Hard lessons for life
Baltimore — THE lunchtime hubbub at Edward Tilghman Middle School had reached full din. Students clad in maroon polo shirts chattered and whooped, as the smell of boiled green beans and chicken cutlets wafted through the cafeteria.
A school may seem an incongruous setting for the latest installment of "The Wire." After all, the gritty HBO drama spent its previous three seasons dwelling on the brutal realities of the street drug trade, dockworker corruption and political malfeasance. Its dozens of characters -- cops, addicts, dealers -- showed life in the city through the lens of criminality.
But for the show's creator David Simon, it was obvious that the next institution to come under the program's unflinching gaze had to be the educational system.
"Every year we've been trying to slice off another piece of our mythical Baltimore," he said. "In the end, we hope that when we finish our run we'll have addressed the idea of the American city and where we, urban people, are at this point in time.
"The next logical thing for us was to examine the notion of equality of opportunity. These human beings who are feeding [off of] and serving and being devoured by the only viable industry in these parts of Baltimore -- where were these people coming from?"
The answer offered up in "The Wire's" fourth season, which debuts on Sunday at 10 p.m., is one that is likely to only further exasperate Baltimore officials, who are far from thrilled about having their city portrayed as an emblem of decaying urban America.
This year, the series follows four adolescent boys -- Michael (Tristan Wilds), Namond (Julito McCullum), DuQuan (Jermaine Crawford) and Randy (Maestro Harrell) -- as they try to navigate the druglord-owned streets of West Baltimore and contend with a largely dysfunctional school system often incapable of protecting its charges.
Much of the action takes place inside the middle school, filmed in a shuttered elementary school on the edge of downtown Baltimore. Early in the season, it quickly becomes apparent that the classroom provides no sanctuary from the battles outside.
On this cold spring day, the four young actors were filming a scene in the school hallway, a bustling corridor papered with hand-painted signs that urged "Integrity" and "Courage." As the friends ambled down the hall, ominous glances were thrown their way. A passing student shoved Randy menacingly -- a warning that he had run afoul of the rules of the street.
