I love David Simon. Not only did he create the best TV series ever made with “The Wire,” but he also captured my experience in Iraq with such alarming detail that I got flashbacks while watching “Generation Kill.” He has an unrivaled dedication to realism in his story telling, and he deflects criticism with a witheringly insightful understanding of his material.
With the first season of Simon’s “Treme” now finished, there are a couple refrains that are common in reviews: excellent music and acting, a plodding pace, and perhaps too much reverence for the culture of New Orleans. Simon spoke to Alan Sepinwall for a lengthy interview at Hit Fix that addresses these criticisms and more. Below are the eight most snobbishly dismissive quotes directed at his critics, with helpful translations:
For me, I don’t think people can tell the difference when they speak of plot between the notion of whether something is a plot that’s progressing or whether they’re having dramatic moments that are typical of television standard – which is to say, cop show, medical show, legal show, “West Wing,” whatever, where the stakes are high. That’s what people are saying.
Translation: “If my plot points are too subtle for you, please turn your dial to CBS, where you can watch “CSI” and fulfill the simple requirements of what you consider to be plot.”
I wouldn’t change a word. But did I anticipate this reaction? I anticipated a lot of, “Jesus Christ, it’s not ‘The Wire.’” Frankly, I could give a f*ck. That’s someone saying, “Waiter, there’s soup in my soup.”
Translation: “Jesus Christ, at this point I almost regret making ‘The Wire’.”
Would I add two murders and a house fire and a gang rape? No, I wouldn’t. If you want that, there’s plenty of opportunities to see it on TV.
Translation: “I don’t write programs for VH1.”
I don’t mind if a character is selfish or insecure. I just don’t need all my characters to be winning. And in the same way that people often miscalculate or fail to acknowledge the equivocation between high-stakes and plot itself, I think people generally mistake their dislike of a character as poor acting… I mean, it’s one thing to talk about the character; it’s another thing to talk about acting as if people know what the f*ck they’re talking about. Most people want to watch shows and they want to like the people they’re watching and they don’t want to think hard about why they’re ambivalent about a character. That doesn’t make it a grown-up endeavor, to do a show where you’re basically spoon-feeding warmth and simple plot.
Translation: “I apologize if my artistic renderings aren’t simple enough for primitive minds to understand. My bad.”
[W]ho isn’t self-absorbed when their town has a near-death experience? Were New Yorkers not talking about 9/11 for years afterwards? Was it not a subject of intense discussion and self-awareness? Did New Yorkers not sound to outsiders self-absorbed and preachy when they spoke of 9/11? The sense of entitlement that New Yorkers feel and that they’re not willing to grant to someone else who’s had a life-changing experience is really remarkable.
Translation: “Ooh, burn.”
Probably the portion of Shut the F*ck Up Juice that a lot of people outside New Orleans might need to drink if they are at all serious about trying to understand the divergence between what they see on screen and what they think in their own heads is on a blog called Back of Town.
Translation: “You should also check out this great website, W W W dot eat my cock dot com.”
We’re actually catching real musical performance on film that is being played by the musicians in the moment it’s being filmed. Not to disrespect “Glee,” for what it is, but if you watch that for performance and for its musicianship, I think you’re short-changing yourself.
Translation: “Not to disrespect but ‘Glee,’ but… wait. I do mean disrespect to ‘Glee’.”
We’re actually being true to the thing. In some ways, people outside New Orleans are prisoners of what they don’t know, or of what they know now, five years later.
Translation: “Other people aren’t as smart as I am.”
You wanna know what the real problem with “Treme” is? Not enough vuvuzela.



What the Wire had that Treme lacks is nudity…specifically, lesbian nudity.
If ignorance is bliss, then many of the people leaving comments here are simply too happy to be bothered with learning something new.
Yes, TV and movies are often just contrived stories to titillate and amuse. But sometimes the stories require some effort, some desire to reach out and learn something new or to see life from a new perspective. Clearly, Treme is not just another Die Hard movie or a Twilight fantasy. And if you don’t get it (or as many have posted here, they don’t WANT to get it) that’s okay. Every TV comes with controls that allow you to change the channel. I just don’t see why it’s necessary to take it so personally. I certainly am not angry when I cannot enjoy Desperate Housewives or CSI: Miami.
Peace,
Tim
The thing about this show that puts many people off is it requires paying very close attention to everything. Many of the complaints I’ve read about this show are based on the reviewer having totally missed a clue, connection, or explanation that was given, perhaps just as a grace note, and perhaps much earlier.
Treme is not easy to follow the way most tv series are. It is not just that it is a place unfamiliar to many. So was Baltimore, yet The Wire is recognized as excellent, perhaps because the crime drama genre was just familiar enough that people stayed for the deeper story.
Treme is about something different; we can’t quite place it and our discomfort shows in our comments. We have become accustomed to turning off our minds, relaxing and being entertained with easily classifiable and always sensational trivia. What we accept as good television doesn’t even require us to be in the room watching or listening to it two-thirds of the time, much less to think about real life implications of what we’re seeing.
Treme is a work you can watch through the lens of race, class, gender, history and more– or just for the music. It is a show worth re-watching from all those angles. I look forward to next season. Meanwhile, I’ll re-watch this one a few times.
…if you read what Simon actually says in that interview, it in no way translates to the straw-man stuff that is this blogpost. Not even close. Let me see: Simon says X — conceding at points that if at the end of the run, you don’t dig the show, then you don’t dig the show — and you guys systematically omit every conciliatory phrase and translate the remainder into a grandly false and hyperbolic Y in which he claims intellectual superiority when he does no such thing. Then you rant and squeal and vent about Y.
Nice circle jerk.
Simon will not rest until every New Orleanian has had a cameo and a soapbox with which to rail against those who don’t “get it”, all the while rejoicing in their unique brand of dysfunction.
But Simon cares nothing of our assessments. And the circle jerk at Back of Town already gives his balls a little caress while they’re down there.
Strange Botwin is totally correct in his assessment. The show gets a bit “You weren’t there, man!” when presenting the hard and fast unspoken rules of N.O., but not just with the honkies. Big Chief, while using the device of explaining the tribal nuances to a newcomer, still comes off a little Training Day.
The other thing that interrupts the flow is the degrees of separation. Why would Davis and Janette both know Creighton even though he lives far from the neighborhood, but neither have knowledge that the other person knows him? The narrative covers to much geography. If you’re going to have these characters co-mingle, plots have to be based around a more distinctive location, event, occupation or social institution. However, I do think that this is where season two may be heading. The characters may have indeed needed to be established as far-flung with loose ties to one another so that when they are inevitably put all in the same area, their more unique identifiers will provide more contrast to the given situation.
Having mentioned these two minor objections, I will now add that it’s my second favorite show right now, just beneath Breaking Bad.
I’m a New Orleans native who was annihilated by Katrina on the MS gulf coast. We suffered pretty bad over here and although I can get past the pain of the storm, I find it difficult to get past the BORING stories of Treme. Plus I’ve already been through that hell already.
Hopefully season 2 will SKIP to current times (Saints winning the Super Bowl.) and move onto worse things, like the oilapocalypse.
Treme would be awesome if it was ‘Treme and it was about drinking Mountain Dew and Parkour starring Sharktopus and Vin Diesel.
Is this guy really comparing 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina? One was a deliberate surprise attack on our country by foreign hostiles….the other was a bunch of people inexplicably being surprised that the city they built on a swamp filled up with water when it rained a lot.
To JCAR, once you start watching seasons 2-5 of the Wire you will be hooked on the genius that is David Simon. S3 is a particular favorite because I witnessed some of what was being portrayed when I was a Baltimore City resident. Simon is on the money. Treme is taking a bit of time for me to warm to it, but I’ll give it a chance.
I’ll take Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, Justified, and even fucking LOST on DVD before I’ll watch another episode of Treme.
I am another that thinks The Wire is the reason TV was invented. Jcar you must be brain dead.
That being said, Treme has come off as this holier that though diatribe/love letter about New Orleans. It takes the attitude that NO was this magical paradise before the hurricane. When in actuality is was the equivalent of a toilet with an open bar. They had high unemployment, high percentage of the citizens were on some gov’t assistance, and they reveled in their political corruptness but because they have good gumbo and an affinity for jazz it is a wash.
The mistake was Simon spent more time proselytizing than developing a story.
David Simon runs for president, outlaws everything not liked by David Simon
David Simon loves this provocative foreign documentary in black and white he watched recently , but he assumes you wouldn’t understand it so why bother recommending it you fucking bumbling mongoloid piece of shit who is beneath David Simon.
but come on, doesn’t he sound like a major dick?
i guess the #2 was more of a statement. :)
two questions-
1. when has zahn NOT played a stoner douchebag?
2. mark folse sounds like a major dbag himself. enjoy fluffing simon. ps mark- i think most of the gang rape comments were in jest, slick.
I’ve only ever seen the first season of the Wire, so I might be missing something, but judging from the first season alone, I don’t see what the fuss is about. Yes, it’s good and well written, but I don’t see how people can claim its the holy grail of TV or the best show ever. It just seemed to me to be your typical police procedural show, only with a single case stretched out to an entire season. Like I said, it was good enough (the stretching out of the case to an entire season gave them more time to develop characters more fully, and the like), but still, I don’t see what is so great about it.
Maybe it gets better in the subsequent seasons, I don’t know (I plan on watching seasons 2-5 of the Wire someday when I find the time), but I still think shows like “Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos,” and even “Battlestar Galactica” (despite its somewhat crappy ending) are better than “The Wire” any day.
Although I do concede that “generation kill” kicked ass, and is probably the best piece of art to come out of the Iraq war yet.
I think the comments as a summary of the audience for this drivel about sums it up nicely. More gang rape and nudity.
I think he’s essentially right, and the tone of the post and the comments shows it: yes, this show is too sophisticated for some people, including this author and most of his commenters (who I presume in some way represent his readers). Strangely, it’s not over the head of my fifteen year old son (who lives in New Orleans now but did not grow up here immersed in the culture, and is much more immersed in the virtual world of his favorite video games).
So what’s on Spike tonight, guys? Or do your parents let you watch that?
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian watching Treme from Canada, but I never thought I was supposed to feel guilty while doing so. I just thought the musical performances were really enjoyable and the characters compelling. And having known a couple of guys with great lives and great families top themselves for what was to the rest of us, inexplicable reasons, I thought the Goodman storyline was the most realistic depiction of a suicide I’ve ever seen.
See? I’m as smart as David Simon ’cause I like his work.
You know what 9 out of 10 people enjoy?
Gang rape.
I’ve personally never known a stoner douchebag as articulate as Zahn’s character, but I’m probably in the minority. However, you can practically hear Simon typing those diatribes onto his laptop and that’s what irks me about this otherwise great show.
And it’s specious reasoning to say that one’s criticism of something is all together moot just because they haven’t lived and breathed it as much as the author of the source material. It’s true in exception cases sure (TV shows not being one of them), but if that axiom was true, then every blog on the Uproxx network would shrink in size by half because that’s ALL we do as a society is knock shit that we aren’t experts on. It’s what makes us great. U-S-A, U-S-A!
While Simon is awesome and Treme is, well it’s okay, and I concede that Simon is well read and well learned, I hesitate to really get on board with a guy who creates a show strictly so I can feel guilty for not feeling guilty.
In this interview sort of comes off less as an avenging hero of good television and more like a guy who blames everybody for not being as awesome as he is for not getting his brilliant show about the music he really likes.
I love everything Simon’s ever done, Corner/Homicide/Wire/Gen Kill, and basically have all 5 seasons of the Wire memorized.
Simon knows more about New Orleans than we do. Good for him. That does not mean Treme is compelling TV. Katrina was traumatic for many residents, and that’s sad. But here’s how it was depicted:
Zahn: “Waa waa, this isn’t fair because New Orleans is incredible and you just don’t appreciate it like I do.”
Lester: “Waa waa, I punched a cop and now I won’t be able to finish gluing the feathers on my costume!”
Goodman (and this is the worst): “Waa waa, I’m an award-winning author and successful novelist with a loving wife, adoring daughter and a beautiful home that was NOT damaged by the storm. I’m also not from this city, but I’m so upset that some things changed that I’m going to kill myself!”
Simon took one of the most significant events in recent history, and depicted it by portraying characters that are complaining about such meaningless bullshit that it’s impossible to take them seriously. Compare Creigton’s “plight” to that of Dukie or Michael, and then decide how earth shattering it really was. It’s laughably stupid. Again, this has nothing to do with Katrina or NOLA, but just how Simon translated it into a television show.
It’s a good multi-layered hour of TV but it lacks one thing that I have desperately craved for close to two decades now:
the appearance of Khandi Alexander’s sweet jugs
Not just gang rape. Gang rape with tentacles.
I was obnoxiously proud of the fact that I watched The Wire from the night the show premiered all the way to the end- but when season five rolled around and it seemed like a personal fuck you from Simon to the newspaper industry I began to suspect that he might be kind of a dick.
I read Sepinwall’s interview earlier today and felt like I was being scolded because I just didn’t find Treme entertaining. I don’t think that automatically means I’m some fucking rube drinking mountain dew out of a 2 liter bottle and eating mayonaise sandwhiches while I watch reruns of CSI on Spike TV. But I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how Simon assumes I’m spending my time when I decide not to tune in his weekly lecture on jazz and how woefully ignorant we are all of anything related to post-Katrina New Orleans. Like I said- I think might be kind of a dick.
I know how David feels.
When I tried to sell my script about a guy who trades soybean commodity futures, people said it was too boring. I mean the guy has to look to see how soybean crops are doing and predict future demand. What is boring about that?
The lesson, as always, is more gang rape.
Realistic or not, I still want my TV to be interesting. I don’t need gang rape for that, but something happening would be nice.
/does need gang rape for that
“here’s to a stronger second season.”
My advice to you is the opposite of the advice I gave to people trapped in NOLA after Katrina: Don’t hold your breath.
The question is moot!
All the white characters. Every time one of them comes on screen, you get some sort of laborious fucking lecture either of the city’s history (Goodman) or music (Zahn)
Sounds pretty realistic to me. White intellectuals both real (Goodman’s character) and fake (Zahn’s) are the best laborious lecturers on the planet. And part of the reason Zahn’s Davis Macalary is so loathed is because we’ve all known a douchebag like him at some point in our lives. Usually while at college. So I’d say that he’s about as realistic as a character gets.
But that’s not the point. The point is that until you’ve read as much as David Simon has or talked to as many people from New Orleans as he has, your criticism is moot.
My opinion is pretty consistent. I didn’t give a fuck about New Orleans before Katrina, and I don’t give a fuck about New Orleans after Katrina.
But I would love to see a Andrew Jackson- Battle of New Orleans movie.
First, let me throw out my brief credentials so I don’t get labeled a hater. I agree The Wire is the greatest TV show ever made, I read Simon’s book The Corner that inspired it, and have seen/read all of his other works to date.
That said, my main problem with Treme: All the white characters. Every time one of them comes on screen, you get some sort of laborious fucking lecture either of the city’s history (Goodman) or music (Zahn) and that seems to be the only time the show loses its authenticity. I feel like that dialog is there, solely to rub the rest of the country’s collective face in the fact that we didn’t do more or don’t understand. Moreover, male and female, all the crackers are whiny ‘woah is me’ pussies. And yeah, the pace is slow, particularly in the middle of the season, but that I don’t mind as much as the nuances of these ill-formed characters.
Alright, I could go on, but I’ll put down the Haterade, and just say “here’s to a stronger second season.”
Every show could use more gang rape. I’d add it.