One of the running motifs in the series is the way the system chews people up and spits them out. Be it the streets, the police department, or city hall, your merits as an individual have little to do with your fate-- only luck, the workings of the system, and your ability to survive in it. The police department and city hall are filled with people like Burrell and Carcetti because their top priority is their career ambition and doing whatever it takes to further that. Doing their job well, doing the right thing, or even being a generally decent person all falls by the wayside of surviving and climbing the ladder.

If you can't work the system, the system chews you up. Look at Namond and Randy. Randy is a nice kid, decent and clever and enterprising. Namond is kind of a douche poser. But at the end of S4, Namond gets pulled out of the streets and Randy plunges further into hell. Because that's the way the system works. Namond got lucky that someone who could make a difference in his life took a personal interest in him-- that's also the only way change happens in the system, and it only happens on small, individual scales. Randy had someone-- Sgt. Carver-- but he didn't have the power to make a difference, so he couldn't be saved.

That was a long digression, but it leads to this: Bodie was a soldier. Soldiers die young. Unless they can move up in the organization somehow or find a way to get off the streets, they die young. "You only got to be a little slow, be a little late, once." Bodie wasn't ever going to move up. There was no way out for him. Didn't matter that he was smarter, more personable, realized the game was rigged. This was his fate.

I don't disagree with the general theme discussion, but Bodie wasn't that one-dimensional. He was clearly able to adapt to his circumstances better than most (Adjusting to being "independent", adjusting to Marlo's proposition the way he did, etc.). He and Slim Charles are two of my favorite characters for that reason and I assumed Bodie would be smarter if the time came to go at Marlo.

You also mentioned the kids, so maybe you can help me, how does Dookie's progression here make any sense. The kids been effectively on his own for his entire life, then his worthless family gets evicted (...again) and just after he's been flourishing in school, he starts slanging??? I get that he was scared at the prospect of going to HS and/or leaving his friends, but that seems like a huge leap for the character to take if he hadn't already.

I guess moving in with Michael got him closer to someone directly involved in the game, but it still seemed odd.

While tragic, Dukie's fate doesn't seem like a big leap to me at all. Coming from such a horribly broken home life where he was surrounded by drug addicts and alcoholics, he's probably lucky to have lasted until high school (we see numerous instances of him depending on the charity of his friends as well as the school principal).

No family, alienated from his new school environment and then finally shut out of the game. The result is similar to the Randy/Carver relationship...but it was always brutally clear that there isn't always going to be a Mr. Prezbo there to help him tread water.

But he spent almost the entire season being picked on and bullied. The only thing that seemed to indicate it was even a possibility was that he moved in with Michael. Going to work on his corner made sense from that spot, as well as him finally having a sense of belonging (not to mention having Michael there to protect him), but up until that point, he seemed to have no interest in anything drug related. That's why him instantly becoming a corner boy seemed really odd.

Coming from his home if he was introduced to us as having to do whatever he needed to in order to survive, then I get it, but he was basically a runt the entire time. He seemed a little similar to Namond in that he was obviously caught up in a world where the drug game was an integral part, but not really made for it.

To be clear, I loved it as a way to show Prezbo what the system does to most of the kids in his class, but I didn't care for it as much from Dukie's side.

bodie dying was luck too. wrong dude watched him walk out the police station at the wrong time. they didnt know anything about wat he was doing there. him being about to snitch was completely incidental.

you seem quite perturbed for no good reason