You say the TV looks like your life*

I notice a frequent go-to excuse for Treme heads regarding the show's improbable, masturbatory, self-referential dialogue is to tell us that what we may think is just crappy writing is, in fact, "gritty realism" or "not normal TV." Not only is this clearly a cop-out it's also just false. "Normal TV" is actually littered with crappy dialogue. Tooth grinding awfulness is one of television drama's defining characteristics. Treme is no exception. It's bad in the same way most of everything else on TV is bad.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from a recent Offbeat interview with some of our favorite Treme bloggers.

Shea: If you’re watching a program where the topic and characters are something that you’re involved in in real life, you know too much and you can see the moving parts in the dialogue, and that makes it hard to suspend disbelief. Some people from New Orleans have this thing where if someone makes reference to red-beans-and-rice-and-it’s-not-even-a-Monday, people laugh because it’s obvious, but, people talk like that all the damn time here. You hear it coming out of an actor’s mouth, it sounds like a cliché because you know it’s a cliché.

Being the "some people" in question here, I should say that the problem is not simply that this is a cliche' (although it is that). It's that it's over-hip unnecessary exposition which natives like me feel a bit exploited by and outsiders talked down to by. It's almost the very definition of poseurism. Also it's crappy dialogue. And it's crap dialogue even if "people talk like that all the time down here." Which they do not. Well, okay, my Dad has been known to say stupid and morose shit like, "You know the last float in my Mardi Gras parade is gonna be passing real soon now" but he's kind of an asshole anyway.

By the way, if you'd like to complain about any of this to Treme creator David Simon in person, you might like to register for this year's Rising Tide Conference where he'll be a featured speaker.


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