Last week I had the opportunity to spend the day on the set of K-ville, the new Fox series filmed here in New Orleans when they filmed a flashback scene for episode 6 in St. Alphonsus Church. The show premiered this evening, and I was looking forward to it, but wary of the usual issues – the tendency to make everyone in the city look racist or corrupt, and the way someone can get from the river to the lake in two seconds worth of car chase. My concerns centered on the opportunity to politicize Katrina, which few people miss. I enjoyed the show until the last 5 minutes thoroughly ticked me off. They used the Orleans Parish Prison during and after Katrina as a plot device, and made it look like prisoners drowned and escaped. Which was an out and out lie, and irresponsible to boot; you’d think Shep Smith of Fox News collaborated on that part of the script.
If you want the truth about the OPP during and after Katrina, read No Ordinary Heroes. It contains key inconvenient facts, like, although the prison flooded, it was only a few feet and all prisoners had to do to get out of it was to get in the top bunks. Was it scary? Doubtless, but the water soon stopped rising and no one’s life was in danger. Not one prisoner died, and not one prisoner escaped. They should have come up with a better way to give that character a criminal past and a deep, dark secret.
The show also portrayed New Orleans as very post-apocolyptic, and the truth is while some neighborhoods are untouched since Katrina – and the sewage system couldn’t support them anyway, water pressure is so low, so often – a lot of progress has been made in other areas and the city is functioning well, all things considered. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it’s going to take many years to undo the damage the Corps did, and the infrastructure that was neglected before Katrina.
The main characters were good – Marlin Boulet, as portrayed by Anthony Anderson, reminded of several cops I’ve known over the years. And race was portrayed fairly well also – at one point Boulet goes into a voodoo shop owned by a white acquaintance of his and comments, “You’re selling voodoo now? You know you’re white, right?” That was so New Orleans, and not unlike the conversation I had with the person who got me onto the set. Yes, there’s racism here like there is everywhere else, but we also let our hair down with people we know, and in general are not hypersensitive about race like some northern cities I’ve lived in and visited.
Another nit to pick – we don’t speak with deep south accents, and nobody makes shrimp po-boys at home. Still, I’m intrigued enough by Boulet and his new partner Cobb to watch it again next week. This may turn out to be the show I love to hate.
