remained even until this season: too much dry babble, without much inspiration in writing these standard, routine dialogues with too much exposition; whereas it is also indicative that the viewers respect these characters, they tolerate them, but never truly care or root for anybody of them—only Herc and Carver are truly sympathetic; there is a surprisingly touching minuscule relationship between Prez, now a teacher, who helps out impoverished teenager Duquan by washing his clothes; but for the majority, all the characters are just plagued by selfish, depressive, backward or aggressive behavior, which leaves little room to act anything else beyond such fatalism. The details give "The Wire" a sense of almost documentary realism: Marlo's men give 200$ to kids, "investing" into them in order to later "draft" them into selling drugs and the like, and thus there is an ironic moment when a police officer finds the said 200$ bill in the pocket of one of the kids. The kid resorts to lies, claiming his stepmother gave it to him, upon which the police officer keeps the money for himself and says: "Your stepmother gave you 200$? Tell her to come to the precinct and I'll return it to her!" The homicide department is afraid to pick up a call, fearing to get another unsolved "John Doe" corpse which will deteriorate their already low quota of solved cases. But when one of their associates gets a break, they say: "Better be lucky than to be good."
When Freamon discovers a whole chain of corpses hidden in abandoned buildings, Seargent Landsman looks at the case board, now filled with red names of new unsolved cases, and calls him a "Vandal". Prez also has a genius random quote: "Nobody wins. One side just loses more slowly". A whole subplot involving an election race between Royce, the old Mayor, and Carcetti, the Councilman, is fascinating, demonstrating how Royce tries to conceal one murder case until everyone votes, and even hires a construction crew to drill the entrance of Carcetti's office with a jackhammer in episode 4.3, sending an angry message towards his rival. It is highly ironic that the murder case which caused such a negative publicity, and ultimately loss of office for Royce—since everyone assumed the protected witness was killed by criminals—turns out to be a "false alarm". Namely, in episode 4.7, Detective Kima goes to the crime scene to search for clues herself, looking at a bullet stuck in a drawer, and finds out that some kids were actually shooting at empty bottles, but that a stray bullet accidentally hit the protected witness, who was just randomly passing by the street. Upon hearing that, Norris sums up the entire case: "So our guy is dead because a bullet misses a bleach bottle, and Corcetti gets to be Mayor because of this stupidity. I f*** love this town!" Even though Corcetti truly wants to make a change, it seems the entire destiny of Baltimore is unchangeable, and the young new Mayor has to make compromises and concessions which ultimately leave the things just as they were. The most disturbing death is found in episode 4.10, where the criminal Chris Partlow beats Devar, Michael's stepfather, suspected of paedophilia, into pulp, implying that Partlow himself was abused as a kid, and that this cycle lead him into the world of crime, as well as that it foreshadows Michael's own future path. Unfortunately, the last four episodes of the season lose steam, and end on a rather standard, grey note, failing to truly circle out some threads into a more satisfying finale.
Grade:+++
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