Treme vs. After the Catch

First off: Pistolette reviews Treme. Go read it.

I've been watching Treme and it definitely has its moments, but all in all, I'm finding that quite a few born-and-bred locals, including myself, are lukewarm about it.

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Contrast Treme's depiction of New Orleans with Deadliest Catch's "After the Catch". Let's be honest, while Treme is an artistic piece put together by HBO's premier 'auteur', After the Catch is a way for Discovery to milk a few more nickels out of one of the top products, but the results have been fantastic.

For those of you that don't know, this year's ATC is being filmed at the Blue Nile here in New Orleans. Here are some of the funny moments from ATC so far:
* Phil's sons (and all the other captains, as well) talk about New Orleans being the perfect fisherman's town ("The bars! They never close!").
* As opposed to Treme, which beats you over the head with New Orleans culture, ATC just sort of presents it and there it is, like the gumbo cooking segment.
* They had a Chalmatian shrimper on the show and he took Sig and Keith shrimping and, while they didn't catch a thing, they had a blast. What was amazing is Sig, totally unscripted BTW, was blow away by the fact that these fisherman have their house right on the water with the boat tied up by the back and go out shrimping for these big hauls in only 10 or so feet of water. Sig's feeling was, 'that's the life. What have I been doing wrong all these year?' {The obvious, 'Wow, it would be a shame if we lost this' was left for the audience to figure out instead of throwing the brick at them.}

* The same Chalmatian shrimper told the Deadliest Catch captains about surviving Katrina and about how being fishermen is a genetic disorder. While Treme is depicting New Orleanians as running around fucking everyone except who they're supposed to ("Do what you wanna...") with their "defective work ethic", here you have ATC presenting a real, heroic portraits of South Louisianians to Middle America in a way you can honestly be proud of. The guys from the Time Bandit praising Louisiana shrimpers is the best defense against bullshit like this: Michael Savage Calls the Gulf Oil Spill Victims Welfare Deadbeats.

Video of the Deadliest Catch captains being interviewed about their time along the Gulf Coast:
CNN Video

NOTE- Some minor edits after posting.