Do You Know What It Means?
Davis: You tell me all you wanna do is get high, play trumpet and barbecue in New Orleans your whole life?
Kermit: That’ll work.
Kermit: That’ll work.
First, there was Homicide: Life on the Streets, which elevated police drama. David Simon was involved with that, but it wasn’t really his baby, so I’ll set it aside. I haven’t seen The Corner or Generation Kill, but I watched and loved the Wire.
The Wire was supposedly a police drama, and its supposed twist was that it spent as much time getting to know the criminals as getting to know the cops. But the real twist was that it was about concepts and institutions–a different one each season, specific to Baltimore but with some relevance beyond that city. Let’s look at the educational system. Does any of it work? Which parts? Which parts don’t work? Why? Oh, are we putting on a crime drama? Okay, well, here’s some bodies in a shack. We’ll hang the story on that, but really the crime isn’t important. We’re here to talk about education. Or newspapers, in another season. Or labour unions. Or legalizing drugs. The Wire didn’t just elevate crime drama. It elevated television. I’m not prepared to call it the best series that ever was, but it showed writers and producers a new way TV could work.
Now the Wire is over and we’ve moved on to Treme, and David Simon has given the medium another shake-up. Treme isn’t a police show. It’s not a lawyer show or a doctor show or a sci-fi show. It’s not a show centered on an unusual concept, like Big Love or Six Feet Under, where there’s a weirdness factor to capture and hold your interest. And it’s not what most–maybe all–non-genre drama on television has been to date: a soap opera. To be fair, I never watched Thirtysomething and I’ve only seen a few episodes of Brothers and Sisters and, hey, I could list a lot of other dramas along these lines. You could argue that they aren’t soaps and maybe you could even talk me over to your side, but there is a certain sudsiness to them.
Treme isn’t sudsy. It’s just a show about some people. They don’t even all know each other. The concept, I suppose, is that it’s set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Really, though, that’s… yes, it’s about that, and it’s very much about New Orleans and so much about music. But Simon’s misdirected us again, the way he did by making the Wire a “crime drama” when really it was bigger than that.
I think Simon wants to talk about New Orleans and about Katrina and even about music. But, more than anything, I think he wants to talk about people. Just some people, doing stuff. One of them is trying to keep a restaurant open and one is trying to find her missing brother and one is trying to find a place to live. One is running for office, sort of. And rocking my world while he does it. Everyone underestimates that little guy and I swear he is the slyest man in town. That’s a tangent and I’ll go no further with it, except to say that I could go on and on about this guy. He’s a fantastic character and I care about him. I care greatly for a lot of characters on the show. I like most of them and none of them flat-out bore me.
I’m the last person to smack talk genre. I love a lot of genre fiction in all media. I love how it allows the exploration of ideas. But the genre fiction I love best is about characters. Funny, weird, passionate, compelling characters–not the dry husks Serious Drama likes to present to us as if this were what real people were like.
There’s a novelist character in Treme who will have an opportunity to promote his forthcoming historical novel about New Orleans, because the flood has created interest in the city. This historical novel is the book he really wants to finish writing and the story he really wants to tell. Katrina is his way to make it happen.
I don’t know that Simon has a stand-in character on the show but, if he has one, this guy is probably it. Katrina has created interest, and therefore opportunity, for Simon to do what I believe he really wants to do: tell a story that’s just about some people. I don’t know how he feels about genres. I don’t suspect he hates them. But I do think he wants to show that TV can work with or without them. Once someone makes that work, as I believe Simon and his team have done with Treme, doing a crime show or a lawyer show or a doctor show doesn’t become wrong… but it does become optional.
That means people who want to do a cop show can and should do cop shows. But people who want to do a show about… I don’t know, Milwaukee.. don’t have to make it Milwaukee PD if that’s not what interests them. That’s good for the Milwaukee show and it’s good for the cop show.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with chosing to do genre shows. Battlestar Galactica had work to do and got it done more effectively as a sci-fi show than, I think, it would have as a show about people hanging around some town on Earth. What I’m applauding is the idea that it’s a choice. That any story, in any setting, might have the potential to be a damned fine TV show if the writing and acting and directing are good enough. I think that’s one of the points Simon has set out to make and, if so, he’s doing his usual excellent job of making it.
The Wire was supposedly a police drama, and its supposed twist was that it spent as much time getting to know the criminals as getting to know the cops. But the real twist was that it was about concepts and institutions–a different one each season, specific to Baltimore but with some relevance beyond that city. Let’s look at the educational system. Does any of it work? Which parts? Which parts don’t work? Why? Oh, are we putting on a crime drama? Okay, well, here’s some bodies in a shack. We’ll hang the story on that, but really the crime isn’t important. We’re here to talk about education. Or newspapers, in another season. Or labour unions. Or legalizing drugs. The Wire didn’t just elevate crime drama. It elevated television. I’m not prepared to call it the best series that ever was, but it showed writers and producers a new way TV could work.
Now the Wire is over and we’ve moved on to Treme, and David Simon has given the medium another shake-up. Treme isn’t a police show. It’s not a lawyer show or a doctor show or a sci-fi show. It’s not a show centered on an unusual concept, like Big Love or Six Feet Under, where there’s a weirdness factor to capture and hold your interest. And it’s not what most–maybe all–non-genre drama on television has been to date: a soap opera. To be fair, I never watched Thirtysomething and I’ve only seen a few episodes of Brothers and Sisters and, hey, I could list a lot of other dramas along these lines. You could argue that they aren’t soaps and maybe you could even talk me over to your side, but there is a certain sudsiness to them.
Treme isn’t sudsy. It’s just a show about some people. They don’t even all know each other. The concept, I suppose, is that it’s set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Really, though, that’s… yes, it’s about that, and it’s very much about New Orleans and so much about music. But Simon’s misdirected us again, the way he did by making the Wire a “crime drama” when really it was bigger than that.
I think Simon wants to talk about New Orleans and about Katrina and even about music. But, more than anything, I think he wants to talk about people. Just some people, doing stuff. One of them is trying to keep a restaurant open and one is trying to find her missing brother and one is trying to find a place to live. One is running for office, sort of. And rocking my world while he does it. Everyone underestimates that little guy and I swear he is the slyest man in town. That’s a tangent and I’ll go no further with it, except to say that I could go on and on about this guy. He’s a fantastic character and I care about him. I care greatly for a lot of characters on the show. I like most of them and none of them flat-out bore me.
I’m the last person to smack talk genre. I love a lot of genre fiction in all media. I love how it allows the exploration of ideas. But the genre fiction I love best is about characters. Funny, weird, passionate, compelling characters–not the dry husks Serious Drama likes to present to us as if this were what real people were like.
There’s a novelist character in Treme who will have an opportunity to promote his forthcoming historical novel about New Orleans, because the flood has created interest in the city. This historical novel is the book he really wants to finish writing and the story he really wants to tell. Katrina is his way to make it happen.
I don’t know that Simon has a stand-in character on the show but, if he has one, this guy is probably it. Katrina has created interest, and therefore opportunity, for Simon to do what I believe he really wants to do: tell a story that’s just about some people. I don’t know how he feels about genres. I don’t suspect he hates them. But I do think he wants to show that TV can work with or without them. Once someone makes that work, as I believe Simon and his team have done with Treme, doing a crime show or a lawyer show or a doctor show doesn’t become wrong… but it does become optional.
That means people who want to do a cop show can and should do cop shows. But people who want to do a show about… I don’t know, Milwaukee.. don’t have to make it Milwaukee PD if that’s not what interests them. That’s good for the Milwaukee show and it’s good for the cop show.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with chosing to do genre shows. Battlestar Galactica had work to do and got it done more effectively as a sci-fi show than, I think, it would have as a show about people hanging around some town on Earth. What I’m applauding is the idea that it’s a choice. That any story, in any setting, might have the potential to be a damned fine TV show if the writing and acting and directing are good enough. I think that’s one of the points Simon has set out to make and, if so, he’s doing his usual excellent job of making it.
Current Bedside Reading: Lonely Planet, Canary Islands
Commentary: Again, no trip-taking. Just research.
My iPod Is Singing: “Watching people sashay past my door.”
Comments
Cori (Jul 05, 2010)
“… and that’s where I left my heart.”
Do you know, I remember seeing a commercial about Treme and thinking ‘hey, cool, Dave would love that’, but then I never caught it on the teevee so we haven’t seen any.
Gayleen (Jul 05, 2010)
It’s funny… I wrote this a few weeks ago and there were some interesting developments on the show after that. Particularly with that author character.
Gayleen (Jul 05, 2010)
That’s another thing about writing in this way, though–things can change. If you’re writing a cop show, a lot of changes can happen, but you’ve always got to basically have most of your characters being cops. Whereas, in Treme, you don’t know whether she’ll keep her restaurant. You can’t say, oh, this is a show about someone running a restaurant (such as Kitchen Confidential) and therefore she can’t lose the restaurant. The show is about people and anything can happen to people.
Thunderhowl (Jul 14, 2010)
I greatly enjoyed the Wire (even though I still haven’t seen all of it) but this is the first I’ve heard of Treme.
Gayleen (Jul 14, 2010)
I think you’d like it. I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think you would.