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Critical response
Reception by television critics has generally positive. New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley viewed the series as a sign of the city's inextinguishable joie de vivre. Salon's Heather Havrilesky remarked that Treme, "epitomizes the sort of great storytelling we all thirst for on TV but rarely find."

Local response
New Orleanians waited cautiously for the series premiere of Treme, but quickly embraced the show as an accurate and honest representation of the city. Times Picayune writer Dave Walker expressed the city's collective sentiment that Treme is, "the screen depiction that New Orleans deserves, has always desired, but has been denied." Still, not all residents are satisfied with the series. While Simon attempted to recreate post-Katrina New Orleans with precision, subtle anachronisms such as the inclusion of a Hubig's pie in the first episode when such pies were still unavailable riled viewers. Simon prefaced the airing of the first episode with a letter in the Times Picayune promising not historical accuracy but that it would be "thematically so." Treme includes many location-specific references, as did Simon's The Wire. In response, the Times Picayune publishes a weekly debriefing of each episode's unexplained New Orleans references called "Treme Explained."

Simon's passion for New Orleans is obvious, just as his devotion to Baltimore came through in The Wire. So far, the difference between the two series is that Treme is weighed down by its creator's reverence. It's fine if Simon wants to see the city through fleur-de-lis glasses—indeed, the show wouldn't exist if he didn't feel compelled to make the case for New Orleans. But Treme, perhaps because it wears its advocacy so openly, is occasionally lacking in subtlety. For all his love for the place, it would be a shame if Simon's veneration of New Orleans was the undoing of what could be a great television series.

With "Treme" (which refers to a New Orleans neighborhood and is pronounced treh-MAY), Simon, co-creator Eric Overmyer and their team of writers (including the late, great David Mills) have proved that television as an art form can not only rival Dickens, but it also can hold its own against Wagner. Full of the same complicated characters, crisscrossing story lines and well-informed immediacy that made "The Wire" one of the most astonishing shows on television, "Treme" flips the theme of urban decay and infuses it with music.

“Treme” uses sound and imagery to suggest that even the worst damage and disruption can’t extinguish the joie de vivre, and that is found in the pearly gleam of fresh oysters, the high notes of Antoine’s trombone, the crunch of barbecue, a glistening bottle of French wine, the feathers on a Mardi Gras costume and, most simply, laughter. “Are you saying New Orleans is not a great city, a city that lives in the imagination of the world?” Creighton thunders at a British journalist who speaks dismissively of his city’s decline. The series turns almost didactic at times, but for a reason. “Treme” is a work of imagination that seeks to reacquaint the world with a struggling city’s reality.

More than 1,600 people died as a result of Katrina, and three months later in these neighborhoods near the French Quarter there are still missing persons, brawls and bad feeling, as well as members of the National Guard on street patrol. But “Treme” is most of all a story about survival — and the pursuit of pleasure — in the wake of a catastrophe that quickly morphed into, as one character puts it, “federally induced disaster.”

New York Times