In the rest of the world’s eyes, New Orleans has become synonymous with Hurricane Katrina, and Fox’s new show “K-Ville” doesn’t seem to be doing much to clarify our current state of affairs.
Although the title is from a spray-painted message on a building, possibly even by a local, it doesn’t mean that we as a city define ourselves that way. The New Orleans of “K-Ville” certainly does, as a character says only a few minutes into its pilot episode: “Half the city still smells like mold.”
The problem with centering a TV show on an event and its aftermath is that the issue is still relevant to everyone’s lives. There weren’t any shows set in some sort of post-apocalyptic New York City after Sept 11 because as with Katrina, it’s a sensitive, complicated, conflict-ridden matter, and it would be seen as a complete distraction from the real issues.
But the real distraction is in the program’s blatant disregard for the problems that have crippled the city at its weakest. National guardsmen are shown patrolling a flooded neighborhood the day after the levees broke. The program focuses on “bringing back the 9th Ward” as if our entire population called it home. Police are glorified for their sometimes violent and corrupt behavior on the job. This is not the New Orleans we know, though it solidifies an image our fellow countrymen will always remember thanks to the misleading and often false reports from the national media.
Watching “K-Ville” is painful at best, as it’s hard to separate the storylines and the setting into “just another cop show” rather than a cop show about New Orleans, especially since it’s riddled with so many inaccuracies. Any discerning local will notice the comical stereotypes-such as main character Marlin Boulet making his own shrimp po-boy for breakfast and noticing his neighbor stealing his cypress tree from his front yard-and would probably do well to treat them as “artistic license.” The producers seem to lack the necessary advice from a local consultant.
The New Orleans Police Department, however, has already endorsed the show, telling the Times-Picayune that the production emphasizes “the good work that the men and the women of the Police Department performed.” Our police’s “good work” shines through as Officer Boulet takes shots of bourbon while working-twice in the pilot alone.
As ridiculous as New Orleanians are made out to be in the series, with names like Ginger LeBeau and Rex DuBois, it might be best to simply watch the show for its comic value (and trite crime drama writing, if you’re into that sort of thing) and support it as a very good thing for the city economically. Dave Walker, a TV writer for the Times-Picayune, reported that NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” pumps $1.5 million into the local economy during every episode it films in Austin, Texas. Shows usually create over a hundred jobs in the area for a film crew, actors, extras and caterers-not a bad tradeoff.
We must, however, give it a chance, no matter how exaggerated the characters and how erroneous the car chases from the French Quarter to the West Bank to the Warehouse District may be. It might be hard, but try to pull yourself out of this perspective and see it as a potential economic boost for New Orleans.
