The one thing that struck me as a departure from the style of the Wire is the inclusion of non-diegetic music in Trem?, a rarity outside of the final montages in the Wire. Makes sense, given the importance of music to the show.
At the risk of sounding like a carpetbagguer -- a topic that will likely be displayed often on "Treme" and forever-ever on the Strut -- I loved it. I got hooked in the first few minutes by that little talk of the fedoras and then the parade: non-diegetic like whoa. Seeing a few of the musicians do a little turn and then dance into the streets just had a great energy that I, in cold Chicago, do not see displayed often enough.
As far as the how realistic is the realism of
Naw'lins, I'll leave that to the folks better qualified to nit-pick its inconsistencies. But with anything that strives for the real, there will be a few missteps. As a reporter, I found fault in the way "The Wire" addressed the media in the final season, as I am sure some inner city teachers did in Season 4, and some seasoned cops in the entire series, and explosive experts did with
The Hurt Locker. That misses the point, though -- isn't it more important that it comes pretty close? Obviously, if you write a story for a newspaper or magazine or blog, you want to do right by the people most intimately involved and also by the people who may be learning about it for the first time. Simon and Co. take an almost documentary care to this process and yet it opens it up to criticism when it doesn't seem as real as it could have been.
I think the more you strive (loudly) for accuracy, the more scrutiny you come in for. Even when your representation of a genre/character/city happens to be way more accurate than anything else out. Oftentimes the less realistic it is the less criticism it engenders.
