The Wire
Alliances
TV Flash files “Alliances” as hour 42 of 60 in the TV Flash guide — The Wire (2002–2008) on HBO, season 4, episode 5, aired 2006-10-08, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S04E05: listed hour 42 of 60 in the The Wire guide, hour 5 of 13 in season 4. It aired 2006-10-08 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Refugees” (S04E04). Next is “Margin of Error” (S04E06).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
The ensuing negative attention turns Royce against Burrell, who takes the heat while Rawls comes to the rescue. At school, Prez's reward/punishment program meets with mixed results, and Colvin looks to restore order by separating disruptive "corner" kids from more attentive "stoop" ones. Chris tries to enlist Michael into Marlo's ranks, spooking Randy along the way. Dukie debunks Randy's "special dead" theory.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Alliances sit in the The Wire guide?
S04E05 is listed hour 42 of 60 — hour 5 of 13 in season 4, season 4 episode 5.
When did The Wire S04E05 air?
Alliances aired 2006-10-08 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Where should I start The Wire?
Episode one of season one. The show is a five-volume novel; skipping the corner season to “get to the good part” is how you miss the grammar.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Watch it as a civic novel that happens to be television: each season a new institution, the same city refusing to be solved. Characters function inside systems, not merch. Start at the corner; stay for the report card — and for a newsroom closer that still argues with the first wire.
Open on a street that is already an argument. The first hour of The Wire does not introduce a hero so much as a jurisdiction: a corner, a courtroom, a police department already lying to itself about what it can solve. David Simon and Ed Burns write Baltimore as a set of interlocking machines — drugs, docks, City Hall, schools, the newsroom — and then ask television to behave like a novel that refuses a narrator’s mercy. If you came for an antihero origin story, the text will starve you politely. If you came to…
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