Carmelo Keeps a Close Eye on The Wire

While most who watch The Wire enjoy the comforts of leather couches and surround sound, Carmelo Anthony watches with an insightful eye. He grew up on the same streets that the show depicts. Carmelo knows the plight of the young black men who survive on the cold corners of West Baltimore.

HBO’s The Wire uncovers the skeletons of West Baltimore. The show forces audiences to recognize the corrupt systems that affect all citizens. From the mayor’s office to the corners of abandoned tenements, The Wire taps into the hierarchy of politicians, police and drug pushers alike.

Many viewers of the critically acclaimed television show have become enthralled by the show’s motley and unlikely characters who challenge Hollywood’s paradigms. Often the drug dealers are more ethical than the police chain of command.

Carmelo Anthony says, “It’s real. Everything is real about it.”

Carmelo’s confirmation about the show’s authenticity is frightening. The Wire’s fourth season focused on middle school children who are sharp and intelligent, but are unable to overcome shattered families: absent fathers, addicted mothers, and grinding poverty.

“It ain’t got no age,” Anthony is adamant when asked when the drug game starts.

Anthony has become friends with much of the cast from The Wire. Pictured above are (from left to right) Jamie Hector who plays Marlo Stanfield, Anwan Glover who plays Slim Charles, Nathan Corbett who plays Donut and Jermaine Crawford who plays Duquan "Dukie" Weems. These cast members attended Anthony's annual H.O.O.D. Movement 3-on-3 Youth Basketball Tournament in Baltimore this past June.

Method Man of the Wu Tang Clan, who plays Melvin ‘Cheese’ Wagstaff on The Wire says in the audio commentary supplement to the Season 4 DVDs, “These kids, they are so caught up in the life, they don’t see anything else for themselves.” Children are so busy surviving, most can’t see beyond the day’s pay.

Carmelo escaped the traps that capture so many: the under-funded public school systems, the racial profiling of police and politicians, the pressures to peddle packages of dope and the bullets that kill too many young men.

“Especially in Baltimore, basketball is one of the only escapes,” Anthony says.

While The Wire is a fictional depiction of hardened lives, Carmelo authenticates both the loneliness of the city’s stoops and the inherent hope.

The Wire’s creator/executive producer, David Simon says in the audio commentary supplement to the Season 4 DVDs, “These voices out of Baltimore are not really the voices anyone pays attention to…The Wire reflects a certain amount of disappointment that I feel in terms of what’s happened to my city and what my city has been made to endure.”

Carmelo thinks, “He’s depicting it right. He’s reaching a lot of the masses.”

Michael Kenneth Williams, who plays Omar Little, discussed the racial significance of The Wire in the audio commentary supplement to the Season 4 DVDs, “It’s not a black thing, it’s not a white thing; it’s a cultural thing, it’s a class thing and it’s a problem.”

The Wire employs a 70% black cast and storylines emphasize color lines.

“We don’t really have that many white people in Baltimore, especially in the inner city. The only white people we have are the police and the politicians,” Anthony says.

The Wire is more than entertainment, it educates audiences about what life is like for those who are often overlooked. Carmelo powered himself to stardom much like he jab steps and drives to the basket. The relentlessness that Carmelo plays with under the NBA spotlight originated on the concrete boulevards of West Baltimore.

Many might find faults in a television show that recreates the streets he or she grew up on, but Carmelo endorses The Wire, “It’s the best show on television.”

The fifth and final season of The Wire premiered on HBO Sunday, January 6.