As The Wire is ultimately a novelistic portrayal of the modern American city, it must look long and hard at the calcified and craven bureaucracies that run them. Previous seasons have focused on the political machinery that took in bribes and favors and spit out empty rhetoric, and its close partner, the police department, with its politician-favored emphasis on the stats game, racking up huge numbers of meaningless low-level drug arrests while neighborhoods continue to crumble. The number-loving bureaucracy gets another thumping this time out, as "Bunny" Colvin (Robert Wisdom), the maverick police major who got bounced after his radical drug enforcement strategy came to light (in short: legalize drugs in certain parts of the city to lower violence), shows up at Tilghman to institute some radical education theories. By the end, the series has used Colvin's pugnacious wisdom to effectively knock down the sacred cows of "No Child Left Behind" rhetoric just as he had exposed the ineffective hypocrisy of the War on Drugs in season three.
The world of Baltimore in season four initially seems more receptive to change than it had in the past, with reform coming in the form of mayoral candidate Tommy Carcetti. He's played by Aidan Gillen as a nervy bundle of high-wire energy and cynical humor ("Every day I wake up white in a city that ain't.") wh
