After watching the first episode of Treme, it made me think about the actual set-up of the story itself. All of the other stories along with the documentary all follow an event unfolding. Edna falls in love and reconsiders her entire life along with her place in it. Binx has to go through his lady-troubles and eventually settle down before taking his promotion. The titular Ophelia has to go through her time as a lady of the night to find her own artistic vision. The documentary follows the hurricane arriving, hitting, and the aftermath of the disaster. All of them have an event (or events) within the story, a big catalyst for some great change.
Treme didn’t follow that logic, it dropped the viewers straight into a post-Katrina New Orleans where we know the significant event that took place. We know people lost their homes, jobs, and lives in the hurricane, and we as viewers see the fallout along with how it affects the varying casts of characters. Personally, I find it really interesting how it’s like we’re circling the big event that happened, it’s like if we were dropped in the middle of Edna’s story while she’s having her existential crisis and we had to figure out what caused her to be so wishy-washy about life. (I’m not trying to suggest that type of story is inherently better or worse, it’s just an interesting route to take, and while Treme is still chronological, because we know what happened beforehand it almost makes it appear like a sequel of sorts.) It also makes me wonder if the show is going to try to tackle doing an episode with all of the characters being either stuck in the middle of the hurricane or if they’re going to stay away from that subject entirely. That is one of the more unique parts about this show in comparison to the other works, and besides the documentary this is the only other one to show multiple perspectives of the overall story.