The Old Rugged Cross

I had been waiting for last night's premiere of HBO's new series Treme for months. An ongoing program that takes place in perhaps my favorite city in the world, bolstered by the usual deft characterization and commitment to world-building endemic of HBO shows like Deadwood and The Sopranos is too good to pass up.

Watching the series, even just the first episode, felt like coming home. Seeing the dive bars and grimy row homes, and even the Tower Records on North Peters, on television give me that weird little thrill one gets while seeing an accustomed haunt on the local news.

Whether the series is any good remains to be seen. HBO's programming is notoriously slow to start, and Treme's rambling, shambling, 80-minute opening episode is no exception, doling out juuuuust enough characterization for each of the principals to barely keep the viewer engaged. The music was slammin', of course, and the naturalistic writing and acting, de rigeur for HBO, more than make up for the plodding pacing.

It's difficult to watch John Goodman play a character and let the man simply inhabit it; he's always just so John Goodman-y. But I couldn't help grinning and nodding along as Goodman's character lit into a British journalist dismissive (or ignorant?) of New Orleans and what it stands for in the American imagination. Wendell Pierce's performance was reliably droll and understated, and his character's consistent shortchanging of his cabbies was not only duly funny, it was a compelling and simple symbol for the dire straits in which New Orleanians (not to mention musicians in general) found (and find) themselves. And Steve Zahn... well, maybe he'll grow on me.

The true crime behind Treme, the real sadness behind it, is that enough of the city is still in wreckage in real life that the film crew was even able to identify neighborhoods that could pass for the devastation of late 2005. Our trip there in 2008 revealed plenty of ruined homes, three years after their destruction.

Amusingly, with this summer's welcome return of True Blood, HBO will now have two series taking place in Louisiana. And did I mention that 2011's big-budget Green Lantern movie is filming in New Orleans, as well? I just hope the entire state of Louisiana isn't so trendy and gentrified that we're too priced out of it to, well, head down and move into a gentrified neighborhood, provided we someday, hopefully, relocate there.

Until then, I'm trusting Treme to present a nuanced, heartwarming, heartbreaking portrayal of the Big Easy, and to laissez les bons temps (et les mauvais temps) rouler. This opening episode of Treme ends with a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral, but only with the downbeat half that leads to the cemetery, the portion set to a funerary dirge. By forgoing the second, upbeat, from-the-cemetery portion of the jazz funeral, the portion traditionally set to hot jazz, the series indicates its characters are at their nadir, three months after Katrina has ravaged them. The central tension of the series, a tension to which I'm looking forward, will be in watching these characters rebuild themselves, and the city they love.

Comments

[Aaron Ragan-Fore]

You know, I have never seen an episode of The Wire, but the approach and the style appeal to me. It's amusing that NPR is pushing the show so much, considering that Goodman's character tells off an NPR interviewer in a great screamed-phone convo scene.

[James Stegall]

NPR has been Treme channel the last couple weeks. I'll have to wait to catch the whole first season, but I loved the Wire, so I'm down.

[Zack Barnett]

Look, I like Bunk and Lester, but it's gonna take some episodes to let it sink in that this is not some spin off of The Wire... oh, and it'd be nice if Steve Zahn's character moved to Houston. The reality of his acting bites.