What I love about Treme, and indeed all David Simon shows, is the total unabashed immersion into a culture and world I am totally unfamiliar with. Simon makes no attempt to lecture situations via exposition, he makes you live them. You’re thrown in the deep end and if you’re too lazy to pay attention well, too bad. There’s a lot to appreciate about such confident storytelling: the thematic resonance, the rich characters - but what’s to love about Simon’s stories is that abstractions or narrative shothands are never used. Ever. That’s probably the only way to approach topics such as institutional dystfunction (The Wire), callous war (Generation Kill) and in this instance, Katrina’s aftermath. The humanist approach. You learn more when you follow people than when you follow events. Characters and plotting are not two distinct storytelling forks in the road, they can co-exist you know. Watch Treme or The Wire or Generation Kill and see how its done.
