This week I’ll be doing a double feature covering epsisodes 8 and 9 of Treme, while focusing primarily upon the former. Episode 8 takes us into Mardi Gras day, the venerable holiday of head-splitting hangovers imbued with an overall sense of shame at the debauchery of the past week all while maintaining the sense of [...]

“Down here in the city of misrule, we are always our own worst enemy.” – Creighton Bernette This week’s episode touches on some of the darkest and coincidentally most controversial subject matter to date in the series including the debate over issues of public housing, schooling, and the upcoming Mayoral election. I began formulating ideas [...]

This week’s episode of Treme explores how the effects of a disaster like Katrina trickle down to affect just about every aspect of a city’s inhabitants’ daily lives. From lost pharmacy and police records, to the struggle to operate a business with a drastically reduced customer-base and cash-strapped distributors. Coming back from a blow of [...]

This week’s episode is chock full of references to the traditional jazz foundations of New Orleans music and the city’s food culture makes its first appearance as a major topic of discussion as well. The majority of the episode keeps a light tone and the events that unfold present the most significant indications of optimism [...]

  The running theme in this, the fourth, episode of Treme is the balance between an impending sense of hopeless doom for the meagerly reinhabited city and an enduringly stubborn sense of optimism and perseverance. The episode’s title, a reference to an area known for its cemeteries is an early indicator of the themes of [...]

This week’s episode of Treme began to touch on the various currents of underlying tension that existed in New Orleans after the storm. From the presence of National Guard troops and the overworked/understaffed officers of the NOPD to the emergence of Katrina Tours, the show depicts the various ways that the devastation of the storm [...]

In its second episode, although there isn’t very much significant plot advancement, Treme continues what it accomplished so masterfully in the pilot. A seamless integration and assimilation of its fictional characters and story lines into the real-life music scene and aftermath of Katrina in the city of New Orleans. Characters share the stage with real-life [...]

As a huge fan of The Wire and also a local New Orleanian, words cannot express how excited I was to hear of the convergence of these two things in HBO’s new series about the music and culture of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina: Treme. Not only is Treme important as a dramatic [...]