Premiere of HBO's "Tremé"

We invited a few friends who are without HBO over for Sunday evening's premiere of HBO's new series set in New Orleans post-Katrina, the long-awaited "Tremé." Scenes and episodes have been shot all over town, including our own neighborhood, and most New Orleanians are only a degree or two (or less) separated from locals who've been given parts of varying sizes in the series. Excitement ran really, really high -- "Tremé" was pretty much all anyone could talk about round town last week, and the local TV channels and radio talk shows, from NPR to 'OZ to Rush Radio was all over it. The Sunday Times-Picayune had a grand total of *6* different articles, stories, reviews, and blurbs about it.

There were 6 of us squeezed around our TV at 9 pm on Sunday, and we were all antsy with anticipation. At various points in the first episode, we sang along, "I feel like funkin' it up, feel like funkin' it up," we laughed (mostly at Steve Zahn's character), we argued ("Is that a real Indian chant?" "Was that Central City or Seventh Ward?"), we shouted "Hey!" (when the on-screen band played the familiar bars of "Secondline"), we equivocated ("Maybe that was the world's oldest and stalest Hubig pie"), cheered and yelled "AMEN!" (when John Goodman's character threw the microphone into the Industrial Canal after an interviewer as good as said New Orleans should not be rebuilt), and we collectively caught our breaths and tried not to cry (when the Indian chief put on his suit and cried out, "Won't bow -- don't know how!").

Afterwards, probably like all the other New Orleans viewers, we traded our own Katrina stories. I'm pretty sure that those scenes in "Tremé" brought those memories back to everyone watching from New Orleans. One of our guests, a nurse at Charity Hospital during the Storm, recalled how the sound of helicopters was pervasive in the city immediately after Katrina, how the sound invaded her dreams and that even today she couldn't stand to hear it. We recounted how much water we had had, and how horrible our first glimpses of the city were. All over the city, and in those places of the diaspora, these conversations were repeated over and over. We talked and talked (I thought folks would never leave) until we were talked out.

We give the show a big thumbs up. It gets us right, and gives us our props. We can't wait for episode 2 -- same time, same group, potluck this time.

Heard today (Tuesday) that HBO has already ordered another season. Good on 'em.