Tuesday, 8 November 2011

TV review: The wire season 4


With a new crime lord in town and the Election Day for the mayor of Baltimore approaching we follow the lives of a group of school kids.

I had my reservation at the end of season 3 but I must say that I was wrong, the creators of this incredible series were merely laying the groundwork for this season, in my opinion the best one and certainly one of the best things that I had the pleasure of seeing on my TV.
As is customary for the wire there is a new setting, the school system, with a bunch of new characters, a gang of school kids. This makes everything that happens on the screen so much more harrowing because beforehand even with relatively sympathetic criminals they were still people who choose the wrong side of the law, instead here we literally see the enormous pressures that drive so many kids to criminal life. Watching the fall from grace of not one but many boys who, in a different setting, would have been perfectly normal people made our viewing really intense.
A lot could be said on how there is a complex system that creates monsters and what could be done to correct it.
The creators again with the character of Bunny Colvin point the finger at the hypocrisies of the school system while proposing solutions that not everyone will like but that are anchored in real life.
As I said in the beginning I thought that the creators where unsuccessful in tackling the dark side of politics, I was really glaringly wrong. It was simply the start of a multi season arc and here we start to see that even electing the right person for the job is only the beginning.
Is difficult to say more without spoilering it, suffice to say that this season is a masterpiece on every level.

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