The Wire “Boys Of Summer”

Season Four opens with a young woman scaring the crap out of a home goods clerk when it becomes clear she isn’t buying an automatic nail gun for home improvement purposes.  Snoop appears to understand more about firearms and their usage than carpentry.

As it is, Snoop and her partner Chris work for Marlo, who figured out how to dispose of bodies without the police finding them.  Basically, kill someone in an abandoned tenement, spread some line, and then nail the entrance shut.  It looks like they’ve been doing this a lot.

But this being The Wire, we need to see what’s failing the people this season.  And it looks like it’s the schools.  Prez leaving the police force sends him to try being a math teacher.  That actually sounds like a good career move.  The school itself is understaffed, the students can get violent, there isn’t enough funding, but Prez telling the principal he used to be a cop gets him in immediately.

And we see some folks have moved around a bit.  McNulty is a uniformed cop in the Western District and actually seems to be doing well.  He’s not living up to his potential, but he seems happy.  Daniels, now a major, is in charge there.  Carver seems to be on the road to becoming a good cop, and he and McNulty have what seems to be almost a friendly relationship with Bodie, the one guy from Avon’s organization still on the street due to a technicality.  Herc is doing bodyguard duty for the mayor.  Major Crimes has a new lieutenant in charge, but he’s getting ready to retire so Kima and Lester basically get to do whatever they want to.  Carcetti is having problems with his campaign for mayor, but he got an idea of some kind at one point.

But most of the episode focuses on four boys, Namond, Michael, Dukie, and Randy.  Namond is the son of one of Avon’s top people.  Randy is a smart one.  Michael seems to be the leader.  Dukie’s the poor kid the others seem to pick on.  Most of them seem to be working for Bodie, but school is starting soon.  What does that mean?  Their lives are already rough due to gang squabbles, and Randy learns he accidentally led a guy on the crew to his death.  These kids will grow up to be the next generation of drug dealers like Bodie or D’Angelo if something doesn’t change that for better or for worse.

This is The Wire.  It probably won’t be for the better.