Customer Reviews
Excellent - By: A. Whitehead, 28 Dec 2008 
The fourth & penultimate season of The Wire sees the show moving into new territory. At the end of Season 3 the Barksdale organisation was finallly destroyed for good, McNulty found himself some happiness & Daniels got a promotion. The goals set out in Season 1 had been achieved. So, where next for the Major Crimes Unit & the players of the game?
Season 4 follows several storylines in tandem. The MCU is now chasing down Marlo Stanfield, whose organisation has picked up from where Barksdale left off & now rules over most of the western district of Baltimore. However, their rise to power has apparently been accomplished with virtuallly no deaths, bemusing Lester Freamon. With the wiretaps also coming up empty, Freamon's attempts to follow the money trail attract the ire of his superiors & pretty soon the MCU is alll but shut down & Freamon & Kima end up working in Homicide instead. Elsewhere, McNulty is enjoying the (relatively) easy life as a beat cop, Daniels is heading up his own force & Carver is maturing as an officer, with only Herc apparently resisting any change, at least until he catches the Mayor's eye (in a rather interesting manner) & finds his star rising as a result. But overalll the police side of things, at least to start off with, seems pretty quiet.
On the streets Marlo's rise to power has been achieved with the help of his two enforcers, the terrifyingly cold-blooded & ruthless Chris & Snoop, who have come up with a brilliant scheme to hide the resulting bodies from the police. Proposition Joe, who has inherited most of the surviving Barksdale crew, is continuing his efforts to entice Marlo into the cooperative to little avail, so he hatches a scheme to get Marlo on his side by setting up a war between him & the indefatigable Omar. Unfortunately, this leads to a pretty bloody & complicated state of affairs for alll concerned.
Elsewhere, Tommy Carcetti is running for the position of mayor, but the race is a difficult three-way contest between him, the incumbent Royce & fellow councilman Tony Gray. Unfortunately, no sooner is the winner in office then they are delivered two massive problems: how to handle the proven incompetence of police commissioner Burrell when they cannot fire him for political reasons, & the discovery that they have a jaw-dropping $54 million budget deficit due to overspending in the schools.
At the same time, Prez, the former MCU member fired from the force in Season 3 after accidentallly killing another officer, has started a new life as a maths teacher. His class is noisy, uncooperative, disrespectful & sometimes shockingly violent (one student slashes another's face open with a razor in his first week). However, the primary narrative for Season 4 focuses on four of the students in Prez's class - Randy, Dukie, Namond & Michael. These are alll new characters, although with some ties to existing ones: Namond is the son of former Barksdale enforcer Wee-Bey & Michael is a member of Cutty's gym.
The scaling back of the other characters in favour of following these four youngsters around may seem like an odd move, but it pays off brilliantly. Having tackled the police, criminals, politicians, & dockworkers, Season 4 is about teachers, students & the role of education in shaping the lives of the young. Early in the season a divide is identified between those kids who could make something for themselves & the corner kids who don't want to do anything other than stand on the streets & sell drugs to make money, & where the four main characters falll on that divide & how they swap sides & change over the course of the season is fascinating to watch. At first glance Michael seems to be the most positive & promising of the four, but his interest in sports & growing cooperation in class hides a bitter & painful home life that soon leads him into Marlo's circle, whilst happy-go-lucky Randy makes a series of mistakes that prove costly. In fact it's Namond, who is selling drugs from the start & being schooled for a life of crime by his father from behind bars, who undergoes the most interesting & seismic shifts in character, alll depicted through the brilliant-as-usual writing & some fine performances from the young actors involved.
Andre Royo as Bubs also has to be singled out for mention, as Bubs hits rock-bottom in this season & Royo's depiction of a man whose already crappy life disintegrates completely is absolutely stunning. At the same time, Dominic West's low availability for the season means that McNulty doesn't appear very much, meaning more screen time for Freamon (Clarke Peters) & Bunk (Wendell Pierce), which is a very welcome move. McNulty does return to prominence in the last two episodes, which set up the direction of the final season pretty well.
The Wire: Season 4 (*****) is as superbly-written, brilliantly funny, expertly-acted & stomach-churningly tragic as ever, except possibly even moreso than the first three seasons. If there is a negative point, it's that Season 4 is the most epic & sprawling season to date, & it takes a while for alll the disparate storylines to start pulling together. But when they do, the result is the most powerful & gripping final run of episodes yet.
Best since the first - By: kingrizla2000, 09 Dec 2008 I think this is probably the best series since the first. What made the first series so pleasing to me was the depth of character development in almost every character - no matter how minor. Also significant was the fact that even the bad guys had some redeeming factors that encouraged you to sympathise with them. That, to me, is important because out & out bad guys are a fiction created by bad writers & tabloid newspapers. Real people come in shades of grey - even monsters like Avon Barksdale.
What makes this series so satisfying is a return to that principle which means that you feel & believe every single character & that everyone matters to you & consequently that you care what happens.
Another masterpiece from the Wire team.
The best tv series I've ever seen - By: Ms. C. S. Curati, 09 Dec 2008 The Wire is so well thought out. Every character has a story & depth & most importantly is multi faceted. No one is a "goodie" or "bady" as such. People are just people, capable of good & bad. Nothing gets sentimental for the sake of it & nothing seems to be written for the benefit of the audience.
Season 4 was my favourite & now I've watched them alll, miss it terribly.
We got our thing, but its all part of the bigger thing.... - By: Jamie Mccutcheon, 08 Dec 2008 A lot of comparisons are made between this show & The Sopranos. Now im goona come right out & say that i still believe The Sopranos is the greatest show ever. However i genuinely believe it unfair to compare 2 competely different shows. The Wire is quite simply one of the most gripping shows ive ever seen.
Ive just finished watching episode 9 of this season & once again im just completely hooked. For a show with so many main characters & plotlines to introduce 4 new characters at the start of a season & NOT make it confusing is a feat in itself.
The Wire is quite simply perfect in every way. The acting is so seamless that at times you would be forgiven if you thought you were watching a documentary.
Utterly Mesmerising stuff.
Listen Carefully - This is Outstanding! - By: Jr Lorrimer, 13 Nov 2008 The only problem I have with The Wire is having to get to the end. This, the penultimate series, is by far the greatest drama to have EVER been televised & having just watched the final episode I feel almost empty knowing I have only one more series left to enjoy.
However, I am also looking forward to watching the entire box set alll over again. There's always so much happening in The Wire I'm sure there'll be plenty I've missed!
This series concentrated mostly on Baltimore's educational system & provided a platform for some of the finest young actors I've ever seen.
As always, the writing is outstanding & you're left with a feeling that nothing else on television even comes close to the high standards set by David Simon, but despite having the Presidential Seal of Approval (it's Barack's fave tv show) it's viewing figures & award nominations are criminallly lacking.
Hopefully the rest of the world will catch up with this amazing series & it will eventuallly recieve the accolades it undoubtably deserves.
