September 18, 2007
K-ville
I came in with low expectations, which is the way one should go into any network teevee show about New Orleans. Given those low expectations, it wasn't hard for Fox to reach them. Perhaps they did a bit better.
Overall, I enjoyed the show. The horror of the days immediately after the storm were captured nicely. The whole issue of Boulet and his original partner, Charlie, was handled well. There are a lot of NOPD cops who stayed that will hold that grudge for a long time. I remember the phone-cam pics that popped up on teh internets in the weeks after the storm of NOPD cars crusing around Planet Hooston, for example.
The big car chase I mentioned last night, yeah, that does happen once editors get to the tape. The rational part of me said, yes, the area under the Crescent City Connection on the west bank is easy to isolate and shoot a chase scene, but still, iit's such a geographic gaffe.
The eebil white people thing was so fucked up, though. For openers, "Rex Dubois" owns the casino? Ummm, no, folks, Harrah's owns the casino, and they're a huge corporation. And can't Hollyweird writers come up with a last name other than "Dubois," or is it really true that their only exposure to New Orleans has been "Streetcar Named Desire?" At least they didn't have the horrid cajun accents of the fillm, "The Big Easy." The notion that the gal's brother got hisself killed in Da Ninth while changing a tire is stupid--he wouldn't have stopped on Congress to fix a tire. Still, think back to the guy that got shot coming out of Port of Call in 1995 or so, and you get the overall feeling.
In spite of the name thing, the show did a very good job of showing the black-versus-white conflict that has defined New Orleans culture for generations. In public, the rich white chick can go into Da Quarters and feign support for Da Ninth, but in private, she wants an ethnic cleansing. This isn't a stretch at all--shit, just go read some of the comments on nola.com sometime. You'll be hard-pressed to find more racism in one place than among Da Paper's commenters.
I'm OK with the black-versus-white theme of this ep, particularly since its overtones are more rich-versus-poor. If the show is going to be realistic, though, Boulet's going to have to be shooting at some black folks really soon. Yeah, there was that scene with the shrimp boat, but that was personal. Right now, gang activity and drug crime in the city is not being perpetrated by Blackwater-style mercenaries. The war in the streets of Central City is black-versus-black.
Oh, yeah, and the whole "k-ville" thing is goofy. But that the hell, it's teevee.
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Comments
There's a chance that the show could develop and grow so maybe it won't just be canceled right away. But in my fantasies, this show was an A+ window into the city that care forgot, a show that had every American in front of their television sets every week, engaging them in a broad look at the problems we face in reality, winning Emmy Awards and challenging national politicians to find solutions all along the way. Fox would lead into the season finale by playing Spike Lee's documentary unedited and without commercials. What this city needs and deserves is a weekly documentary. We don't need fictional glorification of our broken police department, cartoon portrayal of neighborhood violence, or an overall exoneration of the government's culpability in our daily disaster. wecoudbefamous.blogspot.com
Posted by E at September 18, 2007 1:44 PM