If episode 3 is any indication, I think Treme might be losing me a little bit. I'm not giving up yet, but a couple of moments from this episode actively annoyed me. We'll see what happens.
Let me guess: the tour bus?
That, and the Dr. John scene.
The tour bus is definitely part of it, but I think it's a larger issue, where any and all "outsiders" (most specifically, the folks on the tour bus and the midwestern church kids from episode 2) are the sorts of mouth-breathing bovine Americans that I'd expect from a Bill Hicks or George Carlin standup bit, not a dramatic television show by the guy who did The Wire. It's crossed my mind that, like you say, Simon is intentionally trying to provoke this reaction (you see a little bit of it in tonight's episode where the Zahn character lectures his neighbors about the musical history of the neighborhood, only to discover that the neighbor knows everything and is, in fact, a native), and I have enough trust in him as a storyteller to stick it out and see where he's taking the audience. The doubtful part of me is starting to get the same feeling as in Season 5 of The Wire, where Simon's anger turns self-righteous and the newspaper storyline gets unusually one-dimensional. I hope I'm wrong.
I also hope they get around to using the Goodman character as something other than a mouthpiece for the series creators' viewpoint.
