Television Review: Misgivings (The Wire, S4X10, 2006)

Misgivings (S04E10)

Airdate: November 19th 2006

Written by: Eric Overmyer
Directed by: Ernest Dickerson

Running Time: 58 minutes

HBO’s The Wire remains unparalleled in its unflinching, multi-faceted dissection of urban decay, renowned for presenting Baltimore through the fractured lenses of race, class, profession, and crucially, temporal perspective. Season 4’s Misgivings exploits this latter dimension, situating its narrative deep within the city’s late autumnal chill. This is not the sweltering, volatile Baltimore of summer; the biting cold transforms the notorious streets into a bleaker, more desolate landscape, its damp pavements and skeletal trees mirroring the pervasive sense of encroaching doom and diminishing hope that grips its characters. The episode harnesses this seasonal shift not merely as backdrop, but as an active narrative force, its pervasive gloom seeping into the very marrow of the institutions and individuals struggling to survive within them, setting the stage for a profound meditation on the crushing weight of systemic inertia.

As the calendar inches towards year's end and Tommy Carcetti’s mayoral inauguration looms, the initial fervour of his reformist promises has already been doused by the icy reality of Baltimore’s entrenched power structures. Commissioner Ervin Burrell, acutely aware his position is temporarily untouchable during the transition, cynically exploits this limbo. He orders a mass campaign of petty arrests – "juking the stats" – flooding the system with low-level offences to artificially inflate clearance rates and mask the city’s true crime levels. This calculated manoeuvre represents Carcetti’s first significant institutional challenge, a stark demonstration of how the bureaucracy actively resists change. Simultaneously, the ever-opportunistic State Senator Clay Davis recognises Burrell’s vulnerability and Carcetti’s need for legitimacy within the Black community. Davis dangles the promise of securing commissioner's pay rise specifically designed to attract "adequate African American replacements," cynically leveraging racial politics to consolidate his own power while appearing to assist the new administration. Meanwhile, Cedric Daniels, Carcetti’s chosen successor for Commissioner, begins to feel the first gnawing disappointment in the mayor’s willingness to compromise with the very machine he vowed to dismantle. Unbeknownst to Daniels, this disillusionment is compounded by the quiet conspiracy between Burrell and Council President Nerese Campbell, who are actively working to block his ascension, ensuring the status quo endures regardless of the mayoral election’s outcome.

Burrell’s directive fractures the Western District’s ranks along stark moral lines. On one side stand officers like Jimmy McNulty, who, despite his own flaws, takes the time to pursue meaningful police work – apprehending thieves targeting churches – prioritising genuine community safety over arbitrary arrest quotas. On the other side, officers like the corrupt and brutal Officer Walker (Jonnie Louis Brown) seize the opportunity to abuse their authority with renewed vigour. The human cost is brutally illustrated through Donut, a young man who narrowly evades Walker’s car theft arrest but not the officer’s vindictive rage; Walker deliberately breaks four of Donut’s fingers, a savage act of punishment for perceived disrespect that underscores the terror inflicted upon the community under the guise of crime-fighting. Elsewhere, incompetence proves equally destructive. Herc, desperate to redeem himself after previous failures, coerces the vulnerable addict Bubbles into helping retrieve a video camera stolen by Marlo Stanfield’s crew. Bubbles, still reeling from Herc’s past betrayal that nearly got him killed by his tormentor, reluctantly agrees, given a burner phone as his only lifeline. Feeling utterly ignored and used, Bubbles exacts a cruel, deliberate revenge. Using the burner, he falsely identifies an innocent elderly man and his car as belonging to Marlo’s organisation. Herc, acting on this tip, violently accosts the man – revealed to be a minister (Franklin Ojeda Smith) – an act of brutality almost certain to end Herc’s career once Internal Investigations Division (IID) scrutinises the incident. Herc’s downfall stems not from malice but from staggering incompetence and a desperate need for validation, making it tragically self-inflicted.

Amidst this moral quagmire, glimmers of compassion and street wisdom persist. Sergeant Ellis Carver, arresting Namond Brice for petty drug dealing, makes a critical, human decision. Instead of processing the boy into the juvenile detention system, Carver delivers Namond directly into the custody of his former commander, Howard "Bunny" Colvin. This small act of mercy leads to a revealing scene at Colvin’s home. Over a proper meal, the usually swaggering Namond sheds his forced "gangsta" persona entirely, displaying unexpected politeness and vulnerability. The stark contrast between this nurturing environment and the chaotic neglect fostered by his irresponsible, status-obsessed mother, De’londa, lays bare the profound influence of environment on a child’s development – a core theme of Season 4.

Colvin himself, now working within the Franklin P. Tilghman Middle School, confronts the crushing limitations of his innovative special class programme. While students show tentative progress in socialisation and basic skills under his patient guidance with Dr. Parenti, the school bureaucracy remains fixated solely on standardised test scores. Administrators, devoid of understanding for the nuanced groundwork required before academic testing can be meaningful, demand immediate test preparation. Colvin’s position is fatally undermined when education officials witness a violent incident involving his students, confirming their worst assumptions. Prez, meanwhile, adopts a more subversive tactic, developing a method to appear to teach to the test while continuing to impart genuine mathematical understanding – a necessary act of quiet rebellion against an inflexible system.

The episode’s most devastating chain reaction stems from Herc’s earlier, shoddy interrogation of Little Kevin. Upon his release, Kevin reports the incident to Bodie Broadus. Bodie, recognising the potential threat Marlo poses, instructs Kevin to report everything directly to Stanfield. Marlo, with chillingly detached calculation, determines that Kevin, despite not revealing Lex’s disappearance to the police, now knows too much simply by being questioned. He orders Chris Partlow and Snoop to execute him. When Kevin, in a final plea, names Randy Wagstaff as the snitch who led police to him, Marlo opts for psychological torture over immediate death, decreeing Randy should be branded a snitch and shunned – a fate he deems an adequate punishment. Bodie’s visceral horror at Kevin’s execution is profoundly significant; despite his own involvement in Wallace’s murder, he sees a crucial difference. Kevin, unlike Wallace, remained loyal and betrayed no one. His reward for that loyalty is death, exposing the brutal, arbitrary logic of the drug trade where even faithful service offers no security.

Michael Lee’s path towards becoming Marlo’s "loyal soldier" culminates in a horrific reward. As initiation, Chris and Snoop abduct his brutally abusive stepfather, Devar. However, the routine execution fractures when Chris, realising Devar is a sexual abuser, is violently triggered by his own past trauma. Abandoning their meticulous protocols, Chris savagely beats Devar to death on a public street, leaving the body exposed with potential evidence. Snoop watches, bewildered, as Chris’s professional detachment shatters under the weight of personal history. This deviation from their usual clinical efficiency is profoundly unsettling, revealing the deep psychological scars carried even by the most hardened enforcers and demonstrating how the cycle of violence perpetuates itself through inherited trauma.

Written by series Eric Overmyer and directed with assured, unflinching precision by Ernest Dickerson, Misgivings largely sustains the exceptional quality of Season 4. Burns’ deep understanding of institutional failure and street dynamics permeates the script, while Dickerson’s direction ensures the Baltimore chill feels palpable. However, certain narrative choices strain credibility. Namond’s remarkably swift transformation and polite demeanour during the dinner at Colvin’s home, while thematically potent, feels somewhat contrived – a convenient vehicle for character revelation that edges towards narrative expediency rather than organic development, momentarily disrupting the show’s otherwise ironclad realism.

Yet, the episode’s power is undeniable, culminating in one of The Wire’s most graphically brutal sequences: Chris’s frenzied street execution of Devar. The violence is raw, shocking, and deeply disturbing in its physicality. However, the episode cunningly manipulates audience complicity. Knowing Devar is a child abuser, viewers are likely to experience a complex, unsettling mix of revulsion and grim satisfaction – his fate feels, within the show’s moral universe, deserved. This calculated ambiguity is the episode’s masterstroke. It forces us to confront our own capacity for condoning brutality when directed at a perceived monster, blurring the lines between justice and vengeance.

The cold Baltimore streets of Misgivings are not just a setting; they are a reflection of the frozen moral landscape where reformist hopes die, institutions calcify, and the only warmth comes from the brief, fragile sparks of human decency – easily extinguished, but never quite eradicated.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Leodex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9