The Wire Season 4: Getting Schooled

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"You gonna look out for me?"
--Randy Wagstaff

Randy, one of the four eighth grade boys at the center of season 4 of The Wire, curses a would-be father figure with these words after a series of minor and major interconnected events leave his already precarious life in upheaval. Twelve episodes in, he's a long way from the same boy who spent the early part of the season trying to capture a white homing pigeon, coming up with the perfect plot for revenge -- urine balloons -- and carrying around backpack full of candy to sell to drug dealers and fellow students. He's gotten schooled, and this being The Wire, the lessons haven't been easy.

Really at this moment, Randy could be addressing the school system, mayors old and new, the city council, the foster care system, the police, Baltimore, the country for failing him and his friends. In the words of the show's season 3 ads, it's all connected. Over the first four seasons, David Simon, Ed Burns (a former Balitmore homicide detective and later middle school teacher, whose experiences inspired much of this season), and the other creators on The Wire, have connected more threads, starting with the dichotomy of the police and drug dealers and pulling in more aspects of the city -- labor, politics, and now education. They ask how does a child become a drug dealer or worse a killer by showing the pressures urban children face and the failures of the institutions around them.

In the beginning of the season, the four boys each fall into a sort of category. Randy (Maestro Harrell) is a hustler in the best sense of the word. He has a mind for business, charm, and an optimistic outlook. Living with a good foster mother but having suffered the ills of a group home, he also knows the stakes, and his business sense, survival skills, and fear collide in a dangerous way. Duquan "Dukie" Weems (Jermaine Crawford) is what Ed Burns calls "the dirty kid." He lives in a house with drug addicts, who steal his school clothes and sell them for drug money. They haven't had running water for a year, and he smells bad, something other kids comment on a lot. The only time we seen the inside of his house, it's in a pile on the street. He also happens to be kind and bright with skills for math and technology, but he has to rely on the kindness of others just to get his basic needs, and almost any scene with him is heartbreaking either because of the bad he suffers in the scene or the sense that whatever good is happening now could get ripped away at any moment.

Michael Lee (Tristan Wilds) is the strong one, the one with street smarts. His mother is an addict, too, and he finds himself in the role of parent to his younger brother Bug. He also has a dark secret that closes him off to those who might help him and gives him a penchant for and ease with violence, whether the condoned kind at Cutty's boxing gym or the kind practiced by the drug crews that rule the streets. Namond Brice (Julito McCullum) would like to be a player, but in his heart, he isn't. He puts up the front and feels he has to live up to the reputation of his father Weebay (Hassan Johnson), a Barksdale soldier from season 1 who gladly took the rap both for murders he did commit and others he didn't. As for his mother, long-term street survivor Bodie gets it right when he calls her a "dragon lady."

All four boys go to Tilghman Middle School, the latest institution to fall under The Wire's scrutiny. It also becomes another focal point for connecting them to the larger world of the show's version of Baltimore. After a disastrous incident in season 3, Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost) has given up his police badge and become a math teacher at Tilghman. Through his exposure to to the school system, we see many of its failings. Before the school year starts, he's eager to learn even as other teachers tell him survival is the main goal. He pays attention to a ridiculous slide show presentation and repeats along with other teachers the more ridiculous acronym: I.A.L.C. -- I Am Lovable and Capable. This scene, like a parallel one at the Western District police station, devolves into chaos when the teachers confront the speaker with the realities of their classrooms:

Speaker: Another hot zone in the classroom is the pencil sharpener, where children tend to congregate and --

First Teacher: I had a pencil sharpener in my class once. Antoine Granderson ripped it from the wall and threw it at me.

Second Teacher: I'd like to know what your lesson plan suggests when Harold Hounchell sends a full set of textbooks through a closed window. Thank you.

Through the course of the season, Prez (or Mr. Prezbo, as the kids say) struggles to even get one math problem across, has to deal with the constant chatter of the children, and even violence. Still, he learns, figures out ways to teach the children by using what they know, probabilities through cards and dice, only to have everything disrupted when he's instructed to start "teaching to the test," which includes reading comprehension in a math class. The school also turns up the heat in the classrooms because they have to keep the kids drowsy to get them to sit still in 90-minute classes. In the span of days, the class goes from actively learning to demoralized and sleepy. Prez also "adopts" Dukie, giving him food, buying him new clothes, doing laundry for him, and making sure he can shower in the locker rooms, as well as providing him the opportunity to use a computer. Of course, the computer was sitting unopened in the school book room until Prez discovered it.

Howard "Bunny" Colvin (Robert Wisdom) enters the school, too. After the last episode of season 4 aired last year, I wrote, "Bunny Colvin -- perhaps my favorite character on TV ever," and I'll stand by that. In season 3, he tried legalizing drugs and paid heavily for it. In season 4, he gets involved in a university study of at-risk teenagers. On his advice (and after a vivid demonstration), they go to study young teenagers rather than those already "deep in the life." Quickly, he sees that they can divide the kids into two groups, stoop kids and corner kids. Stoop kids stay on the stoop when their parents say so, they try to learn, they don't want to get involved in the drug life. Corner kids are out there already or headed there, and they prevent the stoop kids from learning through near constant disruptions. Colvin and the university professor suggest separating them, trying a different kind of class.

Namond ends up in this class, and soon enough, Colvin and the university people get to the hard truth. These kids aren't using school to prepare for a regular life, but they are learning, learning how to get by on the corners, how to distract people, how to hustle, intimidate, push boundaries, lie. Of course, they they think they've got it easy in their special class, but slowly, they are learning new skills, social skills, and a unexpected bond forms between Colvin and Namond. By the end of the season, Colvin, too, learns some lessons, some negative ones he'd already learned in the previous season and another potentially positive one, the one lurking at the heart of the show, the potential for the individual to affect change where institutions fail.

Early in the season Randy does a favor for someone, telling a dealer to go to a park to meet a girl. The dealer goes to the park, but he doesn't come back. He's been set up for a murder by Marlo Stanfield's crew, something Randy doesn't know until it's too late. When another incident at school forces him into a desperate situation, he spills the beans on the murder, and Prez tries to get help from his old police commander Daniels (Lance Reddick). Daniels gives it to Carver (Seth Gilliam), a one-time screw-up who's come into his own under Colvin's command. From there, things unravel as Carver puts Randy in the hands of the wrong cop, his old partner Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi).

Michael does seem like the strong one, but when he refuses school money from burgeoning drug kingpin Marlo (Jamie Hector), he catches the eye of Marlo and his lieutenant Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe). They see great potential in this pup with "big paws." So does Cutty (Chad Coleman), only as a boxer, but Michael's secret and Cutty's own questionable behavior with the women of the neighborhood stifle that situation. When Michael's home situation abruptly changes, the path to Marlo brightens.

Along with these threads, we also go further inside the politics of the city through a mayoral race started in season 3. Little surprise in a show where institutions suck the lives out of people that politics is a dirty business where the new mayor gets told to prepare to eat shit even as he and others around him tout a "new day in Baltimore." This material could have been deadly, but charismatic performances by Aidan Gillen as Tommy Carcetti, Reg E. Cathey as his deputy campaign manager, and Glynn Turman as Mayor Royce keep it fresh, engaging, and funny. Besides, as someone says in a commentary, you really can't tell the story of a city without getting into its politics, and much of the trouble on the show starts at the top but has major consequences at the bottom.

The police and drug aspects remain, as well. Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) has given up detective work to become a beat cop again, and he's sobered up and moved in with Beadie Russell (Amy Ryan) and her kids. Though he plays a much smaller role this season, he has a major scene, one of the finest of the series, with Bodie (J.D. Williams) in the final episode.

Meanwhile, detectives Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) and Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) spend a lot of time looking for bodies they can't find. Bunk only needs one, but Freamon believes there are more. Marlo has taken control of West Baltimore without violence, something that just doesn't happen, and season 3's drug war had Marlo deep in violence. The people on the street, the kids know where the bodies are, but it takes Freamon most of the season to figure it out, and when he does, he delivers the great line "It's a tomb." (Before the season aired, Stephen King wrote about it Entertainment Weekly, having seen an advanced copy of the entire season. He mentioned this line, and I spent most of the season waiting for it -- it was worth the wait).

In Marlo, The Wire has its closest thing to outright evil. Assholes abound, but even they have moments of humanity and have usually been chewed up by an institution. Marlo is cold. When a convenience store security guard says, "You act like I don't exist," Marlo says, "You don't." He never loses his cool, even when ordering an execution. Hector plays him as a reptile. He moves with a deliberate smoothness, and he when he makes a decision, he often darts his tongue out. His chief lieutenants Chris and Snoop (Felicia Pearson) aren't as cold, but they're terrifying, snoop in her blood lust, Chris when he does lose his cool. Marlo relies on Chris and Snoop, but he still rubs it in to Chris when his "pup" Michael is caught defending the wrong kind of person.

Bubbles (Andre Royo), our addict on the street, has himself quite a season, too. He's taken his entrepreneurial instincts to new levels, pushing grocery carts full of everything from white T-shirts (a favorite of kids in drug crews) to bootleg DVDs, a cardboard sign reading "Bubbles Depo" on the carts. He's also taken a homeless boy named Sherrod (Rashad Orange) under his wing, caring for him, trying to teach him enough so they can cover twice the ground. Sherrod can't handle the money, though, and Bubbles tries to get him back in school, leading to two hilarious run-ins between Bubbles and Prez. Difficulties arise when a bully zeroes in on Bubbles and starts stealing money and merchandise from him, usually throwing in a beating for good measure. The police don't help, and Bubbles takes matters into his own hands, leading to his darkest moments and a possible new path for him.

I don't mean to give these other aspects short shrift. They're as meaningful, engaging, and entertaining as ever, but this season always comes back to the kids. Simon, Burns, and company took a big risk putting so much of the show on kids. If they hadn't found the right young actors, they wouldn't have had a show. Luckily, they found them in Crawford, Harrell, McCullum, and Wilds. These kids can can act, and they grow both as actors and physically over the course of the season, reinforcing their characters' journeys out of childhood. They have a great chemistry, too, evidenced on screen and in their joint DVD commentary on one of the episodes along with Richard Chew (Proposition Joe), who also served as an acting coach for them and other kids. The writers do a tremendous job making them real characters, and the actors use that to make us care about them, and through that caring, we understand the themes of the season.

Like other aspects of the show, the education system and the lives of the children in it doesn't receive an upbeat portrayal. It's broken, a victim of deficit problems ($50 million), politics (whose responsibility is it -- the city's, the school board's, the state's?), and, like the police department, stats. As long as a certain number of kids attend at least one day in September and October, the school gets funding, so Cutty and another man go out in a van to round up kids. The kids know the deal, and after one run, Cutty knows it, too, and walks away from good money. In the world of accountability, improved test scores only mean the school has improved at raising test scores, not at educating kids. Prez tells a colleague they're juking the stats like the police department: "Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels." When Prez sees "proficient" results for much of his class, the same colleague brings him back to reality -- proficient means students can read at least two levels below their age. Robbery becomes larceny, and in trouble becomes proficient.

Yet the facts alone don't make these moments. Prez's anger and disappointment do. Having spent most of the season with the four main kids and other supporting characters does. If you've been with the show from the beginning or even only from season three, you know the damage juking the stats causes, not just in intellectual terms but in personal terms. You've seen McNulty, Bunk, and Freamon driven to rash decisions, anger, insubordination, drink, women. You've seen Bunny Colvin make a radical, controversial decision at first to juke his own stats, then continuing because he sees real change, only to have the higher powers rob him of his job and his dignity. And of course, you've seen the damaged communities, run down by a drug war that only seems to damage them more.

Randy, Dukie, Michael, and Namond live in one of those communities, and in it, they find both the shining and ugly parts of their own humanity. When in a wide shot Randy quietly hands Dukie a sack lunch for the first day of school and Dukie says, "Thanks," we learn and feel so much about them and about their world. When later Randy gets a free sweatshirt for doing work for Carcetti's campaign and gives it to Dukie off camera (and Dukie wears it the rest of the season), we again get to know them. When Namond fails to be a player and Michael steps up with frightening ease, we see their futures opening up, and when Namond goes after Dukie the next day to prove his worth, aping words from the night before, Michael's response and Namond in the aftermath tell they've stepped into those futures.

For all its activism, The Wire's power lives here in the human, the individual, and that might be its greatest lesson. If individuals can't escape or rise above the institutions in their lives (as much as possible), they can either die (literally or figuratively) trying or become a part of the problem and at least survive. If they can, if they can circumvent the system, whether it be a police department, a drug crew, a flawed education system, maybe they can wake up a new day in Baltimore.

The final season of The Wire starts Sunday, January 6 at 9 P.M. on HBO.