A while back I called The Wire: My favorite TV show ever. It presents a vivid and believable world of Baltimore drugs, police, politics, etc. … I findThe Wire’s world unusually consistent with everything I know. … “The overall moral of the story seems to me largely libertarian.
I know this is an old post, but I'm curious if you have any other TV shows you have particularly enjoyed? I too found the Wire a fascinating portrayal of both institutions and individuals, and desperately looking for more.
Supposedly someone once asked Joseph Heller why he was never able to match the greatness of his first novel Catch 22, to which he replied, "Who has?"
Treme lacks the immediacy and accessibility of The Wire, which was built on an extremely familiar foundation of cops vs. criminals. It's hard to grab people's attention with "Musicians in New Orleans" as your building block. But I think it's worth giving Simon a pretty long leash here, especially if you believe, as Robin does, that the show is better than average. The first few episode of The Wire were pretty engaging, but the real payoff didn't occur until later.
For anyone desperate for more Wire-caliber TV, the closest thing I've found is the Canadian TV series Intelligence. It's similarly patient in developing its stories and detailed in exploring institutions, with a large cast.
one thing i wish i could communicate to all of the Treme watchers--
don't construe this show as too much of a deliberate construct. Simon is coming very close to a literal psuedo-documentation of life here at that particular time. The characters are thinly veiled composites of well-known people. A not-insignificant amount of dialog is lifted from work published at the time. The problems they faced are actual ones, thus the drama (which I find poorly paced and somewhat unengaging) is a representation of the actual drama.
You know how life is nothing like the movies or TV? Well in this case it is. It was almost exactly like that. He is creating a fictionalized visual record of what happened here.
Whether or not that is ground breaking, or whether this should be the filter through which the show is critiqued is beyond my pay grade. However, I do somewhat resent your dismissal of the show as political fantasy. There is zero fantasy in that show.
Looks like pretty straightforward regression to the mean and pretty much what we should expect when we consider that so many hailed The Wire as the greatest show ever...
It sure is hard to buck the evaluative biases that emerge if we let our viewing of Treme be anchored by our appreciation of The Wire. The deviations register as straight losses, which accumulate and make the experience disappointing.
I found it easy to step out of this frame. This is why I think Robin sees the characters as idealistic citizens in a political fantasy, whereas I just see confused and frustrated citizens with no political resources or efficacy. They are not warm hearted, they are heart broken. Simon is focusing on empathy rather than on levels of social and political organization. He doesn't offer much on the political front, and if you treat this as a gap that needs to be filled in, then it will look like fantasy.
Wire devotees can make their disappointment vanish by just following Simon's lead. They won't get The Wire, but they will get to appreciate a brilliant show on its own merits.
(I think similar processes plague evaluations of late Woody Allen movies and also of every cast of SNL since the first one.)
Agreed. The Wire is also my favorite TV show of all time and I find Treme to be pretty uninteresting, so much so that I haven't watched the last few episodes saved on the dvr.
Similar thing with The Pacific, which while better than average, couldn't live up to my expectations given how great Band of Brothers was.
I know this is an old post, but I'm curious if you have any other TV shows you have particularly enjoyed? I too found the Wire a fascinating portrayal of both institutions and individuals, and desperately looking for more.
Supposedly someone once asked Joseph Heller why he was never able to match the greatness of his first novel Catch 22, to which he replied, "Who has?"
Treme lacks the immediacy and accessibility of The Wire, which was built on an extremely familiar foundation of cops vs. criminals. It's hard to grab people's attention with "Musicians in New Orleans" as your building block. But I think it's worth giving Simon a pretty long leash here, especially if you believe, as Robin does, that the show is better than average. The first few episode of The Wire were pretty engaging, but the real payoff didn't occur until later.
For anyone desperate for more Wire-caliber TV, the closest thing I've found is the Canadian TV series Intelligence. It's similarly patient in developing its stories and detailed in exploring institutions, with a large cast.
one thing i wish i could communicate to all of the Treme watchers--
don't construe this show as too much of a deliberate construct. Simon is coming very close to a literal psuedo-documentation of life here at that particular time. The characters are thinly veiled composites of well-known people. A not-insignificant amount of dialog is lifted from work published at the time. The problems they faced are actual ones, thus the drama (which I find poorly paced and somewhat unengaging) is a representation of the actual drama.
You know how life is nothing like the movies or TV? Well in this case it is. It was almost exactly like that. He is creating a fictionalized visual record of what happened here.
Whether or not that is ground breaking, or whether this should be the filter through which the show is critiqued is beyond my pay grade. However, I do somewhat resent your dismissal of the show as political fantasy. There is zero fantasy in that show.
Looks like pretty straightforward regression to the mean and pretty much what we should expect when we consider that so many hailed The Wire as the greatest show ever...
I agree about The Wire, but not about Treme.
It sure is hard to buck the evaluative biases that emerge if we let our viewing of Treme be anchored by our appreciation of The Wire. The deviations register as straight losses, which accumulate and make the experience disappointing.
I found it easy to step out of this frame. This is why I think Robin sees the characters as idealistic citizens in a political fantasy, whereas I just see confused and frustrated citizens with no political resources or efficacy. They are not warm hearted, they are heart broken. Simon is focusing on empathy rather than on levels of social and political organization. He doesn't offer much on the political front, and if you treat this as a gap that needs to be filled in, then it will look like fantasy.
Wire devotees can make their disappointment vanish by just following Simon's lead. They won't get The Wire, but they will get to appreciate a brilliant show on its own merits.
(I think similar processes plague evaluations of late Woody Allen movies and also of every cast of SNL since the first one.)
Vaguely related, I thought this New Yorker article on La Familia was fascinating:
http://www.newyorker.com/re...
Agreed. The Wire is also my favorite TV show of all time and I find Treme to be pretty uninteresting, so much so that I haven't watched the last few episodes saved on the dvr.
Similar thing with The Pacific, which while better than average, couldn't live up to my expectations given how great Band of Brothers was.