The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season
by Daniel Attias
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DVD details
Actor: Aidan Gillen, Dominic West, Lance Reddick, Sonja Sohn, Wendell PierceDirector: Daniel Attias
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Greek (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 780 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-12-04
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Hbo Home Video
DVD Reviews of The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season
DVD Review: There isn't enough stars to rate THE Wire!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Wire is the best television drama ever! A recent "study" ranked it fourth below such shows as The Sopranos and Lost! Ridiculous. The Wire is too real for some people, but it's the best portrail of what it happening in American cities everywhere.DVD Review: Gripping and powerful!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Wire portrays so vividly part of America that I think most people would rather ignore or pretend that it does not exist! The writing and acting are excellent!
It makes me think that issues happening in some areas across America do not only have local effects, but they also have state and national effects. It challenges me: what can I do to help?
DVD Review: Dark and penetrating
Summary: 5 Stars
This is perhaps the strongest of the four seasons of this outstanding series I have seen so far. It is unremittingly dark and honest; it has grown way beyond entertainment to become a penetrating and withering examination of what's worst about U.S. society.
This time, the authors take us into the Baltimore school system. We get to know a few of the students, their parents as well as teachers and administrators. These are kids who come from the meanest streets of the city -- their parents are dope fiends or felons. They are foul-mouthed, undisciplined, lack motivation and are unsocialized. In one of the most insightful moments of the entire series, one of the characters comments, "They aren't educating themselves for our world. They're developing the survival skills they need for their world."
One of the students we meet is Michael: his mother is a heroin addict who gives away her own kids' food money to buy drugs. She has shacked up with an abusive man. Michael struggles to protect himself and his young half brother. By the end of the season, he has turned to drug dealers for protection and has become a cold-blooded killer.
Another kid makes the mistake of confiding in a policeman. His house is fire-bombed, his mother grievously injured and he winds up in a group foster home being beaten up as a snitch by his roommates.
A third kid is given a chance of escaping this grim reality when he's adopted by a former police officer. His natural mother's only ambition for her son is for him to become a successful street corner drug dealer and soldier for a trafficking gang.
Since the first season, the dealers on the corners have changed. The Avon Barksdale gang in the first series could be bloody killers but it was all in the pursuit of business -- it was part of what they all call "the game." They had a certain code of honor. But the gang that now controls the streets are cold-blooded murderers who kill without compunction. They have no code and recognize no restraints.
This multi-faceted series recognizes that the drug trade flourishes in neglected black ghettos where social order has completely broken down. In this series, it shows how this failure, which is a collective failure of all of us in America, poisons the lives of children, consigning them to fruitless, cruel lives, leaving them with the choice of embracing the drugs trade and becoming killers or defying it and risking death.
DVD Review: Return to form
Summary: 5 Stars
Even though The Wire is based on slow storytelling where the first couple of episodes take the time to establish the situation and characters, I spent a great deal of time wondering if The Wire - The Complete Third Season was just playing for time. Marlo was ill defined and Bunny's plan to reduce murders seemed just a little too good to be true. The city politics portion was not nearly as interesting as the dock workers from season 2.
With season 4, there is a feeling of renewal. The Avon Barksdale/Stringer Bell dynamic that dominated seasons 1 and 3 (and got some of the best moments in season 2) is gone, replaced by a much scarier sociopath in Marlo. Avon and Stringer killed people sometimes with little cause, but there was always a cause. Marlo is a combination of power hunger and poor impulse control. A shadowy figure in season 3, he comes into his own as the winner from last season. McNulty is mostly MIA with the clean living that makes him show up every so often to act like the friend that you're happy for but you kind of wish he was still fun (although the fact that his absence was due to Hannibal Rising (Unrated Widescreen Edition) is kind of sad) but you don't miss him nearly as much as you think you would. The show has become too much of an ensemble show by this time to have any one character be too predominant (which is what they said about ER - The Complete First Season but look how awful that show got after George Clooney's departure)
Of course, the center of this season is the Baltimore school system. Told from the perspective of Pryzbylski as a new teacher and four students, the show follows the ups and downs as Dukie, Michael, Randy and Wey Bey jr. (sorry forgot the character's name) deal with poverty, outside forces, classmates and a school system that is constantly on the brink of collapse. Prez isn't the Great White Hope teacher (in fact he's pretty bad in most cases) but he is trying his best. And in the world of the Wire, that's not nearly good enough.
The nice thing about this show is that you don't automatically know who is going to rise and fall by the conventions of the genre. Some stories are uplifting. Some are tragic (ok most are tragic) but there's a courage among the characters that you can't help but admire.
DVD Review: Don't miss this one
Summary: 5 Stars
You've seen the first three, right? So what are you waiting for? No disappointments with this one.
Description of The Wire - The Complete Fourth Season
With the fall of Barksdale and the ascent of young Marlo Stanfield as West Baltimore's drug king, the detail continues to "follow the money" up the political ladder in the midst of a mayoral election that pits the black incumbent, Clarence Royce, against an ambitious white councilman, Tommy Carcetti. The theme of urban education is explored through four new characters ??" Michael Lee, Namond Brice, Randy Wagstaff and "Dukie" Weems as they traverse adolescence in the stunted, drug-saturated streets of West Baltimore. The world that awaits these boys and the American commitment to equal opportunity are depicted brilliantly in the edgy, all too realistic Season 4 of The Wire.Even if you missed the first three seasons (the character guides and thorough episode recaps on HBO's website are recommended), and with only one season left, it's not too late to get in under The Wire. In fact, season 4 is an accessible introduction for those who know The Wire only by its street cred as arguably the very best show on television. For them especially, this season will be, as befitting its theme, a real education. Without resorting to melodramatics that other ratings-challenged series employ to gain that frustratingly elusive audience, The Wire shakes things up this season in a way that is true to the series and its characters. A major character, Dominic West's McNulty, plays a minor role as a contented street cop and family man, while a former supporting player, Jim True-Frost's Roland Pryzbylewski, goes to the head of the class as a new eighth grade teacher at beleaguered Edward Tilghman Middle School. It may take a couple of episodes to orient yourself to the Baltimore backrooms, squad rooms, classrooms, and street corners where The Wire's intense dramas play out, and new viewers may miss something in character nuance, but they will easily grasp the big picture. A politically motivated shake-up sends Major Crimes detectives Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Greggs (Sonja Sohn) to Homicide. The gloves come off in the mayoral race between black incumbent Clarence Royce (Glynn Turman) and idealistic white challenger Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen). Gang leader Marlo (Jamie Hector) quietly and deliberately becomes the city's new drug kingpin, managing to subvert all surveillance efforts. Meanwhile, while "Prez" tries to reach his students, four highly at-risk kids will be drawn into the drug trade.
Mere synopsis does not do The Wire justice. The series deftly juggles its myriad storylines and characters, all of whom make an impression, from Marlo's cold-blooded enforcers, Snoop (Felicia Pearson) and Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe), to boxing instructor "Cutty" (Chad L. Coleman), determined to keep his young charges off the corners. There is not a false note in the performances or the writing. Richard Price (Clockers) and Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) again contributed episodes. That this series has only been nominated for only one Emmy (for writing) is a travesty. As engrossing as the finest novels and in a class by itself, this isn't television; it's The Wire. --Donald Liebenson
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