Kudos to HBO for giving us one more (if scaled-back) season. Been looking forward to its return.

An excellent show but the extremely narrow regional focus meant it was always going to be a tiny niche series.

I don't understand that conclusion. The Good Wife is narrowly focused on Chicago. The Wire was narrowly focused. The Sopranos was narrowly focused on Northern New Jersey. Dexter was narrowly focused on Miami. It's not unusual for a TV show to have a narrow geographic focus.

I would put it that this is even more narrowly focused on the Jazz loving world. Some of those musical interludes in the first season, unless you actually really loved or really understood the music of the area, was completely lost on you.



Either way, I love this show. Sad to see only 4 more episodes left, but damn if I ain't watching all of them as excited as ever.

HBO didn't have to ring this back at all, and they could've cancelled The Wire at several points from what I understand. I respect the hell out of them for that, where else could something like this or The Sunset Limited even get made today. HBO do make good on their promise of intelligent programming for adults while Hollywood is off making Transformers movies, so kudos.

So glad we get one more season, even if it's only 5 episodes. This is probably one of my favorite shows in the last few years. I hope that David Simon does something else with HBO next (and hopefully with Ed Burns again).

Simon is apparently talking about hanging it up and not doing any more TV work, it's really difficult for him, even on a network as liberal as HBO, at least that's what he says.

I mainly watched for the music. The storyline was just filler material. I'd watch the credits and then look up the artists I didn't know to get more of a flavor of their music.

All the other shows you cited could be set anywhere and it would not affect their inherent premise or potential drama. Treme would be a totally different series if set in another town.

I'm in significant disagreement with that conclusion, but you've stated your opinion on the ones I've named so we'll leave it at agree to disagree on those. How about Rescue Me?

I don't think the problems with Treme have anything to do with having a narrow geographical focus. I have a black buddy who had a house destroyed by Katrina (he's the one who got me to watch the show), and he doesn't even regularly watch it. There are some wonderful things about the show, but it isn't the most easily accessible. It's relentlessly depressing with the occasional victory. Our protagonists often "lose."

Treme is not filled with pretty people or larger than life people in ways most of the audience can easily connect with. It's not filled with the mob (which people have seen a lot of). It doesn't have notable nudity or violence. Even the profanity is usually relatively tame. Instead, it's a story about people of limited economic power being bulldozed. And then they're hit with a natural disaster and they're bulldozed even more. The politicians do what politicians normally do -- look out for themselves and the people who have economic power. The support system (police, social workers, lawyers, teachers, etc.) is beaten down, sometimes to point of indifference, by the seemingly hopelessness of combating people with political and economic power on the one side and people who don't collectively help themselves on the other.

In the beginning, I spent much time on Google looking up stuff like "Big Chief" and "Third Line" just trying to understand it a bit. Most potential viewers aren't going through all that. I had a client 25 years ago who used to call me "Big Chief" all the time, but he may as well have been calling me "Geronimo" for all I knew. Only after watching the show did I realize he was giving me a compliment. If he'd have called me Consigliore, I'd have immediately understood. Accessibility.

It's not that New Orleans has a culture many of us can't immediately relate to (though that aspect is there). It's that our introduction to that culture often feels a lot more like work than fun (though there are definitely moments of fun).

In the end, I have to fall back on the words of Roger Ebert... it's not what it's about, it's how it's about it. Treme's failure isn't for being about a section of New Orleans post-Katrina, it's for how it delivers on its premise. I consider the show a success, but I get why it doesn't have wide viewership. As we all know, popular and good are very different things.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Tre...Season-4/19231

Blu Ray only complete series set. Coming January 28th

I think I might be interested in it for the right price. I know this show was never that popular overall, but I always liked the look and the music of the episodes I saw.

Breaking Bad got a barrel. This should at least be packaged in a trumpet or something similar.

While I don't think it's a great show, and I have problems with the show lingering way too long on the atmosphere and music (and I like most of the music) leaving a lot less time to story/characters - I still find it interesting enough to watch.

I'm glad it'll be a very shortened season. I don't see a need to drag this out longer than it needs to be.

Well shit, that would be a huge loss.

He just needs to pick a concept that has a better shot at wider appeal. Treme is a cool show but there are a lot of people out there who couldn't care less about New Orleans or its people.

I love this show. I can't believe there's only 3 episodes left.

And yeah, it requires a lot of work to watch this, and yeah, it can be heartbreaking. But this show rewards its viewers, and says more about what it means to be alive than just about any show I can think of.

It's not like The Wire was all that well received when it was airing either.

I'm sad that there's only three episodes left, but man that is some amazing television.

This episode felt so tragic, but there was some great humor, too. I loved Davis's reaction to "You know I'm going home with you, right?" and the banker's "I was wondering where that $300 went" burn.

^ Tragic indeed. Plenty of great lines throughout...I especially liked Albert's to his daughter when showing her around the old neighborhood. "I'm ready to go..." Those words obviously have more than one meaning.

These "final episodes" have been stellar thus far.

Brutal. That's what this season and series was. Man, last night's episode was a lot to handle. All I can say is that it's a shame that we're here, one episode away from the end of an amazing series. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Who is with me in getting some Abita beer, making up some po'boy sandwiches and sending this show off right.

We've barely seen Sonny this season. Wonder if he'll show up in the finale.

I guess we'll see the Saints winning the Super Bowl in the finale?

Man, this series makes me hungry every time I watch an episode.

Saints Super Bowl is about a year away from where they are now. Obama is just taking office and they are getting ready for Mardi Gras in 2009, Saints won the Super Bowl February 7, 2010.

Kind of shame that that won't be covered or the oil spill (you have to assume Simon wanted to get to that with the scene last season (? or the one before) where Sonny saw the oil leaking in the water.

Last episode was tonight. I'm really sad to see this go, I really enjoyed just about all of this show. I hate shows that have to end with a montage covering several months like they did here. Alas...

I thought it was a decent finale. I didn't love the series, but I certainly didn't hate it.

And that ends yet another series I've been watching - so many in the last few years.

I bought the first two seasons for practically nothing from WBShop a while back and have them in my To-Watch pile. Maybe I'll bring the first season to the top of it and watch it this week.