The Wire Season 4 Episode 4 : Refugees

The Wire Season 4 Episode 4: Refugees   The children at the center of Season 4 have been set adrift by crime and indifference. If they're not being preyed upon by family members then they're being clocked by drug dealers as corner fodder. The boy who has attracted the most attention of Marlo Stanfield's crew is Michael Lee (Tristan Wilds). He has heart, cares for his brother and lives in a dope-infested hovel with his addict mother. He's ripe for the picking, they say. Cutty Wise (Chad Coleman) also sees potential in Michael and hopes to draw him into his boxing gym, to steer him away from the kind of life that set Cutty on the road to prison. Predictably and regrettably, the boy mistakes Cutty's interest as a sexual advance -- it is suggested he has been molested by his step-father -- but Michael has no problem understanding Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson) when they come a-knocking. As urban pathologies go -- and the series explores dozens of them -- those involving children can be the more unsettling because viewers are less willing to accept the inevitability of the young person's fate. That is why the killing of the young corner boy Wallace by other corner boys in the first season was so shocking. A secondary, though no less compelling, storyline in Season 4 involves Bubbles' (Andre Royo) attempts to save his young friend Sherrod (Rashad Orange) from a life on the pipe. He enrolls the young man in Tilghman Middle School and he is assigned to Prez's class but Sherrod never engages. Bubbles is frustrated and the viewer suspects the inevitable will not be averted in this case.