TREMEnedous
David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s new HBO outing is both sublime and singular.
Music is the soul of this series, every moment steeped in it, as the Faubourg Treme was soaked to the bone, seemingly beyond drying, by Katrina. There is a lot of talk and drama about how the music is loved in New Orleans, but not the musicians. But it is those musicians, who are driven to play and sing and dance by every instinct they have, who keep the world of Treme pounding along. It is their passion and their inexplicablility that makes this work so unique.
I have only seen the first three episodes, so it could change, but while there are a number of linear threads being pulled through the series, most of what is going on just breathes, like life. You don’t quite know where the characters are headed… as they don’t know where they are headed. They just know that they have to keep moving forward… to keep surviving… to keep waiting for a better answer.
It is inherently a black show. Treme is a black neighborhood. But as the writers have been careful to remind us, Treme is in the spirit, not the skin color. At the same time, like The Wire, there is no fear of race at all. Race just is.
This is what is so amazing about this show. it is like the jazz music that dominates a melange of styles… there is form, but there is the feeling of endless improvisation. Unlike The Wire, a great series that this one quickly threatens to surpass, there is no Guy At The Center. Every time you feel like you are about to pin down the star… the center of the storm… it changes. Is it Wendell Pierce? Yeah. But then it’s Clarke Peters. Wait… it’s Steve Zahn (look for a Support Actor Emmy nomination every season of the series.) But it must be Khandi Alexander.
it does not seem to be a slow swim to the inevitable showdown each season. If there is any guiding narrative it is the idea that this neighborhood is slowly… so slowly… becoming a neighborhood again after the plague. Old men and children… outsiders who mean well, insiders who mean ill, and all shades of color in between… women who are as strong as any of the men and men who have been emasculated.
Casting is loaded with familiar faces, but not one that ever seems unreal. John Goodman and Mellisa Leo are odd perfection as deep-rooted do-gooders, Michiel Huisman and Lucia Micarelli as odd idealistic white street musicians, Kim Dickens as a struggling your chef/restaurateur, Davi Jay as a local guy who also is making a good living being paid by FEMA to help clean up the mess… every one as real as could be… not driving story so much as living from moment to moment.
I loved every second of this show… even the stuff I wasn’t quite sure about as it was happening. It took a full episode to explain one of Zahn’s odd choices and to pay another one off. And it just kept coming back to the music. It is a heartbeat.
I found myself thinking of what I still think of as the greatest sitcom ever, Frank’s Place, while watching this drama. It’s not on DVD… not on VOD. A truly great comedy, as this is a truly great drama. And oddly, for similar reasons. Frank’s Place used the outsider, who was a born insider, as the entry into New Orleans and its culture. Once Frank (Tim Reid) got a taste, he couldn’t leave. There was, as a sitcom must have, a more traditionally structured set of characters. But it also lingered and wandered, much like Treme. Hopefully, the success of Treme will inspire a long-overdue DVD release of Frank’s Place.
I have seen the three. I will watch them again as they air. And I can’t wait for more. Just 10 episodes in this first season. But I look forward to living through at least another 40 or 50. I now know what it means to miss New Orleans.
Having loved EVERYTHING that David Simon has put his name on, I have no doubt that this show will be as aunthentic
as it will be awesome. THE WIRE remains the best drama, hell, the best TV show EVER in my humble view.
What I do worry about is he fact that the HBO of yesterday is gone and the network really is not about shows like TREME anymore. I’m impressed they even green lit it because they care more fo ratings above quality (see TRUE BLOOD and ENTOURAGE). There has been very little, truly great original work produced since THE WIRE was taken off the air and the fact that HBO only ordered 10 episodes of TEME has me anxious.
Will I love this show too, only to see it cancelled after one season? All I can hope is that we get a show with the richness and drama that Simon is known for. The man is incredible and a legend all at once.
Color me excited.
Dave, no mention of David Mills…?
From what I’ve read, HBO is actually throwing their weight behind Goodman for a supporting actor nomination rather than Zahn.
I read an article about Tim Reid a while back where he said the reason Frank’s Place isn’t on DVD is because of music clearance issues.
I’ve just started watching The Wire…it is a great tv show, but I find it to be overhyped per usual on the internet. I mean it’s pretty great, but it doesn’t really pull me in all the way, probably because it’s so “realistic” that it doesn’t have that extra pizazz a usual show may. Like for me, The Sopranos was the most addictive show I’ve ever seen. Great writing, funny, and kind of soapy when you get down to it. Guess that’s what I like.
I figure the white people on the internet like The Wire so much because it’s sort of a cerebral show, and a lot of times they go for that stuff over smaltz (not to say The Sopranos didn’t have a lot of hype either).
But isn’t The Wire like a really long version of Clockers? That’s what I keep thinking. I did love Clockers.
ZAHN POWER. BOW.
“I figure the white people on the internet like The Wire so much because it’s sort of a cerebral show”
Black people love that show too…almost everybody I know from whatever background who watched the show loved “The Wire”
White people on the internet seem to take it to extremes. Like best show ever, etc etc. Like how they love Brooklyn…I’m sure black people love Brooklyn, but I only seem to hear about how fucking amazing Brooklyn is and everywhere else sucks by whities.
Wow, there’s even a website about this shit! Ha ha ha awesome.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/09/85-the-wire/
being a long time visitor to new orleans, i also loved everything about this series and what it promises…both hbo and john goodman are two for two with ‘treme’ and ‘you don’t know jack’… it seems april is the month to sign up for hbo….
Perm,
Don’t talk shit until you get through it. You’re going to feel stupid later. Every season’s different and it stops being a cop show in Season 3.
Hype before anyone has seen something? Meaningless. Hype after everyone’s seen it? Usually accurate.
Terrific review Dave, thanks for this.
And Perm, sloanish is right (if a little blunt). It’s really not fair to call The Wire overhyped until you’ve seen more of it – at least a couple of seasons. It’s a very slow burn, and it gets under your skin like no show I’ve ever seen. I tend to agree that most Internet hype is significantly overzealous (see: Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights), but for me, The Wire transcends it.
Just another voice here for The Wire— it is an unbelievably good piece of storytelling. Rich, intricate, serious. Best ever on television, as far as I’m concerned. As a point of reference, I would place Sopranos second, probably Deadwood third, and either Lost or Mad Men fourth, although it’s hard to rank a show that’s ongoing.
Battlestar Galactica was good for two seasons or so, then it became clear its writers had no idea what to do with the story they were telling.
I’m a little wary of Treme, in that I’ve never been too interested in jazz music, but I’ll watch it on the assumption that Simon et al can make me care.
sloanish sounds white to me.
I mean, sorry guys for offering my thoughts, I know it’s crazy to have thoughts on something after only watching 16 hours of it…but I guess after seeing that much I’ve formed an opinion. I know I should be a total blank slate until I’ve seen like 50 hours, but what can I tell you. Maybe I’ll think differently later, it’s happened before. So far, I’m liking the second season more than the first.
@Perm: Wait until you get to S4. Fuck, probably the single best season of ANY TV show in history. It throws so much out the window when it centers the season on these street kids and the fucked public school system. Just sheer, utter genius. And the great Marlo/Snoop/Kris Partlow stuff is so badass.
Look, and this is the truth: I’ve turned maybe 50 people onto THE WIRE and EVERY ONE OF THEM has come back and told me it is the greatest TV show ever. If that doesn’t sell it, nothing will.
Statements like that are just asking for trouble. š
Can I also mention that the internet seems to have a giant hard-on for Equilibrium? Doesn’t the internet realize that movie was horseshit. I thought computers were supposed to be smart.
THE WIRE is the single greatest work of art ever created by Mankind. Nuff said.
Saw the first episode tonight. Great stuff. Feel like I’m back home again. And I loved the occasional references to transplanted New Orleaneans in Houston.
The Wire is excellent, sure, but BP isn’t entirely off track here; Its megafans love to trumpet it as the MOST PERFECT THING OF ALL TIME, and while there ARE stretches where it was REALLY cooking– most of S1, the latter half of S2, the NON-FREEZONE parts of S3, ALL OF S4– it had the tendency to be vaguely uneven. For a show that trumpeted its journalistic realism, someone like “Brother Mouzone” was a woefully false note. Actually, if you think of it, Omar was faintly ridiculous and practically a comic book character, but he was SO FUCKING AWESOME and Michael K. Williams just KILLED IT so no one really should complain.
Yes, there was an endlessly deep bench of great, riveting, well-written characters on all sides of the law; But more than a few stiffs– Nick Sabotka was a tool and if it weren’t for Chris Bauer as Frank, the GOD BLESS THE SALT OF THE EARTH! dockworker stuff smacked of Simon’s tiresome grinding; BUNNY COLVIN is just about the most ridiculous, MESSAGE!-burdened character of all time. Nothing against the actor, but Simon’s FEEE DRUG UTOPIA of that season really rubbed the wrong way. Oh, how awesome! Little kids slinging rock and smoking crack while Herc and Carv sit impotently by and Bunny gives it all the big thumbs-up. Also Bunny’s right hand man with his dumb Baltimore accent and ZERO SCREEN PRESENCE (Lt. Mello) was a walking one-man case for being MORE cinematic.
Season 5 was a borderline disaster, borderline SUPERNATURAL, with McNulty and Lester breaking all character consistency and goodwill to concoct that IDIOTIC homeless scheme. Though it did provide one of the greatest McNulty moments, his reaction take to the bogus psych profile of the invented killer.
These are all relatively minor nitpicks, and again, SEASON FOUR IS PERFECTION, so many great characters from top to bottom other than the above exceptions and maybe Bubbles, who always ground it to halt especially with WALON…
I know why whitebread critics who’ve never met a black person ever think it’s God’s gift, because it’s all journalistic and super-well-researched and painstakingly crafted and covers this wide canvas and it’s politically aware and cynical and jaundiced like an old newsroom; It flatters the viewer, especially, again, the viewer to whom “the streets” and the “gritty realism!” are some wide-eyed revelation.
I won’t even say one’s better or worse, as they’re all great, but the casual nihilism and deeper relatable personal focus of, say, The Shield, Sopranos, and Breaking Bad made/make (for me) at least equally riveting television on par with The Wire. But to each his own…
This is on HBO right now.
Might be a better show if it didn’t have all this HORRRRRRIBLE FUCKING MUSIC.
JAZZ SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS.
LexG: You sit down to watch a show about musicians in New Orleans, and you complain that there’s too much jazz. Tell me, when you sit down to watch porn, do you complain that there’s too much fucking?
Ugh, I wouldn’t want to watch a show with tons of jazz either. There’s gotta be people in New Orleans who don’t like jazz and don’t practice voodoo (hopefully more the former than the latter).
So I’ve watched about 20 hours of the show so far. Apparently, I have no opinion on it.
48 hours after its premiere — Treme gets picked up for a second season. There is a God.