Treme

[Gregory]

I finished out this series and am sorry to see it done, but a lot of the short, meandering fourth season was a real step down from the previous three. I thought the characters of Davis McAlary and Janette Desautel were pretty compelling throughout the series, but they took up too much of the final five episodes, and the plot lines of Davis's midlife crisis and Janette's naming rights to her restaurant connected far less to the broader community of New Orleans and its challenges after Katrina than what most of the rest of the series showed us, and I would have rather seen more focus on corruption in the city, as well as its still crumbling social foundations such as the schools. What there was of that was excellent.

Davis in particular seemed to be used as a mouthpiece for the show to expound on the city's music, which is fine to an extent, but I was pretty galled by the hypocrisy of the way the show used his views against the planned national jazz center, and for the notion that local culture develops organically at the street level (which I'd largely agree with) while at the same time its scenes of live music are dominated by glorified scenes of the stage at the French Quarter House of Blues, a corporate national chain venue that lacks a vital connection to real blues or New Orleans music. (In one of his rants, George Carlin redubbed it the "House of Lame White Motherfuckers.") Looking at some of their upcoming shows I see a bunch of metal, indie rock, etc., and I'm not judging those genres but rather the show's purported focus on the local nature of the music and how much it's committed to its premise about people like Shorty who grew up in the second lines and streetcorners. Music was obviously one of the mainstays of the show, and for me part of the problem with these last five episodes was that I didn't enjoy most of the scenes of stage performances, and they didn't even tie at all into the resolution of most of the plots in the show's final episodes.
The many appearances of the House of Blues stage were not unlike the product placement—all the prominent views of bottles of Budweiser etc. (which is realistic the first couple of times, then just distracting) which was a poor substitute for something like the way the very first episode captured the post-Katrina situation by having Jeanette in the first episode run out of desserts except for an old Hubig's pie.
Again, all in all a great show.

[domino harvey]

[...]the plot lines of Davis's midlife crisis and Janette's naming rights to her restaurant connected far less to the broader community of New Orleans and its challenges after Katrina than what most of the rest of the series showed us, and I would have rather seen more focus on corruption in the city, as well as its still crumbling social foundations such as the schools. What there was of that was excellent.

I understand your criticism but don't share it. Unlike the Wire, Treme has long been more interested in observing and quietly exhibiting fondness for its characters rather than putting them through the ringer to prove a larger point. I think it's unrealistic to expect a shortened final season to not give us plenty of peeks at characters many viewers, myself included, have grown attached to rather than devote that time to further exploring "The City" in abstract. Davis and Janette get a large focus because their storyline involves the notions of legacy and permanency of one's impact, a fitting notion to explore in the final season of any TV show!

[Gregory]

Agree with most of that in general terms, though I don't think more characters in Treme needed to be put through the ringer, yet Treme could have been a bit more focused, like each Wire season. Credit is due to Treme for having these two characters who are flawed and have a tendency to be impulsive, then burn bridges or take a sour-grapes attitude, and then have to deal with the consequences. Janette isn't a just a victim of those with greater power; she made a deal and didn't really read the contract. But so much time was devoted to these two that seemed like just more of the same, belaboring their character traits and ways of speaking, and the final short season, which seems like it needs to head toward some kind of conclusion, not necessarily any kind of neat or final one, but some kind of direction, seemed rather unfocused, as if the writers of these five episodes essentially decided to just say, "And so on!"
This aimlessness is a problem with many series that try to develop progressing stories that make us want to just keep watching, yet often just ramble and meander, possibly the result of having different writers working on the various episodes. There were problems with this in the later seasons of The Sopranos and many other series as well: not only repetitive scenes but subplots that piqued our interest and then never went anywhere interesting. The repetition isn't a problem with types of series that are structured for that (to quote one of my internet friends, on Cheers: "It’s not built to be consumed sequentially in short order — the plot arcs, such as they are, unfold so slowly as to be barely perceptible.") But for shows that want us to compulsively see what happens, repetition and dead ends aren't so good.

[solaris72]

Treme: The Complete Series is today's gold box deal at $64.99.