'Treme's' True Star Isn't an Actor, It's a City

The danger with producing a show like 'Treme' isn't the political controversies that are sure to arise from it or the never-ending "blame game" that almost destroyed one of America's biggest and most colorful cities.

The devil, as they say, is in the details.

New Orleans natives, like me, know when their city is being taken for a joyride. Some movies and TV shows that are set in New Orleans have taken more liberties with its setting than a fleet of Navy seamen on Tijuana shore leave. I can't tell you how many times I've laughed my huge head off when a character who is supposed to be from "N'Awalins" hops on a streetcar from a Kenner subdivision or talks with an accent that sounds like he just flew in from Mobile, Alabama.

The show's creator, David Simon, saw this petty niggling coming, so he headed off the angry Internet comment writers at the pass by printing a column in The Times Picayune under the headline, "David Simon explains it all for you." His chief concern with last Sunday's premiere was the use of a Hubig's fried pie.

Hubig's, a New Orleans dessert creation and institution, didn't reopen until February of 2006. So the only way Janette could have kept one in her purse for three months is if it was coated in some kind of nuclear bomb shield material and carried a few hundred pounds of dry ice. Simon knew about this inconsistency, but noted that the pie stood for something far greater than its flaky, fruit-filled goodness.

"By referencing what is real, or historical, a fictional narrative can speak in a powerful, full-throated (sic) way to the problems and issues of our time," Simon wrote. "And a wholly imagined tale, set amid the intricate and accurate details of a real place and time, can resonate with readers in profound ways. In short, drama is its own argument."

Frankly, I didn't even notice that little mistake because I was so enamored with the moment. When John Goodman's character learns that Janette has been carrying around this tasty relic of the old city, his eyes light up and he turns from a screaming, angry prophet hanging on to his last ounce of sanity in a world that refuses to listen to him, into a giddy, hopeful lump of a man. And all it took was a fried sweet potato pie that may or may not have gone over its expiration date (I would have eaten it either way, too. If you gotta go, I can't think of a sweeter way than being killed by a pie).

The show may have had other little mistakes like that. No one can point out every single mistake or flaw in the narrative or the locales and even if they could, they are missing the point. This is a human drama that aims to shine a light on the human element of a human tragedy and only the people living it can achieve any redemption from it, whether it's rebuilding a neighborhood destroyed in a flood or savoring a sniff of bourbon as a local band belts out a ear-busting blues tune.

Little moments like that not only made me homesick for a city I still call home even though I live hundreds of miles away from it, but it also shaped New Orleans into its own character. Simon and co-creator Eric Overmyer know that dates and details don't make a city. People do.

Future episodes are bound to feature things like po-boys that don't come on authentic New Orleans French bread, backyard crawfish boils that take place outside of the crawfish catching season and the Superdome that didn't reopen until more than a year after the storm. The characters' interactions and reactions to them are what make the city shine and, more importantly, worth saving.