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Crafting Complex Historical Narratives in Serial Television: Treme

Treme begins three months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 and the failure of the levees caused 80 percent of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, to be underwater. Series showrunners David Simon and Eric Overmyer had long discussed making a television show about New Orleans, and Katrina provided them with a way to frame the show.¹ The series follows a range of characters from mixed social, economic, and cultural backgrounds as they try, and often fail, to rebuild their lives in the Crescent City. Multiple narratives involving these characters are woven together, providing the potential to understand the momentous impact of Hurricane Katrina on a variety of individuals while also exploring the various cultures and traditions of the city.

Television’s ability to incorporate multiple storylines like this has long made it an ideal medium for exploring historical stories. Glen Creeber argues that while film is limited in the scope of the story it can tell, TV can combine multiple narrative levels and produce more complex histories that incorporate the personal and the political, the micro and the macro. The structure of television serials—the longer running time and multiple narrative strands—is a hallmark of the medium and not unique to postnetwork quality dramas.² However, developments within the television industry during the postnetwork era, often pioneered by HBO, have further enhanced the potential of TV serials to tell rich historical stories. This examination of Treme starts to uncover some of the ways complex and nuanced histories are crafted on-screen in contemporary television serials.

The link between character and narrative in television serials is central, and so this chapter and the previous one (on Boardwalk Empire) are intimately tied together. Television narratives depend on “strong chains of action—causes and effects generated by characters and motivated by those characters’ traits and goals.”³ The characters in Treme, like those in Boardwalk Empire, fit into a variety of categories. Most notably different in Treme is the array of people who play themselves—chefs, musicians, politicians, and ordinary New Orleans residents—and engage with the fictional characters. All of the ten to fourteen central characters of each season are invented, although they do take inspiration from numerous individuals. Janette Desautel and Albert “Big Chief” Lambreaux, for example, are completely invented, but situations and moments in their on-screen lives come out of the consultants working on the show, informed by their own experiences or of others they know. A few of the central characters, including Davis McAlary and Creighton Bernette, come close to the “inspired-by” characters from the last chapter, but the connection to any one real person is too tenuous to be categorized as such.⁴ Catherine Dessinges, Dominique Gendrin, and Wendy Hajjar argue that Simon and Overmyer “have gone to extraordinary lengths to create believable characters and plot scenarios representative of lived lives and shared experiences, often nuanced with great detail.”⁵ The broad range of invented characters, all with their own narrative threads (which may or may not be connected to others in the show), results in a complicated narrative capable of presenting complex historical interpretations.

Treme, like both Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire, is structured as a serial with character arcs and storylines developing over multiple episodes, rather than an episodic series. As Jeremy G. Butler explains, “Unlike the series, the serial expects us to make specific and substantial narrative connections between one episode and the next. In the series, the link between each week’s programmes is rather vague. In the serial, the connection is fundamental to its narrative pleasures.”⁶ The nature of a series is episodic, focusing on a new storyline each week that is generally resolved within the thirty-minute or hour-long time frame.⁷ In a serial, storylines run across more than one episode and may develop over a number of episodes, or even an entire season. Though serials were predominant mainly in daytime soap opera during television’s formative decades, they have since emerged in prime-time television; many scholars, including Jason Mittell, Jeffrey Sconce, Thomas Schatz, and Sarah Kozloff, have explored this emergence.⁸ Kozloff points out that the distinction between the two types of television programming has never been clear-cut, with episodic series as old as I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–57) including some serial elements.⁹ All agree that the 1980s was a pivotal decade in the development of serial television with the creation of prime-time shows such as Dallas (CBS, 1978–91), Hill Street Blues, and St. Elsewhere, which focused less exclusively on the mystery/crime/patient-of-the-week story and more on the ongoing development of the central characters and their relationships. This trend continued through the 1990s, and now purely episodic series are a rarity on TV, while serial narratives have become increasingly experimental and complex.¹⁰

History, too, is a “species of narrative,” but while serial television narratives like Treme have become increasingly popular and critically acclaimed, in the historical profession narrative has been a hotly contested issue since the mid-twentieth century.¹¹ History is more than just a simple chronicle or list of events. A chronicle makes no attempt to join the dots between listed events and explain how one event leads to the other. What is missing in chronicle is a narrative voice that provides explanation and gives meaning to the events, thereby transforming it into a (hi)story.¹² Historians distinguish their work from fictional narratives, emphasizing that although the two share a similar form, historical narratives represent real events and are beholden to the sources. While the writer of fiction has infinite freedoms, historians are bound by facts. Traditional historians often took their method of delivery—written narrative—for granted, assuming that the sources would allow them to re-create and reproduce the “true story” of what happened in the form of a written narrative. These firm epistemological beliefs were debated and reevaluated with the advent of the linguistic turn and with the rise of new schools of thought such as the Annalistes, who turned away from linear, event-based history, and of popular new approaches like quantitative history.¹³

Philosophers of history and theorists from a spectrum of disciplines, including Hayden White, Roland Barthes, W. B. Gallie, Louis Mink, Arthur Danto, and Paul Ricoeur, weighed in on the place of narrative in history precisely at the time when practicing historians moved away from the grand narratives of the Romantic historians.¹⁴ Shaped by their interdisciplinary approach and heavily influenced by the social sciences, historians began to favor analytical, thematic, and structural histories. Indeed, White noted in 1996 that “in modern, ‘scientific’ historiography, the tendency has been to suppress storytelling” in favor of “impersonal” approaches. “Storytelling in historiography,” White concludes, “has for quite a while been deprived of its traditional function of explaining historical events and consigned to the more modest roles of explication and illustration.”¹⁵ This trend does not mean, however, that narrative is no longer a crucial element in history; a number of theorists argue that there still exists a narrative element to structural, concept-led, and thematic histories and readers’ understanding of them.¹⁶ Nor have narrative histories died out, with not only traditional historians continuing to work in this form but also those influenced by new approaches to history.¹⁷

The central issue for theorists and philosophers such as White and Barthes is that “narrative is not a neutral form into which content is stuffed, but is ideologically freighted.” “Narrative,” Elizabeth A. Clark summarizes, “serves to impose coherence, continuity, and closure on the messiness of life and of the historian’s sources; the historian then smoothes over the gaps and absences to create an ‘effect of the real.’”¹⁸ For Alun Munslow, it is imperative that historians recognize the artifice of narrative and the role that they themselves play in the creation of historical narratives. While the story—that is, the events of the past documented in the sources—can be said to have existed, historians narrate the events of the past, providing meaning and explanation through emplotment. They make narrative choices, choosing how the narrative is structured and plotted, how events are prioritized, and ultimately what is included and what is excluded in order to maintain the momentum and focus of the narrative. “Because the process of ‘telling’ or narrating the past constitutes a complex system of representation,” Munslow argues, “how a history is told is just as important as what is told.”¹⁹ Since narration is crucial to the construction of historical texts, it is important to explore how history is narrated on the screen, as well as on the written page.

That history on-screen tends to follow a linear, chronological path, similar to traditional narrative histories, has been a point of contention among a number of historians skeptical of the medium’s capacity to engage with history. Written history has remained the primary form of delivery for professional historians because of its “apparent ability to fulfil the ‘meaning function’ through the mechanism of the numbered references” and the ability to directly enter into debate and challenge the findings of other scholars.²⁰ Robert Rosenstone has addressed such issues head-on. He admits that the narrative strategy of film, to tell a closed linear story “with, essentially, a single interpretation” is a troubling aspect, as this strategy denies historical alternatives and “does away with many of the complexities of motivation or causation.” Rosenstone, though, points to the many celebrated narrative histories and biographies that fail to enter into direct debate or reference the larger field of study while he also emphasizes the need to connect with a wider audience. Historians have made a number of methodological breakthroughs since the middle of the twentieth century enriching the history they produce, but if they cannot connect their work with the wider public and tell “stories that matter” both inside and outside of the discipline, he questions the extent to which the profession will remain relevant.²¹ Film and television are mediums that have the potential to reach a wide audience because of their narrative thrust while still meaningfully engaging with the past. In fact, Treme demonstrates that a dramatic television series can present multiple interpretations and express the complexities of motivation and causation, although how it achieves this is, of course, different from written history.

Developments in programming have aided television’s ability to create rich and nuanced histories. Treme is an example of what Mittell has dubbed “narratively complex TV,” and, indeed, he sees HBO as having “built its reputation upon narratively complex shows.”²² Narrative complexity is a catch-all phrase used to denote more elaborate storytelling techniques employed on television shows. There are no set characteristics, and shows that appear vastly different in terms of style, subject, and structure can be cited as examples of narrative complexity.²³ “Temporal play, shifting perspectives and focalization, repetition, and overt experimentation with genre and narrative forms” are just some of the elements of narrative complexity, according to Mittell.²⁴ While devices such as flashback and flash-forward may not be new to the form, how they are employed is; a key difference is that they “are constructed without fear of temporary confusion for viewers.”²⁵ This type of TV can be challenging for viewers, demanding their full attention and a level of mental engagement to follow the narrative.²⁶ However, it is also a satisfying experience for audiences as they “build up their comprehension skills” and come to appreciate “the aesthetic sophistication that can bring its own rewards.”²⁷ Treme can be classified as narratively complex due to the expansive storyworld it creates on-screen. Temporal devices are rare and the show follows a linear narrative. The complexity here comes from the vast array of characters, relationships, and narrative threads interwoven on the show. What is also notable on Treme is the lack of explicit explanation. Viewers are, effectively, thrown into the deep end of New Orleans culture and tradition, and context and explanation are provided slowly, paying off for dedicated viewers.

Numerous factors, including demographics, technology, and changes within the industry, have coincided with the rise of narrative complexity. With the numbers of channels increasing and the size of audiences shrinking for each show, expectations within the industry have changed. A small but cult following can be enough to sustain a show, allowing for niche series that do not have to try to appeal to the widest audience possible. The advent of new technologies (VCRs, DVD and Blu-ray players, the internet, streaming) has been important because viewers can rewatch entire episodes or replay specific scenes to dissect complicated plot twists and revelations, and also watch an entire season in the space of a few days. The internet has also allowed viewers and fans to be in constant contact, share knowledge and theories, and create a community.²⁸

As a subscriber service driven to remain at the cutting-edge of programming, HBO has either spearheaded or embraced many of these changes. Anthony N. Smith points out that HBO’s business model “places a low priority on servicing the needs of casual viewers.”²⁹ Instead, the focus is on crafting complex narratives that will draw viewers in week after week, building a loyal base willing to pay the subscription fee in part for that show. HBO helps viewers build this loyalty by making the episodes readily available to subscribers—replaying them multiple times on the cable channel and, more recently, by making them available on HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max. HBO “does not care how subscribers watch its content, just as long as they watch it.”³⁰ In contrast, broadcast networks driven by advertising dollars want audiences to tune in for the premiere.

The significance of these changes within the industry and HBO’s approach to serial dramas can be observed in the production and reception of Treme. From its first season the show had a small audience that fluctuated but averaged around five hundred thousand in live and same-day viewings, a small number compared to other HBO serials.³¹ Despite the low ratings, HBO continued to green-light subsequent seasons. “We’re as proud of ‘Treme’ as we are of anything on the network,” stated HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler when the show was renewed for a third season. “Do we wish more people watch it? Of course we wish more people watched it. But it’s hard, a story of human beings in distress.”³² Online forums have also been important for this particular series, providing viewers with a space to share thoughts, frustrations, and theories and a place to seek out an appendix to the show. Dave Walker’s weekly posts on the Times-Picayune website provided a guide to the often obscure New Orleans references on the show and were regularly recommended by TV critics and praised by viewers seeking out greater explanation.³³ While it is impossible to state definitively, it seems safe to assume that a show like Treme would not have appeared on television screens during the TVI or TVII era (see introduction) or, if it had, that it would not have lasted three and a half seasons. The TVIII period, however, has been particularly conducive to producing historical dramas with depth and complexity.

Because Treme is a show populated with invented characters, the question becomes how free the show’s creators were to invent in terms of the historical narrative being told. Both Simon and Overmyer stated in interviews that their wish was to capture the realities of life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Though the central characters are invented, this does not mean they were writing a fictional narrative with the freedom to change the historical record. It is useful here to employ the terms “satellites” and “kernels,” created by narrative theorist Seymour Chatman. As David Herman explains, these names “refer to the core and peripheral elements of story-content respectively. Delete or add to the kernel events of a story and you no longer have the same story; delete or add to the satellites and you have the same story told in a different way.”³⁴ In Treme we can think about the documented historical events as being the kernels. Like any historian writing a scholarly monograph, storytellers should refrain from significantly altering these kernel events, as to do so would mean it would no longer be classified as history. “Some things, you just don’t make up,” Simon explained, although as noted in the previous chapter, changes to date and location in historical film can be accommodated without impacting the overall veracity of the history being presented.³⁵ The characters and their storylines, then, are the satellites; conceivably Simon and Overmyer could have created ten different central characters in season 1, which would have resulted in the same history documenting New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but told in a different way, through the experiences of ten new characters.

The inclusion of so many main characters requires an elaborate structure able to accommodate numerous ongoing storylines. Several metaphors have been employed by TV critics and scholars to capture the complex structure of television serials. In a piece published by the New York Times in 1995, Charles McGrath declared “The Triumph of the Prime-Time Novel,” referring to those TV series that developed storylines across episodes and became the nineties’ “equivalent of the serial novel, unfolding epic stories instalment by instalment.”³⁶ This analogy has remained popular, with Greg Metcalf updating the terminology to fit with changes in technology, arriving at the term “DVD Novel.”³⁷ For both McGrath and Metcalf, episodes equate to chapters in a book, developing ongoing characters and plot. Not everyone is content with this comparison though; Sean O’Sullivan finds that TV serial narrative is in fact more closely related to poetic structures, particularly the sonnet, which he compares to a TV season. For O’Sullivan, “the multiplot spectrum of characters, events, and thematic context in a single serialised episode far exceeds the ambit of a traditional novel chapter.”³⁸ Brett Martin dispenses with literary metaphor in favor of an architectural one, describing each episode in a TV serial as a “brick with its own satisfying shape, but also part of a season-long arc.”³⁹ However, Mittell argues that despite influence from literature, film, comic books, and videogames, TV narrative structure is, in fact, unique, with its own strengths and weaknesses.⁴⁰ “An understanding of the medium-specific potentials of moving-image storytelling,” he asserts, “allows us to appreciate what they offer on their own terms.”⁴¹ Mittell is correct that it is counterproductive and impractical to judge television narrative by the standards and capabilities of literature, whether novelistic or poetic. Still, such comparisons can provide a useful frame of analysis.

The full series of Treme can be compared to a complete book, while a season is analogous to a chapter, and an episode to a series of paragraphs in that chapter. Exploring a serial in this way does not entail the expectation that television should mimic a written history text, nor does it elevate one form above the other. Instead, such juxtaposition provides a starting point by which to understand how history is constructed across a series, a season, and an episode. Each of the following sections focuses on one of these storytelling units. The first looks at how an episode operates in isolation and explores the nuts and bolts of how narrative is constructed on-screen. Just as written history is more than a chronicle of events, history on-screen must also imbue events with meaning. As White argues, film has a different language and discursive mode than that used in traditional history. A close reading and analysis of the episode “Shame, Shame, Shame” allows for an examination of how a dramatic television series constructs and presents historical facts, themes, and ideas.⁴² The second section focuses on season 3 and one of its major storylines. The issue of rebuilding New Orleans—both at the individual level, in terms of private housing, and at the public level, in terms of city infrastructure—is a central theme of this season involving a number of the main characters. Linking back to ideas from the previous chapter on alignment and allegiance, this chapter demonstrates that a television show has the potential to present more than just a single, straightforward historical interpretation. The final section on the series as a whole considers Treme’s overarching argument: that the city of New Orleans is rich in unique traditions and culture and it is vital that it continues to thrive in the aftermath of the storm. Treme is not unlike new narrative histories, especially microhistories, which use a traditional narrative form to bring to light the stories of ordinary people and, in doing so, illuminate wider issues. It is also necessary to consider paratexts, the extra material packaged within the DVD and Blu-ray sets, as they expand on the central text, effectively functioning as the show’s footnotes.

History in Beats: Episodes

David Simon has often been vocal in interviews that Treme is not a show that can be judged or evaluated on an episode-by-episode basis, stating in one interview that the measure that he cares about “is not the episodic.” Instead, Simon, Overmyer, and the creative team wrote for “people who have a complete DVD set in front of them, or who are watching the show via HBO On Demand, or who can otherwise absorb it all as a piece and watch [the episodes] all in a row.”⁴³ Storylines do evolve slowly on the show, and it often takes an entire season for what could be considered mundane narrative threads (such as LaDonna Batiste-William’s roof woes in season 1) to find any sort of closure or resolution. Evaluating the season as a whole, especially a TV series such as Treme that is character driven and eschews the “standard tropes of a standard television drama,” is, of course, imperative.⁴⁴ But TV, by its very nature, is episodic, and episodes need to function to a certain degree on their own in order to keep viewers tuning in from week to week during its initial airing. It is live viewing, plus the number of additional viewers tuning in for repeats and watching DVR recordings within the first seven days, that have a strong bearing on whether or not a cable or network show will be picked up for subsequent seasons.⁴⁵ Though HBO’s primary concern may not be casual viewers, individual episodes need to first reel viewers in and then keep them engaged to build loyalty.

Although the writers of Treme clearly favor long-running arcs over self-contained episodic storylines, it is crucial still to examine individual episode structure in order to understand how complex narratives are presented on-screen and how events are assigned meaning. “Shame, Shame, Shame,” episode 5 of season 1, provides a standard example, following the same general structure as most of Treme’s episodes, weaving together numerous storylines that branch out beyond this one episode. “Shame, Shame, Shame” charts the lead-up to the largest second line parade since the storm while also developing a number of longer-running narrative threads relating to the central characters. Annie and Sonny’s relationship continues to slowly crumble, exacerbated by the presence of house-guest Arnie; Davis recruits local musicians to play on his CD as a part of his effort to run for city council; Albert pursues his inquiry into the housing projects; Antoine Batiste attempts to salvage his livelihood with the help of a Japanese jazz fan willing to buy him a new trombone; and LaDonna and her lawyer, Toni Bernette, continue their fight to learn the fate of LaDonna’s brother Daymo, missing since the storm. The episode climaxes with the second line parade and closes on a somber note, with many characters recognizing problematic elements in their own lives and/or in the community.

This section on “Shame, Shame, Shame” looks not only at the story but also at the discourse, the two central elements of narrative theory. As Chatman simply puts it, “The story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse the how.”⁴⁶ Russian formalists utilize the terms fabula, “the complete story,” and syuzhet, “the selection and ordering of the action explicitly presented on screen.”⁴⁷ David Bordwell prefers the latter terms for discussion of narrative in film, taking narration to be “the process by which film prompts the viewer to construct the ongoing fabula on the basis of syuzhet organization and stylistic patterning.” It is not enough to consider the story, or fabula, alone; the syuzhet arrangement is equally important, as “it is the very force that conjures the fabula into being.”⁴⁸ Breaking down the individual narrative threads and understanding the patterning employed helps make clear the key facts and themes conveyed to viewers in this one episode alone. While “Shame, Shame, Shame” is just one small part of a much larger and complex whole, it serves to illustrate how narrative is crafted on-screen and how historical facts and ideas are generated.

The structure, or architecture, of Treme’s episodes follows the basic patterns employed by most cable and network ensemble drama series. While cable shows, and especially HBO series (with their tagline “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”), are often considered to be very different to their network counterparts, they are essentially constructed the same way. Anthony N. Smith argues that the episode architecture of the seminal HBO series The Sopranos, which was lauded by critics and scholars for breaking the television mold, basically still follows many of the same formulas, although it was certainly more creative and subtly edited together.⁴⁹ “Situation comedies, episodics, and serial dramas all organise their stories into rather short segments,” Michael Z. Newman explains. These “beats,” or what viewers might think of as scenes, are “television’s most basic storytelling unit” and are rapidly cut together with each one generally lasting no longer than two minutes.⁵⁰ The beats alternate among multiple plots contained within that episode, a structure that “both permits contrast and resonance between distinct storylines.”⁵¹ Television episodes also often follow a three- or four-act structure. Even though premium cable series do not have the commercial interruptions of network TV, which necessitates a clearly defined and evenly timed four-act structure, acts are still employed because they allow for rising and falling action and turning points that complicate the action.⁵²

Given the multiplicity of characters and both the isolated and interconnected relations to one another, there are multiple storylines at play in episodes of Treme, with different numbers of beats dedicated to each.⁵³ The inclusion of a myriad of storylines is certainly a common feature of narratively complex television. In a brief study of TV narratives, Steven Johnson compares four series—Dragnet (NBC, 1967–70), Starsky and Hutch (ABC, 1975–79), Hill Street Blues, and The Sopranos—and plots the narrative threads in order to demonstrate the stark difference between the former two episodic series, which focus predominately on a single narrative, and the latter two serials, which contain multiple threads.⁵⁴ Treme fits into the second category, with upwards of ten narrative strands per episode, some of which may only briefly appear in one or two beats. Generally, individual episodes can often be analyzed and separated out into A, B, C, and D stories, with the greatest number of beats divided between the A and B threads, and declining numbers of beats for the minor storylines, however many there may be.⁵⁵ In Treme’s episodes it is difficult to identify such a clear structure due to the number of narratives included and the scattered number of beats given over to each (see graph on opposite page). In “Shame, Shame, Shame” the trombone and Daymo storylines could be considered the A and B storylines, respectively.⁵⁶ It is not a clear distinction, though, as two other storylines have only one fewer beat than the Daymo thread. The story of Antoine’s trombone also has two main lines of action, each with a very different focus: Antoine’s journey to replace his instrument is bookended with conversations between Toni and Lieutenant Terry Colson that are initiated by Toni’s quest to find his original missing trombone. With the number of beats per episode (approximately forty for a fifty-five-minute Treme episode) and the number of storylines per episode, there is potential for each individual show to raise a number of historical issues.

Beats, and the storylines they contain, are edited together to form a cohesive narrative that viewers can engage with and follow. Robin Nelson describes this as a “flexi-narrative,” a “fast-cut, segmented, multi-narrative structure.”⁵⁷ This structuring serves a number of purposes: omitting what is considered unimportant, telescoping time, and keeping up audience interest by not allowing one storyline or group of characters to dominate airtime.⁵⁸ The beats do not conform to a rigid pattern, nor are the storylines evenly spaced throughout the episode, demonstrated by an analysis of “Shame, Shame, Shame.” The trombone story is first introduced in the fourth beat after the opening credits, as Toni meets with police officer Colson to discuss Antoine’s missing trombone. In the following beat, LaDonna stakes out her roofer, waiting to serve him papers, before the next beat returns to the trombone story, and is again succeeded by a continuation of LaDonna’s roofer storyline. After this beat, LaDonna’s roof thread does not reappear in this episode, and the trombone story does not reemerge until the nineteenth beat. The same patterning is more substantially replayed here with Antoine’s interactions with the Japanese jazz fan, Koichi Toyama, documented in four beats, alternating with two other storylines: one beat on Albert’s housing project thread and the three remaining beats on Janette’s restaurant vignette.⁵⁹ Some storylines, such as the Sonny/Annie/Arnie arc explored in this episode, have beats more randomly plotted throughout the episode. However, double beats or longer groupings of beats alternating with other storylines are more usual.

Number of beats assigned to each storyline in “Shame, Shame, Shame.”

The alternating rhythm of beats often found in Treme’s episodes allows for fairly rapid development of plot within the featured storylines while also keeping viewers engaged with the flexi-narrative structure. It also helps audiences follow some of the more complex storylines. Midway through “Shame, Shame, Shame,” Toni searches through water-damaged papers in an effort to find any clues that will aid her search for Daymo. Sofia Bernette manages to read the word “Webster,” and Toni wonders aloud if it could refer to Webster Street. After the next scene of Davis’s recording session, the show cuts to an exterior shot of Desautel’s restaurant, a street sign reading “Webster St” clearly visible, before jumping to an interior shot of Toni talking to Janette and Jacques about the previously unknown fact that Daymo was an employee. With too long a gap between the two beats, Toni’s discovery of the word “Webster” and the visual cue of the street sign could be difficult for viewers to piece together. Just as the order and structure of sentences and paragraphs in a written text are fundamental for conveying ideas logically and clearly to the reader, so too are the order and organization of beats in an episode. Operating within a flexi-narrative structure that viewers have become accustomed to, beats are carefully ordered and structured to help viewers follow complex narrative threads and signal important focal points at different stages of the episode.

Many of Treme’s narrative threads are historical in nature and require explanation and evidence. On the surface, individual storylines in “Shame, Shame, Shame” are clearly delineated, but many revolve around similar concerns, revealing the central themes of the episode. Due to the number of characters and narrative threads, these themes are given substance through repetition and layering ideas, often subtly, across storylines. Two main topics are evident in this episode. The first is that many New Orleanians felt abandoned by those in power at local, state, and federal levels, and disillusioned with efforts to get the city back on its feet. The second is that, in 2006, crime began to return to the unprepared city. Presenting such historical facts and ideas in a written text can be straightforward—dates, statistics, and contextualizing evidence can be listed in a forthright manner. However, conveying historical facts and ideas in a dramatic series is more difficult, as they must be naturally and convincingly integrated into the narrative while still being fully explained and supported. In “Shame, Shame, Shame,” song, YouTube monologues, character conversations, and action are used to illustrate historical issues and provide meaning and context. While these ideas are not unique to this episode alone and are, in fact, expanded on throughout subsequent episodes and seasons, they are both sufficiently documented and explained in this one episode alone that they can function independently.

The most easily readable issue included in this episode is that crime began to return to the city several months after the storm. The main supporting evidence for this comes from the second line sequence during which shots ring out amid the celebrations and several people are injured. This is a restaging of the All-Star Second Line Parade on January 15, 2006, organized by thirty-two social aid and pleasure clubs, shortly after which three people were injured by gunshots. New Orleans crime rates prior to the storm were among the highest in the country, but in the aftermath “the bullets and drugs and the fear” disappeared, according to the New York Times, “swept away by Hurricane Katrina.”⁶⁰ Crime data for Orleans Parish in the immediate months after the storm is unreliable, but as Michael Leitner et al. contend, “There is some support to suggest that crime rates fell drastically after the storm,” in part due to the number of National Guard troops in the area, the amount of government aid being given out, and the reduced population.⁶¹ This lull in criminal activity did not last long, and the second line shooting included in “Shame, Shame, Shame” is used to signal the returning presence of violent crime. Crime rates for larceny, burglary, and robbery began to return to pre-storm levels during 2006, but murder and aggravated assault rates rose well beyond figures for previous years.⁶² Taking into account reduced population numbers, Mark J. VanLandingham’s study of 2006 murder rates shows the “murder rate in New Orleans increased substantially over both 2004 and 2005.”⁶³ Treme’s characters eagerly anticipate the second line, but the mood of optimism and hope created by the parade is dampened by the sudden appearance of violence.

Alongside the return of violent crime was the return of drugs to the city, and this element is also addressed in “Shame, Shame, Shame.” During the second line, LaDonna spots Marcus, an old friend of Daymo’s, and it becomes clear during the course of their conversation that Marcus is a drug dealer. He explains to LaDonna that he was in Atlanta until the start of 2006 and then came back to New Orleans to see what was happening. LaDonna’s signature arched eyebrows in response to Marcus’s dubious and vague comments indicate that she knows he returned to the city for less than lawful reasons. Like Marcus, many dealers and drug users did in fact evacuate the city during and immediately after the storm, along with the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding residents. While New Orleans was never completely drug free after Katrina hit, availability was scarce and prices skyrocketed, resulting in reduced visibility of drug culture and crime.⁶⁴ “The dope men, like, they’re out of town,” one local resident commented in November 2005.⁶⁵ As this scene indicates, it did not take long for the drug market to reestablish itself once evacuees began returning home.

The second line shooting and LaDonna’s interaction with Marcus are single instances provided on-screen that are representative of what is happening on a larger scale. These basic facts are discussed in an exchange between Toni and Colson that explicitly provides both context and meaning for what has occurred earlier. “Crime is coming back and we ain’t ready,” Colson asserts. He lists the problems standing in the way of maintaining law and order in New Orleans: criminals may be coming back to the city, but the police force is not functioning at full capacity, those police working are themselves homeless and struggling with the personal aftereffects of the storm, and the district attorney’s office and judicial system are in a shambles. Not all these problems were new, but they were exacerbated by the storm.⁶⁶ The syuzhet organization and construction of these scenes encourages the viewer to grasp the larger story (fabula) of the problem regarding crime in New Orleans. Toni and Colson’s conversation, coming towards the end of the episode, functions as a conclusion, drawing together key pieces of evidence and evaluating the broader significance of what is happening. These three scenes consisting of action, inference, and straightforward character discussion across a range of storylines clearly articulate the issue of returning crime.

Perhaps more difficult to convey than a relatively straightforward fact is the mood or emotion of a community. Abandonment and disillusionment come through most strongly in Creighton Bernette’s personal struggles. After the opening credits, the show opens with Creighton recording a YouTube video (as his character has become accustomed to doing), this one addressed directly to President George Bush. Bordwell argues that the ordering of events is key because the “order of events governs how we understand them, and the first item has greater saliency.”⁶⁷ On Treme it is often the first scene after the opening credits that sets the tone for the episode and highlights important storylines and themes, rather than the cold open.⁶⁸ Creighton lays out the problems still facing the city: half the population still not home, hospitals closed, people dying for lack of medical care, and the next hurricane season just five months away. In the second half of the monologue he references Bush’s September 2005 Jackson Square speech in order to highlight the failure of the government, and of Bush personally, to follow through on promises made.

What I mean to say, Mr. President, is that I continue to believe in the better angel of your nature. The one who, a few days after the storm, stood in front of a flood-lit Jackson Square and promised to rebuild the Gulf Coast. So let me banish from my mind the image of you lightly joking about the high times you spent here in our city as a youth while bodies floated in our streets. Far be it from me, with all my excesses and impulses, to judge you for a few untethered, unfocused words. All will be forgiven, Mr. President, if you just simply take a moment, as I often do, and watch yourself at Jackson Square, and listen to those stirring words. And then keep your fucking promise.⁶⁹

Using a similar technique, Davis’s recording scene midepisode clearly gives voice to civic problems and discontent with authority figures, again singling out Bush during his parody of the Smiley Lewis song “Shame, Shame, Shame.”

Look up in the sky

It’s a bird, it’s a plane

It’s, “Oh hell yeah I’m with ya, New Orleans

“Bring this bird down 8,000 feet

“Let’s have a look see

“Oh no, oh no, that’s not good at all

“Your city is wet, really wet

“It must be twice as bad on the ground”

Twice as bad, twice as bad, ya think?

Shame, shame, shame on you now, W

Shame, shame, shame on you now, W

Shame, shame, shame what you done

We was on the ropes, we were down and out

You flew on over, never did come down

The feelings of disappointment, frustration, and neglect espoused by both Creighton and Davis reflect the reality of the slow and often mishandled recovery of New Orleans. Looking back a year after the hurricane, independent reports and news outlets expressed concerns over the slow rate of progress and inefficient plans for rebuilding the city.⁷⁰ The transmission of Creighton’s concerns via his YouTube clip and Davis’s critique via song are clever delivery techniques that allow for one-sided dialogue capable of conveying a straightforward summation of the feelings of some New Orleans residents that do not have to be more subtly embedded into intercharacter dialogue.

However, unlike the evidence presented on the return of crime, this particular message requires more careful reading on the part of the audience. Viewers’ understanding of Creighton’s YouTube argument, and the argument developed as a whole across the different storylines of the episode, will be affected by their prior knowledge of the show. Taken out of context from the rest of the series, Creighton’s presentation of the facts may be taken by the audience at face value, though his belligerent attitude may not endear him to them. If they have witnessed Creighton’s prior actions and remarks, they will take his criticisms with a grain of salt and approach this episode with the knowledge that Creighton is quick to anger and prone to hyperbole (as is Davis).⁷¹ Although Creighton is known to be an unreliable narrator, the fact that his discontent is mirrored by Davis and by Albert, who voices frustrations at the authorities over the issue of public housing, does support his grievances.⁷² That they interact with other characters who are sympathetic to their troubles (most notably the praise Creighton receives for his YouTube posts later in the episode) signals they are not expressing a radical point of view. A New York Times/CBS poll conducted in August 2006 found “Americans critical about the pace of recovery and lacking in full confidence of the government,” with 39 percent surveyed “dissatisfied with progress in the region” and an additional 11 percent angry.⁷³ In a poll of those impacted by Katrina in the Gulf Coast region, 69 percent of those surveyed rated the federal government’s response as “only fair” (36 percent) or “poor” (33 percent), leaving only 30 percent rating the response as “excellent” (5 percent) or “good” (25 percent). The ratings for state governments, mayors, and local officials were higher overall, but followed the same general trend.⁷⁴

In “Shame, Shame, Shame” it is largely the characters who assign meaning through conversation and commentary. This is not the only way history on-screen can provide meaning; editing, for example, is another effective means of crafting ideas. Unlike the author of a historical monograph, though, the characters are a physical presence known to the audience and cannot make claims to objectivity. As Munslow points out, historians often write in the third person to give the effect of objectivity, even though this ideal has long been debunked in the historical profession.⁷⁵ Indeed, Peter Burke argues that “historical narrators need to find a way of making themselves visible . . . as a warning to the reader that they are not omnipresent or impartial and that other interpretations besides theirs are possible.”⁷⁶ This is precisely what happens in a television series like Treme, as the illusion of objectivity is more difficult to maintain in a dramatic televisual representation. Ideas are necessarily filtered through characters, and their presentation of the facts is inherently subjective. Even with characters largely unknown to audiences, such as Colson (as this is the first episode he appears in), the characters’ positioning and status in the narrative, as well as their delivery of the message, affect how viewers will understand them.⁷⁷ What could be termed a “side effect” of the medium is one of its most interesting aspects. TV (and film) takes what could be termed a postmodern approach to history, acknowledging the bias of those shaping the interpretation presented.

Rebuilding New Orleans: The Season

“Shame, Shame, Shame,” while illuminating some key issues, is, of course, simply a snapshot, a small piece of a much larger whole. The season, as a storytelling unit, is much better able to elaborate and develop historical storylines. By focusing on a season and one of its central storylines, Treme demonstrates that history on television has the potential to overcome a number of the perceived pitfalls of the medium. Through the inclusion of a wide spectrum of characters who occupy various positions in the narrative, multiple perspectives can be supplied on any one topic, creating complex and multidimensional representations. Simon has explained that there are central ideas to each of the seasons: season 1 focuses on people returning to the city and what it meant to come back to New Orleans; season 2, starting approximately fourteen months after the storm, introduces major problems plaguing the city, particularly the rise in violent crime; and the third and final full-length season, beginning twenty-five months after, revolves around money coming into the city and how that money was often misappropriated.⁷⁸ These themes identified by Simon do in fact run through each and every season, but the structure of the season—the finite length with a clear beginning and end—provides shape and coherence, allowing certain themes to come to the fore. Not only does HBO’s preference for short seasons of approximately ten to sixteen episodes allow for bigger budgets per episode, but shorter seasons, free of hiatus, are likely to achieve a “greater degree of narrative coherence” that audiences can follow.⁷⁹ Treme’s seasons each work like a chapter in many ways, advancing the overall argument of the series but also working on its own as an isolated unit.

Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that within each season of Treme there are multiple chapters in play given the number of storylines and characters in the show. As Rosenstone points out, film brings together many elements that are often separated in history texts. “This characteristic of film,” he argues, “throws into relief a certain convention—one might call it a fiction—of written history: the strategy that fractures the past into distinct topics, categories and chapters; that treats gender in one chapter, race in another, economy in a third.”⁸⁰ Within the flexi-narrative structure of Treme, different topics are developed alongside one another over the course of not only an episode but also the season and series. And as is the case with “Shame, Shame, Shame,” important ideas and themes are built up through layering. Within season 3, for example, there are two major themes or chapters. Incompetence, corruption, and wrongdoing by the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) are investigated by Toni, visiting journalist L. P. Everett, and Colson, working within the police department itself. Each of the characters pursues his or her own line of investigation, although the individual threads often connect. The other major theme of season 3 deals with the rebuilding of New Orleans and again includes a number of separate storylines: Delmond and Albert become involved in the planning phase for a proposed national jazz center, and Desiree and Nelson both become embroiled in the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership program, with Desiree falling victim to it and Nelson endeavoring to cash in on the scheme.

As noted in the chapter on Boardwalk Empire, viewers are aligned with characters and may develop allegiance to them, a crucial factor in the creation of historical representations on-screen. “Structures of alignment are produced by two, interlocking character functions, cognate with narrational range and depth,” Murray Smith explains, “spatio-temporal attachment and subjective access.” In season three of Treme the narrative follows the spatio-temporal path of around fourteen characters, dividing its attention roughly equally among them. In terms of subjective access, the audience is privy to characters’ motivations and emotional states; they are transparent to the viewers. This places all the characters on a level playing field, so to speak, giving the audience equal access to each of them and not privileging one character over others. Allegiance, on the other hand, refers to how spectators respond emotionally to characters. According to Smith, “to become allied with a character, the spectator must evaluate the character as representing a morally desirable (or at least preferable) set of traits, in relation to other characters within the fiction.”⁸¹ In the case of Treme each of the central characters is developed enough, especially by season 3, that both positive and negative traits have been established. The idea of partial allegiance is perhaps the most apt for describing viewers’ attachment to characters on Treme, as partial allegiance is when “we find ourselves sympathetic to some attitudes and actions of a character, but antipathetic to others.”⁸² The multitude of alignments and allegiances generated on a show like Treme can have significant historical ramifications, demonstrated in the storyline surrounding the development of a new jazz center.

Varied and conflicting viewpoints on the jazz center are provided through the characters, an example of what literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin termed “heteroglossia,” a mixture of voices within a text coming from differing classes and groups. There are two main lines of debate: one side of the argument is supplied by central characters Albert Lambreaux and his son Delmond, Black working-to-middle-class New Orleans residents, and the other by two white developers: Will Branson, a new minor character, and C. J. Liguori, a recurring character from season 2, who recruit Nelson Hidalgo, a central character who also first appeared in the second season. Delmond and his father are both brought on as local consultants, with the developers stressing that they want the project to be done correctly, with insight from both the old and the new, making the father and son an ideal team.⁸³ While the plan on Treme is largely fictional, it works to illuminate some of the larger debates surrounding the rebuilding of the city, including corruption, preservation, and commodification. In the days, months, and years after Hurricane Katrina, politicians, ordinary citizens, journalists, commentators, and scholars debated how New Orleans should be rebuilt and what the priorities should be. Racial issues were at the fore, with many holding responsible those in power for trying to remake the city with a diminished African American presence.⁸⁴

Nelson, Liguori, and Branson view the creation of a national jazz center as a positive move for the city, stating the need to “monetize the city’s culture” in a smart and effective way. Their argument, advocating the conversion of New Orleans culture into an asset generating money for the city and aiding its recovery, is one with a long history. As the local economy began to decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, the “city pursued a strategy to generate urban revitalisation and bolster the tax base,” building new attractions and hosting “mega-events” to draw in both national and international visitors.⁸⁵ These endeavors yielded results; in 2003, 8.2 million people visited New Orleans, and one in six of those working in the city relied on the tourism industry for a job.⁸⁶ Tourism was central to the New Orleans economy before the storm, and getting tourists and conventions to return would be fundamental to getting the city back on its feet.⁸⁷ The tourist sector experienced the greatest job loss (approximately 22,900 jobs) after the storm, a loss in wages of about $382.7 million.⁸⁸ The argument presented by Branson, Liguori, and Nelson is in line with a number of objectives of the Bring New Orleans Back Cultural Committee’s January 2006 report. This report, created by sixteen prominent New Orleanians, including the jazz musicians Wynton Marsalis and Irvin Mayfield, stressed the link between New Orleans culture and the economic revival of the city, stating at one point that “culture is business in New Orleans.”⁸⁹ This in itself though is a contentious issue for many locals—the commodification of their culture, their traditions, and their music.

There is a certain irony to the developers’ argument for building a national jazz center to celebrate the city’s musical heritage when Treme shows important heritage sites being left to deteriorate. Although seemingly unrelated to the jazz center storyline, Davis’s Musical Heritage Tour, which he starts in season 3, raises questions about the preservation of cultural areas outside the tourist hubs and provides audiences with the necessary history and context to assess the proposed jazz center plan. The tour starts in a laundromat, formerly the home of J&M Recording Studio, before moving on to the dilapidated Eagle Saloon and later Perdido Street, where he points out where Louis Armstrong’s house once stood before being demolished in the 1960s. Davis is constantly fielding questions about the neglected state of the buildings, and one guest asks whether “you people actually ever preserve anything of note.” The sites that Davis shows the tourists, mostly significant sites in jazz history, lie outside of the Central Business District and French Quarter and are instead located in Black neighborhoods. Anna Hartnell and Lynell L. Thomas both point to the fact that historically the city has relied on Black culture to draw visitors to the city and in the process has commodified and exploited Black culture to suit the expectations of visitors.⁹⁰ New Orleans opens up “the experiences of the largely underprivileged for corruption by the privileged,” allowing tourists to do so in the “safe” confines of the French Quarter, without having to venture into actual Black neighborhoods where the performers themselves reside and the traditions originated.⁹¹ Jonathan Mark Souther suggests that over the course of the twentieth century, as tourism became ever more important, city leaders gave their blessing to “projects that destroyed neighborhoods whites viewed as blighted, even as they more or less oiled the preservation machine in the French Quarter.”⁹² While there has been a concerted effort on the behalf of preservation societies to save and recognize Black heritage sites since the 1990s, they have struggled to secure government support and funding. There is clearly a discord between what the developers are proposing—even though their logic is sound—and what Davis’s tour scenes reveal about tourism and cultural heritage in the city.

The question the developers ultimately raise with their jazz center plan is, Who are they rebuilding for? Are they rebuilding to better the lives of New Orleans residents, many of whom are poor and Black, or are they rebuilding for tourists to bring back this much-needed economic base? Both are important considerations for the survival and future of the Crescent City, and the show acknowledges that. As the season progresses, though, it becomes increasingly clear that it is only the latter they are concerned with. Albert and Delmond, as native New Orleanians, present an opposing point of view and voice the concerns of local residents. Delmond is initially more optimistic than his father and opines that a jazz center “would be a fine thing if it could happen.” He shares a number of ideas with the developers, the most important being that they remove the fence from around Armstrong Park that keeps “all the little Louis Armstrongs out.” This one issue is chosen to highlight the opposing points of view of the two sides. Delmond’s recommendation to remove the fence echoes views expressed by individual Tremé residents and neighborhood organizations during planning meetings on the future of the park conducted after Hurricane Katrina. Tremé residents charge that the fence was constructed to keep them out of the park, even though much of the Tremé neighborhood was destroyed to create the space. “There are no entrances from three sides of that Park,” stated Joyce Williams, a local resident in 2009. “To me it speaks volumes about what you think about the community. The community has no place in that park.”⁹³ People United for Armstrong Park, a local group that has aimed to revitalize the park, conducted surveys of neighboring residents and found a divide between the wishes of those of the French Quarter side of the park and those on the Tremé side regarding the fence.⁹⁴ This divide is revealed when Delmond restates his concerns and Nelson and Liguori cite the cost of pulling it down and city issues over “public safety.” Albert elaborates that these concerns over safety are really about “Black kids from the neighborhood using the park, which is right on their front steps.”

Albert remains skeptical across the season, reflecting a general distrust of the intentions and motivations behind much of the rebuilding of New Orleans. His wariness is augmented by the outcome of the long struggle against the proposed demolition of the “Big Four” public housing complexes, which he has been involved in since season 1. With the council decision to tear down the projects and with the closure of Charity Hospital (both real events), he concludes: “They are trying to wash us away . . . what the storm and them broken levees didn’t finish. This is their golden opportunity.” Like Albert, during the long proposal and planning phases for rebuilding, many, including professor and community leader Mtangulizi Sanyika, charged white elites with trying to produce “a smaller, leaner, whiter, and richer New Orleans.”⁹⁵ Alongside such concerns, it was also widely recognized that the process of awarding post-Katrina work contracts was greatly flawed and produced less than exemplary results.⁹⁶ Albert boils it down for Delmond and for the audience: “A lot of talk in the press, a lot of money changing hands, few people get rich, but nothing gets done.” It is a valid argument given revelations of corruption, favoritism, and profiteering at the local, state, and federal levels. Indeed, the real 2009 proposal for the Municipal Auditorium in Armstrong Park failed to progress, as shortly after its announcement the inspector general urged the city council to reject the plan on the grounds that bid-rigging and favoritism could have been involved in the choice of developer for the project.⁹⁷ Delmond eventually comes around to his father’s way of thinking, conceding in the season finale: “If it gets built or doesn’t get built, ain’t never taking that fence down.”

Having spent the greatest amount of time developing Delmond and Albert’s point of view that the rebuilding of New Orleans is not always in the best interest of the majority, the show ultimately comes down on their side of the argument. However, it is crucial that alternative perspectives are acknowledged and considered. That both arguments are coming from characters that viewers are aligned and allied with gives both sides of the argument weight. It would have been easy to paint the developers as one-dimensional “bad guys” working to exploit the city and line their own pockets. That motivation is certainly acknowledged, but so too is their appreciation of New Orleans’s musical heritage and their love for the city. By including Nelson as one of the developers involved in the project, the show makes an attempt to balance the argument of Albert and Delmond. Even though Nelson is constantly hustling to make money off the disaster, he embraces the food, the music, and the people, developing friendly acquaintances with the rest of the main cast of characters. While allegiance is, of course, subjective and not something that can be guaranteed, it is fair to conclude that viewers may share partial allegiance with Nelson’s character. Consequently, that side of the debate is fairly represented, more so than if it were given by just Liguori and Branson, minor characters whom viewers may be more likely to dismiss. The debate over the rebuilding of New Orleans as presented in Treme demonstrates one of the possible ways history on television can engage with multiple arguments over the course of a serial narrative—by aligning different characters with differing sides of an argument.

Not only can television series present more than one interpretation or viewpoint, but they can also convey the complexities of history, as demonstrated through the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Program (NOAH) storyline. Again, it is both time and access to a variety of characters that facilitate the construction of a detailed historical representation. There are numerous areas relating to housing that could have been documented on Treme, given that housing stock was severely damaged and consequently would be one of the most difficult and costly areas to rehabilitate after flood levels had dropped. As Karl F. Seidman notes, conservative estimates of the damage had “over 134,000 houses and apartments destroyed or damaged by the hurricanes and flooding—71 percent of the city’s occupied housing units.” Some districts, such as the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East, and Village de L’Est, had even greater percentages of occupied housing units damaged, with 84 percent, 90 percent, and 91 percent, respectively, reported as being in need of repair after the hurricane.⁹⁸ Most of Treme’s main characters have experienced damage to their homes (and businesses) and have struggled with insurance payouts, rental housing, the Road Home Program, and the desire to rebuild.⁹⁹ The Road Home Program, as the “primary grant for rebuilding permanent housing for uninsured or underinsured homeowners,” is the most widely known rebuilding program, and much has been published in news reports and scholarly articles on the myriad problems it experienced since its inception.¹⁰⁰ While the Road Home does crop up in a number of storylines, season 3 of Treme is focused on exploring a much smaller and less well-known housing scheme. In fact, in scholarship on Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of New Orleans, NOAH has thus far garnered little to no attention, making Treme one of the first secondary texts to document this sequence of events.

The NOAH program, and the many controversies associated with it, is a tangled and elaborate sequence of events to convey on-screen. NOAH was supposed to help elderly homeowners gut their damaged properties and was promoted in 2006 by Mayor Ray Nagin. The program first hit mainstream news headlines in New Orleans in July 2008 with a news report from 4WWL journalist Lee Zurik. Zurik had been in contact with Karen Gadbois, a concerned private citizen who was one of the first to notice NOAH discrepancies, posting information on her blog Squandered Heritage. Gadbois’s first post on NOAH, “What Is up with This?” posted June 28, 2008, included photographs of a property gutted by NOAH that Gadbois also found to be on the imminent health threat list.¹⁰¹ More posts followed showing houses where NOAH had claimed to have done remediation work but clearly had not, and others revealing houses ineligible to be on NOAH lists. Further reporting by Zurik and the Times-Picayune exposed the full extent of the backroom dealing, misappropriation of funds, and general disorganization of city departments, leading to investigations by the FBI and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program was immediately suspended, and corruption charges against a number of contractors were eventually made.

The camera lingers on the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Program (NOAH) sign outside Desiree’s mother’s house.

Treme details the lead-up to the NOAH scandal through Nelson and Desiree, who encounter the scheme from very different positions. Nelson’s side of the story predominantly focuses on the perpetrators, demonstrating how the network of corruption operated. At the start of the season he aggressively pursues his goal of becoming a NOAH contractor, in the process doing his own investigation into another fictional contractor. What Nelson discovers in the course of the investigation mirrors what journalistic probes into NOAH found. Working through a list of the contractor’s NOAH properties, he finds one address to be an empty lot, another where the remediation work was actually done by a Milwaukee church group, and another where substandard work was being performed. His investigation is ultimately about getting the “local connect” that he needs to become a contractor for the scheme. Stacey Jackson, the executive director of NOAH who is referenced in episode 2, awarded the majority of work to a small number of contractors that she had close ties to. Jackson would overpay these contractors using federal funds, and they would send kickbacks to her, securing them more work in the future. Nelson’s character is not tarnished by his involvement in the NOAH scheme because, unlike the other contractors, he and his business partner actually do the work they are paid for. This is important for keeping viewers allied, or partly allied, with his character, a central consideration in the jazz center storyline, as previously shown.

Through Desiree an equally important side of the story is explained, that of a victim and the grassroots activism that leads to NOAH’s exposure. Desiree sets out to find answers after her mother’s house is first assigned as a NOAH property without her permission and then is subsequently demolished without warning. She expresses frustration at the lack of answers when she queries what happened and expresses the emotional toll the demolition had on her family. Through local meetings Desiree connects with Pam, a fictional character, and Gadbois, who explains how and why she is documenting what is happening with the housing stock. Desiree comes to serve as one of Gadbois’s volunteers, trawling the streets to check up on the status and condition of empty properties. What is also worth noting is that Desiree is not the hero of this storyline; it is Gadbois and Zurik who are given credit for bringing this issue to the attention of the public. As Simon has stated, in making the show, he and his staff were “actually interested in what happened in New Orleans,” making this goal a priority over entertainment, which, in this case, probably would have seen Desiree, a character viewers are allied and aligned with, be the hero of this narrative thread.¹⁰² The NOAH storyline draws to a close in the season finale with the airing of Zurik’s first exposé on 4WWL and the press conference Nagin held in response a few days later. The charges, trials, and sentencing of those involved in NOAH stayed in the news until 2014, but given the length of time it took for the legal process to happen, far beyond the time span of the show, it is unsurprising that Simon and Overmyer chose to conclude the NOAH narrative here.

The NOAH storyline appears in nine out of ten season 3 episodes, cropping up in just one beat in episode 8, but seven beats in episode 2. When detailing an issue of relative complexity such as this over an entire season, it can be difficult, especially if viewing during the initial airing with weekly gaps, to completely grasp and understand the intricacies being played out on-screen, even with a shorter season. Likewise, it can be equally difficult to detect the often subtle alternative viewpoints and issues at play in the jazz center storyline upon first viewing. Simon and Overmyer note on the audio commentary that Treme is the type of show viewers need to focus on; if they are eating, texting, or doing the laundry, they are going to miss both important plot developments and little nuances.¹⁰³ The need for viewers to concentrate is true of many narratively complex shows, whether they are historical in nature or not, and rewatching scenes, episodes, and entire seasons is something dedicated audience members do to make sure they catch each and every nuance.¹⁰⁴ Just as historical monographs may need to be read more than once to fully understand and absorb the intricacies being described and to capture the author’s argument, so, too, are multiple viewings of television series often necessary to fully comprehend the history displayed on-screen. Thankfully, rewatching individual episodes and entire seasons is much easier with the advent of streaming, downloading, and DVD and Blu-ray box sets.

New Orleans Matters: The Series

A work of history, be it written or filmed, should seek to answer historical questions and present a clear and persuasive argument. Narrative histories, such as Treme, must fulfil this function too, “even if their arguments, slippery as eels, are difficult to fish out of the oceans of story.”¹⁰⁵ Looking at Treme as a whole, one can start to identify questions driving the narrative: Why does New Orleans matter? Is it a unique American city? Why should it be rebuilt? Simon and Overmyer pose these questions across the seasons using the techniques discussed previously—conversation, commentary, action, and editing, among others. They also offer an argument in response to these questions: that the culture and traditions of New Orleans are worth saving and that it is “a great city that lives in the imagination of the world.”¹⁰⁶ This argument is crafted not only through the characters and their actions but through the detailed exploration and documentation of New Orleans culture. Brass bands, modern and traditional jazz, Mardi Gras, second line parades, and New Orleans cuisine are incorporated throughout the series, while bounce music, jazz funerals, and other elements of New Orleans culture are covered to a lesser extent. Arguably the most prominent and compelling aspect of local culture incorporated by the show is the Mardi Gras Indians.

In keeping with Treme’s particular brand of narrative complexity, little context or explanation is initially provided on the Mardi Gras Indians and their traditions, but over the course of three and a half seasons a comprehensive study emerges. Towards the end of the pilot episode, Albert Lambreaux emerges out of the dark attired in a fantastical full-length orange feathered and beaded costume. He sings that he is the “Big Chief” and dances in the center of the road for an audience of one. No explanation is given for the suit or for what Albert is doing, but it is a visually arresting scene that works to pique the interest of the audience. During the rest of season 1, as Albert attempts to reorganize his tribe, the Guardians of the Flame, the groundwork for understanding the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is laid and subsequent seasons continue to develop and flesh out their cultural practices. In a sense, what is produced is not unlike an example of what anthropologist Clifford Geertz termed “thick description,” reworked to fit within the format of a television drama. Thick description is a “technique which interprets an alien culture through the precise and concrete description of particular practices or events,” allowing someone outside of the culture the chance to fully understand its function and meaning within a particular society.¹⁰⁷

Albert Lambreaux cuts a striking figure as he emerges out of the dark in Treme’s pilot episode.

Many of the day-to-day practices of Mardi Gras Indians, as well as their rituals, are documented on Treme. The show pays particular attention to the creation of Mardi Gras suits, which are made from scratch every year, requiring hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work. In the first season alone there are at least fifteen beats that show Mardi Gras Indians working on or discussing their suits. This trend is continued across every season, with characters often conversing as they sew, stitch, and tack. Most Mardi Gras Indians rely on family and friends to help sew sequins and the many beaded patches that adorn the crown, chest piece, and apron. They frown upon taking shortcuts such as using glue guns rather than needle and thread, reusing patches from old suits, “renting” parts worn previously by other Indians, or paying a third party to create an entire suit.¹⁰⁸ Treme conveys each of these points, along with many others, resulting by the end of season 4 in a comprehensive and intricate description of the Mardi Gras suit-making process. Viewers potentially come away from the series with an appreciation and understanding of a cultural tradition, little-known even within the city itself.¹⁰⁹

However, Treme does more than demonstrate how New Orleans residents mask Indian; it suggests why they do it. The show supplies viewers with some of the meaning behind the tradition so that they will see it as more than just a tourist spectacle of African American men dressing up in extravagant costumes and parading through the streets. Although only a few scholars research Mardi Gras Indians, often disagreeing with one another over the origins of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, most agree that masking Indian served as a form of resistance during a period when Blacks were being increasingly marginalized.¹¹⁰ “Masking Indian was a form of protest in a Jim Crow New Orleans,” Mitchell Reid explains, “a symbolic rebellion against white institutions.”¹¹¹ The city has undergone many changes since the 1880s, when Mardi Gras Indians are first said to have appeared, but masking Indian still serves a similar function, allowing working-class African Americans to take control of the streets, assert their power and pride, and galvanize the African American community, which continues to be marginalized and entrenched in poverty. Many of Treme’s storylines provide the context needed to understand the meaning behind these rituals. Albert, for example, rails against the New Orleans Housing Authority, which, by keeping the Big Four housing complexes closed, is keeping many poor Blacks from returning to the city. During this conflict he comes into contact with NOPD officers, who not only unlawfully beat him but disrespect his Indian tradition. In response, when released from prison, Albert works furiously on his suit and challenges police emissaries when they come to discuss the continual conflict between police and Mardi Gras Indians: “I understand pride, officers, but it seems that your gang don’t think anyone other than themselves is entitled to any.” He steps out that St. Joseph’s Night, and when surrounded by police, Albert and his tribe stand their ground until the police back down. Through the inclusion of Darius in season 1, a Black youth who starts to work for Albert, viewers also learn how and why this tradition continues to attract new members. Mardi Gras Indians are “viewed as community heroes,” and elders pass on their knowledge and moral codes to youths, explains Cherice Harrison-Nelson, who grew up in the tradition.¹¹² Darius finds himself at a loose end, with little to keep him occupied or out of trouble, until he and his aunt become involved in the Indian tradition. Darius is clearly intrigued, first watching the Indian practices, then learning the moves from Albert and accompanying the tribe out on St. Joseph’s Night. Albert is a positive role model for Darius, teaching him the importance of hard work, discipline, and self-respect and instilling in him a desire to mask Indian.

Treme captures and conveys the culture of New Orleans, including Mardi Gras Indians, in drawn-out beats that serve no other purpose in the narrative except to do just this. Smith identifies this “unhurried plotting” as a hallmark of HBO and other premium subscriber services; inaction is allowed to play out and linger on-screen in order to provide insights into the characters and their environs. Given the flexibility of episode structures (both in terms of length and lack of ad breaks), an alternative to the fast-paced network episode structures has emerged.¹¹³ Treme takes particular advantage of this, integrating long scenes involving cooking and music, that highlight the culture of New Orleans and work towards supporting the series’ overarching argument. As Martha M. Nochimson argues, “local colour” could have been provided in shorter and fewer scenes. The point is that these long scenes are “not just background; they are foreground. They are as much a part of the spectator’s experience as the problems and complications of the numerous plots that crisscross as the season progresses.”¹¹⁴ New Orleans culture is central to the show, a fact that is explicitly elucidated by the characters and their storylines but also more subtly through the long, unanchored beats that document New Orleans culture.

Over the course of four seasons Treme reveals itself to be, perhaps, closest to a microhistory in its approach. Microhistory came to the fore in the 1970s with a number of celebrated works published by European scholars, including Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou, a probe into peasant life in the fourteenth century, and Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms, a study of a sixteenth-century cheese miller. It is difficult to pinpoint just what microhistory is, as it “eludes formal definition. It is less a method than an orientation, sensibility and aesthetic” that has become popular across the humanities and social sciences.¹¹⁵ Microhistories can be about places (Montaillou), people (Martin Guerre), or events (the Great Cat Massacre), although they do typically share some traits.¹¹⁶ What Treme shares first and foremost with microhistory is its narrative form. When Lawrence Stone identified a revival of narrative in the late 1970s, many of the authors he cited were pioneers in microhistory or were soon to make their mark in that area. Although “asking new questions, trying out new methods, and searching for new sources,” these authors turned away from analytical approaches to history and instead returned to narrative.¹¹⁷ Such narratives were different to the grand historical narratives of the past in that they engaged in analysis as well as description, were concerned with the thoughts, feelings, and actions of ordinary individuals, and sought to illuminate wider currents in culture and society. Microhistory did not abandon poststructuralist concerns; rather it used narrative as a tool to better address certain areas in history. For Stone and other advocates of microhistory, like István Szijártó, an additional advantage is its appeal to a wider audience.¹¹⁸ New methods, ideas, and approaches to history can be shared with readers outside the profession who are drawn to an engaging narrative but who would otherwise be put off by analytic and structural histories. This, of course, relates back to Rosenstone’s call for historians to connect their work with the wider public. As microhistory demonstrates, narrative does not mean having to sacrifice the key principles of history, but it can popularize it, and the same potential holds true for television serials.

Beyond its basic narrative structure, Treme shares a number of features with microhistory, including its focus on ordinary individuals. As Richard D. Brown points out, the goal of microhistories is to access “the experiences and mentalités of peasants, giving voice to people who had hitherto been silent.”¹¹⁹ Treme’s characters, though invented, are representative of a range of working- and middle-class New Orleans residents, Black and white, and their post-Katrina stories. Although these stories are increasingly being documented in scholarly texts, they have been less visible in mainstream media.¹²⁰ Structural histories can often overlook the role of human agency, whereas narrative histories, including microhistory, place individuals and the actions and decisions they make front and center, demonstrating that “people as well as abstract forces shape events.”¹²¹ To borrow an example from Peter Burke illustrating the difference between the two approaches, a narrative historian may explain, “The window broke because Brown threw a stone at it,” while a structural historian may suggest, “The window broke because the glass was brittle.”¹²² The characters on Treme are not pawns, pushed and pulled by structural forces, their fates determined. Instead, they make conscious decisions and instigate chains of action and reaction. Treme, of course, is not unique in this respect, as all histories on-screen necessarily focus on individuals, as established in the previous chapter. What Treme also starts to do, though, is explore structures as well as the actions of individuals.

Microhistory is separated from more traditional forms of narrative history by its attempt to link the micro with the macro. For instance, unlike in biography, which emphasizes the extraordinary nature of the subject’s life, in microhistory the value of examining a life “lies not in its uniqueness, but in its exemplariness, in how that individual’s life serves as an allegory for broader issues affecting the culture as a whole.”¹²³ Microhistories, although focused on a particular person(s), place, or event, aim to illuminate wider issues and structures in society, functioning as a peephole to the past “that reveals a wide expanse of culture and society, not a tiny chamber.”¹²⁴ Treme is a microhistory of New Orleans, or rather, a section of it. The show’s characters are “weighted to culture bearers” and “those who supported, patronized or contended with culture bearers,” as this was the group Simon and Overmyer were particularly interested in.¹²⁵ While Treme certainly manages to produce an informative narrative about the varied and colorful cultures of New Orleans, it also evokes the mentalité of post-Katrina New Orleans as a whole (see the disillusionment of residents with authorities in the “episodes” section) and issues plaguing not only the Crescent City but American cities in general.

While New Orleans is viewed as a city of excess, in terms of both positive and negative attributes, many of the issues explored in Treme have relevance far beyond the city itself. Colson, for example, struggles to function within the NOPD, coming up against corruption, incompetence, prejudice, excessive violence, and a culture of protectionism. These are not problems unique to the NOPD, as viewers of Simon’s other long-running serial The Wire, and those who regularly read or watch the news, will know already. Albert’s prolonged fight to stop the demolition of the Big Four highlights many of the problems faced by predominantly poor Black inner-city residents and the realities of structural racism in the United States. These storylines, along with many others, “fill out in small-scale and human detail some of the social and cultural features that are otherwise known as generalizations.”¹²⁶ However, the link between the micro and the macro is not overt in Treme; the show relies on viewers’ existing knowledge to make these connections. Treme is not alone in this, as a common critique of microhistory is the failure to adequately bring the micro and macro together, alongside the potentially distracting intensity of the central narrative that may obscure the larger issues.¹²⁷ There are layers to Treme that the viewer may or may not comprehend. On one level, it is a story about a group of loosely associated individuals; on another, the stories of those individuals illuminate the history and cultural traditions of the city, both new and old; and on another level, the stories of those individuals also reveal broader issues affecting the United States as a whole. Even if some viewers do miss these broader implications, Treme undoubtedly functions as an effective microhistory of the city of New Orleans.

When considering Treme as a whole, we must not only look at each of the episodes and all of the seasons, but we must also consider the entire work contained on the DVD or Blu-ray set. If we continue with the analogy between a history book and a historical television series, the DVD or Blu-ray box set is the equivalent of a published book that comes complete with a cover, contents page, footnotes, bibliography, and index. When judging and evaluating history on-screen, scholars and critics should consider the paratexts included on the DVD—making-ofs, featurettes, and audio commentaries—alongside the primary text, just as a complete book is put under review, not only selected sections of it. It is in the paratexts that a number of answers to historians’ criticisms of film can be found. Gérard Genette used the term “paratexts” to describe productions like the title page and illustrations that function as a “threshold” or “fringe,” packaging the central text and preparing the reader for its consumption. He identified two spatial categories: peritexts, paratexts located within the book; and epitexts, paratexts “located outside the book, generally with the help of the media (interviews, conversations).”¹²⁸ These ideas and terms have been adopted by media scholars and applied to different forms of media, including film and television. Jonathan Gray, for example, distinguishes between “entryway paratexts,” those that reach individuals before they view the central text, and “in medias res paratexts,” those that are consumed during or after the central text. For Gray, the television program itself, while central, is only part of the complete text: paratexts are also intrinsically part of the text too.¹²⁹ This is a salient point to consider for history on-screen, with paratexts packaged within the DVD set, most likely consumed in media res, being of particular significance.

Technological innovations have facilitated the proliferation of paratexts and, in turn, their potential in conjunction with history on-screen. From the mid-1970s, VHS allowed viewers to own their own movies and TV shows and watch and rewatch them within the comfort and convenience of their homes. However, VHS was problematic on a number of fronts, with its low picture quality and the limited running time available on each individual VHS, obviously a major obstacle for long-running TV series. The transition to DVD, which began in the mid-1990s, overcame these particular obstacles and enabled the inclusion of multiple supplements and special features far beyond the scope of VHS. The format of DVDs derives from the Criterion Collection laser discs of the mid-1980s. Commentaries with directors and scholars, multiple language options, original aspect ratios, and additional materials such as documentaries appeared on laser discs that were marketed to cinema aficionados.¹³⁰ “Most of Criterion’s innovations have become adopted, popularized, and extended by mainstream studios,” Craig Hight explains, with supplementary material created not only for big-budget, special-effects-driven films but for dramatic and independent films, and now television as well. Hight also points out that digital video, which is much cheaper than traditional film stock, allows for greater documentation of the production process. When digital video is paired with the much greater storage capacity of DVDs, there is “opportunity to develop these materials as a normal part of film production,” even for films and shows with a relatively small budget.¹³¹ As noted in the Deadwood chapter, HBO invests in such paratexts to promote the showrunner as auteur, but often its series box sets also contain information from a variety of departments and on a spectrum of topics. The fact that special features are cost-effective to create and easily packaged alongside the central work is advantageous for historical productions, as they can potentially serve important functions.

The commentaries and featurettes included on the Treme DVDs effectively act as the show’s references and footnotes. “The adage that ‘you can’t footnote a film,’ often cited as an objection to the medium by historians who favor written accounts, is challenged through extra features,” contends Debra Ramsay. Using the special editions of Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) as examples, Ramsay argues that the bonus features serve to “contextualize the events within the bigger framework of World War II” while also pointing to “alternative interpretations.” She concludes that “some of the old objections to representing the past on screen are diluted by the paratextual material available in extra features.”¹³² Unlike the footnotes used in scholarly texts, which are (ideally) orderly, precise, and complete, the DVD versions of footnotes are admittedly haphazard, anecdotal, and incomplete. Nonetheless, they still do similar work, informing the viewer as to where some of the information was sourced, pointing towards other avenues for study, explaining why particular interpretive or narrative choices were made and how conclusions were reached, and providing further context to help the audience better understand the central text. As Ramsay further points out, the special features for historical film and television shows often foreground the constructed nature of the work through what she calls “acts of showing.” Behind-the-scenes features create “an intense awareness of the processes through which the past is recreated in this medium,” meaning that the audience is made aware that what they are watching is not the past as it actually happened but a representation of it created by a group of filmmakers.¹³³

While many of Treme’s bonus features also double as promotional materials, they do still provide useful insights into the creation of the show and the history presented on-screen. The longest special feature included in the season 1 DVD, “Beyond Bourbon Street,” contains sections that mix information on the history and culture of New Orleans with discussion on production of the show. It is an “act of showing,” one that describes, for example, how the scenes of devastation were re-created five years after the storm, alerting viewers to the constructed nature of what they are seeing on-screen. The section on Mardi Gras Indians employs a number of talking heads, including cast and crew members, a museum historian, and an author. It runs for just under two minutes but manages to touch on the history of the Mardi Gras Indians, cast affiliations with tribes, and the ritual of suit making and Mardi Gras Day. It is helpful in that it fills in potential gaps in viewers’ knowledge and also confirms the facts that have been implied across season 1. In this brief segment alone, two related but differing reasons behind the origins of the Mardi Gras Indian masking tradition are provided by two of the commentators. While extremely short, this snippet demonstrates that behind-the-scenes features are a place where debates can be voiced and alternative views expressed, most likely through the employment of several commentators. A ten-minute featurette on the season 2 DVD, as well as repeated references throughout the audio commentaries, provides further information on the Mardi Gras Indians and how they are represented on the show.

Audio commentaries are often the most useful and informative paratexts. There are commentaries for five episodes of season 1, and they are performed by a range of individuals, including creators Simon and Overmyer, actors Khandi Alexander, John Goodman, and Wendell Pierce, episode director Anthony Hemingway, episode writer George Pelecanos, producer Nancy Noble, and TV critic Alan Sepinwall. If we judge these commentaries as historical footnotes, the value varies greatly. The commentary by Alexander, Pierce, and Sepinwall is often entertaining but yields fewer insights into the reasoning behind choices made in the narrative. It is those by Simon, Overmyer, and Pelecanos that hold the most valuable information, although even these are not exhaustive.¹³⁴ The audio commentaries are an excellent forum where the showrunners and writers can provide extra context, offering insights into the people, places, and music being played. This is crucial for a show like Treme, which includes many local musicians and public figures generally unknown outside of the city, as well as “insider references” and local vernacular. The audio commentary allows those speaking to alert viewers to creative liberties taken and instances when historical facts have been altered for the sake of the show. The erroneous inclusion of a Hubig’s pie in the pilot episode and the change in time frame for the closing of the New Orleans branch of Tower Records are just two examples that are discussed in season 1 commentaries. It is not a perfect science, as some lines of discussion can run so long that what the commentators are discussing has long since passed on-screen, with the consequence that other scenes may be passed over. In theory there is no limit to the number of commentaries that can be included for each episode (some of Treme’s episodes include both a commentary by cast and crew and a commentary specially focused on music) meaning that a television show can actually incorporate “footnotes” from many individuals, covering a variety of different topics and issues. Furthermore, when viewers watch an episode with an audio commentary, they have, most likely, watched the episode already and are returning to it to glean additional insights. Watching a second time gives viewers not only extra information from the commentators but a second chance to view the episode with a more critical eye, without being focused on following the narrative.

The fact is, however, that paratexts such as making-ofs, audio commentaries, and behind-the-scenes featurettes are becoming increasingly rare—or aren’t conveniently packaged together with the show itself. Watching a television series on DVD or Blu-ray is, perhaps, the ideal way to engage with history on television, as the box set comes complete with the supplementary material that complements and expands on the primary text. All the materials are packaged together, making it easy for interested viewers to segue from the episodes to the special features that build upon and expand the central narrative (although many viewers will choose to watch only the show itself). The reality is, though, that DVD and Blu-ray are already almost redundant, with streaming currently the most popular way to watch TV. Certain streaming platforms, such as Netflix, rarely produce special features for films and TV shows, which means that this element of the history-on-screen experience is missing for some historical TV narratives.¹³⁵ While this does not negate a historical series that comes without paratexts, it is surely sad to see such potential go unfulfilled. HBO is currently continuing to release DVD and Blu-ray sets complete with special features (although the number of special features included does appear to be dwindling), and it is also releasing other supplementary materials, such as podcasts, online.¹³⁶ Like audio commentaries, podcasts give showrunners, cast, and crew the opportunity to supplement the on-screen narrative, albeit in a purely aural form (which brings its own advantages and disadvantages). Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime are streaming services that are producing special features and bonus content, although the quality and quantity vary greatly from show to show (and even season to season). Paratexts are yet another aspect of the TV industry that is in flux, and it remains to be seen what approach will be embraced by audiences and streaming services in the long run.¹³⁷ Treme is not the HBO show with the most extensive supplementary material created and included on the DVD sets, but even its modest extras demonstrate the potential of special features.¹³⁸ What is vital is that paratexts remain accessible for those who are inclined to pursue the topic further and who want to question the central text and need a starting point to do so.

Conclusion

Simon explained in an editorial for the Times-Picayune that the show used “the post-Katrina experience to create a narrative about some people” and that although it was set in a real time and place, it was a fiction—a television drama.¹³⁹ I believe this undersells what Treme and other historical television dramas are able to achieve.¹⁴⁰ Although dealing with predominantly invented characters, Treme can be classified as a narrative history—or, more precisely, a microhistory—that brings to light both the cultural practices of New Orleans and difficulties facing residents in the wake of Katrina. As Burke argues, authors of fictional works, particularly historical novels, have long managed to produce written works fulfilling the goal of new narrative historians to “juxtapose the structures of ordinary life to extraordinary events.” Burke suggests that historians would do well to learn from novelists such as Shimazaki Tōson and Leo Tolstoy, but acknowledges that historians have a handicap that fiction writers do not: they are not as free to invent and thus “they are unlikely to be able to condense the problem of an epoch into a story about a family, as novelists have often done.”¹⁴¹ However, based on the findings of the previous chapter—that invented characters have the greatest potential in history on-screen—it is acceptable and indeed advantageous to create and employ invented characters in a microhistory on-screen. Likewise, using invented characters potentially makes it easier to present alternative sides to an argument by utilizing alignment and allegiance as demonstrated in the “Rebuilding New Orleans: The Season” subsection. This is not to advocate abandoning the use of real figures in history in favor of invented ones; rather, I would like to suggest that this level of invention, given the constraints of the medium, is a useful tool for crafting complex historical narratives that does not necessarily detract from these narratives’ integrity. Simon is correct in stating that Treme cannot and should not “supplant the journalism, the documentarianism or, ultimately, the historical scholarship that has been generated and continues to be generated about post-Katrina New Orleans,” but it should be recognized that it is a valuable part of the discourse and has equal historical value.¹⁴²

This analysis of how a historical narrative is constructed in serial television only starts to scratch the surface of what is possible. While the basic units of beats, episodes, seasons, series, and box sets are fairly standard, how a story is developed across each can differ dramatically. Treme offers an example of a sprawling ensemble series that generally follows a linear chronological path, but one only has to look at a selection of other narratively complex shows to see how narrative is being experimented with. Damages (FX, 2007–10; Audience Network, 2011–12) uses flash-forwards in each of its seasons to create mystery and suspense, while, in its final season, Boardwalk Empire employs substantial flashbacks to Nucky Thompson’s childhood and the start of his career in order to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. Hannibal (NBC, 2013–15) blurs the lines between the real world and dream world of the narrative, and Fox’s action series 24 (2001–10) uses a “real-time” structure. Showtime drama The Affair (2014–19) often splits its episodes into two, telling the story from one protagonist’s point of view, then switching and replaying the same set of events from the other protagonist’s point of view, complete with inconsistencies and variations. A similar setup used for historical series could explore issues relating to the role of memory in history, the unreliability of sources and bias. Not all these narrative structures, or the many others that currently exist on television, will result in useful history on-screen, but it does show that there are exciting new avenues to be tested and pursued.

As well as changes to the industry that have opened up the possibilities of constructing historical narratives on-screen, one other aspect must be considered—how changing viewing practices may affect audiences’ engagement with them. Does the shift from appointment viewing (one episode per week, as per a traditional linear TV schedule) to binge-watching (multiple episodes in a single sitting) have an effect on how historical narratives are processed and understood? Scholars are now starting to examine the phenomenon of binge-watching and its implications. Thomas J. Billard’s experimental study, for example, found that the prosocial effects of appointment viewing a TV show were longer lasting than the prosocial effects of binge-watching.¹⁴³ Similarly, a study by Jared C. Horvath et al. concluded that those who watched a TV series weekly had better memory of what they had watched when tested months later than those who had binge-watched the series.¹⁴⁴ While this is a very new field and there have not been any studies that focus particularly on the differences between binge-watching and appointment viewing historical TV series, we can tentatively conjecture that watching via appointment viewing results in the historical message remaining with the audience member for longer. For a show like Treme, weekly breaks also give the audience time to sit and stew over the complex plot points and research any elements of New Orleans culture or politics that may have piqued their interest. This is not to say that there is a right and wrong way to consume historical series, but it is an evolving aspect of the televisual experience that deserves consideration. HBO continues to release new shows in weekly installments, meaning that audiences can engage via appointment viewing or may binge-watch at a later date on a streaming service or with a box set.

There still exists, of course, a number of potential problems with rendering history in serial form, even when produced by premium subscription services such as HBO. One key concern is unpredictable length and the possibility that a narrative may be cut short. Films, miniseries, and the increasingly popular anthology series (such as FX’s American Crime Story, 2016–) do not share this problem, as they are generally conceived and produced as an individual unit. Serial television, though, can be canceled at any moment, leaving the story without a satisfactory conclusion and without the show’s creators fully achieving what they set out to do. Although HBO co-president Plepler stood behind Treme and its very modest ratings when season 3 was announced, HBO was only willing to continue the show for so long. The fourth and final season of Treme was “half a loaf,” as Simon put it, five episodes rather than the usual ten or eleven. Simon was grateful that HBO executives fought to provide a budget for a shortened season 4, but he admits that “every character suffered a little bit” by the writers’ need to speed up and condense each of the character arcs.¹⁴⁵ “It’s not an ideal solution,” concluded Sepinwall, “but given the ratings for Treme relative to HBO’s other original series, the existence of any kind of fourth season is something to be celebrated.”¹⁴⁶ Simon and Overmyer were lucky that they were able to produce this “half loaf” and wrap up a number of loose ends and bring the series to its conclusion. Other shows, such as Deadwood, were not so lucky, and the narrative was left open for thirteen years, like a book abruptly ending after one of the body chapters. On the other hand, some series, including Boardwalk Empire, run long enough that the creators are able to choose when and how to end the series without having to rush or force a conclusion.

Every medium has its drawbacks, but in the case of television serials the positives far outweigh the negatives. Serials offer a unique form for engaging with history on-screen, and the advent of narratively complex television has opened up even greater possibilities. As Mittell points out, writers and showrunners “embrace the broader challenges and possibilities for creativity in long-form series, as extended character depth, ongoing plotting, and episodic variations are simply unavailable options within a two-hour film.”¹⁴⁷ It is for similar reasons that historians should also embrace the long-form serial. Not only does the longer running time set it apart and provide greater opportunities, but changes in audience expectation and developments in style and aesthetics open up new avenues for presenting history on-screen. Ambiguity, subtlety, unresolved endings, and often a move away from clichés and standard TV tropes are hallmarks of narratively complex television. There does not have to be a single hero, a tidy (happy) ending, and answers provided to every question in serial television. While it is impossible to make accurate generalizations about the reactions of the viewing public or sweeping generalizations about the different kinds of narrative complexity employed in postnetwork quality TV dramas, it is fair to say that narratively complex serials allow for a more multifaceted rendering of history on-screen.