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Thursday, August 12, 2010

TV 'Treme' to get more 'Wire-y' next season

Posted by Lindsey Millar on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:41 AM

Kermit Ruffins

Eric Overmyer, the co-creator of "Treme," talked to a packed house at the Clinton School tonight. Or rather the Clinton School's director for public programs Nikolai DiPippa interviewed Overmyer onstage. Once the former got sufficiently mic-ed and quit mumbling it was fantastic.

And newsy: Overmyer revealed that next season of "Treme" will jump a year in the future from where last season left off and focus on crime, the police force and New Orleans' severely troubled public school system.

Woo-hoo!

Like I said in a mid-season critique, season one gave us great characters, a sense of place colored with anthropological detail but NO DRAMA. In an abstract sense, it's cool that David Simon was able to take what essentially began as a police procedural and elevate it into THE GREATEST TV SHOW OF OUR TIME (say it in a booming voice, as if from above) and then parlay that into a show about New Orleans that's so character driven that nothing happens.

But less so on the screen.

With new focus in familiar territory (Overmyer was on the writing staff of "The Wire" on season four, the school year; surely the best season) that's still way different enough as to appear fresh (New Orleans schools and crime are similarly terrible to Baltimore's, but wildly dissimilar as far as the particulars go), I'm way geeked up for next year.

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no drama?! this show had plenty of drama, from the relationship between annie and sonny to the search for Ladonna's brother, Daymo, to the shocking suicide of Creighton, this show had more drama than most shows currently on the air. while I hope the quality of this show continues in the vein of "The Wire", I don't think it needs to be similar in structure as that show. I think the focus of how people in New Orleans continue to cope and recover from the tragedy of Katrina provides more than enough drama.

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Posted by jobypoet on August 12, 2010 at 12:48 PM

Agreed, Joby. The pace was perfect, a tense and sultry slow recovery story, and the final episode was a stunner. I've not seen The Wire, but I hope Treme doesn't turn into yet another god-forsaken cop/lawyer/doctor show.

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Posted by ArkitectEcho on August 12, 2010 at 10:37 PM

I love New Orleans. I loved the Wire. I hold a special love for Kermit and if you have seen him live you know why. I was bitterly disappointed in Treme. I got back HBO just for it and other than the great music, it just never clicked. It wasn't until the final episode did I think, here is some great film making. Season four of the Wire it on all gears all the time. Let's hope season two of Treme can capture some of that magic.

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Posted by HIPTVMAN on January 3, 2011 at 11:31 AM

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