TV Retrospective: “Treme”

For Treme, creator David Simon had one of the most thankless tasks in HBO history. Even with average ratings, its predecessor, The Wire, came to define the zeitgeist as one of the best TV series of the modern age. Depending on who you ask, it may even outrank the equally influential The Sopranos. Even then, the follow-up was always going to receive unfair scrutiny for never being exactly what drew audiences to Simon in the first place. The Wire was essentially a great boilerplate crime drama. It’s easy to understand the larger appeal, especially with a cast of characters who become unforgettable by the time they leave the screen.

Treme is very much not The Wire. Even if there are murder mysteries scattered throughout the story, Simon is less interested in recreating the seediness that defined his Baltimore story. He’s always been more game on treating fiction like anthropology, blending the fictional characters with a sense of realism that delves into some ripped-from-the-headlines moments. As one can guess, New Orleans has a much different climate. The most noticeable difference is that Treme spends a lot of time centered around musicians talking shop and playing horns. Several characters are adjacent to the music industry, whether they be DJs or working trombonists and violinists. There is more passion to preserve history and celebrate architecture with its own rich mythology. To watch Treme is to feel like you’re on a guided tour of Louisiana with occasional breaks for Mardi Gras. It’s something The Wire could never get away with, if for no other reason than it paints Baltimore as a less forgiving city.

The contrast is essential to why Treme works, but there is something even greater to why the show is deserving of any discussion in the HBO pantheon. Whereas The Wire felt “timeless” outside of its fashion and references, Treme will always exist in a moment. Even as the decades roll on, the show’s greatest charm is how much of it is tied to the reconstructionist period following Hurricane Katrina. 

To Simon’s credit, he saw the disaster and found something empathetic shining through. His once-in-a-generation idea was to capture a community that sought to rebuild after an enormous tragedy. This isn’t a story about the Day 1 madness, but more the years onward when the residents have moved back in and are trying to make sense of their new landscape. Even if the show premiered five years later, there are traces of a world still not fully recovered. Businesses may have reopened, but there are infrastructure questions that have yet to be resolved.

A key detail to understanding this version of New Orleans is its eclectic history. Season one centers around the first Post-Katrina Mardi Gras and how they must rise up and celebrate. The colorful outfits dance down the streets. While it may not be the most vibrant year, it still reveals how much of a pulse the city still has. People will still blow their horns and toss beads in the hope of remembering why they love the city. Weather can’t keep them from the rapturous camp. Neither can death, which famously features the deceased carried down the street while the front line plays a farewell melody. 

Everything about the city transcends the morbidity of life, and it becomes clearer the longer that the show goes on. Season one is easily the most indebted to the discussion of Hurricane Katrina, and there is some catharsis to hearing the arguments that rise from the locals. They curse the name of FEMA (as the opening credits allude to: “Fix It My Ass”) for letting them down, and the risk of contractors preying on the land by removing homes. There are questions about what matters most for the future of New Orleans, and it’s clear that not one person has the right answer. Everyone makes a compromise to better the larger ecosystem. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but mostly it's a reflection of endurance.

Nowhere is that clearer than in its mix of musician characters. Simon understands the nature of hustle culture, where everyone is constantly hanging around crowded bars and hunting for the right person to produce a record. There is a need to collaborate and produce art that pays tribute to the past. Characters are constantly running off laundry lists of iconic artists who have made their name in New Orleans, believing in some sense that they’re keeping history alive by noticing the small spots where change was made. It gives the sense of appreciating the common man and, on some subtextual level, Simon is creating a love letter to the musicians who were busking around town Post-Katrina. The mythology is an ever-evolving premise that people take for granted. Many of the characters who become Treme favorites will not know the fans who immortalize them as their own gateway into this world.

If there is one criticism some have made, it’s that all of this time in nightclubs watching entire set numbers is antithetical to forwarding the plot. Simon’s infatuation with live performance is evident in every episode. Even if this is mostly designed to highlight the essence of the city, there is a hypnotic quality that makes one engage with the sonic potential of music. It may drive more narrative-driven people impatient, but the goal is to do more than cheap concert footage. It’s to reflect the passion and evolution of figures, both on stage and in studio environments, and find their passion. Nowhere is this more evident than when jazz performers lock in and really sell a track. This is a place where the experimentation changes from episode to episode, where the passion breaks through, and these artists – some whom are only around for a few minutes – really express a feeling that elaborate arcs could not. It answers why these people make music in the first place. It’s there in the physicality as a song escapes their body, released into a world and only contained by the public’s memories.

The only real connection that Treme has to The Wire is how well it captures the intimacy of small moments. Even as characters come and go, there is an emphasis on their domestic lives that creates a greater sense of purpose. For as much as this is a place defined by creativity, it’s also one of toiling away on good lyrics in your bedroom, or trying to patch up bad marriages, or even watching a New Orleans Indian patch together his outfit for the upcoming Mardi Gras. Whether or not this is the most thorough vision possible, Simon’s fascination creates an incredibly dense understanding of a city known as The Big Easy. It is anything but. Everyone is doing their own thing, and it’s the few times they intersect that the magic truly happens.

At its core, Treme is a story of revival. Most people would look at a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina and assume that New Orleans is a lost cause. It may recover, but it will never be what it once was. For those who patiently weave up and down the streets over the many seasons, they will find the progress slow but frequent. Maybe there will be a setback here or there, but the characters are slowly refilled with passion and drive. They see the world as something greater. By the end of the truncated final season, whole careers are starting to take shape and redefine their own contributions. Seasoned musicians are now teaching students to take up their role. Even the roles that people play during Mardi Gras have reached a poetic shift that reflects how the culture is less about one person and more about surviving through ritual.

Everything that needs to be said can be found in the final scene. The point of Treme wasn’t about fixing every problem. Most issues will continue on as the world enters a Barack Obama presidency and the potential for change restarts. It’s a reminder that nothing lasts forever. Even then, as the radio DJ drives away at the end of a montage set to a song declaring how difficult it is to miss New Orleans, he witnesses a problem that hasn’t been fixed. At the start of the season, he finds a pothole and fills it with a traffic cone. It’s his small way of raising awareness of the issue. The story ends not with cement in the hole, but the cone covered in beads and various celebratory garments. Deep down, it’s the essence of New Orleans in a single image. The city has been through some rough times, but even as certain things fail to get resolved, there will always be good spirits. Treme calls for people to recall the motto: “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” Let the good times roll. Problems may or may not be resolved, but there will always be something worth fighting for.

In the 21st century, HBO hasn’t made a show that restores faith in humanity to the extent that Treme has. While it may be more of an acquired taste than the darker, more complex tale around it, there’s still something to be said for capturing the essence of a city during a critical time and finding its true nature shining through. This is a story that’s as much about capturing an incredible time in America’s history as it is about creating a character study of a very unique city. Like New Orleans, Treme is one of a kind. You can’t fully understand its culture without spending some time down there. Next to booking a ticket, this is the closest one can get to feeling alive in the streets among the smiling faces and historic architecture rich with a history that you may never learn, or maybe you’ll find the one resident passionate enough to explain what happened at the local laundromat. Music history was made there. Sometimes, all it takes is stopping to ponder and realize how beautiful it is to be alive. If only more of it could be down in the Treme.