The Reel Critic - 04/15/10

As a devoted fan of television’s Citizen Kane, “The Wire,” I waited until the last possible moment while watching the final episode on the final disk of the season five DVD to reluctantly press stop and end what had been the most transcendent TV watching experience of my life.

Luckily, creator David Simon is at it again, as his new HBO series, “Tremé” premiered Sunday night. While it is hard to expect another “The Wire,” given Simon’s unique knowledge of and love for the city of Baltimore, post-Katrina New Orleans certainly has much to offer for a dramatist who loves telling stories of people and the institutions that fail them.

Centered in the Tremé district of New Orleans, the show focuses on ordinary people in the city attempting to maintain normality in their lives after the storm. It opens on jazz musicians in a second line parade, which right off the bat captures the uniqueness and vibrance of the NOLA culture.

Wendell Pierce, (Bunk Moreland in “The Wire”) leads the pack as trombonist Antoine Batiste. Pierce, a New Orleans native and classically trained musician, adds an organic feel to this character that didn’t come out through Bunk’s fancy suits. Another familiar face from “The Wire” is Clarke Peters, who plays Albert Lambreaux, a storeowner who returns to New Orleans to find his home and store in shambles.

This character isn’t a centerpiece of the first episode but his story is introduced enough to prepare the viewer for an interesting ride the rest of the way. The MVP of the first episode was John Goodman, who plays college professor Creighton Bernette. We first see Burnett blowing up at a British camera crew that question the need for federal aid to New Orleans, and later, repeating this shtick on an NPR phone interview.

Goodman plays this character with the power and likeability he always brings and is a commanding force in every scene he’s in. Interestingly, while he feels the need to be the voice for a city in need, it appears that the Bernettes (Creighton’s wife is played by Melissa Leo) are well off and not particularly affected by the storm. This dynamic could come into play later in the season as Simon is an expert when it comes to critiquing class.

The rest of the ensemble, led by Steve Zahn, fill out a cast of diverse characters populating the world of the show.  As in “The Wire,” the viewer is thrown directly into the deep end, meaning that we are hardly given character introductions, merely opened up into a world that already exists and exists when not being watched.

From episode one it is hard to know who the major players are and what will unfold but on a micro scale, just watching the city and its people be captured was enough to carry this episode.

I have no worry that Simon knows exactly what he’s doing in telling his story and that Tremé will succeed as both a journalistic account of a classic American city’s real struggle as well as an entirely entertaining and fascinating work of episodic television.

Get in on the ground floor — this will be the next show everybody will be talking about.