The day after we raged through the finale of "The Killing," we watched this week's episode of "Treme." It felt like the perfect antidote to the aberration that we had witnessed the night before, a show that is written intelligently, a program that unfolds organically, one that communicates with its audience, one that teaches us a thing or two.
There's a potential spoiler or twp in this paragraph right here. The episode this week, "What is New Orleans?" was written by George Pelecanos, the writer who made me love "The Wire" after watching several episodes and not understanding or caring about what was going on and being too sick to do anything but just sit back and curse that, of all the rentals available at the video store, I had chosen this show. But then the Pelecanos episdoe aired and Wallace died, and I was seriously hooked and never looked back. This is a similar type episode, where a much loved character is suddenly killed. It was shocking and sad and it felt right. As a transcriptionist, I work for lawyers. I've learned about what can happen in cities in these times. The events that unfolded felt real.
"Treme" works slowly on you. It works in layers. There's short vignettes. There's moments. In this episode, competing musicians would stand in a crowd and lift their instrument up in the air and that would serve as their invitation to join the others on stage, or it would provide them an opportounity to convince the crowd to follow them Pied Piper style up the street to their gig. It is this type of detail that makes the show special to me.
And there's music all around. How can you not fall in love with a show where Steve Earle sings "Galway Girl" or where you can watch Dr. John play piano and marvel at his hands? Or an opening montage that shows not only the parades but an assortment of images of moldy walls? There's outrage about what has happened to this American city. It's sadness and valentines all rolled into one. It's a show I very much like.
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