Isn't it a bit sleazy for a TV network to attempt to make money off a recent natural disaster that is still un-remediated, un- cleaned up, where people's homes are still broken and the dead are barely two years in the ground?
This press-release from FOX TV came up in my Yahoo entertainment news today, and I had a little of that same nasty frisson that I had when I heard about OJ Simpson's If I Did It. In OJ's case, readers will be getting a cheap thrill out of a failure of our justice system; in this case Katrina recovery, a massive failure of our emergency management system, becomes the backdrop for banal entertainment.
When everything changes, so do the rules.
From writer and executive producer Jonathan Lisco ("NYPD Blue," "The District") comes a heroic police drama set in New Orleans. Two years after Katrina, the city is still in chaos. Criminals roam the streets with AK-47s, many cops have quit, and the jails, police stations and crime labs still haven’t been properly rebuilt. But the cops who remain have courage to burn and a passion to reclaim and rebuild their city.
Yes, two years after Katrina, the city IS still kind of in chaos. Criminals DO roam the streets. Nothing has been properly rebuilt except maybe the tourist facade of the Quarter. And there are people who remain who do have the courage to try to turn things around.
The problem is, that's not fiction. That's reality. And while America forgets to look at the reality on the ground, our buddies at Fox are developing a new TV Series, peopled not by the real heroes and villains of New Orleans, but by the likes of Ginger "Love Tap" LeBeau.
Rounding out the crew of cops are hotheaded BILLY "K-9" FAUST (Maximiliano Hernández, "Law & Order," "Shark"), who often speaks before thinking; wisecracking JEFF "GLUE BOY" GOODEN (Blake Shields, "Sleeper Cell," "Veronica Mars"), the team’s comic relief; tough-as-nails GINGER "LOVE TAP" LeBEAU (Tawny Cypress, "Heroes"), the only female on the squad, who gives as good as she gets; and CAPTAIN JAMES EMBRY (John Carroll Lynch, "Zodiac," "The Drew Carey Show"), who wrangles the eclectic personalities of his squad with equal parts humor and tenacity.
Now, you might legitimately ponder whether this fictionalized portrait will help bring America's attention back to New Orleans (as some might claim) or whether it will just help the rest of us, who are not there every day, move what happened in New Orleans firmly into the place in our heads that belongs to novels and ancient history, Harry Potter or the Civil War.
It's filmed in New Orleans. Intriguing! We'll get Fox's real-o-fiction-TV perspective on the mansions of the Garden District and the Lower 9th Ward. Of course, filming in New Orleans does beg the question...how will the producers handle it if a Dean-level storm should happen to strike the Gulf while they're filming?
I can't decide if this is a cognitively offensive fictionalization and banalization of a troubling reality that we want to avoid thinking about, or just in incredibly bad taste.