RECAP: Chicagoland Episode 4

This week’s episode follows the divergent stories of two at-risk young Chicagoans.

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On last night’s Chicagoland, we saw Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Fenger High School Principal Liz Dozier go the extra mile to do some one-on-one mentoring. If the message of the series’ first three installments has been that Chicago’s murder epidemic has taken its toll, the message of Episode Four is that the city’s leaders are concerned about young black men and are working to keep them employed and in school.

These were singular efforts against what everyone on screen understands as signs of deeper societal problem: An alarming number of at-risk youth, further imperiled by the city’s school system and poverty rate. But Emanuel explains that he’s become “taken” with a student he met at an after-school basketball program, and Dozier campaigns for a former student because he was “special” to her. So we have two young black men at the center of this episode, each pushed by powerful figures to get their lives on track.

(The basketball program was the brainchild of Emanuel and former NBA player Isiah Thomas, a Hall of Famer and Chicago native, who chats with the mayor courtside. The episode also featured cameos from Dwyane Wade, who grew up in the area, and Magic Johnson, who isn’t from there, but don’t everybody love Magic? His charity works seem to be everywhere.)

Martell Cowan, the mayor’s mentee, is brought on as a City Hall intern. He files mail and receives a book that Emanuel had his own daughters read. It becomes obvious how spectacular his college application will look if he gets his grades together. And Emanuel tells him he “ain’t messing around with that.” By the episode’s end, we don’t know where Cowan will wind up college-wise, but with the mayor vouching for him, there’s little need to worry.

With Dozier’s mentee Jason Barrett, it’s the opposite tale. We’re introduced to the facility where Barrett is incarcerated in one those hackneyed prison montages — shouts rock the walls, fingers reach through the bars — that can’t help but come off as a touch exploitative. (Chicagoland makes up for the clichés later when it shows the prisoners leading an anti-violence rally.) The judge at Barrett’s parole hearing is so impressed with Dozier’s championing that she allows for his release after a year, as opposed to the four to 15 that Dozier informs us his sentence could have given him. The principal gets him set up in a halfway house, and connects him to a re-entry program.

Barrett moves out of the halfway house, oversleeps and skips the job interview the program had arranged for him, and winds up back in jail over a robbery. We see all the dominoes as they fall, but we’re left to wonder why Barrett let that opportunity pass him by. Yes, Chicagoland maintained its enlightening, matter-of-fact reporting style, but left us wanting to know more.

We hear that murders are down from last year, but things remain stark. Emanuel spoke about the homicides to Isiah Thomas as they watched a practice at their program, Windy City Hoops. “It’s the greatest job I’ve ever had,” Emanuel says of the mayorship. “But there there are days you see a five-year-old shot at the park. They are lucky that guy’s in jail. I swear to God, it’s like what the fuck are you doing? I would like to strangle him.”

Aside from Cowan and Barrett, an unlikely star of the episode is Chance the Rapper, who provides a connective thread for the series’ common themes. Back in his hometown to play Lollapalooza, Chance shares the story of a friend of his that was gunned down after being at “the wrong place at the wrong time.” The cameras follow the rapper on the set of the video for “Paranoia.” It’s a great song about how the murders in the city have affected the psyche of young Chicagoans, so we’re going to leave it right here.

What did you think of this week’s Chicagoland? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Cassie Owens is a regular contributor to Next City. Her writing has also appeared at CNN.com, Philadelphia City Paper and other publications.

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Tags: chicago

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