Coming from David Simon, creator of The Wire, I expected Treme to be phenomenal. It was good, but it simply wasn’t quite on par with my expectations, Elvis Costello or no Elvis Costello. The episode started off the show well, though — I definitely look forward to seeing more of these characters. Some of them I am already invested in, while others still haven’t quite sold me. But that’s to be expected from an early show.
In fact, Treme made the most of its one-and-a-half hour running time. It introduced a pretty large amount of characters, and did a lot to develop them into characters you could empathize with. The best of these characters is John Goodman’s Creighton Bernette, an overweight English professor with a huge temper and a love for New Orleans. In his first scene (the most memorable of the episode), Bernette attacks a British reporter who insults New Orleans culture, throwing his microphone into the lake and attempting to do the same to his camera, all while his daughter looks on smilingly.
Another memorable character is Steve Zahn’s Davis, a radio jockey who is quite irritable and doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind — unless he’s talking to Elvis Costello, that is. Costello stops by a club which Davis frequents, and Davis humorously contemplates what to say to Costello, eventually having a brief but friendly conversation.
However, despite these great characters, I did have a few qualms with the episode. Most of them are directed toward the music. Now, I love the style of jazz that is prevalent throughout the episode, but it was a little overplayed over the episode. Extended musical scenes are nice, but when they sound like the same song over and over, they aren’t so much fun. I can’t imagine the series staying fresh for very much longer if the music is so frequent through each episode. I understand the show is about the culture of the Treme neighborhood, and that music is a big part of that culture, but we can enjoy the culture without having to sit through five straight minutes of it.
Another qualm I had was directed toward the opening credits. They remind me a lot of the credits for shows like True Blood and How to Make It in America in that they show a lot of local color in the area that the series is based. However, unlike the credits of those two shows, Treme‘s plays more like a slideshow and isn’t quite stylistic enough for my liking. I do like the theme music, though. It sets the tone for the episode.
One more thing I liked: when the episode begins, a title card simply reads “Three Months After.” That’s all it needs to read, and it does a very good job of highlighting just how big of an impact Katrina had. It was big enough where we don’t even have to name it to know what it is.
Overall, Treme‘s first episode was a good start, and I look forward to seeing more of what it has to offer in the coming weeks. B+
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